AJP centennial. One hundred years of journal publication.

Abstract

AJP CENTENNIALOne hundred years of journal publicationToby A. AppelToby A. Appel 1 Cushing/Whitney Medical LibraryPublished Online:01 Jan 1998https://doi.org/10.1152/ajpcell.1998.274.1.C1MoreSectionsPDF (83 KB)Download PDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesGet permissionsTrack citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInEmail in 1998, the american physiological society(APS) celebrates the centennial of the founding of theAmerican Journal of Physiology (AJP) and by extension the centennial of the entire APS family of journals. APS was one of the earliest national biological societies in America and also one of the first to have its own journal (4). Although for its first sixteen yearsAJP was owned by its editor, William T. Porter, Porter published the journal at the request of APS and under contract to APS. By 1914, APS had assumed full ownership and management. The hundred-year history of APS journals has been one of expansion and specialization built on this strong early foundation.Founding of the American Journal of PhysiologyWhen APS was formed in 1887, no immediate attention was given to a publication, since the British Journal of Physiology was, in effect, a joint publication of British and American physiologists (11). But the increasing number of articles published by American physiologists as well as a sense of national and disciplinary pride soon made an American journal desirable. The question of an American publication was first raised by Frederic S. Lee at a special meeting of APS in May 1894. He moved that a committee be appointed to report “as to the feasibility of the establishment of an American Journal of Physiology.” Although this first committee, consisting of Lee, William T. Porter, and Henry Herbert Donaldson, reached an impasse probably due to financial considerations, the issue was raised anew by President Russell Chittenden at a special meeting of APS in May 1897. This time, Porter generously offered to undertake the publishing and financial responsibility for the new journal himself (9, 19). By June 1897, the new committee appointed to study the matter, consisting of Chittenden, Porter, William H. Howell, Lee, and Arthur Cushny, prepared a formal report that was mailed to the membership. It advocated the publication of a physiological journal “at once.” The committee wroteIt is no less evident that the various expedients that have hitherto served us are growing irksome and disadvantageous. The sending of manuscripts across the ocean, often to be printed in foreign languages, has been a necessary and valuable resource. But the time for this is past… . There can be no question that the position of our profession and its power for usefulness both at home and abroad would be increased by a publication that should be to us what the great archives of physiology are to Germany, France, England, and Italy. We believe that physiology in this country should occupy a position not less dignified and secure.Of sixty-two members who received the report, forty-one responded, and all approved of the project. By the annual meeting of APS in December 1897, Chittenden could report on behalf of the committee “that The American Journal of Physiology was an accomplished fact.”Like most scientific journals in this period, AJP was started and financed by an individual or individuals. There was little alternative, for societies at this time were small, and to retain their membership, dues had to be inexpensive. APS dues for the first fifty years of its existence were two dollars a year. Societies simply did not have the resources to put up the capital for a publication venture or to take on the financial responsibility if the journal should fare poorly. However, although APS accepted no financial responsibility for the journal and members were not required to subscribe, from its founding, the journal had an official connection with the Society.By the terms of the contract with APS, Porter agreed to edit five volumes of the journal, each about 500 pages, at a subscription price of five dollars per volume. Contributors would be guaranteed immediate publication and fifty free reprints. Any profits would accrue to the Society. The Society, in turn, would appoint a Publications Committee that would have control of the editorial management of the journal and would enter into formal contract with Porter in the name of the Society for the publication of the volumes. Formal approval by the Society was given in December 1898, with the text of the agreement amended to read that the journal was “to appear in such a form and at such intervals as are satisfactory to the Committee: provided, that the Society shall be free from all financial responsibility for such publication.” The first Editorial Board, also called the Publications Committee, appointed by Chittenden in 1897, consisted of Henry P. Bowditch, William Henry Howell, Frederic