ANZJS Editors’ Column

The NZSA Conference recently provided a useful opportunity for general discussion of the journal. Roger Littlejohn who chairs the NZSA subcommittee for ANZJS commented on finances. Murray Jorgensen spoke about future publishing models. Sue Wilkins, who is Publishing Operations Manager at the Royal Society of New Zealand spoke about the changing journal environment internationally, the RSNZ’s experience with its own journals, and her thoughts on issues facing RSNZ constituent societies like ours that publish journals. I spoke on editorial issues.

The session was very useful, if short. The journal finances (which are separate from those of NZSA and the Statistical Society of Australia) look healthy; the bulk of the journal income is generated through non-member subscriptions particularly from libraries. Open access publication models were discussed, but both Sue and Murray mentioned (wisely in the view of the editors) that there still needed to be an income stream, and page charges might be difficult to avoid under this model. On behalf of the editors, I commented that expanding the workload for editors was not realistic and that, if a new publishing model was chosen, planning to manage the transition while still publishing the journal regularly would be imperative.

The consensus, both from the speakers and the participants, was that making major changes in publishing mode or publisher at this stage were not warranted, although a watching brief should be kept as the international publishing arena is changing rapidly.

Speakers at the ANZJS discussion, from left to right:
Murray Jorgensen, Sue Wilkins, Roger Littlejohn, Ian Westbrooke and Stephen Haslett.

The Editorial team remains Mervyn Silvapulle, Jeff Wood, Ken Russell and me. Richard Penny has very recently been appointed as Book Review Editor. We are currently looking for an Applications Editor to replace Jeff Wood at the end of 2009 – if you are interested please contact me. During 2008/2009 ANZJS made progress towards adopting the electronic Manuscript Central / ScholarOne system to handle papers submitted to the journal. This will significantly improve the way papers are handled. Most international journals use similar software for managing papers. We expect that by next year, papers will be submitted to ANZJS by uploading pdf versions online. In the interim, submissions are via anzjs@statsoc.org.au. The current submission system is regrettably not entirely reliable, so if you do not get acknowledgement of receipt for your paper in the week following submission, please email me direct at s.j.haslett@massey.ac.nz and ask for a status report. If I am not travelling, I will endeavour to reply the same day.

The Impact Factor of Australian & New Zealand Journal of Statistics has risen significantly from 0.373 to 0.650 (ISI Journal Citation Reports, 2008). The Immediacy Index also increased from 0.138 to 0.259, which indicates that (on average) a good portion of the articles are cited in the same year they are published. We are only too well aware that measures such as Impact Factors alone are inadequate to assess the quality of a journal, that they are subject to fluctuation, and that they can depend on whether key papers are included in the time window. Nevertheless, we are pleased that these figures are so favourable to ANZJS.

The number of consortia libraries with paid access to the Journal increased by 7% during the year, and the Table of Content alert registrants increased by 15%. The number of downloads has also increased significantly. These figures all point to a pleasing set of improvements.

The journal has a large number of papers already accepted for publication. The volume for 2009 has already been finalised. Nevertheless, the ANZJS Editors would like to encourage all members to submit original papers in any of the following four categories: Applications, Theory and Methods, Reviews, and Historical and General Interest.

Stephen Haslett
Managing Editor, ANZJS
anzjs@statsoc.org.au

ANZJS - non-editorial management

There have been ongoing discussions between NZSA and SSAI, and within NZSA, about developments with the journal.

The proposed joint venture between NZSA and SSAI is currently on hold.

The homepage for ANZJS is now http://www.wiley.com/bw/journal.asp?ref=1369-1473&site=1

Roger Littlejohn

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