date: Fri Jan 28 10:34:22 2005
from: Phil Jones <p.jones@uea.ac.uk>
subject: Re: [Fwd: Re: The Recent Sahel Drought is Real]
to: Aiguo Dai <adai@cgd.ucar.edu>, plamb@gcn.ou.edu, Kevin Trenberth <trenbert@cgd.ucar.edu>, Mike Hulme <m.hulme@uea.ac.uk>, Ping Ping Xie <pingping.xie@noaa.gov>

      Dear All,

         At a  meeting earlier this week, I heard that the Chappell/Agnew paper
    has been talked about at quite high circles within the Royal Met. Soc. . Questions
    of how it got past reviewers etc. The new President of the RMS is from
    Salford and expressed to the Awards Committee (the meeting earlier
    this week) his regret that the paper was published. The reviewing procedures
    of IJC are being looked into within a broader study of all RMS journals. The
    main driver behind this is the Research Assessment Exercise in UK
    Universities - people are publishing in journals with high impact factors
    and these tend to be AMS and AGU journals for detailed science papers.
       Also the response to our comment was rejected by two reviewers. A revised
    one though has been submitted and is going to three new reviewers. I've seen
    neither version.
    Cheers
    Phil

   Prof. Phil Jones
   Climatic Research Unit        Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090
   School of Environmental Sciences    Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784
   University of East Anglia
   Norwich                          Email    p.jones@uea.ac.uk
   NR4 7TJ
   UK
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