JIPLP plans for the future

Above: JIPLP team meetings are always lively affairs

The JIPLP editorial and production team had a three-hour meeting earlier this week, at which practically every aspect of the journal's form and content was discussed. Among the things we've decided on are the following:

• The abstract of each published article will appear on its front page instead of the current bullet-pointed 'Key issues'. This is because (i) the abstract and the key issues generally overlapped quite heavily and (ii) the existence of two separate sets of pointers to the content of an article was something that often confused and puzzled authors.
  
  
• At the head of the first-page abstract there will appear a brief note on the author. Following the inspirational lead of Twitter, and to avoid boastful biographies, we thought it best to limit these notes to 140 characters per author.
  
  
• We are hoping to rewrite the Manuscript Central templates for all the notices and correspondence sent out by our automated submission system, in the hope of making them read less like machine-generated text than they do at present. The rejection letter is particularly abrupt ("... your article has been denied publication ..."), but even some of the more welcoming missives sound downright discouraging. The rewrite process is likely to take some time, so please don't expect imminent changes.
  
  
• From January 2011 we will be consolidating the journal's separate Editorial Panels into a single Editorial Board and expanding our review function.
  
  
• The jiplp weblog will carry occasional features which focus on some of the journal's more frequent contributors. This will help readers put a human face to the impersonal text and will also, it is hoped, encourage occasional contributors to write more often for us.
  
  
• The April 2011 issue of JIPLP (issue 4) will carry rather more United States-related content than is normal, to reflect the editor's intended participation in the annual Fordham University Intellectual Property Conference late next April. The following month's issue (May 2011) will be the annual "trade mark special", to coincide with the International Trademark Association Meeting in San Francisco from 14 to 18 May. This weblog will soon publish last dates for the submission of any articles and Current Intelligence notes which, contributors hope, will gain inclusion in those issues -- allowing for the exigencies of production and the vagaries of the peer-review procedure.

Not actually discussed at the meeting, but still worth mentioning again, are the following considerations:

• Authors whose articles and Current Intelligence notes are rendered out-of-date by subsequent case law decisions, statutes, administrative changes or practice are welcome to contact this weblog so that a note to that effect can be posted here and thus more effectively drawn to the attention of readers.
  
  
• JIPLP is always on the look-out for more peer reviewers. If you think you might have what it takes to be a good peer reviewer, please contact me and let me know why!
  
  
• If you think we're doing anything wrong, or not as well as we might, please do let us know. We don't like criticism but we do welcome it, since it helps us to deliver a better product from which we all benefit.