On the review process and journal development

This paper describes the editorial and review process currently operating at JMS and offers the Editors' perspective on the journal's growth over the past three years. We first outline what we think is the essence of a JMS article. Then, we describe the review process from the editor's initial decision, to the reviewers' comments, to the editor's final editorial decisions, and including the process of accepting a paper. We suggest four main reasons for rejecting a paper: lack of contribution, failure to develop a theoretical contribution, fatal flaws in methods and deficiencies in analysis. With respect to the journal's progress, we show that JMS has significantly increased its position in the ISI rankings to 19th and its impact factor to 1.180. In addition, the journal experienced a 222 per cent increase in submissions from 2003 to 2005.