S. Lee, Jacques Loeb, Warren P. Lombard, and Porter, with Chittenden an ex officio member. As with many journal boards at the time, the members, other than Porter, were chosen because they represented different university cities, in this case, Boston, Baltimore, New York, Chicago, Ann Arbor, and New Haven. Although Chittenden, when he announced the formation of the journal to the Council, requested that the amount of a subscription be included in the annual dues, the proposition was voted down. Instead, in 1899 and several times afterward, circulars urged members to subscribe, but then as now, many members did not require individual subscriptions, and institutions and nonmember subscribers made up a good part of the subscription list.The first issue of the journal appeared in January 1898. It commenced with a paper from the laboratory of the Sheffield Scientific School by Chittenden and William Gies, “The influence of borax and boric acid upon nutrition with special reference to proteid metabolism.” No doubt the most memorable contribution to this inaugural volume was Walter B. Cannon’s first full-length paper on the application of the newly discovered X-rays to physiology, “The movements of the stomach studied by means of roentgen rays.” Among the authors represented were Howell, Lee, Porter, Charles Wilson Greene, Lafayette B. Mendel, Graham Lusk, Colin C. Stewart, A. N. Richards, and Ida Hyde. The entire first volume consisted of thirty-two papers in four issues and 522 pages and concluded with the publication of the abstracts of papers of the December 1897 APS Meeting.In all, Porter edited thirty-three volumes of the American Journal of Physiology through March 1914. Publication at first ran at a loss. The Society made up some of the deficit by contributing sums of $50 or $100 from time to time, but Porter himself covered the remainder of the debt. The contract with Porter was renewed in 1900, and then again in 1905 and 1911. At first, issues appeared every two months, but after July 1899, they appeared monthly. As with many other journals, the period of time covered by a volume varied depending on how much material was received. Subscription was not by year but by volume, and even in 1898 there was material sufficient for more than one volume a year. There was no formal review process, although Porter was said to have gone over papers thoroughly and returned them to the authors with suggested changes (7). The main function of the Editorial Board was to help attract articles to the journal, not to critique them.Biographical Sketch of William T. Porter (1862–1949)William Townsend Porter, the founder of the American Journal of Physiology, has been the Society’s greatest benefactor. Trained at St. Louis Medical College (later incorporated into Washington University School of Medicine) and in German laboratories, Porter began to teach physiology at St. Louis Medical College in 1887 and established the first physiological laboratory beyond the Mississippi River. He was elected to APS at its fourth annual meeting in 1891 and presented a paper before the Society in 1892 on the effects of ligating coronary arteries. His publications on ventricular filling and pressure, control of respiration, coronary circulation, origin of the heartbeat, and the physical and mental development of children brought him to the attention of eminent physiologists, among them Bowditch, who in 1893 invited Porter to join his department at Harvard and introduce laboratory experimentation as part of the regular physiology course.Because imported laboratory instruments were far too costly to equip a teaching laboratory, Porter established a machine shop in the department to make simplified and less expensive apparatus. It was found that enough instruments could be produced to equip other physiology laboratories. With the help of Charles W. Eliot, president of Harvard, capital was raised to found the Harvard Apparatus Company in 1901. The company prospered, and in 1920 Porter used the profits to found the APS Porter Fellowship. On two occasions, Porter offered to give the company to the Society, but the Society felt unequal to the task of attempting to manage such an enterprise properly and reluctantly declined.In 1900 Porter, who had by then the major responsibility of the teaching of physiology at Harvard, chose as his teaching assistant Walter B. Cannon, who had just received his M.D. from Harvard. Despite Porter’s devotion to the reform of the teaching of physiology, he was not popular with the medical students. A strict disciplinarian, his expectations were too high; he failed roughly one-third of the students from 1902 to 1904. A student revolt was one of the reasons why, when Bowditch retired in 1906, it was Cannon rather than Porter who succeeded him. Porter was named instead professor of comparative physiology. A breach that lasted many years was created between Porter and Cannon. However, in 1937, Cannon was among those who enthusiastically