Editorial

I wanted to take this opportunity to inform our readers regarding some new features and updates to the Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (PASP). These new features and updates will improve both the author and reviewer experience with PASP article submission, review, and access.

Recent Tutorials and Reviews:

As tutorial and review content are some of the more popular types of articles that we publish, I wanted to highlight some of the recent review and tutorial articles that we have published in PASP:

• 1.  
  "Data Analysis for Precision 21cm Cosmology" by Adrian Liu and J. Richard Shaw (2020).
• 2.  
  "Parameterized CLEAN Deconvolution in Radio Synthesis Imaging" by L. Zhang, L. Xu, and M. Zhang (2020).
• 3.  
  "Estimating Electron Temperatures in Ionized Nebulae: The Direct Method and its Limitations" by David C. Nicholls, Lisa J. Kewley, and Ralph S. Sutherland (2020).
• 4.  
  "Astronomy and the New SI" by Prasenjit Saha (2020).
• 5.  
  "Coded Aperture Imaging in High-Energy Astrophysics" by João Braga (2019).
• 6.  
  "Gamma-Ray Polarimetry: A New Window for the Nonthermal Universe" by Cosmin Ilie (2019).

Future issues of PASP will include reviews and tutorials on topics including hardware and software for exoplanet direct imaging, exoplanet atmospheric retrieval, measuring MHD turbulence in galaxies, post-starburst galaxies, and spin–orbit alignment for exoplanet imaging. If you are interested in submitting a review or tutorial for publication in PASP, please contact pasp@ioppublishing.org.

Review Process Efficiency:

The PASP editors and IOP Publishing place a high value on providing an efficient and effective article review process for our authors. This emphasis on the review process has resulted in article processing times that are very fast and, based on feedback from our authors, a positive contribution to our published articles. The median number of days from submission to first editorial decision for all PASP articles is currently 18 days, and has consistently been less than 20 days for several years. The PASP editors will continue to place a high priority on efficiently providing helpful reviewer feedback to our authors.

Article Submission Integration with Editage:

To further streamline the publication process for authors, PASP has integrated the Editage language editing system into its ScholarOne article submission system. IOP Publishing and PASP have partnered with Editage since 2016 to offer authors the option to pay for a pre-submission service offering language editing and/or plagiarism and technical checks of their manuscripts. This enables authors to ensure that their manuscript is judged on the quality of the scientific content and not the quality of the English language used in the article. The price is set by Editage and depends upon the service(s) chosen and the length of the manuscript. This integration of the Editage system with PASP's article submission system means that:

• 1.  
  Authors submitting an article to PASP will see the option to send their manuscripts to Editage from ScholarOne; and
• 2.  
  Authors whose work has been edited by Editage will see the option to submit the work to their chosen journal directly from the Editage system.

This improved process makes it more convenient for authors by highlighting the option of pre-submission editing and reduces the administrative work to take this option. In addition, we also expect this development to better support PASP's reviewers and the peer review process, allowing reviewers to focus on the science rather than the writing in the PASP articles they review.

PASP Participation in IOP Publishing's Transformative Open Access Agreements:

PASP has agreed to participate in IOP Publishing's "transformative open access agreements" with various governments and institutions beginning in 2021. These transformative agreements will allow authors from specific countries or at specific institutions to publish their articles on an open access basis in PASP at reduced cost. See IOP's institutional open access agreements page for further information on these transformative agreements, including a list of countries and institutes that currently participate in these agreements. PASP is excited about joining these transformative agreements, as it will allow more authors to publish their research in PASP at reduced cost to them. IOP Publishing anticipates that the number of countries and institutes participating in these transformative agreements will grow over the coming years.

Update to Open Access and Copyright Policies:

To comply with Plan S and general open access best practices, PASP has updated its open access and copyright policies. The primary change in these policies is that authors who publish on an open access basis now retain the full copyright to their articles.

Improvements to IOPscience:

IOPscience, PASP's access point for all articles that have been published since its inception in February 1889, has been updated to improve page performance and accessibility. These changes improve text legibility by using a larger font size with increased in-letter character spacing, and address accessibility issues, particularly neurodiversity. Page access speed has also been improved, with measurements indicating that page loading speed has increased by at least 15%. Page access speed is a core element to Google Algorithms, and leads to improved indexing of content, which in turn results in higher search ranking, and by extension improved content discoverability and usage.

Let me close by reiterating my request for your input and ideas for material that you would like to publish or see published in PASP. In particular, I welcome your ideas for review or tutorial articles and focus issues, as well as other comments or suggestions that you might have.

• Jeff Mangum
• Editor-in-Chief
• Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
• National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Charlottesville, VA 22903