2006 — Thanking MJA reviewers

It is that time of year again when we publicly thank all our reviewers for their efforts in ensuring that the MJA publishes only the best possible articles. In the 12 months from November 2005 to October 2006, 1757 reviewers have helped us in our quest for quality — they are listed below and we thank them enormously for their assistance and diligence. We do not send all manuscripts out for review — many are returned to their authors after being discussed at our Editors’ meetings, mostly for reasons of poor science or presentation, or content that is not suited to the broad general readership of the MJA or that would be more appropriately published elsewhere. Reviewers are asked to complete their reviews within 3 weeks (2 weeks for letters) and most manage to meet this deadline, as evidenced by a mean time to complete reviews (for all article types) of 16 days. The range, however, is from an extraordinary 1 hour (this was for a letter, but we think this reviewer must need a busier day job!) to a more tardy 10 weeks (fortunately this sort of delay is very infrequent). These times are, of course, from the day a reviewer agrees to review — it may take us a few weeks to find a willing reviewer. The Box shows the fate of the manuscripts we received between July 2005 and June 2006.