There is good news to report. First, JM ³ has been accepted for coverage in the following Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) resources beginning with Vol. 2(1), January 2003:

According to ISI, the evaluation process consists of many criteria, such as basic journal publishing standards, including timeliness of publication, adherence to international editorial conventions, and English language bibliographic information. ISI also examines the journal’s editorial content and the international diversity of its authors and editors. Citation analysis using ISI data is applied to determine the journal’s citation history and/or the citation history of its authors and editors. Being accepted confirms the quality of JM ³ in these areas.

Citation indexing is a key feature of the ISI database. Citation indexing is used to link the journals, books, and proceedings in the sciences, arts, and humanities that are included in the ISI database. There are 8700 journals in the database. There are over 3700 science and technical journals covering more than 100 disciplines for the Science Citation Index.

What does this mean for us? We are now linked to most other science and technical journals. The references we cite in our articles as well as citations to JM³ can now be searched, traced, and counted. They carry more weight and significance. In addition to our articles being more easily found and cited, we will also know how much impact JM ³ makes to the scientific community through one of the ISI metrics, the impact factor, which is calculated by dividing the number of current year citations to the source items published in that journal during the previous two years. It is a measure of the frequency with which a “typical” article in a journal has been cited in a particular period. The rating is most useful when compared to other journals in the same field. Libraries often consider the impact factor when determing whether to subscribe to a particular journal, and authors often use this metric when deciding where to publish their research.

JM³’s first impact factor should be available in summer 2006, since calculation requires three complete years of data and JM3’s coverage in the Science Citation Index begins with January 2003. What can we do to affect the impact factor? Of course, we want to be widely cited, because it reflects the usefulness of our articles to other authors. For this, we will have to maintain the quality of our work, of our writings, and of our peer reviews, as well as timeliness and relevance. However, being widely cited is only one of the aspects of a prestigious journal. Being widely distributed and widely read are no less important, even though they are also somewhat influenced by the impact factor. Valuable works do not always have to appeal to the masses. We will continue to print and archive them.

We definitely should take this opportunity to emphasize one thing. It cannot be better said by Eugene Garfield, founder and chairman emeritus of ISI: “I’ve always believed that authors should be held by journal editors to the same ‘due diligence’ standards required of inventors by patent offices. That is, authors should formally assert and verify that their ideas are original and do not replicate discoveries already reported in the archives. Consequently, they should be required to acknowledge the ‘prior art’ that directly or indirectly influenced their research.”

Let’s diligently reference relevant works. ISI mentions the correlation between referencing and citation. An article that has more references tends to be cited more frequently.

New Senior Editor in Microfabrication

Another piece of good news for JM ³ is that we have a new senior editor in microfabrication, Tom Suleski, who has been an active researcher in the field of micro-optics since 1991 at Georgia Tech, Digital Optics Corporation, and, since 2003, as a member of the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Dr. Suleski has demonstrated dedication to this journal through his work as a JM ³ associate editor and is very active in publishing, lecturing, and chairing conferences. Please support him in making the microfabrication area even more successful.

Dave Seeger, the former senior editor in microfabrication, expressed his wish to leave the editorial board of JM ³ due to unanticipated extra responsibility at work. I regretfully accepted his resignation and would like to take this opportunity to thank him for his service to JM ³.

Happy reading!

Happy referencing!

Burn J. Lin

Editor-in-Chief

Publisher’s Note:The annual Author and Subject indexes that have previously been printed in the last issue of each volume have been discontinued, due to the availability of metadata searching in the online version of this journal. SPIE journal articles published from 1998 to the current issue can be searched online using the SPIE Digital Library (http://www.spiedl.org). A subscription is not required to use the search and browse features or to view tables of contents and abstracts. Downloading of full-text digital papers is available only to subscribers.