Editorial Update

In my last editorial in May 2008 in Chelonian Conservation and Biology 7(1), I waxed somewhat philosophically reflective as I looked back on my role in the turtle conservation community while facing imminent and life-threatening heart aneurysm and valve surgery. I am pleased and relieved to share with you all that the surgery went well and that my health has recovered nicely, and other than some occasional arrhythmias that my physicians are keeping under pretty good control, I usually feel fine and am back to productive work. Work that I hope to keep doing for a long time yet.

What I would like to share with you in this editorial are some more mundane, but nonetheless important, details about the progress we have achieved with this, our flagship journal. All scientific journals depend upon a steady supply of good manuscripts to maintain their ouput and impact. And that supply of manuscripts is driven by the reputation and perceived relevance and importance of the journal in its field. One measure of that importance is the Thomson Reuters Impact Factor rating that compares journals worldwide in their respective fields. This Impact Factor has become increasingly important for authors trying to choose in which journal to publish their research in order to achieve the most effective impact on their field, as well as for their own professional advancement and performance evaluations in the academic world.

We are therefore very pleased and proud to announce that the latest Impact Factor ratings for CCB have improved dramatically. We have been listed and evaluated for the last two years, and the 2008 rankings were announced in June this year. CCB's ranking was 1.294 with total articles cited for the year 44, representing an 89% increase over 2007's Impact Factor of 0.692. In the category of Zoology, the median Impact Factor was 1.072, with a total of 231,533 cites, and CCB ranked in the top 50 Zoology journals worldwide, number 47 out of 125 journals. Of the 7 Herpetology journals on that list, CCB ranked number 2, ahead of such classic and well-respected journals as Copeia, Herpetologica, Journal of Herpetology, and Amphibia-Reptilia. We are very proud of this achievement and hope to maintain and improve on these numbers. With your help I'm sure we can.

As an apparently direct result of this higher Impact Factor, the number of manuscripts we received during the latter half of 2009 has increased dramatically, and our overall submission rate has climbed quite nicely after being somewhat lower over the previous several years (see Fig. 1). This is a most encouraging sign, and we look forward to increased productivity.

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In terms of our overall 17-year history, we have now received a total of 819 manuscripts and published 590 (72.0%) in 8 volumes encompassing 24 issues. Of the manuscripts we have finished processing, 75.6% have been accepted for publication, yielding an overall 24.4% rejection rate. Papers published have dealt with freshwater turtles (42.5%), marine turtles (35.6%), tortoises (19.2%), or other combined categories. Papers have been published on ecology (34.2%), conservation (27.6%), distribution (5.4%), morphology (5.3%), methodology (4.6%), systematics (3.7%), pathology (3.7%), physiology (3.4%), genetics (2.7%), behavior (1.9%), husbandry (1.0%), nomenclature (1.0%), and a few other lesser categories. Papers have been submitted by authors from a total of 86 nations worldwide, with the top ones USA (46.8%), Brazil (5.3%), Australia (4.0%), Mexico (3.6%), Canada (3.1%), United Kingdom (2.5%), Turkey (2.4%), China (2.0%), Italy (2.0%), Oman (1.7%), Japan (1.6%), France (1.6%), Costa Rica (1.6%), India (1.5%), Colombia (1.2%), and Malaysia (1.1%). In terms of all authors on all published papers over these 17 years, 53.1% have been US-based and 46.9% international. Those numbers have gradually been shifting increasingly to international authors, with the split in their favor over the last four volumes and 44% USA to 56% international in this volume, a tribute to the global reach of the journal and the growth of our international chelonian conservation community.

A critical part of our success and growth in our Impact Factor has been the broader online availability of the journal as a result of our co-publishing arrangement with Allen Press and the production and wide dissemination of pdf files of all published articles. Since pdf files of CCB articles have only been available for Volumes 5 and up, we have now arranged to have all articles from Volumes 1 through 4 also scanned and turned into pdfs. That project has been spearheaded by Jeffrey Seminoff, and we are now pleased to announce that we will be making all these pdfs available soon. Keep an eye on our website (www.chelonian.org) for details on how to obtain them.

Once again, we thank all those professional colleagues who work tirelessly on the journal's behalf to provide thorough peer-review of all submitted manuscripts. Over the last year the following individuals have served as reviewers, often on more than one occasion. We thank them all from the bottom of our hearts—we know how over-committed all of you are—your service to this journal and to the greater chelonian community is deeply appreciated.

Reviewers were: Alberto Abreu-Grobois, Mark Acierno, Matt Aresco, Ray Ashton, Hal Avery, Ernst Baard, George Balazs, Albert Bertolero, Janice Blumenthal, Roger Bour, Annette Broderick, Ron Brooks, Russell Burke, Adalgisa Caccone, John Carr, Paolo Casale, Justin Congdon, Kristen Conway-Gomez, Indraneil Das, Carlos Diez, Kenneth Dodd, Jr., Michael Dorcas, Michael Dreslik, Scott Eckert, Gary Ferguson, Paulo Dias Ferreira Junior, Bob George, David Germano, Matthew Godfrey, Heather Harris, Chris Harvey-Clark, Sandra Hochscheid, Mike Hoffman, Brian Horne, John Iverson, Dale Jackson, Fred Janzen, Tim Jessop, Todd Jones, Yakup Kaska, Max Kasparek, Ross Kiester, Gerald Kuchling, Michael Lau, Christopher Leary, Richard Lewis, Peter Lindeman, Jacqueline Litzgus, Jeff Lovich, Luca Luiselli, Don Moll, Nicholas Mrosovsky, James Parham, Steven Platt, Peter Praschag, Richard Reina, Peter Richardson, Perran Ross, Willem Roosenburg, John Rowe, Vincent Saba, Mike Salmon, Mario Santoro, Jeff Schmid, Richard Seigel, Brad Shaffer, Kartik Shanker, Lora Smith, Melissa Snover, Franco Souza, Nicole Stacy, Joel Strong, Chris Tabaka, Manjula Tiwari, Jesus Tomas, John Tucker, Robert van Dam, Peter Paul van Dijk, Dick Vogt, Bryan Wallace, Scott Whiting, Blair Witherington, Jeanette Wyneken, Marco Zuffi, and George Zug. Thank you all again.