BOSTON — With the installation of new technologies and procedures in 2015–16, the American Meteorological Society made a 30 percent reduction in the time needed to prepare and publish accepted manuscripts to its scientific journals.

Authors now wait a full month less for their articles to move through the production process from acceptance to print. Just one year ago, publication for articles accepted in the 10 AMS scientific journals averaged 100 days—the shortest lag ever at that time. As of last month, this production period had dwindled to around 70 days and continues to diminish today.

AMS has made continual improvements in production efficiency in recent years; the additional acceleration in article turnaround in the past year was largely due to a shift from issue-based workflow to article-based workflow. This new technique allows individual articles to be published as soon as they have made it through the production process, rather than waiting for an entire issue to be completed before publishing.

These improvements were announced at AMS’s annual Publications Commission meeting in late May. At the meeting, the chief editors of the journals as well as other appointed volunteers on the Commission convened with staff at AMS headquarters in Boston to review performance and policies and then provide guidance for AMS’s publications program. AMS’s scientific journals represent a critical platform for disseminating atmospheric, oceanic, and hydrologic research to the scientific community and to society.

The Publications Commission expressed confidence that the trend toward faster production will continue, allowing authors to get their research to the scientific community even more quickly.

Ken Heideman, AMS director of publications, said, “While we are pleased to have cut mean production time by 75 percent in just six years, we will never stop pursuing efficiencies that make publication even faster while maintaining the high quality standards that our authors and readers have come to expect.”

For more information, visit www.ametsoc.org.