Letter from the publisher

Dear JOT readers:

Bertrand Meyer Publisher

JOT is now more than four years old; the first issue was published on May 1st of 2002 and ever since JOT has come out - on time, every single time - on the first of every odd-numbered month, plus quite a few even-numbered months for special issues.

JOT was created to fill a gap, when the Journal of Object-Oriented Programming disappeared. I think we can say it has achieved that goal, and much more, quickly developing a personality of its own. The object-oriented and component scene in 2006 is quite different from what it was 20 years ago (when JOOP started) and even ten years ago. From Web services to aspect-oriented programming, from ownership types to model-driven development, our community continues to bring in new ideas - sometimes faster than the field can absorb them - and JOT is the place of choice to present these ideas to the world and discuss them in depth.

The site statistics speak for themselves. JOT gets almost 1200 unique visitors a day; that's about 200,000 pages a month. It's impossible to determine the exact number of readers, but extrapolating from the site statistics suggests about 50,000.

JOT has achieved this success through the hard work of the editor-in-chief, Richard Wiener, assisted by the program committee and the editorial assistant, Claudia Günthart (succeeding Ruth Bürkli). And of course JOT would not exist without the constant influx of quality papers. The columnists are amazing, tirelessly delivering new insights issue after issue; as to the submitted papers, here are a few statistics (for 2005, regular issues only) communicated by Richard Wiener:

• Papers rejected: 39
• Papers accepted without revision: 14
• Papers that required revision before acceptance: 10
• Acceptance rate: 38%
• Average time between receiving paper and publication decision: 35 days
• Average time between publication decision and publication: 10 months

I find the decision time amazing; very few publications can boast anything similar. As to the publication time, it's much shorter than most journals; it would look even better if the figures accounted for special issues, which usually come out of conferences or workshops.

Talking about special issues, we are getting ever more requests; in fact, we could publish several issues a month if we accepted all the good proposals. We can't, so we have to be selective, but it is a sure sign of the reputation and attractiveness of JOT that ever more top conferences think of JOT as their first choice for final publication of revised versions of their best articles.

On quality, Richard Wiener points out that “the acceptance rate for papers has actually increased compared to previous years”; the reason is that “the overall quality of manuscripts has continued to improve in 2005”. This is another very good sign.

JOT made from the start the decision to be an all-electronic journal. We have nothing against paper, but this policy has enabled us to be nimble and establish JOT in a fraction of the time that would otherwise have been necessary; the key advantage is that we can concentrate our efforts on contents, not logistics (of printing, mailing etc.). There are a few side advantages as well; citing Richard again:

Because there is no paper used in publishing JOT, the 15-page constraint that was in-place during the first year or two has been relaxed. Authors are still required to write in a concise and readable style, but if they require more than 15 pages while meeting our editorial standards they are not asked to artificially shorten their manuscript length.

JOT is a resounding success story of electronic scientific publishing.
This story deserves to be better known (in particular by science indexes and academic evaluation bodies); for this JOT critically needs the help of its readers. Publicize the journal among the relevant authorities, and make it known that it applies the highest standards of scholarship.

More generally, if I had one immediate wish, it would be for more reader participation. There's a Letters to the Editor section, which we would like to populate more, and there are plenty of opportunities for book and product reviews as well as other forms of participation. With an audience of JOT's size, sharing your thoughts is worth the time.

The final note of thanks is for ETH Zurich , on whose resources (Chair of Software Engineering) JOT entirely runs. This is what enables us to be totally independent and publish the best in object and component technology, without having to worry about making a profit and without any interference from anyone.

Thank you for reading and supporting JOT; we are looking forward, with your help, to continued improvement of the journal for the greater benefit of quality software construction.