Shaping the future of <i>Allergy</i>
Authors: T. Bieber, H.‐U. Simon
Journal: Allergy (2009)

The quality, the international awareness and the impact of a scientific journal are the product of teamwork provided by the editors, the associate editors, the editorial board members, the publisher and all the authors. Our journal has successfully been developed under the leadership of Jean Bousquet for the last 9 years. Specifically, the impact factors increased from approximately three to more than six. This led to an increasing attractiveness of Allergy, leading to a dramatically increased submission rate. Accordingly, the workload of the Editor and the Associate Editors increased considerably. This situation requires changes to keep the high standard and to further improve the quality of the journal. Another limiting factor is that Allergy has concentrated too much on the ‘European market’. Therefore, to further improve the quality, we will give the journal a more global character and increase the expertise of the Associate Editors and the members of the Editorial board. In a first step, the number of Associate Editors has been increased, partly by appointing three top clinician-scientists from outside of Europe. This way, we hope that we will attract more high-quality manuscripts and to receive help from additional reviewers from these areas of the world for our journal. We also want to use the journal as a tool to develop our field. Besides attracting more reports containing experimental work on important molecular mechanisms within the pathogenesis of allergic diseases, we would also like to encourage authors of manuscripts dealing with other issues of clinical immunology, including autoimmune and immunodeficiency diseases, to send their work to the journal. Moreover, we will continue to invite scientific leaders in the field to write reviews and opinion articles for the journal. Speediness of publication is an important aspect in the scientific world in the 21st century. Many factors contribute to the possible delay between the submission and the publication. One factor is the quality of the manuscript at the entry in the system. Therefore, the incoming manuscripts will now be checked first by Editorial Assistants on their legibility and whether they comply with the instructions for authors. Any article that does not follow the rules will immediately be returned. This should improve the flow of the process and will safe both energy and time for all the individuals involved in the process. The Editors will go over each submitted manuscript and decide whether a manuscript is suitable for an external review process. If a manuscript is rejected at the Editorial level, the decision will be made by both Editors. The external review process is organized by the Associate Editors. Decisions about a manuscript should be completed within 4 weeks after submission. The members of the Editorial Board have largely been selected by the Associate Editors and/or according to their past support of the journal. Specifically, we have selected individuals who are willing to evaluate at least ten manuscripts per year in high quality and timely manner. There will be room for additional individuals who would like to work with us. We are willing to take over this challenging task of serving Allergy as Editors and are highly motivated to continue developing the journal as one of the leading journals in the world in the field of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. We would like to ask all potential authors to send your best manuscripts to Allergy. We promise fair and speedy evaluation. Let’s work together in our effort to develop a high-priority journal in Allergy and Immunology.