proposed that Porter be honorary president for the Semi-centennial Celebration of APS. Porter served as master of ceremonies for the happy occasion. In 1948 he had the distinction of becoming the only American ever to be elected an honorary member of the Society. Former APS President A. C. Barger wrote of him, “Physiology was Porter’s religion; he had no other” (7-10, 19, 20).APS Assumes Full Responsibility for AJPA turning point in the history of APS publications occurred in 1914, when the Society took on full ownership of and responsibility for theAmerican Journal of Physiology. Although the Society was grateful for Porter’s generosity in running the journal, some degree of friction seems to have developed between Porter and the Council and its Editorial Committee. Porter, a man of high ideals and uncompromising standards, did not always work easily with others. At the December 1913 meeting, the same meeting at which Cannon was elected president, members of the Society at a business meeting adopted the following resolution after “extensive” but unreported “discussion”Resolved that the Editorial Committee be appointed a special committee and instructed to consider the question as to the relation between the American Physiological Society and the American Journal of Physiology, and to recommend at the next annual meeting of the Society means by which more satisfactory conditions for publication by American physiologists may be obtained.The Editorial Committee, chaired by Howell, addressed to Porter a letter inviting him to discuss the matter. Although Porter may have had personal financial reasons for wanting to relinquish the journal at this time, the letter implying criticism of his editorial policies led to a quick decision (9). Porter sent to A. J. Carlson, secretary of the Society, a terse note announcing that he would cease editing the journal after the current volume (i.e., volume 33) was completed, which would probably be April 1914. He set forth conditions for continued use of the title, which he owned: “(1) that the Society shall publish a journal that shall be their own property and (2) that such a journal shall be printed by a first-class house in a form little if at all inferior to that of the present journal.”Porter’s sudden action precipitated a crisis. April was only three months away, but no official Society action could be taken until the annual meeting in December. The Editorial Committee had no authorization to take financial responsibility for a journal, and there was no one at hand to do the work. A flurry of letters passed among the members of Council and the Editorial Committee. When it proved impossible to induce Porter to continue as editor until the next meeting of the Society, an emergency meeting of the Editorial Committee was held in New York in January attended by Howell, Lee, Graham Lusk, Cannon, Samuel J. Meltzer, and Lafayette B. Mendel. The committee recommended that the Society own and manage the journal and continue to use the same title if possible, but, if Porter was unwilling, to adopt a new title. Lee and Cannon met with Porter in Cambridge on 5 February and succeeded in negotiating Porter’s conditions. Although Porter was willing to receive manuscripts for the first issue of volume 34, he insisted that the Society assume responsibility for sending out notices and collecting bills by the beginning of March. Joseph Erlanger, treasurer of APS, was hurriedly pressed into service.Because there was no time for constitutional niceties, Cannon took matters in hand and, after conferring with Lee, sent to the members of the Society a printed notice requesting a vote on the question, “Shall the American Journal of Physiology be owned by the American Physiological Society, and edited under its control?” The notice claimed that the journal as edited by Porter “results in little or no financial deficit,” when in fact the journal had been running at a loss. To provide for the journal, Council proposed to raise a “guarantee fund.” By 16 February, of the seventy-five members of the Society who responded, seventy-three were in favor, and ten men had pledged a total of over $1,000 for the emergency fund. A formal vote was taken by Council by mail. At the annual meeting in December 1914, the membership gave final approval and amended the constitution to enable the Society to own the journal. After considerable debate over the relationship of the journal to Council, it was decided that Council itself would act as the Editorial Committee.In March, a candidate for managing editor was found. Neither Lee nor Howell, the two most senior members of the committee, was willing to take on the work. Both had supported the idea of finding a younger man. There was some concern, however, that a young man would not have the necessary broad experience for editorial judgments. Donald Russell Hooker, first suggested by Lee, was an excellent choice, because, as a student of Howell and a member of the Department of