Reflections

In this, the third issue of the Journal in 2023, Reflections considers the return of ‘correspondence’ with a discussion between Charles Bamforth and Ricardo Fritzsche regarding Charlie’s Provocation review from earlier this year. In the last century (!), ‘correspondence’ or ‘Letter to the Editor’ was a regular feature in JIB. Rather more contemporary is the use of Google Analytics to analyse website traffic. Whilst a rich source of data, the wheat needs sorting from the chaff. The numbers are interesting and will become more so over time. In terms of visitors to https://jib.ibd.org.uk/index.php/jib, they are from 90 countries with three quarters coming from 10 countries. Continuing the ‘numbers’ theme, there are four KPIs which capture steps from submission to publication. These provide useful insights into the process and identify opportunities for improvement. These KPIs are updated with each issue of the Journal. Finally, a reminder to budding authors that the current ‘instructions to authors’ must be consulted and carefully applied to the submitted manuscript. This saves time (for everyone) and avoids the ‘desk rejection’ of manuscripts that ignore the instructions.