ARCHIVOS DE ZOOTECNIA. EDITORIAL REPORT 2011

Resumen en: The editorial process of Archivos de Zootecnia during 2010 is reported below. A total of 384 manuscripts were received from 33 countries, mainly from Bra...


INTRODUCTION
The shortening of excessively long editorial times, specially from submission to printing, detected in previous editorial reports, continued as the principal target for 2011. As the economic crisis has increased, the difficult are remaining, and so, to increase the number of pages published yearly is a hard task. Nevertheless, during 2011 an important effort was done and the number of published pages was more than twice of those in 2010.

METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS
The editorial report of 2010 follows the same methodology described in the 2009 editorial report (Gómez Castro et al., 2010). Figure 1 shows the annual progress of manuscripts received since the creation of our web site (May, 2005). The annual number of manuscripts received and managed by Archivos de Zootecnia has remarkably increased ever since. The number of manuscripts received during 2011 was 373 (generally within the scope of the journal), of which: 300 were articles, 25 short notes, and 48 reviews. Both the number of manuscripts and their type were similar to 2010.

RECEIVED MANUSCRIPTS
There have been no significant changes in the country of origin of the manuscripts; therefore, are substantially similar to contributions received in past recent years (table I). The 77% of manuscripts received come from Brazil, while Brazilian authors represent a greater proportion (81.99%), due to the greather number of authors of these manuscripts. These proportions are higher than in previous years, possibly related to a positive evaluation of Archivos de Zootecnia in Brasil. Manuscripts signed by Mexican an Nigerian authors represented an additional 9.3%, and the remaining 8.7%, came from other 28 countries, in proportions very similar (all lower than 2.0%). Manuscripts received are from 13 different Spanish speaking countries, two Lusophone countries and other 16 countries speaking different languages some (English, French and Italian) official in the magazine.
As shown in table II, the origin of the manuscripts is reflected on the language used. However the Portuguese represents 69.65%, which is lower than the percentage of items of Portuguese speaking origin. Spanish was used in 16.8% of the manuscripts with a significant decrease on the Only very few of manuscripts received (0.81%) were written in French. As in previous years, there were no articles in Italian. It is remarkable that the percentage of manuscripts published in Spanish is higher than those received, while the trend is reversed in the manuscripts published in Portuguese.

REVIEWING
Each manuscript submitted to Archivos de Zootecnia is first reviewed by members of the Editorial Board and Advisory Council. Subsequently, the Editorial Board at its plenary session, analyzes each submitted manuscript and decide if it must be reviewed (in which case at least two, and up to four reviewers, are assigned) or rejected. Reviewers are chosen from a repertoire of nearly 1000 reputed international experts from many different countries. Archivos de Zootecnia is grateful to the 313 experts to whom at least one manuscript was sent to for review during 2011, as  As the page number was strongly increased the number of waiting manuscripts was reduced near to 0. A more detailed analysis of these data shows that the management of the reviews and feedback from reviewers was longer than in previous year, the recuperation of delayed manuscripts is the principal reason, however, there is still a lot of work to do for minimize delays. In past years the delays were growing during the publication phase due to the large number of manuscripts received and approved, which far exceeds the maximum number of pages published yearly due to budgetary reasons. Nevertheless, along 2011 a considerable effort was done and the number of pages (and so, of manuscripts) have been duplicated.
The acceptance and rejection rate of manuscripts received, and completed, in 2011 reached 2.9% and 52.3% respectively. While the acceptance rate has decreased compared to previous years, the rejection has increased. The sum of these rates does not imply that only 44.8% of the manuscripts received during 2011 are pending a decision, since in fact there are more manuscripts in revision received during the precedent year.

PUBLISHED PAPERS
The journal Archivos de Zootecnia published 171 manuscripts during 2011 (table IV), doubling the number of manuscripts published in 2010. The manuscripts were published mainly in Portuguese (42.6%) and Spanish (39.0%); however, manuscripts published in Portuguese decreased, while the manuscripts published in Spanish increased in 2011 (table II). About 48.8% of the authors were Brazilians followed by Spanish (27.2%) authors and finally, the remaining authors are from other 21 countries (table I). Countries of origin of authors continue the trend of recent years. The average number of authors in 2011 was 5.8 ± 2.5/ manuscript. The average length of articles was 9.7 ± 1.7 pages, 4.0 ± 0.1 pages for short notes, and 15.0 ± 6.2 pages for reviews.  About 7% of the received manuscripts are written by authors coming from more than one country, in the case of published papers this figure rises to 11.2%. Members of the Publisher Institution or from Editorial Board in the previous year only accounted for 0.8 and 0.1 percent respectively, in 2011 rose to 1.6 and 2.3% respectively. In any case, in the previous and present year, are small ratios of endogamy in the contents of the journal (table V).
The topics covered in the manuscripts published by Archivos de Zootecnia are shown in table VI. The animal species  studied were mainly, bovine, followed by ovine, poultry and alternative species. The studies mainly focused on feeding and foods, breeds and genetics, and reproduction. Topics continue the trend of recent years.

DIFUSSION
Archivos de Zootecnia (online and paper editions) is included in about 400 directories or electronic databases (Agricultural BIOSIS, CAB abstracts, Latindex, Scopus, Scielo ...), making the journal readily found. No notable changes from the previous year in this regard. More than 2 300 000 (400 000 hits during 2011) visits have been registered in Archivos de Zootecnia web page: http://www.uco.es/organiza/servicios/ publica/az/az.htm In conclusion, during 2011 Archivos de Zootecnia has reinforced its role as an outlet for scientific research regardless of the long editorial times. The problems detected in previous reports regarding the delay in publication have decreased; however, it is not enough, nevertheless the efforts done by Archivos de Zootecnia during 2011.