A look back

This is the first issue of the second volume of Neuroinformatics and we proudly look back on a successful first year. Four issues appeared timely last year each containing great science. As a result Neuroinformatics has been accepted for indexing and abstracting by Medline (PubMed) and Index Medicus and by the Science Citation Index expanded and CompuMath Citation Index. These are important steps in the early stage of a new journal and will make Neuroinformatics more attractive to authors and readers alike. All journals depend on continuous manuscript submissions to stay alive and this can often be critical for new journals. Neuroinformatics is doing well in this regard as most papers, including four in this issue, are submitted by authors who are not affiliated with the editorial board of the journal. The distribution of articles reflects quite well the diversity of neuroinformatics as a scientific field. One pleasant surprise was the large number of manuscripts describing “clinical neuroinformatics” as in this issue’s article by Cao et al. We are adapting the editorial board to reflect this interest for clinical applications. The editors of Neuroinformatics are working very hard to achieve high standards of quality. In the first year we accepted 70% of submitted papers. This may seem a high acceptance ratio but this number does not reflect all the behind-the-scenes work. Most papers went through extensive revisions, often twice, before they were accepted. We wish to thank all the reviewers for their superb work. Authors tell us that the quality and depth of review is very high and that they like the positive approach to reviewing the journal takes which stands in contrast to the negative “let’s reject many papers” attitude many journals are following nowadays. The second volume of Neuroinformatics will keep to the four issue format but we hope to increase this to six issues next year. While all went well in the first year, procedures will improve significantly this year. The publisher is in the process of implementing a new online system for article submission and review, called JASPER (Journal Article Submission Peer Online Review), which will be a great help to all. The journal will also implement a CrossRef citation linking capability that