- Email: [email protected]
Update from the editors
Editorials and Commentary
Update from the Editors Kevin Patrick, MD, MS, F. Douglas Scutchfield, MD, Charlotte S. Seidman, FNP, MHS, MPH, ELS, Peggy A. Browneller, MA
W
hen we assumed the editorship of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine several years ago, we promised that we would update you on a regular basis about how things are going and about any changes on the horizon likely to affect your experiences as either a Journal reader or contributor. Well, there is a lot going on! With the full concurrence of the Editorial Office, the Governing Board of the Journal — composed of representatives of our two sponsoring organizations, The American College of Preventive Medicine and the Association of Teachers of Preventive Medicine — recently renegotiated the publishing contract with Elsevier Science, Inc., to extend through Volume 33, scheduled to complete the calendar year 2007. This will carry us through 10 years with Elsevier and reflects our continued high level of confidence in the support that this world-class publishing house provides us. One of the most important aspects of this new contract is the plan to increase the number of pages we publish each year, initially by increasing the page count for each issue, beginning this calendar year, then increasing our frequency of publication over the next several years. This will, of course, be contingent on the continued receipt of high-quality manuscripts, since we do not wish to reduce the overall quality of what we publish simply to meet arbitrary page-count requirements. However, if we achieve this change, we will have effectively doubled the size of the Journal from when we began in 1995. (This does not count the pages that we devote to supplements, discussed below.) All in all, this represents a very encouraging growth curve for the Journal, reflecting not only the increasing productivity of prevention researchers, but the increased recognition of the importance of solid scientific and policy work to the preventive medicine community. Other aspects of our new contract include, for individual subscribers, electronic access to the full text of each issue and, for institutional subscribers, access to the Journal in the context of Science Direct, Elsevier’s large and integrated suite of electronically available publications. We are aware of the increasing financial
From the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, San Diego, California Address correspondence to: Charlotte Seidman, FNP, MHS, MPH, ELS, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, San Diego State University, 5500 Campanile Drive, San Diego CA 92182-4710. E-mail: [email protected].
106
burden that libraries have to bear to deploy systems like Science Direct and the controversy that surrounds this in many locations. However, at present, we feel the advantages to the Journal of this relationship outweigh any disadvantages, especially when considerations such as publication quality and publisher responsiveness to Journal needs are factored in. Please be assured, however, that we will keep a close eye on these issues and will do all that we can to ensure that the Journal is widely accessible and affordable. Our new contract also continues to support the publication of supplements and special issues, an increasingly important and, we think, informative dimension of what the Journal provides its readership. Recent efforts have featured publications from groups such as the Task Force on Community Preventive Services, the National Immunization Program, the Cooper Institute for Aerobic Research, the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, and the Office of Genomics and Disease Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to name a few. These have been supported by several organizations, including the CDC, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and other major stakeholders in the prevention and public health communities. We have an additional dozen supplements in the pipeline for the coming 2 years, sponsored by a wide variety of groups in the prevention community. We have been encouraged by readers who tell us that these collections of papers are useful in settings ranging from public health courses to influencing health policy at the state and federal levels. While professional journals are measured in many ways, some of the best-known benchmarks are those associated with the Institute for Scientific Information’s (ISI) Science Citation Index. These indices center on how many, how often, and how quickly papers published in a journal are cited in the broader group of peer-reviewed publications in that discipline. This provides a crude measure of the importance of a journal to researchers as they endeavor to expand the collective body of scientific knowledge. We are happy to say that the numbers for AJPM continue on an upward trend. AJPM had 91 “source items” or papers cited in 1995 and 267 in 2001. Over this same time period, citations to AJPM papers grew commensurately from 974 to 2364. For the second consecutive year, these numbers place us in the upper 20% of all Medical/General
Am J Prev Med 2003;24(1) 0749-3797/03/$–see front matter © 2003 American Journal of Preventive Medicine • Published by Elsevier Science Inc. PII S1054-139X(02)00579-2
