Pediatric Research
Five
Years in New Haven
George
Lister, M.D., Editor-in-Chief
In December 1998, the North American
Editorial Board of Pediatric Research will
relocate to the University of Toronto, and Alvin Zipursky
will begin a five-year term as Editor-in-Chief. Although
there has certainly been a hefty investment of time to
perform the editorial duties for the journal, we, the
Editors and Managing Editor, will all miss this
interesting and challenging responsibility. In the
process of trying to maintain the high standards of the
journal, provide excellent critiques and expeditious
decisions, and serve our academic societies, we have
learned a great deal -- by reading the work of our
colleagues and the critical insights of the reviewers. We
have also come to appreciate how well the peer review
system can function. We are particularly pleased that
some of our goals have been realized and innovations well
received. Although we provide a detailed report at the
Annual Meeting, I thought it would be useful to summarize
some of the progress and changes that have occurred in
our journal during the past five years.
- We wished to make the journal
accessible to postdoctoral fellows: 600-800
fellows per year have been receiving sponsored
subscriptions.
- We wished to have the journal
available to physicians with limited access Pediatric
Research: with the consent of the APS and SPR
Councils, a program was initiated in which over
70 members have already offered to donate their
subscriptions to physicians in regions such as
Eastern Europe or the Middle East.
- We have worked with the Councils
of the APS, the SPR, and the European Society for
Paediatric Research (ESPR), and the International
Pediatric Research Foundation to accommodate
other societies that wish to have Pediatric
Research serve as their official publication:
recently, the European Society for Paediatric
Haematology and Immunology entered such an
arrangement, and their members will incur the
same responsibilities and benefits accorded those
individuals in the APS, SPR and ESPR. We trust
this new affiliation will help improve the
quality while increasing the readership and
exposure of the journal.
- We wanted to have regular
State-of-the-Art Reviews on topics of broad
interest: we have published over 20 such articles
during the past five years, on a breadth of
topics such as Heat Shock Proteins, Adhesion
Molecules, Maternal Intrauterine Infection,
Homeobox Genes and Comparison of
Laboratory and Epidemiologic Approach to
Pediatric Research. More are scheduled for
the coming year.
- We initiated sections of the
journal where readers could learn about upcoming
activities of the societies (inside cover) or
other academic functions (Academic Bulletin
Board).
- We developed a Home page on the
World Wide Web, for our readers to have ready
access to our featured reviews, the tables of
contents, current abstracts, and information
related to our academic societies (http://www.wwilkins.com/PDR/).
- To help provide recognition to the
high quality work in the journal, we have placed
illustrations on the cover of each issue
featuring one of the published articles for that
month. We quickly learned that every author whose
work is chosen appreciates this feature.
- Finally, we worked hard to engage
expert and prompt reviewers so that our authors
receive thorough and thoughtful comments. We
fully recognize that both the reviewers and the
authors are vital to the health of the journal.
We particularly appreciate the effort and
responsibility that our Society members have
assumed by submitting their interesting science
for publication and providing conscientious and
constructive reviews.
I thank the Members of the APS and SPR
for permitting me to serve as Editor-in-Chief.
September 1998
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