Reform of the journal conducted in “Electrochemistry” Vol.88 No.3

Reform of the journal conducted in “Electrochemistry” Vol.88 No.3
The period of peer review has been shortened to 1/5 !

The editorial committee of “Electrochemistry” has been working on reforming the Journal. Here, the new policy and achievement which appear in Vol. 88, No. 3 issued May 5, 2020 are informed.

1 Shortening peer review period

Reducing the average number of days required for accept of the manuscript submitted in 2019-2020 is indicated in the Figure in the right side. The whole period from the date of submission to accepting the manuscript consists of the peer review period committed by the editorial board and the revision period by the authors. Since the reorganization of the editorial committee in March 2020, an average period of peer-review has been reduced to about 1/5 with the dedicated cooperation of the peer reviewers. Furthermore, we provided as much guidance as possible to the peer-reviewers and shortened the judgment of the editors in order to facilitate the review of authors as a peer review policy. As a result, the average revision period by the authors, and also the whole period time from submission to accept of the manuscript has been significantly reduced. Consequently, 29 articles were published in this issue with short periods.

2 Retaining copyright by authors under Creative Commons

The authors retain the copyright of all articles and clarify the standard for secondary usage licensed with Creative Commons for convenient of authors and readers. Authors have been expected to choose either CC BY or CC BY-NC-SA for the copyright license of each article issued from Vol.88, No.3.

3 Graphical Abstract

Based on analyzing the results of questionnaires to members last year, the editorial committee revised the Instruction of Authors for Electrochemistry, and introduced the Graphical Abstract (GA) under the authors’ option. The editorial committee welcomes the use of GA by authors so that the reader can easily understand the aim of their research. The editorial office introduces two articles including the abstract graphics in the articles and TOC.
           https://doi.org/10.5796/electrochemistry.20-00010
           https://doi.org/10.5796/electrochemistry.20-00017
These URLs are available from 5th May, 2020. A version of advanced online publication is linked until 4th May, 2020.

4 Font change of Title and Abstract

The graphical abstract and the allowance for exceeding the word limit of the abstract at the peer-review stage need additional space in the article. Due to reduce the authors’ burden for article processing charge (APC) as much as possible, the design of font type and size has changed.

These reforms have reflected many opinions in the survey for the ECSJ journals last year. The editorial committee would like to thank all members and authors for their cooperation, and hope them to contribute their manuscripts to Electrochemistry.

3th May, 2020

The Editorial Committee of “Electrochemistry”
The Electrochemical Society of Japan (ECSJ)