The Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society underwent the IEEE 5-year review this spring. The final report will come out later, but the informal feedback is that we did very well. One area that was of concern is our lack of a defined methodology for the succession of editors and associate editors. There was concern that some editors held their positions for too long, then again, they realized that we have quite a few special issues and these editors held their posts for too short a time. The publications committee of the AdCom is working on a response to this criticism.

In the meantime the outstanding editor of this Newsletter, Ken Dawson, has decided that it is time for someone else to take over the reins of the NPSS Newsletter. As you will note elsewhere in the Newsletter, we are looking for individuals interested in helping with the Newsletter. In addition, we would like to identify individuals who might be willing to work at some level on our other publications. As we consider the concerns expressed in the 5-year review, we need to know if the manpower exists to implement a plan for editorial succession.

Impact Factors for the NPSS Transactions as a function of year. The IF is the total number of citations seen in one year for articles in a journal for the previous 2 years divided by the number of articles. (e.g., If the IF is 1.0, then the average citation per article is 1.0 per year.)

One area of concern was a low impact factor in 2001, which was right in the middle of our review period. I checked the ISI Web of KnowledgeSM, where the various evaluations for almost all journals can be found. It seems the Impact Factors (IF) for both TPS and TNS had anomalous lows in 2001 and if we plot the IFs as a function of year and do a linear fit we get a nice progression the value of the IF, if we ignore 2001. TPS is improving by 3% per year and TNS by 7% per year. Our star is TMI which is improving at a rate of 15% per year.

In the table below components of the IFs for 2001 and 2002 are listed for TNS, TPS and TMI. The numbers in parentheses are citations originating in the same journal. The 2002 IFs are outstanding for TMI and good for TNS and TPS.

We cannot compete with other journals on the total number of citations. Our Society and its fields of interest are too small. We must compete at the level of the IF. One way to help ourselves is to be sure we do cite NPSS articles appropriately, not only in NPSS papers but in manuscripts for other journals as well. As the editor of TNS:NMIS, I see many submissions where the authors only cite their own work or very few papers.

As you can see from the table, the total number of citations is small enough, that appropriate due diligence in citation can make a significant difference.

Ed Hoffman can be reached at the UCLA School of Medicine, 10833 Le Conte Avenue, B2-096 CHS, Los Angeles, CA 90095-6948; Phone +1 310 825-8851; Fax: +1 310 825-4517; E-mail: EHoffman@mednet.ucla.edu