Dear authors, reviewers, and readers:
As 2023 draws to a close, it is my distinct pleasure to summarize the continued improvements we've made this year in JAVMA and AJVR. But it is the contributions of you, our main stakeholders, that are central to our successes. Thank you!
Your journals could not exist without the amazing content provided by authors—clinicians and researchers who are advancing veterinary care with the development of new diagnostic aids, medical and surgical treatments, and laboratory tests. Nor could their manuscripts progress to publication without the painstaking work of our scientific reviewers. So, this month I want to give a big shout-out to all JAVMA's and AJVR's authors and reviewers. Thank you for your contributions!
Here are some of the many steps we've taken to improve author, reviewer, and reader experiences. We continuously amend our process maps to streamline submission and publication processes for authors, reviewers, and your AVMA Publications team. Newly submitted manuscripts are first assessed by me for suitability for your journals. Approved manuscripts then proceed to our Publishing Editor, Michelle Krieger, for initial quality control (QC). Michelle is also a Copy Editor at the AVMA and brings a unique postacceptance lens to the QC process. At initial QC, Michelle is looking for potential barriers to publication of a manuscript, such as low illustration quality or excessive tables, figures, or word counts. Revised manuscripts undergo further QC. Our aim is to make manuscript submission to JAVMA and AJVR a positive experience for you, our valued authors. We are constantly asking, “What can we do to improve author and reviewer experience?” and then finding a way to get it done.
A simple win-win for authors and reviewers is the inclusion of a sample “Response to Reviewers” in the decision letter (minor or major revision) to authors. This shows authors how to provide point-by-point responses: the author restates the reviewer's comment, followed by their response. This simple fix has dramatically improved the workflow and time required for revising manuscripts.
Once a manuscript is accepted, simplified copyright (or open access) forms are now automatically generated, and our payment portal for open access manuscripts has been entirely revamped to ease and speed up the process for authors. This is important because manuscripts cannot be published until we receive these forms.
To our loyal readers, a heartfelt thanks for your attention to the printed issues of JAVMA and the online editions of both journals. Here are some of the improvements we've made to your reading experience this year, many of which help authors as well, with easier navigation of the websites encouraging more downloads and citations, and more social media activity to bring you the latest advances in veterinary science and practice.
To guide you to the specialized content you may need at a given moment, we have assembled several virtual collections (ie, curated content from both journals) on timely and important topics, including coronavirus, dentistry and oral surgery, vaccination, theriogenology, analgesia, arthritis, dairy, tick-borne diseases, dermatitis, antimicrobial, diabetes, geriatric medicine, and wellbeing. You can find them at https://jav.ma/Collections. Add to these the two 2023 Special Supplements, Dermatology in Your Practice (June) and Dentistry in Your Practice: Making Gold-Standard Recommendations (December). With the June supplement, we replaced harmful plastic polybagging with an environmentally friendly paper envelope—a first in scientific publishing.
A win-win for authors and readers is continued active social media promotion of manuscripts to readers through X (formerly known as Twitter), Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and our very own podcast, Veterinary Vertex (with over 14,000 downloads this year)! JAVMA is ranked #3 in audience engagement of 2,155 veterinary science journals, and AJVR is #14! Dr. Sarah Wright leads social media for JAVMA and AJVR and continues to be amazing. Well done, Sarah!
Many of these initiatives and improvements are only possible because JAVMA and AJVR are self-published by the AVMA. That means there is no big publishing house like Elsevier, Springer Nature, or Wiley to impose their culture, structure, and systems on our efforts. Being self-published is exactly what has allowed us to be innovative, creative, and nimble as the AVMA strives to bring you timely scientific information to inform clinical practice and advance veterinary research. Thus far in 2023 we have published over 400 JAVMA and 175 AJVR articles in print and online, and we have seen over 3 million visits to the journals' websites. We couldn't have done this without the amazing AVMA Publications Division Staff pictured below.
On behalf of the Publications Division Staff, we wish all of you a safe and joyful holiday season and look forward to even more exciting developments for your journals in 2024!
Dr. Lisa A. Fortier DVM, PhD, DACVS
Editor-in-Chief, JAVMA and AJVR
Division Director of Publications, AVMA
AVMA Publications Division Staff. Back row (left to right): William A. Mazur, Production Coordinator; Nicholas T. DeLuca, Managing Editor; Justin D. DeAre, Publications Technology Specialist; Victor Schultz, Senior Copy Editor; Dr. Gussie J. Tessier, Associate Editor; Karen L. Dodson, Editorial Manager. Front row (left to right): Rita E. Donnelly, Advertising/Subscription Associate; Mark A. Williamson, Advertising/Subscription Associate; Christina M. Banks, Display Advertising Associate; Dr. Lisa A. Fortier, Editor-in-Chief; Dr. Sarah Wright, Associate Editor; Michelle A. Krieger, Publishing Editor; Kristen M. White, Senior Copy Editor; Morna Conway, Publishing Consultant; Dr. Kristi Henderson, Associate Editor.
Citation: American Journal of Veterinary Research 84, 12; 10.2460/ajvr.23.12.editorial
