You may have noticed that your September issue appeared in your mailbox in late August and that your October issue showed up even earlier in the month of September. This is no accident: in the future our production schedule has issues being put into the mail by Mack Printing about the middle of the month previous to the date of issue. You can expect to receive your copy about the third week of the month. The timing of delivery of Journal issues to subscribers is an issue that a great many readers have told us needed improvement. It took a lot of scrambling and a lot of extra hours over the summer to change the schedule so that you will have each issue prior to the month of its date. If you like this and would like to tell the staff, you can do so at jce@chem.wisc.edu.

The Backlog

Issues are appearing earlier but that doesn't mean we will have much of a chance to rest. There is the backlog of manuscripts to be tackled. To say that people have told us about the backlog is an understatement, and of course we already knew that the time between acceptance of a manuscript and publication was too long. One step toward alleviating the problem is the authorization we have received from our Board of Publication to print more pages during the next year. Of course that means we need to prepare more pages, and the staff has decided that it will make every effort to do just that. Another thing that would help is for manuscripts with huge numbers of figures or tables to have most of them appear on our World Wide Web site. This means that if your manuscript has 25 or 35 tables, we might ask you to select the five most important for the print medium and the entirety could go on the Web. Reviewers, too, will need to help speed up the publication process. In general reviewers will be asked to return reviews in about three weeks. If you need a bit longer, just say so-but we want to avoid having a manuscript disappear into a stack on your desk. Readers can expect to hear reports as we continue to tackle-and conquer!-the backlog problem.

Subscription Fulfillment

For many years, perhaps since its founding in 1924, the Journal has used Mack Printing Co. as both its printer and its subscription fulfillment agent. Now this will end because Mack is getting out of the fulfillment business. They will continue to do their usual very capable job of printing. A new agent is about to be selected, and your December issue will indicate what company will perform that service for us and where you should direct questions about your subscription. We will do several trial runs, so we expect no glitches in shipping out Journal issues to subscribers.

Call for Reviewers

Are you a Journal reviewer? Are your colleagues and friends? The Journal needs more reviewersfirst-rate persons like you who know their science and understand how to teach it. We are now sending each manuscript to three reviewers, but our present data base is not large enough to continue this for very long without the current reviewers screaming "I'm overworked!" You can help by volunteering or by urging a colleague or friend to do so. To volunteer or to update your present reviewer file, find a list of our newly revised keywords. Circle all the keywords that apply to you. Send this to us by U.S. mail or fax, or email your list of keywords. Be sure to also include:

name:

institution:

mailing address:

phone number, fax number:

email address:

Please indicate your preferred method of communication. We will get your information into our data base and we promise to send you manuscripts to review.

Book Review Editor

Appointment of a Book/Media Review Editor is imminent. The call for applicants went out during early summer and several very fine applications were received. In the December issue we should be able to tell you who will assume these duties. We also expect to be able to present some of their ideas and plans for this very important section.

JCE Online

In last month's News from Journal House we said that you could find a column that listed the major areas that can be found on our multifaceted World Wide Web site. At the very last minute that column had to be pulled in favor of an advertisement. However it is definitely in this issue, on page A270. We hope you will check out JCE: Online and let us know what you think.

Search for a Business Manager

Our announcement of a search for a Publications Coordinator to act as the Journal's business manager appears again in this issue (see page A269 of Journal). The deadline for applications is January 1, 1997.