Round 3 at JASN (2001 to 2007)
Authors: William Couser, Allison A. Eddy, Carol Hill
Journal: Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (2010)

It is a pleasure to have this opportunity to look back and comment on our term as the third editor-in-chief, deputy editor, and editorial assistant of JASN from 2001 to 2007 and to try to place that period in historical perspective. Thoughts at the beginning and the end of our term have been published in JASN before.1,2 It is again humbling to acknowledge the monumental accomplishments of the first JASN team under Jared Grantham, who founded the journal in July 1990 and established its reputation for excellence from day 1 and to follow the second team led by Craig Tisher, which maintained and enhanced JASN's preeminence as renal science entered the era of cellular and molecular biology that swept through the scientific world in the late 1990s. From 2001 through 2007, it was our mission, as its third editorial team, to maintain JASN's already well-earned stature as the top-ranked kidney journal in the continuously evolving world of sophisticated science in molecular biology and genetics while also better serving the needs of our majority clinical readers. When we began our tenure in July 2001, we inherited a great journal with an impact factor of 6.2, 873 manuscript submissions per year, an acceptance rate of approximately 26%, and a content that was 35% clinical and 65% basic science. When we completed our term in 2007, the impact factor had risen steadily to 7.34. Submissions by 2007 were up 50% to more than 1200 per year. JASN's increased selectivity was reflected in an acceptance rate that had fallen to approximately 21%, and the content evolved intentionally to 50% clinical and 50% basic science. Despite this growth, the size of the journal was kept exactly the same: Approximately 300 printed pages per issue. Although these numbers document the remarkable growth of JASN during 2001 through 2007, they do not reflect the many changes in the character of the journal that were also implemented as we strove to keep JASN, like the ASN annual meeting, at the leading edge of the many exciting currents that ran through nephrology research during the first years of the 21st century. Among these new initiatives were recognizing the emergence of clinical epidemiology and outcomes research as a discipline and naming a new associate editor to lead this effort; moving the journal to electronic manuscript submission and review, which dropped the acceptance time from 7 to 3 months; adding “JASN Express” in November 2004 to our electronic edition, thereby allowing articles scheduled for future publication to be viewed by readers online soon after acceptance; moving the journal to self-publishing to enhance our flexibility to adapt quickly to changes in the way readers accessed and used the journal; adding new features such as “Fast Track” and “Nephrology Beyond JASN” (written by Associate Editor Eberhard Ritz), a provocative look each month at two to three unusually exciting observations published in nonrenal journals; increasing the clinical content of the journal from 35% in 2000 to approximately 50% by 2007, particularly in the areas of epidemiology and genetics; separating the basic research and clinical research articles in the table of contents to help readers scan topics of interest; introducing a new “Highlights” section at the front of the journal, written for the general reader to provide short summaries of the content of the most important articles in the issue; increasing the number of invited editorials; combining the previous “Reviews,” “Science Watch,” and “Disease of the Month” into a multipart feature called “Frontiers in Nephrology” (edited by Deputy Editor Allison Eddy), which combined reviews of the latest pathogenetic mechanisms with updates on clinical aspects and treatment, all focused on one renal disease; using a dedicated medical illustrator to improve the graphic quality of invited reviews; and developing policies to deal with the onslaught of articles describing changes in expression of hundreds of genes that followed the advent of genome sequencing and ChIP technology and the enhanced ability to identify multiple single-nucleotide polymorphisms associated with many renal diseases. From 2001 through 2007, the JASN team reviewed almost 7000 new submissions, an average of approximately 3 per day, 7 d/wk. We guided what we believed were the best 1800 of these, including 250 invited reviews and editorials, through revisions to eventual publication. The most rewarding part? The privilege of being the first to see the very best studies in both basic and clinical renal science and to play a role in disseminating that new information quickly to JASN readers. The most challenging part? Selecting the best 21% of articles from more than 100 worthy submissions each month and convincing reviewers and authors that there really were publication deadlines. The best part of the opportunity to contribute this editorial? The chance to thank again the thousands of authors, the hundreds of reviewers, the dozens of contributors who wrote invited reviews and editorials, the 15 dedicated individuals who served JASN as associate editors between 2001 and 2007, and our single managing editor, Bonnie O'Brien, for her tireless dedication to making JASN the exceptional journal it has been since its inception in 1990. Happy 20th birthday, JASN! Disclosures None.