and Internal Medicine publications, and in the top 21% of all Public Health and Environmental and Occupational Health journals. By comparison, 5 years ago we were in only the upper third for medical journals and the upper half of public health journals. To us this means that we can say with confidence to potential authors that if they publish in AJPM, their work will be presented alongside an increasingly influential body of work that is recognized by their scientific peers. This year we have made some changes to the masthead. Dr. Harrison Spencer, who has moved back to the United States from London, has joined our Editorial Board. His role as Associate Editor for International Preventive Medicine will now be filled by Dr. Adrian Bauman, who hails from Sydney, Australia, where he has a very active portfolio of teaching and research activities at the School of Public Health and Community Medicine, University of New South Wales, and at Sydney University. In addition to benefiting from Dr. Bauman’s considerable expertise in preventive medicine and public health, our presence in the Pacific Rim is increasing, so it is nice to have that part of the world represented. Our Associate Editors and Editorial Board members are active partners in the editorial process and deserve considerable credit for the increasing quality of AJPM. This year we will begin using Editorial Manager威, a new online program for handling the manuscript submission and peer-review processes. The objective is to move to a fully electronic system for all involved parties and, we hope, shorten the time it takes to get manuscripts through the various stages required for publication. As with all new systems, there will be some bugs to
work out, but we are confident that in the end this will contribute to improving the Journal. This past year has seen papers published in AJPM quoted in the press — including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post, as well as regional and health-related publications — and in the electronic media, including network news shows, much more than ever before. While this is certainly a function of the quality and importance of the manuscripts, this phenomenon also results from publicity generated by the Washington DC– based Center for the Advancement of Health (CFAH), a nonprofit organization devoted to increasing the visibility of prevention research. Our sincere thanks to the staff of CFAH for getting the word out and demonstrating how enthusiastic the public can be about prevention science when they have the chance to hear about it. Finally, our continued success depends largely on two things: (1) expanding our institutional and individual reader/subscriber base, and (2) the continued receipt of high-quality and timely papers from leading researchers, educators, and policymakers in our field. Every person reading this editorial is in a position to assist with each of these goals by becoming a subscriber, if you are not yet one; by encouraging others to subscribe; by assuring that your institution has AJPM in its library; and foremost by submitting your publishable research to AJPM and encouraging your colleagues to consider AJPM as a place to publish their work. Together we can continue to make AJPM one of the “must read” journals in both medicine and public health. Please feel free to contact our Editorial Office with your concerns, ideas, and recommendations for how we can improve.
Am J Prev Med 2003;24(1)
107
Update from the Editors Kevin Patrick, MD, MS, F. Douglas Scutchfield, MD, Charlotte S. Seidman, FNP, MHS, MPH, ELS, Peggy A. Browneller, MA
W
hen we assumed the editorship of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine several years ago, we promised that we would update you on a regular basis about how things are going and about any changes on the horizon likely to affect your experiences as either a Journal reader or contributor. Well, there is a lot going on! With the full concurrence of the Editorial Office, the Governing Board of the Journal — composed of representatives of our two sponsoring organizations, The American College of Preventive Medicine and the Association of Teachers of Preventive Medicine — recently renegotiated the publishing contract with Elsevier Science, Inc., to extend through Volume 33, scheduled to complete the calendar year 2007. This will carry us through 10 years with Elsevier and reflects our continued high level of confidence in the support that this world-class publishing house provides us. One of the most important aspects of this new contract is the plan to increase the number of pages we publish each year, initially by increasing the page count for each issue, beginning this calendar year, then increasing our frequency of publication over the next several years. This will, of course, be contingent on the continued receipt of high-quality manuscripts, since we do not wish to reduce the overall quality of what we publish simply to meet arbitrary page-count requirements. However, if we achieve this change, we will have effectively doubled the size of the Journal from when we began in 1995. (This does not count the pages that we devote to supplements, discussed below.) All in all, this represents a very encouraging growth curve for the Journal, reflecting not only the increasing productivity of prevention researchers, but the increased recognition of the importance of solid scientific and policy work to the preventive medicine community. Other aspects of our new contract include, for individual subscribers, electronic access to the full text of each issue and, for institutional subscribers, access to the Journal in the context of Science Direct, Elsevier’s large and integrated suite of electronically available publications. We are aware of the increasing financial
From the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, San Diego, California Address correspondence to: Charlotte Seidman, FNP, MHS, MPH, ELS, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, San Diego State University, 5500 Campanile Drive, San Diego CA 92182-4710. E-mail: [email protected].