Physiology at Johns Hopkins, he could readily avail himself of Howell’s advice. Elected to APS in 1906, he was at this time thirty-seven years old. Howell, as chairman of the Editorial Committee, requested Hooker’s appointment to the Committee, and, although Porter had not yet formally resigned and created a vacancy, Cannon approved. Hooker was to act as managing editor of the APS journals for the next thirty-two years.With Hooker in place, journal procedures were regularized and some important cost-saving changes were made. Porter’s payment of five dollars to authors of accepted articles was eliminated as unnecessary. It was decided that authors should pay for reprints and for part of the cost of publishing articles that were long or contained many tables. Procedures for acceptance or rejection of manuscripts were spelled out. There was at this time no formal peer review. Any member of Council had the power to accept articles for the journal, but two members of Council were required to reject a manuscript. In fact, few articles were rejected (17). Ten rejections were reported in 1917, three in 1919, eight in 1920, and ten in 1921. Immediate attention was devoted to finding another press for printing the volumes, because the Plimpton Press used by Porter was considered too expensive. Waverly Press was chosen because of its location in Baltimore, close to the managing editor, and its extensive experience in handling similar journals. Waverly Press printed and distributed the AJP for 70 years. (The journal is currently printed by Science Press, in Ephrata, Pennsylvania.) In 1914 there were about 400 subscribers to the journal, for the most part libraries and institutions. Of 205 members of APS at the beginning of 1914, only one-fourth subscribed to the journal; this figure increased to one-third as the result of a circular sent to all members.By mutual consent of Hooker and Council, Hooker assumed handling of subscriptions and financing. Finances for the journal were thus from the beginning separated from finances of the Society. Hooker established an office for the journal in his home in Baltimore and in 1915 hired an assistant, Laura Campen, APS’s first employee, who was responsible for all the day-to-day affairs of the APS journals throughout Hooker’s long tenure as managing editor. APS was one of the earliest societies of its size to assume full responsibility for managing its associated journal. By way of contrast, the Journal of Biological Chemistry and the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics were still privately owned, with only an informal relation to the American Society for Biological Chemistry and the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. Early in its history, however, APS began a strong publications program that has led to a long period of steady growth and prosperity.Biographical Sketch of Donald Russell Hooker (1876–1946)Born in 1876 in New Haven, Connecticut, Donald Russell Hooker received his B.A. and M.S. degrees from Yale and his M.D. degree in 1905 from Johns Hopkins. After spending a year in research at the University of Berlin, he joined the Department of Physiology under Howell at Johns Hopkins as an assistant in physiology. In 1910 he became an associate professor but gave up the appointment in 1920 because of the pressures of editing the APS journals, accepting in 1926 an appointment as lecturer in the School of Hygiene and Public Health. His research was of a high order. Between 1907 and 1935 he published over forty journal articles on the physiology of the circulatory system, and he is recognized as a pioneer in the study of venous pressure. Some of his most important work was done at Hopkins in the early 1930s as part of an historic team project, funded by Consolidated Edison, to investigate the effects of electricity on the human body. The collaborators were Hooker, O. R. Langworthy, a neurologist, and William Kouwenhoven, an electrical engineer. Their research, published in the American Journal of Physiology in 1933, demonstrated that electrical defibrillation was possible in animals and led to the eventual development of means to defibrillate the human heart (14, 16, 19).In addition to his duties as managing editor of the American Journal of Physiology and Physiological Reviews (begun in 1921), in 1935 Hooker became secretary of the Federation; he was the founder and the first editor of Federation Proceedings. For most of his years as editor of APS journals, he worked without remuneration. A. J. Carlson (12) said of him that he “was one of the ablest most devoted servants of our science,” and “the last man to claim the stature of a superman.” As an editor he was known for his wide experience; good judgment; high standards of accuracy, clarity, and brevity; and conservative management, resulting in the accumulation of a substantial reserve fund for the protection of the journals. He was a man of strong social conscience, active in civic affairs and social