Editorial: Incoming Honorary Editor

Abstract

A scientific journal serves two primary roles: the presentation of timely, high-quality research and the archiving of such material for future reference. Secondary roles, fulfilled by many journals, are to provide well-documented tutorial reviews of currently important research in the journal's area of emphasis as well as to provide a venue for limited scientific discussion of essential issues in the field. As I assume the position as Honorary Editor of Physiological Measurement, I realize how important these roles are in the success of a journal and the great responsibility that the editor and the publisher have in guiding the publication to fulfil them. It is an honour and a challenge to take on this responsibility. I am pleased to follow the strong example set by my predecessor, Stuart Meldrum, to work with the publisher,Jane Roscoe, and the rest of the staff at Institutue of Physics Publishing (IOPP), and to receive advice and assistance from an outstanding international Editorial Board.Dr Meldrum and the staff at IoPP have steered the journal on a steady course of increasing impact factor, decreasing receipt-to-publication processing times, and increasing subscriptions. Dr Roscoe and the IoPP staff have established a state-of-the-art electronic manuscript submission, review and electronic publishing capability for the journal. In 2001 there were over 53,000 hits on Physiological Measurement's home page with over 8,500 downloads of manuscripts; both values showing significant increases from the previous year.Our Editorial Board has representatives from Europe, North America, Australia, and Asia, and one of my goals as editor will be to further increase the international presence on this Board. In this regard, I am pleased to announce that Professor Idagene Cestari from Sao Paulo, Brazil and Dr Jean-Pierre Morucci from Toulouse, France, who is past president of the International Federation of Medical and Biological Engineering (IFMBE), have joined the Board this year.The most important groups in the publication process are you the authors, reviewers and readers. For a journal to be successful, it must meet your needs and do so in a timely, efficient way. We, who are involved in the journal's production, have a great responsibility to you to provide an effective means to disseminate your work and to meet your needs to know the state-of-the-art in physiological measurements. You also have a responsibility to us to submit appropriate, high-quality manuscripts for consideration and to serve as peer reviewers in an expeditious way when called upon to do so. A quality publication must have capable, fair and considerate reviewers as well as outstanding authors and manuscripts.Thus, we are all in this together: authors, reviewers, readers, editor, and publisher. Through our combined efforts we can continue along the path established by my predecessors. We can continue to bring Physiological Measurement to the forefront as the première journal in which to publish manuscripts, topical reviews, notes and brief correspondence on the theory, technology, techniques, and understanding on how we can better measure and comprehend physiological systems.