• editorial
• review
• publication

While March may seem an odd month for an end of year report, it is only now in January when I write this report that all the statistics for 2003 are available. This is our first full year of web based electronic submissions and, as expected, we have seen a substantial rise in manuscript submissions, up from approximately 1500 in 2002 to 1977 in 2003. It is very much to the credit of my hard working associate editors that, in spite of this 32% increase, the average time to first decision for all manuscripts is 29 days, one day less than the average in the previous year. The time to first decision for reviewed papers has also fallen from 41 to 39 days. We have worked hard to increase the efficiency of manuscript handling and have engaged the additional support of three specialist editors, Professors Columbel, Dusheika, and Lerch, to help …