Combating mad cow disease in the United States.

Public Health Reports has greatly increased the speed with which manuscripts go through the review process. We sometimes send decisions about publication to authors in as little as a month. More commonly, authors receive a response after review in eight weeks. Of course there are glaring exceptions and we are trying to do better. Each reviewer is queried for willingness to review by e-mail, fax, or telephone before a manuscript and review package is dispatched by courier service. Our follow-up correspondence with authors and reviewers is increasingly conducted by e-mail. Because Public Health Reports has upgraded its computers with a new set of Macintoshes, we are able to translate almost every manuscript into Word 6.0.1 for Macintosh, in which we work, and back into the original format before returning it. This means we are now able to receive submissions electronically and transmit them to most reviewers in the same way. We would like to encourage authors to send their covering letters by e-mail, with the manuscript appended as an electronic attachment. This will help speed the manuscript to reviewers and the results back to the authors. With a little luck, our turnaround will shrink further. CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: