Changes in Medical Publishing

Abstract

> “It is astonishing how little reading a doctor can practice medicine, but it is not astonishing how badly he may do it” > > William Osler, 1901 The goal of scientific publishing is to disseminate advances in scientific knowledge. Scientific publishing is currently undergoing dramatic changes driven largely by the acceptance and integration of the Internet into all aspects of our daily lives. Change has not come quickly to the field of medical publication, however. Print journals have been the method of disseminating new medical knowledge since the late 17th century with the first scientific journal; the French Le Journal des Scavans was published in 1665 followed shortly thereafter by the English journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London .1 The growth of the medical journals such as the NEJM , JAMA , and Lancet began in the 1820 to 1840s, and evolved the more typical scientific paper that was focused and brief relative to the initial thesis-type journal articles. The growth of biomedical publications has been remarkable with more than 25 000 biomedical journals currently. The American Heart Association has been publishing its flagship journal Circulation since 1950 and has added 5 other prestigious journals over the years. Five years ago, the Scientific Publishing Committee of the American Heart Association decided to further expand the Circulation family by adding 6 subspecialty journals, including Circulation: Cardiovascular Interventions . During the past 4 years, we have seen amazing growth in all of the subspecialty journals. For Circulation: Cardiovascular Interventions , we have seen a doubling of submissions during the past 3 years, accompanied by a reduction in our acceptance rate to <20%, resulting in an Impact Factor of 6.058. We have chosen the time-proven format for our journal with peer-reviewed original articles published in a bimonthly print journal available to …