Integrative and Comparative Biology Advance Access originally published online on January 6, 2006
Integrative and Comparative Biology 2006 46(1):1-2; doi:10.1093/icb/icj010
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Editorial
SICB
Oxford Journals
This is a time of great change for Integrative and Comparative Biology (ICB). A new editor, new publisher, new online host, and a whole suite of changes mark the SICB's intention to make its journal a truly modern one while living up to the best traditions of the high standards established by previous editors. Before we tell you about the innovations, however, we would like to express our sincere appreciation to John Edwards, outgoing editor, and the Washington Consortium, who have taken such good care of the journal over the past years.
Volume 46 marks several transitions in ICB. In addition to new editorship and a change from having Allen Press as the printer to having Oxford Journals, a division of Oxford University Press, as a publishing partner, ICB will embrace just about all the bells and whistles that the electronic medium can provide, including online publishing of articles immediately following typesetting, online access to all current and past issues of ICB (including American Zoologist), a new four-color photographic cover with photographs contributed by authors, and electronic submission and manuscript tracking.
With today's rapid pace of scientific research, it is important to disseminate results in a timely fashion. We are, therefore, changing the entire way that SICB symposia are published. Authors are being asked to submit their papers online at or within two weeks of the annual meeting. We are supporting authors in this process by providing people at the conference itself who can guide them through their submissions. The entire review and editorial process will then be conducted online, and the papers will be downloaded seamlessly for production by Oxford Journals. Each paper will be processed individually and published online as soon as its corrected proofs are ready—within six weeks of arrival of the final version of the paper at the publisher. Thus, authors who submit their finished work promptly will be credited with an earlier publication date on their papers than will those who lag in their submissions, even within a given symposium. In this way, punctual authors are not penalized by colleagues' tardiness. Papers will be grouped together in symposia online as they arrive, and publication in printed copy, symposium by symposium, will follow in the course of the year.
Readers will notice that from issue 3 the 2006 issues will generally be thicker than usual. This is to allow us to implement the new regime for the 2006 symposia without delay, both online and in print. Papers arising from symposia held in 2006 will be published in concert with those still pending from 2005.
The scope of the journal is international in its content, authorship, executive, and clientele. A broader vista, both geographically and taxonomically, was heralded by the change in name from American Zoologist to Integrative and Comparative Biology in 2002. Given the membership of SICB and the globalization of science, this is likely to accelerate. Thus, we will be looking specifically to add to the editorial board members from other countries. We will be asking that consideration be given to amending the by-laws to allow expansion of the editorial board beyond its current structure of one member per SICB division.
One of the valuable and unique features of ICB has been the publication of thematically integrated groups of papers rather than of collections of contributed papers on disparate topics. One can turn to these symposia for concise, authoritative, complete, up-to-date reviews—in essence they are high-level "short courses" on specific subjects. That tradition will continue under the new editorship. There will, however, be an expansion of scope. In the interest of more comprehensive treatment of particular topics, the Editor will, from time to time, solicit specific papers to fill topical gaps in the symposia published by the journal. As space allows, prestigious symposia other than those officially sponsored by SICB may also be published following review by both the Editor and the Editorial Board. These symposia will be selected from international symposia that do not publish their own proceedings or publish them only in abstract form.
The abstracts of contributed papers at SICB meetings will be published electronically on both the SICB and the journal web sites, but because of the general accessibility of the online version it will no longer be printed in the journal. Abstracts published on the journal web site will be both citable and searchable; CD-ROMs of the abstracts will be distributed with the program at the meeting.
The editorship would like to present a challenge to organizers of symposia destined for publication in ICB: use the symposia to help resolve controversial issues. In journals one often finds rebuttals and counter-rebuttals rising from inconclusive data or differences in interpretation. Yet one seldom sees recommendations of how such controversies could be resolved. The following procedure is suggested. Protagonists should each review the topic from their respective points of view and draw their independent conclusions. Each of these reviews would be published in the same issue of the journal, with one proviso: that the authors with opposing views then collaborate in designing an experiment or set of experiments that they both agree would resolve the dissention. This proposal would be published alongside the pro and con articles. Such a procedure might lead to significant advances in science and be more fruitful than merely defending favored positions.
As SICB begins this new partnership with Oxford Journals, ICB will continue to be a journal with exciting science, interesting synthesis, and clarity of expression, as it has been since its inception.
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