With the current major increase in the speed of scientific knowledge production and renewal, delivering the results to the reader as quickly as possible has become an important target. Turkish Journal of Pathology has ensured that any articles that have not yet been published are delivered to the reader as epub ahead of print, so as to reach this target. Any articles accepted from now on will also be eligible for early publication within two months so that the knowledge can reach the reader without getting old. The Turkish Journal of Pathology has also shortened article evaluation durations every year and the mean evaluation duration for an article was 12 days last year. We have also largely reached our target of responding to every article we receive within one month last year and this is an important gain for the authors. Thanks to this objective, the authors are able to get a “rejection, revision or acceptance” response for their articles within one month and their articles that are accepted can go out to the scientific world as epub ahead of print within the very short duration of two months.
These developments have also increased the desirability of our journal and there has been a marked increase in the number of articles sent in 2013, especially from other countries. The lack of a change in the number of articles coming from Turkey despite all of these developments is probably a reflection of problems in the university system. However, it is also encouraging that articles are being received from Western Europe and North America.
References made to articles published in the Turkish Journal of Pathology are increasing every day. The fact that the journal is accepting more qualified publications has increased our rejection rates from about 35% to about 50%. However one of the points we need to emphasize is that we receive many case reports. The general tendency in the world is to decrease the space reserved for case reports in journals. Many popular medical journals have been gradually decreasing space for case reports. It is therefore becoming more difficult for case reports that do not have significant new information to find a place in the journals with each passing day. To eliminate any loss of time and labor, we suggest that our readers not write case reports unless they contain some new information that contributes to the literature. We also want to share the decision that we will not publish any case reports that lack new information in Turkish Journal of Pathology.
We try to share new information and supporting text related to scientific publishing through the Turkish Journal of Pathology “Facebook” page. The number of our followers is increasing every day. We have also started to present these pages in English to increase international followers. If you are not yet a follower, we invite you to visit the https://www.facebook.com/turkjpath address of our journal.
Yours respectively,
Alp Usubütün , M.D.
Turkish Journal of Pathology Chief Editor