reforms. In the volume of the American Journal of Physiology dedicated to him was written, “No one of his generation has had a greater influence on American physiology” (1).Founding of Physiological ReviewsUnder the management of APS Council and Hooker, AJP began to accumulate a modest revenue. As early as 1915 Hooker reported a surplus of $2,565.76, an amount that grew steadily every year thereafter. Within a few years it was generally understood that the funds were to be used for publication purposes only. Among the uses for the money suggested in Hooker’s annual report for 1915 was “to guarantee for one year the publication of a journal devoted to articles reviewing the various fields of biological science.” At this time this was quite a novel suggestion, for there were few journals of this kind in existence.The initial idea of Physiological Reviews, as well as its subsequent development and rapid success, was largely due to Hooker’s mentor and colleague, William Henry Howell. In April 1919, Howell and Hooker brought the matter of the review journal before Council and the Society. Howell felt there would be good demand for such a journal and that it would soon be self-supporting. Council appointed Howell and Hooker to a committee charged with presenting a detailed plan at the next meeting. The proposition was discussed informally by the Society. Its response was described in the minutes as “enthusiastic,” although Howell recalled years later that the initial reaction was at best lukewarm.In June Hooker and Howell sent Council a report proposing that a journal, called either Physiological Reviews or Quarterly Reviews of the Physiological Sciences, be published quarterly in a single volume per year. The journal would “cover the subject of physiology, physiological chemistry, pharmacology, experimental pathology and such other subjects as may from time to time appeal to those interested in the biological sciences.” Editorial responsibility would rest with a Board of Editors, representing various branches of physiology, which would select the subjects to be reviewed and assign them to authors. “The ultimate subscription list is estimated as over a thousand,” they wrote. It was hoped that the journal would appeal to teachers and clinicians, as well as to physiological researchers. In the plan presented to and approved by Council in December 1919, Council was to appoint the managing editor and to deal with policy matters other than selection of authors and articles. Hooker became managing editor, and Council appointed a first Editorial Board consisting of four members from APS (Howell, Macleod, Lee, and Hooker) and one each from the other three Federation societies (Lafayette B. Mendel, Reid Hunt, and H. Gideon Wells). The Board elected Howell to be chairman, a position he held until 1932.In 1920 a prospectus was drawn up and widely distributed. It described the journal in the following terms:The main purpose of the PHYSIOLOGICAL REVIEWS is to furnish a means whereby those interested in the physiological sciences may keep in touch with contemporary research. The literature, as every worker knows, is so extensive and scattered that even the specialist may fail to maintain contact with the advance along different lines of his subject. The obvious method of meeting such a situation is to provide articles from time to time in which the more recent literature is compared and summarized. The abstract journals render valuable assistance by condensing and classifying the literature of individual papers, but their function does not extend to a comparative analysis of results and methods. Publications such as the Ergebnisse der Physiologie, the Harvey Lectures, etc., that attempt this latter task, have been so helpful as to encourage the belief that a further enlargement of such agencies would be welcomed by all workers. It is proposed, therefore, to establish a journal in which there will be published a series of short but comprehensive articles dealing with the recent literature in Physiology, using this term in a broad sense to include Bio-chemistry, Bio-physics, Experimental Pharmacology and Experimental Pathology.The first volume, which appeared in 1921, contained nineteen contributions, including articles on the conduction of the heartbeat by J. E. A. Eyster and Walter Meek, functions of the capillaries and venules by Hooker, blood volume and its regulation by Joseph Erlanger, the sugar of the blood by J. H. R. Macleod, the regulation of pulmonary circulation by Carl J. Wiggers, afferent paths for visceral reflexes by S. W. Ranson, the physiology of undernutrition by Lusk, and the physiological effects of altitude by E. C. Schneider. Physiological Reviews proved an immediate and overwhelming success. Cash subscriptions in advance at $6 per year had been adequate to meet initial expenses, and the reserve fund of $3,000 did not have to be used. By the end of the first year of operations the journal had 838 subscribers “and new