Editorial Review Board

This is my tenth editorial letter to you as your Editor-in-Chief of International Surgery.

In my last editorial letter to you, I emphasized our goal of streamlining our electronic editorial review process to gain the advantages of efficiency and professionalism. In this reference, I report to you that the new manuscript management system, PeerTrack, which was implemented in late 2012, is attracting an increasing number of manuscript submissions. We are now receiving as many as two new manuscripts per day and PeerTrack is of great assistance in speeding up the time to process manuscripts. I share two key statistics with you:

• Approximately 12 days is now the time to complete a review. The PeerTrack system sends an automatic follow-up, if reviews are not undertaken within the default period of 21 days.

• On average, the submission to acceptance time is currently 34 days.

The human element is still the most important part of any electronic review system – the members of the Editorial Review Board. No matter how good any electronic peer review system may be, each and every member of the Editorial Review Board is still of critical importance. The reputation of International Surgery is directly related to how well the members of the Editorial Review Board do their job. The review of the content of each submitted manuscript, as well as timely suggestions for improvement, where necessary, all contribute to publishing excellent manuscripts which will be cited again and again.

It is certainly understandable if any current member of the Editorial Review Board cannot continue to serve on the Board for any reason, including time limitations and other conflicting commitments. To ease any such transitions, I recently sent a brief informal note to each member of the Editorial Review Board inquiring if they wish to continue on the Board or not. Replies are now being received and you will notice an updated listing of the Editorial Review Board on the International Surgery website. In advance of any such changes, I unequivocally express my appreciation to all members who elect to not continue on the Board, as well as, of course, to those members who elect to continue on the Board.

To assist those new Editorial Review Board members, as well as continuing Editorial Review Board members, you may wish to visit the International Surgery Home Page, with address http://www.internationalsurgery.org. Here you will find an online video entitled “Tutorial on Getting Started for Reviewers”, which provides an overview of PeerTrack. This article may be of assistance to you in reference to your reviews.

I thank all members of the Editorial Review Board for their support and look forward to the ongoing, exciting challenge of steadily increasing the prestige of International Surgery.

Sincerely,

Professor Christopher Chen

Editor-in-Chief

International Surgery