The journal of child neurology: 28 years and still improving.

In 2013, the Journal of Child Neurology started its 28th year of publication. Over the these years, it has been a success story, particularly since 2007 when SAGE Publications took over as publisher and began placing issues on the SAGE Journals website through HighWire Press. To maintain momentum, continued innovation is necessary. This year, the Editorial Board has been shuffled, with 3 longstanding Associate Editors—James F. Bale Jr, Michael Duchowny, and Liana Beni-Adani—stepping down at the end of December 2012. The important contributions of Drs Bale, Duchowny, and BeniAdani to the success of the Journal of Child Neurology over the years are greatly appreciated. In order to enhance the publication of historical materials in the Journal of Child Neurology, Lawrence A. Zeidman has been appointed Associate Editor for Neurohistory. Aviva Fattal-Valevski will now serve as Associate Editor, International. Pedro Weisleder will continue his role as Associate Editor for Neuroethics, developing more articles for the acclaimed journal section titled ‘‘Ethical Crossroads.’’ As social media such as Facebook and Twitter assume increasing importance in the global culture, Yasmin Khakoo and Kara Lewis have taken on roles as Social Media Editors. During the past year, the Journal of Child Neurology has had a Facebook web page (https://www.facebook.com/JournalofChildNeurology), but these new Social Media Editors will expand that presence and increase exposure for the Journal of Child Neurology on Twitter. Because the future of the specialty of child neurology rests on the next generation of child neurologists currently in training, Audrey Foster-Barber has taken on the task of developing a Resident/Fellow Section of the Editorial Board. As Associate Editor, Dr Foster-Barber (with help from the 2 dynamic Social Media Editors) will mentor the initial 7 trainees appointed to serve a 2-year renewable term on the Editorial Board. Submissions to the Journal of Child Neurology continue to increase each year (Figure 1). Acceptance rates remain low, in part due to the constraints of just 1632 pages being allocated to the 12 issues per year. About an equal number of original articles and of brief communications (case reports and short articles) have been published over the past several years (Figure 2). Although the lag from acceptance to print publication has sometimes exceeded 9 months, articles generally appear within 3 months of acceptance on the SAGE Publications OnlineFirst website for the Journal of Child Neurology (http://jcn.sagepub.com/content/early/recent). These OnlineFirst articles are also indexed in the United States National Library of Medicine MEDLINE database for the PubMed website (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/). In 2012, failure of authors to follow the author instructions posted on the SAGE Track ScholarOne manuscript submission website (http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/childneurology) led to 28% of the 896 rejected submissions (Figure 1) being triaged by the Editor-in-Chief and rejected without any peer review. In 2013, a new set of Instructions for Authors has been published to clarify all the necessary manuscript preparation requirements. Particularly critical for the authors are the various disclosures of author contribution (role), declaration of conflicting interest, funding, and ethical approval (including the name and approval number of any approving committees), that have taken on increasing importance because of the escalating amount of fraud and misconduct in scientific publication. Another major reason for triage rejection of manuscripts has been the excessive (and sometimes absurd) use of abbreviations, acronyms, and initialisms (designated as ‘‘abbrevobabble’’). The peer-review process is important for maintaining the quality of the material published in the Journal of Child Neurology. The time in review for submitted manuscripts varied from 1 to 60 days, with a mean of 15 days and a median of 14 days. During 2012, peer review of articles was provided by 130 different individuals, a few of whom (as shown in Table 1) performed a substantial number of reviews, and their efforts are to be applauded. In addition to the members of the Editorial Board, manuscript peer reviews during 2012 were kindly provided by Hoda Abdel-Hamid, Gulay Alper, Daniel Arrington, Rogert Avery, Liat Ben Sira, Leslie Biesecker, Audrey C. Brumback, Bruce Buehler, Diana Castro, Bruce Cohen, Basil Darras, Darryl De Vivo, Jay Desai, David Dunn, Deborah Gaebler-Spira, Generoso Gascon, Kivilcim Gucuyener, Geoffrey Heyer, Monica Islam, Joseph Knezetic, Bruce Korf, Uri Kramer, Michael Kruer, Bennett Lavenstein, Lenora