O. EREMIN
Editor of the Journal of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh
As we approach the end of another year in the publication of the Journal, it is time to reflect about the Journal, its achievements, to date, and where it is heading in the foreseeable future. I am pleased to write that the Journal is continuing to make progress. The number of submissions have steadily increased over the past years and in 2001 we have had the highest number of submissions since I became its Editor. This is a pleasing development and reflects its standing as a generalist surgical journal within the surgical community. The submissions are biased towards general surgery, with orthopaedics being the commonest specialty presented. Although the Journal is not in competition with the specialist journals it does publish on a wide range of specialist topics, albeit that these are a less common inclusion. The Journal is keen to publish articles dealing with specialist topics, including those from oromaxillofacial and dental surgeons.
The Impact Factor is recognised as an important, peerreviewed measure of a journal’s status and its rank in the publication field of clinical and scientific journals. I am pleased to report that, since first acquiring an Impact Factor rating (0.434 in 1998), it has steadily increased and for 2000 was 0.510. The Editorial Board believes that this reflects the continuing improvement in standards and the Journal’s standing, and justifies the strategy that we have employed in improving the quality of the Journal’s content; in particular the increase in targeted clinical and scientific reviews on various topics.
The Educational Section has been a success with excellent articles and the HIDI (‘How I Do It’) Section has been favourably received by the readership.
A new innovation has been the publication of the James IV prestigious series of lectures (see this issue). Approximately five James IV Professorships will be awarded annually to Dental and Surgical Diplomates of the College. Each successful applicant will deliver a lecture at a National Specialty or College Meeting, the text of which will be published in the Journal. The first of these lectures, by Professor Rugg-Gunn, is published in this issue of the Journal.
There are exciting new developments in the foreseeable future. The four Royal Colleges of Surgeons have agreed to explore the possibility of a new inter-collegiate surgical journal. The Editorial Board of the JRCSEd are very supportive of this exciting development, which offers great challenges and opportunities. The intention is to publish a high quality, attractive, monthly Journal. It is hoped that agreement will be reached soon to establish a steering group , representing all the four Colleges to determine the remit, format, content and editorial infrastructure of the intercollegiate journal, with a launch date in January 2003. Should this become an actuality I would like to assure our readers that the Editorial Board will do all it can to ensure that we have a first-rate journal, which will be not only an attractive product but also relevant to the professional and educational needs and requirejments of both the trainee and the established surgeon, in the 21st century.
Due to requests from our readers, the full (yearly) contents have been reinstated and published along with the index and list of referees in the December issue. I and the Editorial Board are very grateful to all those who contributed to the production of the Journal. Jennifer Clarke has done a sterling job and we are pleased to have Sadie Maskery, as Senior Production Editor, back at the helm. Sarah Morrison resigned at the end of August. We wish her well in her new career. As always, we are grateful to our dedicated panel of reviewers who gave so much of their time and effort to ensure that the quality of the Journal continued to improve. Their names are listed on the Journal’s Website, and I apologise that there was no room this year to print them in the paper version (there are a lot of you)!
The Editorial Board and I wish all our readers and contributors best wishes of the season and a prosperous and happy 2002.
O Eremin
Editor of the Journal