New Zealand Statistical Association Newsletter 56
October 2002
ANZJS Applications Editor
The biggest challenge for me as Editor of the Applications Section of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Statistics was to become a bit more organized. In my previous role as Newsletter Editor, I knew that I had to put aside a couple of days every six months, stir-up the loyal contributors a few weeks ahead of deadline date, and file away the contributions as they arrived.
The Applications Editor job doesn’t work like that - the submissions, reviews, revisions etc, roll in at any old time and it requires some organisation to keep track of it all. This is particularly so because almost all submissions and correspondence are conducted electronically and I can’t count on my in-tray keeping a track of my "to do’s". Fortunately, Chris Lloyd (Managing Editor) provided me with his Excel spreadsheet and Word mail-merge documents for automating the handling of correspondence and these have proved to be invaluable.
The Applications Section averages about one submission every couple of weeks. They seem to come in batches, which I suspect coincide with the breaks in teaching duties. I give each submission a quick read to determine if it meets the Apps Section policy and is not obviously flawed. About 40% of submissions do not make it beyond this point. If it does, then it gets emailed to an Associate Editor for review. The target is to have the review within three months of submission - this relies very much on the dedication of the Associate Editors. They are vital to the smooth and timely running of the refereeing process. I don’t have a good feel for the acceptance rate yet, but I’d put it at a little over 50% of those that get sent to review.
The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Statistics is a publication that we can be proud of, and it is steadily improving its impact factor rating every year. You can help in this regard by considering ANZJS when submitting your work. The Editorial team have some ideas for keeping the momentum going, and one I especially favour is to invite review articles - we’ve certainly got the depth of expertise in our membership to produce some review articles that will be much noted in the years to come.
Russell Millar
StatsWeb
is now live at http://www.statsjournalsweb.com. It is a unique tool enabling researchers to search quickly and easily across titles, abstracts and authors in all the leading statistics journals published by Blackwell.As a member of the NZSA you are entitled to:
· free online access of the full text of all articles published in Australian and New Zealand Journal of Statistics from 1997 to the current volume;
· search across titles, abstracts and authors of all Blackwell statistics journals;
· browse tables of contents for current issues;
· sign up for email alerting;
· access submission guidelines and style files.
To access full text articles is simple:
· go to http://www.statsjournalsweb.com;
· click ‘Browse Journals and Societies’ ;
· locate Australian and New Zealand Journal of Statistics, click ‘Logon’ and enter the password (which has been distributed to members).
· locate the issue and article you require and click on the Article button for the pdf file of the full text.
In the unlikely event that you have any problems logging on, please contact our email helpdesk at e-help@blackwellpublishers.co.uk. Free online access can be extended to include other journals on StatsWeb, by joining one of the other societies or taking out a personal subscription. Details of how to do this are on the StatsWeb site.
Paula O’Connor, Blackwell Publishing, Oxford
poconnor@blackwellpublishers.co.uk
