Announcements and Current News

Most major science and policy journals publish in and require that manuscripts be submitted in English. Because effective communication improves the chances that a submitted manuscript will be accepted, authors whose native language is not English and who don't have easy access to colleagues who can improve the prose, are at a distinct disadvantage. To reduce this inequity, I am calling for volunteers who are willing to help IBS members polish up the prose in a manuscript that they intend to submit for publication. The target journal need not be Biometrics or the Journal of Agricultural, Biological and Environmental Statistics (JABES); the goal is to increase the publication success rate for IBS members irrespective of the intended journal. An author who wants to take advantage of this service would need to prepare a very mature draft of the manuscript; one that is ready to submit once the prose has been polished. The volunteer editor could provide additional input, but editing is the only expectation. To keep the focus on this role, the volunteer editor could not be included as a co-author.

If you are interested in serving as a volunteer editor, please email me (tlouis@jhsph.edu) with your contact information and the topics you would prefer to handle. Once there are a few volunteers, we'll announce availability of this service on the IBS website. Initially, I'll be the contact person and make arrangements, but if there is sufficient activity, we'll create a way for connections between authors and editors to be made via the IBS website.

I'm excited about this initiative and look forward to your response and to its success. And, I welcome any suggestions on how to improve the plan.

Thank you and best regards,

Tom
Professor Thomas A. Louis, PhD
President of the International Biometric Society
Department of Biostatistics
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
615 North Wolfe Street, E3545; Baltimore, MD 21205-2179
USA 1-410-614-7838(office); 410-955-0958(fax); 202-494-9331(mobile)
tlouis@jhsph.edu
http://www.biostat.jhsph.edu/~tlouis/

"Biometry, the active pursuit of biological knowledge by quantitative methods"
R. A. Fisher, 1948