AUSTRALASIAN ORTHODONTIC JOURNAL (AOJ)

The AOJ is travelling at a steady pace. On average there are 3 new manuscript submissions every week, a high proportion of which come from Asia and the Middle East. Even though there are a smattering of submissions from other parts of the world, a paper has merit and the reviewers consider it worthy, often significant work needs to be applied before readability, understanding and publication can be achieved. This is not a problem isolated to the AOJ as other journals face similar challenges.

In 2022, the Journal published 36 papers in its two issues which is a little more compared with the hardcopy system. At the time of writing, there are 10 papers currently out for review.

There are over 350 reviewers listed in the program management system, 207 of whom contributed in 2022, many more than once. The assistance of the reviewers is gratefully acknowledged and it would be impossible to produce a high quality journal without them.

Members and Council will be delighted to learn that the impact factor for the journal has risen. It is now 0.269 which is a rise of approximately 0.1 over the past 12 months. This is pleasing since we started at zero several years ago. The impact factor is a backdated measure of a journal’s acceptance (1-2 years in the past) and so the expectation is for further gains in the future. In addition, Sciendo (publisher) are taking steps to review the journal for its compliance with the National Institute of Health’s (USA) requirements for listing in PubMed. This is a positive step and while by no means this indicates that PubMed acceptance is assured, we will continue our efforts to be listed in PubMed.

Emeritus Professor Craig Dreyer Editor