Editorial

The editorial team of the Journal of Epidemiological Society of Nigeria is delighted to present the third volume of our Journal to our teeming readers. We are grateful to Professor Chikaike Ogbonna who took up the onerous task of reviving the Journal and publishing the first two volumes under very challenging circumstances during his brief stint as Editor-in-Chief. Indeed he left behind very big shoes into which I will try to fit over the next couple of editions of the Journal as we maintain and try to improve on its standard. This issue of volume 3 will be the first under my editorship. I wish to solicit the support of members of the editorial team as well as the Board of Editorial Advisers so that we can continue to grow the Journal.

As from this volume our readers and authors will notice remarkable improvements in many aspects of the Journal. The Journal of Epidemiological Society of Nigeria is now fully online and can be accessed on our website at https://jeson.org.ng. With this development manuscript submission and processing are also fully online and authors are able to track and follow the process of review of their manuscripts. In addition all back issues of the Journal have been uploaded online so that authors who had published their research articles in earlier issues can still find them online. To make this possible we have secured an online International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) in addition to the print ISSN as well as the doi number. These doi numbers have also been assigned to past articles to enhance their retrieval from the database. With all these innovations and with its recent indexing with google Scholar, the Journal is set to soar to greater heights as it will enjoy high visibility among the community of scientific journals.

Researchers from within and outside Nigeria are encouraged to take advantage of our timely but thorough review process to publish their well-researched scientific papers. In addition to our timely review, we have adopted the “publish ahead of print” style so that as soon as the review process is complete for any manuscript and both the editorial team and the authors agree on the final version of the paper, it is published online before such a time when other manuscripts needed to make up an issue are ready for printing. In this way articles are not kept for unnecessarily long periods before publication. To help us speed up the review and editorial processes I wish to remind potential authors to visit the Journal website first and thoroughly familiarize themselves with the instructions to authors before finalizing their manuscripts. This is vital because manuscripts that do not conform to the Journal’s format will be rejected at the stage of preliminary review and will therefore not proceed to the reviewers. In addition, during submission, corresponding authors are required to also attach a cover note that should include email addresses of all the authors. I look forward to a robust working relationship with our authors, reviewers and readers.

Thank you

Dr Jonathan C. Daboer
Editor-in-Chief