Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology: Evolution of an Electronic Journal

When I began working as managing editor of Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology (JDST) in August 2011, I was not quite sure what this meant in reality. With each day, I realized that it involves a good number of emails, increasing each and every day, and a lot of things to learn. It also means fun. For example, you read the (detailed) response letters of authors who write many sentences as to why this or that comment of a reviewer is wrong or right but at the same time, are very reluctant to change a single sentence in their manuscript—more about this a little later. Sometimes, I also get shocked when I encounter clear cases of plagiarism. But at first, you have to see and accept how many “stories” are going on in an active journal/editorial office. The truth is that each and every manuscript has its own story. Almost always, there are some special issues here or some trouble there. It takes some time to learn this game, and it requires highly efficient handling in the editorial office not to get lost. On the other side, it is as a big honor to work with David Klonoff and the editorial team of JDST (mainly, Vanessa Ta, Jiji Reyes, and Yoram Tamir), and my hope is that my efforts will somehow contribute to improving the quality and acceptance of our journal even further over the coming years. This might be an unusual editorial, but having been onboard this ship for several months now allows me to reflect on some aspects I believe might be of interest to our readers. With this opinion piece (the true meaning of an editorial), I also hope to clarify some topics in the interest of our journal. As a scientist, I will bring some data to the table as well. The source of these data is a well-maintained database in which each and every bit of email from the editorial office is documented along with each reviewer, deadline information, and the topics of manuscripts. There is room for a more in-depth analysis of the database in order for us all to learn some lessons, including those of us at the editorial office.