Relatório anual da CBP, revista que sou co-editor

2011 Annual Report from ‘Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology’

Tom Mommsen, Pat Walsh and Göran Nilsson

CBP remains strong as it begins its ‘second fifty years’ and we appreciate the guidance from the many members of its sponsoring societies who submit papers and who serve on the Editorial Board, as Associate Editors, and as referees. Numbers of submissions increased again this past year to 1337 manuscripts, a 7% increase over 2010.

The rejection rate is approximately 64% with many of these coming as ‘desk-rejects’ without peer-review when papers are seriously flawed or outside the scope of the readership of the journal (as judged in a pre-screening by the Editors and the Editorial Board). This strategy has enabled CBP to only send to referees the manuscripts that will benefit most from peer-review and has minimized referee burnout.

We are grateful to the ~1300 referees who helped us this past year; their names are published in the January issue. Selecting only a portion of manuscripts for peer-review also allows us to work more closely with authors and referees in the revision stage to insure the highest quality papers. Indeed, Impact Factors for CBP have steadily risen over the past several years and all four parts bracket a solid 2.0 (Part A = 2.134; B = 1.989; C = 2.325; D = 1.800).

Other positives include very fast review turnaround times (very rarely does this take longer than 30 days) and very rapid times to e-Publication after acceptance (typically as short as 2 weeks depending upon author proof turnaround). Other features on CBP’s website (http://www.journals.elsevier.com/comparative-biochemistry-and-physiology-part-a-molecular-and-integrative-physiology /) include regularly updated lists of top downloaded and top cited papers (you might find your paper here!). A collection of perspectives articles celebrating our recent Golden Anniversary also appears there.

Editorial Board turnover has kept CBP’s perspective fresh; we are aiming for a Board with an appropriate gender balance (we still need to improve!) and a good mix of scientists at various career points. We are particularly interested in adding EB members in the areas of ‘biochemistry of venoms’ and ‘avian physiology’. Special Issue and Review Article submissions have been strong, but we remain selective in order to not delay publication times for regular papers.

As always, ideas for how we can improve and better serve the membership of sponsoring societies are welcomed.