[PDF][PDF] Speed, competition, rigor, and creativity: Striking a delicate balance

SJ Weiss - The Journal of clinical investigation, 1997 - Am Soc Clin Investig
The Journal of clinical investigation, 1997Am Soc Clin Investig
We are taking over the reins of an important journal at a difficult time for scientific publishing,
indeed for all of science. Exploding knowledge with its concomitant specialization, tougher
and leaner funding, decreases in the subsidization of basic research from shrinking clinical
resources, questions about tenure and job security as well as increased competition from
other journals for the best articles are just a few of the problems facing us (1–3). Although we
can't make these things better, we also cannot allow them to distract us from our primary …
We are taking over the reins of an important journal at a difficult time for scientific publishing, indeed for all of science. Exploding knowledge with its concomitant specialization, tougher and leaner funding, decreases in the subsidization of basic research from shrinking clinical resources, questions about tenure and job security as well as increased competition from other journals for the best articles are just a few of the problems facing us (1–3). Although we can’t make these things better, we also cannot allow them to distract us from our primary charge: disseminating solid and exciting advances in basic or clinical research that provide new insights into human physiology and disease. We are in service to good science, and want to fulfill the “desire-to-know” that attracted us to these endeavors in the first place.
Our task is made easier by our predecessors. We are grateful to be taking over a smoothly running, professional operation. Consistent quality of research, unprecedented attention to the peer review process, fairness, and speedy publication are just portions of the legacy of the previous administration. We intend to continue these improvements, but we also want to pull the JCI even further out in the front of the pack of journals crowding the field. We want to make the JCI the flagship journal for worldwide biomedical research. The editorial by Varki et al. reviewed the many areas in which the Journal’s impressive gains could, and will continue to be, measured (3). We, in turn, want to address some of the intangible—and not as easily measured—issues that bear on the Journal’s future. A primary issue is the Journal’s continued comprehensibility to a broad readership in the face of a virtual explosion of knowledge-building in the biomedical sciences. But for all this building of knowledge, we seem to be busily reconstructing a virtual tower of Babel. A recent editorial decried the “withering exclusiveness” that is growing as the languages of specialties and subspecialties gets more impenetrable to nonspecialists (and sometimes, even specialists)(4). This is a problem we too want to address. One concrete thing we intend to do is to expand the use of the Perspectives series as an educational tool for our readers. In conjunction with the authors, we hope to use them to illuminate new breakthroughs published in the Journal or elsewhere, with a minimum of the language of the specialty (or at least defining our terms). This will not be a “dumbing down,” but an “opening up.” We will also pay increased attention to article titles and abstracts, so that JCI readers from different areas can understand any paper’s primary conclusions. In addition, we hope to make editorials what their name implies: insightful, accessible commentaries—not simply exhaustive reviews—on new issues, discoveries, and controversies with direct bearing on biomedical research. Another hard-to-measure, but sensitive, issue is the editorial policy used in accepting or rejecting manuscripts. How does one weigh “sexy but risky” against “safe but boring”? There is a growing concern that the power of methodology-
The Journal of Clinical Investigation