subscriptions constantly coming in.” It was not long before the “ultimate subscription list” of 1,000 was reached and surpassed.The Board of Publication Trustees and Peer ReviewThe major concerns of the APS journals in the 1920s were the products of their success: first, too many manuscripts, and second, how to handle a rapidly growing reserve. Although the most prolific authors of articles in AJP came from a small number of centers of medical research, papers in the early AJP represented a very broad definition of physiology and a wide spectrum of researchers and of institutions (17). Hooker and the APS Council took pride in the rapid publication of research results in AJP; they had been able to publish articles two months after they were submitted. The mounting accumulation of manuscripts was at first handled by expedients such as increasing the number of pages in the volumes and printing in smaller type or printing an extra “free” volume to eliminate the backlog. In the 1920s the rejection rate for manuscripts was low; only the obviously unfit were refused publication. Hooker and Council were reluctant to select articles on the basis of merit. Instead they decided to restrict the field covered by the journal, by eliminating almost all articles that would be more appropriately submitted to some other journal. Thus the journal became far less hospitable to articles in such areas as general physiology, comparative physiology, nutrition, clinical physiology, and industrial physiology, because these fields were covered by professional journals. Articles describing apparatus, those containing no new research (i.e., theoretical articles), and those coming from a foreign laboratory were also routinely rejected. In addition, Hooker urged authors to avoid historical reviews of the literature, to state their results with clarity and brevity, and to include only the most important tables and group them together whenever possible. An increasing number of articles were returned for condensation. These measures only staved off for a time the need for closer scrutiny of the manuscripts.Nearly everyone agreed that Hooker was the ideal managing editor, but there was concern over placing too much editorial and financial responsibility on a single individual. Manuscripts were sent directly to Hooker in Baltimore, who approved them on his sole authority, returned them to the author for condensation, or rejected them if they fell into various categories of unsuitable manuscripts as previously defined by Council. The relatively small number of manuscripts on which there was some question was sent by Hooker with his recommendation to members of Council. No one man, it was felt, could possibly have the expertise to render judgment on papers in all branches of physiology. Occasionally, members of the Society would bring to Hooker’s attention examples of seriously flawed papers that had been published. By the 1930s the problem of too many manuscripts had reached a critical point. In some years, five volumes of the journal had appeared at a high total cost to subscribers of $37.50 for nonmembers and institutions and $18.75 for members. (Member rates had been introduced in 1922.) As billing for journals was still done by volume, rather than by year, there was pressure from subscribers, especially in a time of depression, not to publish more than four volumes a year. Although the journal was recognized as excellent, there was a growing feeling that manuscripts should be more carefully selected.In his 1929 annual report, Hooker, concerned with the high cost of subscriptions and with the accumulation of manuscripts, suggested that the Society should “create a continuously functioning editorial board with specified jurisdiction for each member, to which all manuscripts will be referred.” In 1930 he requested and received permission to consult nonmembers of Council on articles with the understanding that appeals could still be made to Council. That year another unsuccessful attempt was made to reduce the cost of subscription by including the cost of the journal in the Society dues. Council voted to set dues at fifteen dollars to include a subscription to the journal, but the membership rejected the plan.The issue of financial vulnerability was brought to a head in 1932 by the loss of some of the Society’s funds, then held in a Boston bank, through bank closures. It was imperative to protect the publications reserves, which by then amounted to nearly $100,000. Council felt that Hooker should not bear this responsibility alone. Thus in 1932 a committee, consisting of Walter Meek (chairman), Cecil K. Drinker, and A. C. Ivy, was appointed to examine editorial and financial policies of the Society’s publications and to report back at the next meeting. By putting Drinker on the committee, the Council knew what to expect, as Drinker had already proposed a trustee arrangement to APS Council in the 1920s.The committee’s report, presented to Council in 1933 recommende