2024 Latest News & Announcements

First, I want to personally thank the Section Editors and reviewers for the amazing work that they have done over the last year. The turn-around time from submission to first Editorial outcome (online publishing) is now 68 days. This is a decrease in about 3 weeks over the last two years.

Second, submissions to PSJ have increased by over 30% over the last two years. In 2023, PSJ had over 1800 submissions! Lastly, PSJ is now ranked 4^th out of 62 in Impact Factor (4.4) in the Agriculture, Dairy, and Animal Science category.

Authors

• A large portion of the increased submissions to PSJ have come from countries outside North America. With this increase, there has been an increased issue with language and grammar in many of these papers. This obviously makes the reviewer process an issue in many cases since the reviewer has a hard time understanding the basis of the work and/or the experiment design and methodology that was used. TO help alleviate this problem, Elsevier has provided a link to their own in-house language editing services: https://webshop.elsevier.com/language-editing-services/language-editing/?dgcid=les%3Asd-journal-menu. We encourage all Authors whose first language is not English to utilize this service BEFORE submission which will only decrease the time of the review. The Section Editors have also begun the practice of proofing the submissions before sending for review. If the English and grammar are an issue, the SE will recommend immediate ‘revise’ decision and provide the same link for the authors to fix their papers before providing the revised copy which can then go out for review. In other words, language and grammar should not be a reason for rejection, unless the authors refuse to use this or other language services.
• Last year, I suggested that authors pay close attention to the Instructions to Authors before submission, especially for formatting. Unfortunately, this request seems to have fallen on deaf ears. We have had far to many submissions either returned before review or rejected because of ignoring the formatting requested by the journal. The SE and reviewers react badly to not following the formatting provided by the Instructions to Authors.
• One of the areas that is specifically covered in the Instructions to Authors is repeatability. It is expected that all experiments should be repeated at least twice before submission to PSJ. Additionally, authors are advised to pay close attention to the statistical analysis conducted on their data and to make sure that it is appropriate for the experiment(s) conducted.
• Reviews: reviews are normally requested by the Editorial Board from experts in a specific field. Otherwise, if you are contemplating a review-type paper, please contact me directly and provide the background and justification for the review. I can then agree that such a review is of interest to PSJ. We have noticed a number of labs around the world constantly submitting reviews in multiple areas of poultry science, most of which they are not experts. These reviews are superficial and do not provide the in-depth review that is vital to a topic. These papers very seldom get accepted by the reviewers.
• All submissions, new or revised, to PSJ via Editorial Manager are checked for similarity and duplication by algorithm called iThenticate. The Editorial Board has agreed that a threshold 25-30% similarity/duplication is acceptable because Materials & Methods sections are extremely difficult to change from paper to paper. However, anything above the 30% threshold is flagged and usually rejected before review for potential plagiarism. Authors that do a lot of ‘cutting and pasting’ from previous published manuscripts or that use the internet for selective phrasing should be aware of iThenticate.
• It should be noted that a rejection decision of a manuscript is final. PSJ does not allow for revision and resubmission of a rejected manuscript. Attempts to do so are inevitability detected by iThenticate and are automatically rejected.

Reviewers

• When you make a recommendation on a paper, there are a number of categories that you can use for classifying your review:
  • Reject: you MUST provide a specific reason(s) for your recommendation for rejection. Simply suggesting rejection is not sufficient and will be either ignored or you will be contacted directly by the SE or myself for an explanation.
  • Accept: This means without any revision. If you have listed some grammatical or editorial suggestions to the authors, then this is not an accept decision, it is a revise.
  • Revise: either major or minor, but you must provide the author with a clear, sound explanation of why this is necessary.
  • Revise to Research Note: again, it is important to explain to the author why the majority of the data provided does not support the conclusions drawn. Think of this as the reader wants to see the trees for the forest concept. There are usually too many tables/figures that do not help the reader see the true significance of the data.

Special Topics

We are still interested in the development of some Special Issues in Poultry Science within the different sections of the journal. Special Issues have the ability to concentrate on a singular topic and provide up-to-date reviews and/or novel technologies and discoveries that should provide a positive immediate effect on the journal’s impact factor. Anyone that has an interest in becoming a Guest Editor for a Special Issue, please contact myself or a Section Editor with your idea. Please provide a Topic Description and potential list of authors for the Topic. Elsevier will provide a Special Topic Editorial professional to work with you to develop the Topic.

Michael H. Kogut
Editor-in-Chief
Poultry Science®