Companion Volume: Progress Report
2012 February 1 — Since the last report from the editors of the PhyloCode Companion Volume (September 9, 2011), considerable progress has been made. As of the end of January, 263 contributions have been received, each dealing with a particular name/clade combination. Of these, 8 were subsequently either rejected or withdrawn by the authors. Of the remaining 255 contributions (versus 228 in September): 218 (85%) have been reviewed by at least two external reviewers (versus 169 [74%] in September), and 81 (32%) have been accepted (versus 10 [4%] in September). The large increase in the number of accepted contributions is due in part to a change of policy. Acceptance now requires approval of only two of the three editors, whereas approval of all three editors was required previously. After the primary and one secondary editor have approved a contribution, the third editor is given two months to review it and either approve it or explain what changes are needed. If this is not done within the two-month window, the contribution is considered accepted.
Of the 218 contributions for which two external reviews have been received:
- 7 (3%) are being reviewed by the primary editor in preparation to send the external reviews to the authors
- 54 (25%) have been returned to the authors for revision
- 43 (20%) have been revised by the authors but have not yet been fully processed by the primary editor*
- 33 (15%) are awaiting approval by the secondary editors**
- 81 (37%) have been accepted.
One final statistic: Of the 137 contributions that have been externally reviewed but are not yet accepted, approximately 55% are awaiting work by the authors and 45% are in the editors' court.
* Processing of the revised manuscript by the primary editor sometimes requires several exchanges of drafts before the editor is fully satisfied with the revision, so this step can take months.
** This multi-draft revision process is sometimes repeated after comments are received from the other editor(s); there are 21 contributions that are currently being revised a second time to address issues raised by the second or third editor.
Report prepared by Phil Cantino with input from Kevin de Queiroz and Jacques Gauthier.