JINST Journal of Instrumentation Status Report

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JINST Journal of InstrumentationStatus Report
Amos Breskin Meetings with JINST Editors, CERN,
Feb. 2-3, 2006 (updated March 21 2006)
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Why JINST?
High-quality fast economic new features
Main Competitors

• Elsevier Nuclear Instruments Methods in
  Physics Research (NIM A)
• 2004 impact factor 1.35
• IEEE IEEE Transactions in Nuclear Science,
  Plasma, medical
• imaging
• 2004 Impact factor 1.7
• AIP Review of Scientific Instruments
• 2004 Impact factor 1.23
• All 3 publish Scientific articles
  Conference proceedings
• Generally good Journals
• Printed electronic
• Slow though submission is electronic (recently
  also for NIM A)
• All 3 have long publishing delay
• Expensive (particularly NIM A)

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How can we become competitive?

• Good editorial advisory boards
• Good editorial office (SISSA) publisher (IOP)
  support
• Friendly submission (flexible format)
• Strict review policy ? quality
• Attractive features for authors video clips,
  database links,
• links to citations, free color figures etc
  important IOP has
• excellent search engine
• Attractive Journal content
• Low prices? recruit also industries,
  consultants, etc
• (ongoing discussions on Open Access)
• Fast publication
• Liberal copy-right policy (articles on arXiv,
  private web,
• reuse material in other places)

Advertising JINST comme il faut ? by the
publisher (IOP) by us, within our communities!
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Editorial Board
Advisory Board
Charpak, Lederman, Willis, Skrinsky, Policarpo,
Walenta, Radeka, Nygren

• High-quality, large Editorial Board
• Presently 44 autonomous Editors covering most
  fields of Radiation Instrumentation
• ? broad scientific competence
• broad knowledge of the field/potential referees
• efficient editor matching to keywords
• ? rapidity of review
• ? quality of review
• ? rapidity of publication

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JINST PRESENT SCOPE
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EDITOR SELECTION

• Editors are selected by the software system
  according to keywords provided by the author.
• There are at least 2 Editors for each keyword on
  our list.
• Though we have 44 Editors, it could happen that
  an Editor is not properly assigned, exactly in
  his field.
• In such cases
• - either suggest to the Editorial Office an
  alternative
• Editor out of JINST list
• - or, if you cannot locate a suitable Editor
  inform the Editorial Office

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JINST content

• Regular articles
• Invited Reviews (can start any time!)
• Technical reports
• Instrumentation Theses (in preparation April 06)
• Calendar links to Instrumentation events
• (on home page)
• Useful links (search engines, science,
  databases, etc
• (on home page)
• Links to Instrumentation groups (in preparation
  April 06)
• Job offers requests (in preparation April-May
  06)
• Interactive readers Forum questions/answers
  panel
• (in preparation April 06)

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PUBLICATIONS IN JINST

• Regular articles submitted to editors according
  to keywords.
• Technical reports IDEM.
• Regular articles may be degraded into technical
  reports by referees/editors, according to the
  general instructions to reviewers.
• Invited Reviews Reviews of general interest.
  Invited by Editors and members of the SAB.
• Instrumentation theses submitted to JINST
  Scientific Director, generally by the students
  supervisor, after being accepted by the
  University. Only genuine Instrumentation theses
  will be published after evaluation. They will
  be classified in sections similar to the
  articles sections.

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REVIEW POLICY

• Invited Review articles will be refereed by the
  inviting person (incl. SAB member). Allocated
  time 6 months for submission 8 weeks for the
  referee 8 weeks for authors revision.
• Articles Technical reports 1 week for
  accept/decline by editor/referee 3 weeks for
  the editor/referee 1/3 weeks for authors
  minor/major revision
• Theses No review - just general evaluation of
  quality and relevance. 4 weeks for accepting.

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REVIEW CRITERIA(following questions of some
Editors)

• We aim QUALITY RELEVANCE
• The review criteria can be
• - Novelty
• - Originality
• - Scientific value
• - Technical value (mainly for Technical
  Reports
• - Language and technical issues
• - Referencing
• - NEWLY DEVELOPING COUNTRY criteria (add a
  correction coefficient to support work done in
  such countries, but insist on relevance to JINST
  language corrections in the revision phase)
• In the revision process you have an OPTION of
  applying virtual or real scores, e.g.
• - Accepted Papers 8-10
• - Accepted Technical Reports 6-7
• - Rejection Below these scores

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ADVERTISING JINST

• A broad database of instrumentation-oriented
  scientists exists and is constantly updated.
• Sources Conferences, Associations, large
  experiments, Institutions etc. (some do not
  provide access to mailing-lists but diffuse our
  advertising material)
• e-advertisements sent to gt 4000 persons
• Printed leaflets of JINST distributed _at_ IEEE05
  will be distributed in bags of most
  instrumentation conferences. Editors will get
  soon leaflets for personal distributions.
• Sort article in CERN courier (1-2/06) note on
  CERN library web future advertisements in other
  press, institutional brochures, web sites etc.
  incl. arXiv.
• Posters in preparation
• We dig out daily relevant papers deposited in
  arXiv and suggest authors to submit to JINST
  present and future papers.

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SUBMISSIONS STATUS March 20, 06

• 27 papers submitted since Jan 9 JINST launch
• 6 accepted
• 6 rejected
• 5 not suitable
• 3 withdrawn following suggestion to author
• 7 in review process
• Promised in preparation for submission to JINST
  by colleagues approached by me/others
• Many promised articles by potential authors who
  responded to the e-advertisement or to the note
  sent after their submissions to arXiv.

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EDITORS URGENT TASKS

• Pls help advertising, by all possible means.
• Pls help providing mailing lists, suggest
  contacts (institutional journals, experiments,
  conferences etc), or diffuse our standard
  letter among mailing listsother ideas.
• We are missing so far mailing lists in
  accelerators, medical instrumentation, plasma,
  synchrotron radiation, astronomy and
  astrophysics, etc. Pls help approaching these
  communities
• Pls submit papers to JINST asap
• Pls suggest others to submit to JINST