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Desktop publishing comes to Psychoneuroendocrinology
Psychoneuroendocrinology,Vol. 13, No.3, pp. 215-216, 1988 Pergamon Press pie. Printed in Great Britain
EDITORIAL DESKTOP PUBLISHING COMES TO
Psychoneuroendocrinology
IN EARLY 1981, I became Editor-in-Chief of Psychoneuroendocrinology. Having the editorship of a journal was initially a very heady experience - - being able to decide the fate (at least with regard to one journal) of an investigator's scientific product. I quickly learned that the job carries a great deal of responsibility for quality control, which to my mind has two aspects. The first, obvious one is to keep the standards of a joumal high; i.e., to publish only articles of scientific merit. The second, perhaps more personal, aspect is to try to recognize "redeeming scientific value" that may be hidden in an otherwise poorly prepared manuscript and help the author bring it up to publishable quality. With this dual responsibility I enjoyed the first several years of editorship, working with authors, reviewers, and Editorial Board members, and seeing a nice flow of publishable manuscripts. During these years, Psychoneuroendocrinologywas a quarterly journal and grew to about 500 pages per year. Compliments were coming in about the quality of the published material, but disgruntlements also were being voiced by authors, centered on the long time between manuscript acceptance and appearance in print. I kept thinking that, when the number of published pages reached 600 or so per year, we would go to a bimonthly production schedule. Meanwhile, the disgruntlements increased, and some authors were telling me that they were submitting to other journals because their work could be published faster. And, the members of the International Society of Psychoneuroendocrinology,with which the joumal is affiliated, were urging me at annual congresses to publish six times per year. We began to do this in 1987. There was just one nagging problem left. The time between sending manuscripts to Oxford for typesetting and receiving proofs back from authors often took four or five months, adding another unacceptable delay to the appearance of accepted manuscripts in print. At the same time, over the last two years or so, desktop publishing has come into its own, with affordable computer hardware and very sophisticated word processing and page layout software. In March 1987, discussions with Dr. Ivan Klimes and his colleagues in Oxford led to our embarking on the adventure of desktop publishing of Psychoneuroendocrinology. Dr. Robert Trelease, our computer consultant responsible for hardware and software configuration, Ms. Evelyn Ford, our joumal Administrative Assistant, and I decided on a Macintosh'-based system, for several reasons. First, it is extremely user-friendly. Second, with a 19-inch monitor, we have a full-page display of the work. Third, the desktop publishing program we chose, Quark Xpress®, is extremely versatile. And fourth, the PostScript laser printers with which the Macintosh is compatible produce professional quality output. With this setup we were "off to the races." We even asked for manuscripts to be submitted on diskettes, expecting a flood of Macintosh diskettes. Instead, we received many 5.25-inch PC floppy disks and a few other strange ones as well. What to do next? Fortunately, the march of progress in computing brought an affordable solution to us in late 1987: We obtained a flat-bed document scanner, connected to a PC clone, with optical character recognition software. Now, if we cannot read a floppy disk in our PC clone or a diskette in our 215
216
EDITORIAL
Macintosh, we simply scan the printed manuscript into the system, converting it to a text file with the optical character recognition software, run it through a spelling checker to eliminate scanning errors, transfer it from the PC clone to the Macintosh through MacLinkPlus~,, and process it straightaway with our desktop publishing software. The complete page makeup of each issue is done in our Editorial Office; figures are positioned on the pages; proof copy is sent to authors and returned by them to the Editorial Office; and the f'mal, full set of pages for each issue is sent to Oxford in camera-ready form for printing, binding, and mailing to subscribers. The last journal issue of 1987 and all 1988 issues have been done in this way; they look almost identical to the previous, typeset issues of the journal. And, the time between our express shipping the camera-ready copy from Los Angeles to Oxford and the time the finished issue of the journal appears in the mail on my desk is five to six weeks! Our experience certainly augers well for the future of desktop publishing. We have trimmed several months off publication time. Desktop publishing is clearly an enterprise whose time has come. Pergamon, with foresight, recognized this and helped us add this important improvement to our journal. Robert T. Rubin
