We are undergoing big changes at Condor. Most obviously, as you see before you (Figure 1), the journal has been renamed The Condor: Ornithological Applications. This name clearly states the area of ornithology we aim to cover. You may also be reading this Editorial as part of the first set of papers released online, in the first week of 2014. Our new publishing model will allow accepted papers to make their way into press without the delay of quarterly publishing.
On the journal's main web page you can see how we are working together with The Auk: Ornithological Advances. Simply put, both journals become more efficient and more valuable to the ornithological community by dividing subject matter but sharing editorial and production offices. Behind the scenes are a newly configured joint editorial office, a new manuscript tracking system, a new online publishing platform, and a new print house, all of which are shared with Auk. As an example of new services the combined editorial office can provide, we work with authors and university outreach departments to highlight significant papers.
These changes mean little to the discipline if we can't produce a quality product. We think the explicit subject matter focus makes The Condor: Ornithological Applications an attractive place to submit your paper. First and foremost, as an author you can be assured your paper will be reviewed by ornithologists who know both the birds and the applied context. An exciting innovation is the opportunity for double-blind review, at your discretion as an author. We hope you will consider this option when you submit your paper. Additionally, a subset of papers will be open access from the time they appear online, giving your work a chance to reach audiences removed from academic libraries. As a reader, you can be assured any results and recommendations we publish have been thoroughly vetted by ornithologists. Our first set of papers quickly reveals that we are publishing important information for conservation of birds.
We've expanded the expertise of the editorial staff to stay on the cutting edge of applied ornithology. In particular, in addition to the Editor-in-Chief, we have two Editors with full authority to accept or reject papers. Jen Owen brings unique skills in avian disease research, and Paul Doherty is an expert on analytical techniques. Our review system moves to the Associate Editor (AE) system, much as has been used at The Auk for more than a decade, in which AEs solicit external reviews and recommend a decision to the Editor-in-Chief or Editors.
With all these changes, I want also to offer a bit of history to remind the reader of the long tradition of the Cooper Ornithological Society's publications. As Editor-in-Chief, I'm humbled to follow in the footsteps of not just our excellent recent editors, but also those of Joseph Grinnell and Alden Miller, luminary ornithologists who combined to edit The Condor for a mind-bending 60 years, from 1906 to 1965. But our history begins even before Grinnell. On the Searchable Ornithological Research Archive ( sora.unm.edu), you can read the very first edition of the Bulletin of the Cooper Ornithological Club of California, from 1899. Only in its second year did the Bulletin become The Condor. In describing the name change, Editor-in-Chief Chester Barlow wrote “[The Condor] expects to gain support wholly through its course of presenting the most attractive and valuable articles on ornithology.” We aspire to nothing less 114 years later.
