Brain, Vol. 123, No. 1, 1-2,
January 2000
© 2000 Oxford University Press
A message from the Editor
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One hundred years ago Brain had already reached its majority, then being 22 years old. I am delighted that the previous editor, Professor Ian McDonald, has accepted my invitation to highlight some of the Journal's contributions to neurology over the last century (pages 3–7 in this issue).
The Journal's long history has not prevented it from being highly competitive today. Our impact factor this year has risen again. It is now 5.9, placing the Journal second in the ranking of clinical neurological journals. Moreover, Brain articles are not ephemeral. As pointed out last year, our 15-year impact factor ranks Brain thirteenth of all biomedical journals, immediately below the Journal of Neuroscience.
One way in which Brain has changed since 1900 is by becoming an international journal. Virtually all papers in the early issues were by British authors. Now, of the papers published in Brain, 35% are from Europe other than the United Kingdom, 25% from North America and 10% from the rest of the world. We have an international editorial board (10 of the 22 members are from outside the United Kingdom) and, as the list of referees in the December issue showed, 60% of our reviewers are from overseas. Brain has been on the World Wide Web with full text since January 1997. Users are able to access and download the Index for all volumes, abstracts published over the last 17 years, and editorials. Subscribers can download full papers and book reviews.
The number of papers submitted to Brain continues to rise. The increase has been 25% in the 2 years since I took over the editorship. Because of constraints on the size of the journal, the increased submission rate has resulted in a further reduction in the acceptance rate, which has been running at about 25% in 1999. This has meant that we have had to turn away a number of good papers that we would otherwise have been glad to publish. For this reason, the Board of Management of the Journal has agreed to an increase in the annual number of pages that should allow us to publish about two more papers per issue. Articles in Brain are often longer than those in other neurological journals (the median count for text is about 7000 words). This is because we believe that some topics need space for their full impact to be made. But prolixity is not encouraged for its own sake; an unnecessarily long article by one author will deny journal space for another, and authors may sometimes be asked to shorten their manuscript. Articles that make their case succinctly and convincingly are welcome.
Despite the increased number of papers received, we have further shortened the time taken to process papers. The median time from its reception at the Brain office to the first decision on a manuscript is 47 days. This figure has shown a steady decline despite the rising rate of submissions. The median interval between acceptance and publication has held at 4.5 months. We plan to reduce this further in the forthcoming year.
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