EDITORIAL DESKTOP PUBLISHING COMES TO
Psychoneuroendocrinology
IN EARLY 1981, I became Editor-in-Chief of Psychoneuroendocrinology. Having the editorship of a journal was initially a very heady experience - - being able to decide the fate (at least with regard to one journal) of an investigator's scientific product. I quickly learned that the job carries a great deal of responsibility for quality control, which to my mind has two aspects. The first, obvious one is to keep the standards of a joumal high; i.e., to publish only articles of scientific merit. The second, perhaps more personal, aspect is to try to recognize "redeeming scientific value" that may be hidden in an otherwise poorly prepared manuscript and help the author bring it up to publishable quality. With this dual responsibility I enjoyed the first several years of editorship, working with authors, reviewers, and Editorial Board members, and seeing a nice flow of publishable manuscripts. During these years, Psychoneuroendocrinologywas a quarterly journal and grew to about 500 pages per year. Compliments were coming in about the quality of the published material, but disgruntlements also were being voiced by authors, centered on the long time between manuscript acceptance and appearance in print. I kept thinking that, when the number of published pages reached 600 or so per year, we would go to a bimonthly production schedule. Meanwhile, the disgruntlements increased, and some authors were telling me that they were submitting to other journals because their work could be published faster. And, the members of the International Society of Psychoneuroendocrinology,with which the joumal is affiliated, were urging me at annual congresses to publish six times per year. We began to do this in 1987. There was just one nagging problem left. The time between sending manuscripts to Oxford for typesetting and receiving proofs back from authors often took four or five months, adding another unacceptable delay to the appearance of accepted manuscripts in print. At the same time, over the last two years or so, desktop publishing has come into its own, with affordable computer hardware and very sophisticated word processing and page layout software. In March 1987, discussions with Dr. Ivan Klimes and his colleagues in Oxford led to our embarking on the adventure of desktop publishing of Psychoneuroendocrinology. Dr. Robert Trelease, our computer consultant responsible for hardware and software configuration, Ms. Evelyn Ford, our joumal Administrative Assistant, and I decided on a Macintosh'-based system, for several reasons. First, it is extremely user-friendly. Second, with a 19-inch monitor, we have a full-page display of the work. Third, the desktop publishing program we chose, Quark Xpress®, is extremely versatile. And fourth, the PostScript laser printers with which the Macintosh is compatible produce professional quality output. With this setup we were "off to the races." We even asked for manuscripts to be submitted on diskettes, expecting a flood of Macintosh diskettes. Instead, we received many 5.25-inch PC floppy disks and a few other strange ones as well. What to do next? Fortunately, the march of progress in computing brought an affordable solution to us in late 1987: We obtained a flat-bed document scanner, connected to a PC clone, with optical character recognition software. Now, if we cannot read a floppy disk in our PC clone or a diskette in our 215
216
EDITORIAL
Macintosh, we simply scan the printed manuscript into the system, converting it to a text file with the optical character recognition software, run it through a spelling checker to eliminate scanning errors, transfer it from the PC clone to the Macintosh through MacLinkPlus~,, and process it straightaway with our desktop publishing software. The complete page makeup of each issue is done in our Editorial Office; figures are positioned on the pages; proof copy is sent to authors and returned by them to the Editorial Office; and the f'mal, full set of pages for each issue is sent to Oxford in camera-ready form for printing, binding, and mailing to subscribers. The last journal issue of 1987 and all 1988 issues have been done in this way; they look almost identical to the previous, typeset issues of the journal. And, the time between our express shipping the camera-ready copy from Los Angeles to Oxford and the time the finished issue of the journal appears in the mail on my desk is five to six weeks! Our experience certainly augers well for the future of desktop publishing. We have trimmed several months off publication time. Desktop publishing is clearly an enterprise whose time has come. Pergamon, with foresight, recognized this and helped us add this important improvement to our journal. Robert T. Rubin