[Image above] Credit: Wiley
“The Journal of the American Ceramic Society is a great journal, but boy are they difficult to submit to and slow to publish papers.”
We cannot count the number of times we have heard that comment.
And while we are glad to hear the first part, we certainly want to change the other stuff—both the reality and the perception.
So we made significant investments in the Journal and changes to our publishing processes. These changes have improved authors’ experience without compromising the enduring quality that is synonymous with the Journal.
First and foremost, we have added nine members to JACerS editorial board, making a total of thirteen. By expanding our expertise at the initial stages of the review process, we have simultaneously increased the number of papers reviewed by nearly 20%—and shortened review timelines by up to four weeks while maintaining a high level of scientific rigor.
In addition, together with our publishing partner Wiley, we have instituted new post-acceptance processes for all journals that have really made a difference in publication speed and discoverability. With the new “Accepted Article” view, papers are published online with citable DOIs within a week of acceptance. Authors also have new tools for sharing and promoting their articles to get people to read them more quickly.
We understand that indexing manuscripts in Web of Science and Scopus is where the rubber meets the road for author metrics. To give manuscripts a head start on gathering citations, we have accelerated publication of issues with page numbers by two months. Now your article can be read and begin collecting citations before the game clock starts running.
Not being satisfied with only being faster to publish, we also made it easier to prepare submissions. As discussed in the simplified instructions posted both in our Author Guidelines and in our manuscript submission system, we now encourage authors to make original submissions using a single PDF or Word document. Initial reviewers now examine manuscripts for content alone—no need to fret over final formatting of images, which are now accepted in many file formats until after an article is in the final round of the review process.
So when you consider where to publish your next manuscript, make sure you take a look at the much improved ACerS journals. Submission has never been easier!
Please contact the journals’ managing editor, Jonathon Foreman, at jforeman@ceramics.org for more information or questions.
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