The Focus on Quality Publications in Journal of Clinical Microbiology

EDITORIAL

This is an exciting time at Journal of Clinical Microbiology (JCM). Recent changes have been noted by many who regularly peruse the journal. These include a new feature, The Brief Case, as well as increases in the numbers of minireviews and commentaries published (21 and 10 of these, respectively, in the first 7 months of 2016). These features join our popular Photo Quiz, Biographical Feature, and Point-Counterpoint articles. Keen observers, particularly those who get JCM in the printed form, might have noticed something else: JCM is getting smaller. The number of papers accepted in 2015 was approximately 20% less than in 2014, although the numbers of manuscripts submitted were about the same in these 2 years. The data from the first half of this year suggest that we are on track to further reduce the number of manuscripts in 2016. Most of this reduction is accounted for by a reduction in the percentage of full-length and short-form manuscripts accepted by the editors of JCM, although a small part is due our decision to no longer publish case reports. Our acceptance of fewer manuscripts is due to the commitment of the editors of JCM to accept only the most significant, high-quality papers that are relevant to clinical microbiology or epidemiology. In my opinion, the overall quality of manuscripts submitted to JCM has not changed and so the lower acceptance rate truly reflects the higher standards of the JCM editors. The very thoughtful and comprehensive reviews by the outstanding members of the Editorial Board have been essential in this effort.

This commitment to high quality in JCM has led to two additional changes, both of which are reflected in the revised Instructions to Authors posted in August. First, we will stop taking short-form-paper submissions, and second, we have updated our recommendations for statistical analysis for manuscripts submitted to JCM.

At our recent editors' meeting, we had a long and thoughtful discussion about short-form papers in JCM. We discussed many reasons for keeping or eliminating short-form papers. In the end, there were two main reasons we decided to stop publishing these papers. First, we agreed that the format of short-form manuscripts was a problem. With an abstract word limit of 50, authors were limited in providing an adequate summary of their work. The recommended maximum length of the text, 1,000 words, or approximately three manuscript pages, meant that important information was sometimes omitted or consigned to supplemental material. Finally, the absence of section headings made it difficult to quickly find information one wanted in the paper. These formatting and organizational issues created problems for both authors and readers. The second reason we decided to stop publishing short-form manuscripts was that it was clear that overall we have held these manuscripts to lower standards than full-length manuscripts. This was apparent both from reviewers' comments and from the numbers of citations received by short-form papers published in JCM.

Short-form manuscripts submitted before August 2016 will be processed as before, out of respect for the authors who submitted them. Authors who have been asked to convert their papers to short-form manuscripts will be asked to revise them in the full-length or another acceptable format instead; this became a requirement as of 1 August. I am sorry for the inconvenience this will cause some authors, but this requirement is due to the changes made to our Web-based submission system.

Short manuscripts are still welcome as submissions at JCM, but not in the old “short-form” format. There is no reason why a paper must have five or more data elements (figures and tables) to tell a complete and interesting story. We prefer to let each paper be the length it needs to be, within reason, rather than prescribing the brevity of the short-form format. That said, we encourage authors of all papers to be deliberate and concise when preparing manuscripts. The new-data-letter format remains available for findings that are best described very concisely.

A second major change we've made is to update the guidance on “Statistics” in the Instructions to Authors for JCM. We have added several recommendations that are particularly germane to clinical microbiology. If you write or review manuscripts for JCM, please take a moment to read these updated instructions. It will save you headaches later, as the editors will be applying these standards. I will not repeat the recommendations here, since they are in the Instructions to Authors, but I will only say that some of them are drawn from an excellent guidance document from the Food and Drug Administration (1) as well as a commentary that I wrote several years ago (2).

JCM is doing extremely well. By any measure, JCM is among the top journals devoted to diagnostic testing for infectious diseases, and we publish many of the most important papers in this area. As I said in a previous editorial, I think it is important that we avoid the complacency that success invites and continue to improve this excellent journal (3).