With the start of a new volume and a new year, our ninth since the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center (MPRC)–Oxford University Press consortium assumed responsibility for the Schizophrenia Bulletin, it seemed an opportune moment to provide our readers with an update on the status of the journal and to introduce a few changes in the editorial office policy and composition.
We are pleased to report that Schizophrenia Bulletin continues to enjoy significant growth in the metrics used to assess journal influence. Since 2005, the Bulletin’s impact factor has increased 16% annually and in 2011, it reached a value of 8.8, placing us fifth among all journals published by the Oxford University Press and fourth in the list of the 129 journals comprising the Institute for Scientific Information’s compendium of psychiatric journals. In addition, the Bulletin ranked in the top 20 psychiatry journals in other citation metrics, including the immediacy index (7th) and the Eigenfactor® score (15th). The Bulletin’s Article Influence® score, which weights the Eigenfactor® score by the number of articles published over a 5-year period—normalized to all articles published in the field—was 2.97, nearly 3 times greater than the average of all psychiatry journals, placing us fifth overall in the field.
Despite this success, the Bulletin is not immune to the issues confronting all of academic publishing. Since 2008, full-rate institutional (print and online) and personal subscriptions have dropped by 34% and 37%, respectively. Fortunately, these declines have been offset by a 64% increase in library consortia access. Although a variety of factors are driving these trends, unprecedented budgetary constraints facing our academic libraries and a shift away from the printed page toward the PDF as the preferred format for accessing scientific literature are major contributors. Evidence of these changes is reflected in the number of full-text article downloads, which increased from 600 000 to nearly 925 000 during the course of the past 3 years. In 2010, we undertook a major effort to provide journal content to developing countries and, in 2011, provided nearly 1500 subscriptions to individuals and libraries at reduced or no charge. When all of these changes are taken into account, the overall circulation of the Bulletin increased from 3500 subscriptions in 2008 to 6200 in 2011—a net increase of just more than 78%.
The rapid growth of Schizophrenia Bulletin has presented some challenges. Despite an acceptance rate of approximately 17%, we continue to have a large backlog of material in Advance Access, the journal’s online resource for publishing material ahead of print. Commitments to publishing invited theme articles together with a budget of 200 pages per issue have resulted in longer delays between online and paper publication for regular articles. In an effort to address this issue, word limits for invited themes and regular articles will be reduced to 5000 and 4000 words, respectively. We are also reducing the number of papers in each theme and publishing fewer themes per year, which has allowed us to devote a greater proportion of our page budget to the publication of regular articles. While we work to resolve our current backlog, we would remind authors that papers published in Advance Access appear in PubMed and can be cited using the Digital Object Identifier, or DOI, and the publication date.
The continued growth and development of the Bulletin depends on a vigorous and productive editorial board. When we formed the editorial office in 2005, the plan was to rotate about a quarter of the membership annually with the intent of including new members, particularly individuals who had done substantial service in peer review or in organizing themes. This proved to be impractical and the last significant change to the composition of the editorial board was made in 2009. Beginning with this issue, we anticipate rotating board membership every 3 or 4 years, making occasional additions in off years. We appreciate the work of editorial board members and thank each of you who are rotating off for your service to the journal and for your understanding of the need to invite and acknowledge the contributions of your peers.
For the past several years, Dr Gunvant Thaker has held the position of Deputy Editor of Schizophrenia Bulletin. After 30 years of service to the University of Maryland and the MPRC, Guni recently elected to make a career change. Dr Thaker was critically important in forming our partnership with Oxford University Press and in preserving the Bulletin traditions of publishing patient perspectives and artwork. In addition, he served as the assigned editor on submissions relating to genetics, phenotypes, and gene/environment interactions. With his departure, the Deputy Editor position will be vacated. Dr Laura Rowland has assumed responsibility for cover artwork and the First Person accounts, while Dr Vishwajit Nimgaonkar will oversee the review of manuscripts previously handled by Dr Thaker. All of us at the Bulletin are grateful to Guni for his substantial role in making the journal a success and his lifelong commitment to improving the lives of people with schizophrenia.