Poultry Science® Editor-in-Chief Tips and Tricks (March 2023)

Insights from Dr. Michael H. Kogut for authors and reviewers submitting manuscripts to the journal Poultry Science^®.

As the new Editor-in-Chief for Poultry Science^®, I would like to provide some thoughts and new initiatives that we will try to implement over the coming months. One of the biggest complaints that we receive is the length of time from submission to decision. Many tend to believe that reviewers and Editors are to blame for the delay, but more often than not, authors can cause delays. I have comprised a list of items to keep in mind that will help authors speed up the decision time for their papers.

Authors

• Please pay close attention to the Instructions to Authors before your initial submission. Manuscripts not following the journal format will be rejected by the reviewers.
• Formatting is exceptionally important on submitting a revised manuscript. The Instructions for a revised manuscript state that all revisions made to the manuscript must be highlighted in yellow, not in red, blue font, or other formatting. Failure to highlight corrections in yellow results in delaying the final decision-making process further.
• Revised manuscripts are to be returned in a timely manner. Authors are given 30 days to respond to the reviewer’s comments and return the revised manuscript. This timeframe is not being followed. Many of the revised manuscripts are being returned much later than the 30-day timeframe. Although we do not reject revised manuscripts that are delayed in the return, it does further delay the process. Unless the reviewers are requesting further experiments be conducted, all revised manuscripts should be a priority of the authors to be returned for a final decision. However, if more time is needed, sending me an email request for an extension may be granted.
• Obviously not everyone is happy about the comments made by a reviewer of one’s hard work. However, emotional emails describing the reviewers (or the Section Editor or the Editor-in-Chief) with unprofessional and negative comments are unnecessary. Receiving, a scientific-based rebuttal to any comment goes a long way in providing me with the evidence to reconsider any initial decision. This does not, however, guarantee a reversal of any decision.

Reviewers

The lifeblood of all journals are the reviewers and the service that they provide. As a former reviewer of Poultry Science^®, Section Editor and now Editor-in-Chief, I truly appreciate everyone who has provided a review and continues to provide reviews for the journal. There are some things that I would like to see change and/or improve:

• Upon accepting the invitation to review, a reviewer is given 3 weeks to complete the review. Unfortunately, we are experiencing a large number of delayed responses by reviewers. We certainly understand that each reviewer is extremely busy with the duties of their full-time positions. I ask that once you accept the invitation to review that you try to make it a standard practice to get the paper read and the review submitted within the first week. This alone would decrease our decision time significantly. As a reviewer, please remember what you were feeling as an author when you submitted a paper, each author is anxiously awaiting to hear back from the journal.
• One initiative that I would like to start is the training of senior level PhD students as reviewers for Poultry Science^®. We are graduating PhD students to go out into the academic, corporate, and government world that have never had the opportunity to actually review and comment on a new submission for Poultry Science^®. I would like to ask professors and mentors to provide me with a list of students that they believe would be able to provide a scientifically sound review of manuscripts submitted to the journal in their areas of expertise. Please provide email addresses and keywords/topics in the students’ area of interest. Elsevier provides an online instructional service for learning the review process on the Reviewer Main Menu page of Editorial Manager. You can learn more about the peer review process here. I also encourage mentors to provide guidance to their students as it relates to completing a valuable review.

Special Issues

Another area of concern that the journal readily hears about is the Impact Factor and the quality papers published in Poultry Science^®. We are going to initiate the development of some Specials Issues in Poultry Science^® within each section of the journal. We are hoping to have at least one or two Special Issues per year. Special Issues have the ability to concentrate on a singular topic and provide up-to-date reviews and/or novel technologies and discoveries that should provide a positive immediate effect on the journal’s impact factor. We have begun the process with a Special Issue on Poultry Processing and Products. We will be asking that potential Guest Editors of different poultry-based themes to contact me expressing their interest.

Michael H. Kogut
Editor-in-Chief
Poultry Science^®