As I hinted on my blog of Jan 10th some changes need to happen to AJNR to keep it current and make it more relevant than ever before. Thus, the following changes will take place immediately:
Review Articles: Currently we publish 3 x month, they have been cited very little and are working against the improvement of our Impact Factor. We will honor those accepted until today and as such the current publication scheme will continue until February 2011. After that date, only one Review Article per issue will be published. I expect the new reviews to be more cutting edge, preliminary communications akin to the current Methodologic or Research Perspectives. Before embarking in writing one of these articles please consult with me.
Case Reports: Please be aware that our new threshold for acceptance of Case Reports is 5% of all those submitted (same applies for Technical Notes). Case Reports receive very few citations and do not favor increasing our Impact Factor. Series with less than 5 cases are considered as Case Reports.
Original Research: These articles are prospective and hypothesis-driven. Although up to now we have published descriptive case series under the same rubric, we believe that this practice does not reflect the true nature of these two different types of articles and is unfair to authors of true research, as such a new category of articles has been created: Clinical Reports (see below). The structure of Original Research articles remains unchanged.
Clinical Reports: These are series of cases (more than 5) that are retrospective and descriptive. The total number of allowed words will be 3500 (one illustration counts for 100 words). This length is between that of Case Reports (1650 words) and Original Research (6100 words) articles. A structured abstract is not needed. In its place, a summary abstract (such as the one currently used for Case Reports) suffices.
We hope that these refinements will make AJNR a better journal and we thank our authors and readers for their understanding and support. The goal of your Editor in Chief and Senior Editors is continue to provide with you with the best Neuroradiology articles and assure the pre-eminent position of AJNR.
