A fresh look

Abstract

Eagle-eyed regular readers of this journal will have noticed a new look this issue, possibly causing some of you to do a double take when first seeing it; if so, it is my entire fault. I have the honour of taking over from Tony Brown as Editor-in-Chief (EIC) of Emergency Medicine Australasia (EMA). Tony has done a terrific and admirable job for many years and although he is an extremely hard act to follow, I am looking forward very much to the challenge. Before agreeing to accept the role, I thought about it very carefully; some of you might know that I was the Joint EIC of EMA for 8 years (from 2006 – my last issue was December 2013), a role I enjoyed very much and was passionate about. Before agreeing to accept the EIC role with EMA I needed to make sure in my own mind I had something to offer after those 8 years, as well as having the energy to take on a new project. In the transition period I have updated myself by reading minutes of meetings and strategic planning days, recent annual reports and talking to Tony, ACEM and Wiley. It is very clear that there is a tremendous fondness for the journal, while at the same time there being an overwhelming desire to see its modernisation. The challenges facing medical journals in the second decade of the 21st century were well described in the recent February (2014) silver anniversary issue of EMA. Among other things, social media platforms allow consumer involvement and engagement (participation), immediacy, brief didactic opinions, rapid appearance of opinion leaders, peer-review processes and comprehensive debates. Commentators have been declaring the imminent extinction of non-fiction and fiction books for a while now, but publishers are adapting and surviving. The same story will apply to medical and scientific journals; they must adapt to survive. My personal view is that there will always be a need for a hard copy issue of a journal, regardless of digital innovation, website and social media developments and their usage by consumers; like the book industry, the journal, whether hard copy or digital copy, must evolve too. The big challenge is maintaining and developing new content that will ensure readers still value the journal (electronic and hard copy versions) while at the same time protecting intellectual rigour. All journals sit on a spectrum of content, one end being peer-reviewed science and comment (the journal) and the other being more casual and non-peer-reviewed (the magazine); although the energy needed to get copy for both ends is equally challenging, one end is formal and serious, the other informal and less serious. Clearly medical and scientific journals need to keep (and attract more) scientific content and, in the case of EMA, expand the magazine content; there is a balance here to get it right but ultimately it is a judgement call as to where the balance sits; pragmatically it will slightly vary with each issue. With respect to the magazine component of the journal, I am starting a new section, called Social Media. This will be 2–3 pages long and will get some social media material into a hard copy format. I plan to start a Trainee Section soon, with contributions from trainees. Other new sections will follow in due course. I also want to get more commentaries, opinion pieces or personal views (call them whatever you like) and debates. They will be on any subject that is of interest to our readership and not on subjects of interest just to me; in my view they have a different flavour, feel and function to a blog. If any reader has something they want to say please contact me to discuss first or submit a finished article via the normal submission process (found on the journal's website). All ideas, no matter how controversial or challenging, as long as they are not libellous, will be considered. These evolutionary (and not revolutionary) changes are only possible because of the hard graft and dedication of my predecessors; the base line they established is a very high bar. GH is Editor-in-Chief of Emergency Medicine Australasia.