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This issue of the Journal of Neurophysiology contains several papers that were submitted, reviewed, revised, and accepted using the APS Central on-line system. Therefore this is an opportune moment to report on the transition to the system that has changed the mechanics of how we do business.

In July, August, and September of this year 459 manuscripts (including new, revised, and resubmitted papers) were uploaded into APS Central. During that time 480 different reviewers uploaded more than 700 reviews, and the associate editors made 361 decisions. That manuscripts which were submitted in July are published in this issue is a testament to the efficiency of the on-line review process. We have removed much of the editorial and administrative downtime associated with shipping manuscripts and reviews around the world on paper. In principle, a manuscript can be in the hands of reviewers the day it is submitted, and a decision could be made 2 weeks later if the reviewers are timely. If the revisions requested are relatively minor, and the authors revise and return the paper rapidly, it is possible to have a manuscript go from submission to acceptance in a month, and a number of manuscripts have done so. Nonetheless, the potential for rapidity provided by the on-line process has little impact on the endless ability of reviewers, authors, and even editors, to procrastinate. Our mean turnaround time to first decisions for the first 3 months of operation was just under 27 days. There are, however, manuscripts that have lagged, either because it was difficult to obtain reviewers or because the reviewers were tardy. That said, our goal is to provide first decisions to all manuscripts within a month of submission.

The vast majority of manuscripts move through the electronic system with no problems. There are a few whose figures cause difficultes. The frequency of these has decreased each month, as the APS staff has worked with authors to ensure that the figures that are released to reviewers are of adequate quality for the review process. We will work to improve every step of the on-line submission and review process, and I look forward to the time when several months go by with no reports of unintelligible fonts, figures that won't print, or passwords that don't work.

It is striking that although the mechanics of review have changed, the returned reviews retain the essential features for which the Journal of Neurophysiology has been long known. Almost invariably the returned reviews have been careful, thoughtful, detailed, and constructive. Many reviewers have eloquently articulated their assessment of what is required in terms of technical excellence, interest, and quality of a manuscript to be published in the Journal of Neurophysiology. This internal model shared by many of our reviewers appears impervious to the changes in editorial board and to the changes in the manner in which reviews are solicited and submitted. If anything, it appears that you, our reviewers, are sending us a strong signal that you wish to ensure that the high standards of scholarship, so much a part of the core mission of the Journal of Neurophysiology, are preserved despite the altered mechanics of review.

Although the Journal of Neurophysiology publishes a narrower range of papers than some of our sister journals, the range of work we review and publish goes from human functional imaging to channel biophysics. As such, we serve a number of overlapping, but nonetheless distinct, subcommunities within neurophysiology. The standards of excellence for work within each portion of our community evolve as our fields change, as new techniques become available, and as new knowledge informs judgments of how experiments should be best conducted. The fact that a paper using a given method of data collection or analysis was found acceptable several years ago does not necessarily mean that the same methods will be or should be deemed acceptable today. Certainly, many of the most valuable experiments we conduct today continue to employ time-honored and reliable methods that have been used for many years; however, new technologies and new data will sometimes show that some of the old ways are no longer sufficient. Understanding the strengths and limitations of new technologies and methods of data analysis takes time and experience.

As editors, we depend critically on our reviewers for input and advice as the standards for excellence evolve. Thoughtful reviews that provide constructive criticism help set the standards for a field and become one of the ways that groups of investigators working on similar problems and using similar technologies collectively determine criteria for excellence. That said, reviewers, like authors and editors, are fallible, and men and women of goodwill can thoughtfully disagree on issues of substance at the frontiers of what is known. It is easy to be right about well-established facts. It is less easy to be invariably right when new and exciting science is at issue. So we as editors are sometimes forced to make decisions with which some of you, as authors or reviewers, will disagree.

The Journal of Neurophysiology exists to publish new knowledge created by a community of scholars doing their best to understand the unknown. Our changed mechanics of submission and review facilitate the rapid evaluation and dissemination of the best research in neurophysiology.

Journal of Neurophysiology