Adherence to issue due dates is imperative to ensure on-time issue publication, as this can affect your journal’s institutional subscriptions, impact factor, and subscription revenue. Please remember the following for smooth sailing through issue production:
- Please submit all issue content—including the Table of Contents (TOC)—by the deadlines provided by your PE. Please take care to remember special items like editorials, book reviews, and news pieces.
- SMART’s Article List is a great tool for reviewing available articles for issue placement, listing all articles along with submission dates, page counts, author names, and other helpful data. The information can easily be sorted and copied, which can be helpful for creating the Table of Contents you’ll send to your PE or for tracking your page usage.
- For many journals, your PE can create the TOC for an issue by selecting completed articles by order of acceptance and page allotment. Please contact your PE to discuss this option and outline the parameters of selection.
- Please send updates for editorial boards, submission guidelines, and other recurring content as soon as you think of them, no matter how distant the next issue. We suggest using TOC preparation as an additional “last-call” reminder to think about any such updates and supply them.
- Many of our issues are finalized as early as 2 months prior to the cover month, so the deadline for such updates may be earlier than you expect! You can ask your PE for specific deadlines or reminders if needed.