106
burden that libraries have to bear to deploy systems like Science Direct and the controversy that surrounds this in many locations. However, at present, we feel the advantages to the Journal of this relationship outweigh any disadvantages, especially when considerations such as publication quality and publisher responsiveness to Journal needs are factored in. Please be assured, however, that we will keep a close eye on these issues and will do all that we can to ensure that the Journal is widely accessible and affordable. Our new contract also continues to support the publication of supplements and special issues, an increasingly important and, we think, informative dimension of what the Journal provides its readership. Recent efforts have featured publications from groups such as the Task Force on Community Preventive Services, the National Immunization Program, the Cooper Institute for Aerobic Research, the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, and the Office of Genomics and Disease Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to name a few. These have been supported by several organizations, including the CDC, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and other major stakeholders in the prevention and public health communities. We have an additional dozen supplements in the pipeline for the coming 2 years, sponsored by a wide variety of groups in the prevention community. We have been encouraged by readers who tell us that these collections of papers are useful in settings ranging from public health courses to influencing health policy at the state and federal levels. While professional journals are measured in many ways, some of the best-known benchmarks are those associated with the Institute for Scientific Information’s (ISI) Science Citation Index. These indices center on how many, how often, and how quickly papers published in a journal are cited in the broader group of peer-reviewed publications in that discipline. This provides a crude measure of the importance of a journal to researchers as they endeavor to expand the collective body of scientific knowledge. We are happy to say that the numbers for AJPM continue on an upward trend. AJPM had 91 “source items” or papers cited in 1995 and 267 in 2001. Over this same time period, citations to AJPM papers grew commensurately from 974 to 2364. For the second consecutive year, these numbers place us in the upper 20% of all Medical/General
Am J Prev Med 2003;24(1) 0749-3797/03/$–see front matter © 2003 American Journal of Preventive Medicine • Published by Elsevier Science Inc. PII S1054-139X(02)00579-2
and Internal Medicine publications, and in the top 21% of all Public Health and Environmental and Occupational Health journals. By comparison, 5 years ago we were in only the upper third for medical journals and the upper half of public health journals. To us this means that we can say with confidence to potential authors that if they publish in AJPM, their work will be presented alongside an increasingly influential body of work that is recognized by their scientific peers. This year we have made some changes to the masthead. Dr. Harrison Spencer, who has moved back to the United States from London, has joined our Editorial Board. His role as Associate Editor for International Preventive Medicine will now be filled by Dr. Adrian Bauman, who hails from Sydney, Australia, where he has a very active portfolio of teaching and research activities at the School of Public Health and Community Medicine, University of New South Wales, and at Sydney University. In addition to benefiting from Dr. Bauman’s considerable expertise in preventive medicine and public health, our presence in the Pacific Rim is increasing, so it is nice to have that part of the world represented. Our Associate Editors and Editorial Board members are active partners in the editorial process and deserve considerable credit for the increasing quality of AJPM. This year we will begin using Editorial Manager威, a new online program for handling the manuscript submission and peer-review processes. The objective is to move to a fully electronic system for all involved parties and, we hope, shorten the time it takes to get manuscripts through the various stages required for publication. As with all new systems, there will be some bugs to
work out, but we are confident that in the end this will contribute to improving the Journal. This past year has seen papers published in AJPM quoted in the press — including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post, as well as regional and health-related publications — and in the electronic media, including network news shows, much more than ever before. While this is certainly a function of the quality and importance of the manuscripts, this phenomenon also results from publicity generated by the Washington DC– based Center for the Advancement of Health (CFAH), a nonprofit organization devoted to increasing the visibility of prevention research. Our sincere thanks to the staff of CFAH for getting the word out and demonstrating how enthusiastic the public can be about prevention science when they have the chance to hear about it. Finally, our continued success depends largely on two things: (1) expanding our institutional and individual reader/subscriber base, and (2) the continued receipt of high-quality and timely papers from leading researchers, educators, and policymakers in our field. Every person reading this editorial is in a position to assist with each of these goals by becoming a subscriber, if you are not yet one; by encouraging others to subscribe; by assuring that your institution has AJPM in its library; and foremost by submitting your publishable research to AJPM and encouraging your colleagues to consider AJPM as a place to publish their work. Together we can continue to make AJPM one of the “must read” journals in both medicine and public health. Please feel free to contact our Editorial Office with your concerns, ideas, and recommendations for how we can improve.
Am J Prev Med 2003;24(1)
107