Farewell address from Dr Quilligan and Dr Zuspan

Abstract

It was 1969 when we were given the opportunity of a lifetime. We received a call from Dr Howard Taylor, Jr, the editor in chief of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, asking if we wished to become associate editors of the Journal. At that time the other editors were Dr Allan Barnes and Dr John Brewer. Dr Barnes had been our chief as we were residents and young faculty members at Western Reserve and Ohio State University and was undoubtedly responsible for our nomination as associate editors. Within a year, Dr Taylor decided to become an emeritus editor and Dr Barnes, who was then chairman of obstetrics and gynecology at Johns Hopkins, took a position with the Rockefeller Foundation and resigned from the Journal. Dr Brewer became editor in chief and we became editors, a team that worked harmoniously together for the next 24 years. Dr Brewer decided to become an emeritus editor in 1990 and we became editors in chief. Over the next few years six new editors joined the Journal. The July 2003 issue will have a new masthead indicating we will become emeritus editors and Drs Thomas Garite and Moon Kim will become editors in chief with Drs Richard Bump, Steven Gabbe, Jay Iams, Alberto Manetta, and Roberto Romero as associate editors. During the time we have been associated with the Journal we have seen revolutionary changes in our specialty, many of which have been reported in this Journal. The ability to evaluate the fetus through heart rate monitoring, ultrasound visualization, and sampling the amniotic fluid or fetal blood were unimaginable 34 years ago. The tremendous advances in infertility therapy, laparoscopic surgery, and contraception were part of the explosion of knowledge that needed to be communicated to the reading public, and thus the number of articles submitted to the Journal increased. We needed to make certain the best science was presented in the Journal in a timely manner. Shortly after joining the Journal, we asked that all articles published in the Journal be peer reviewed. We recognized that peer review was not a perfect system, but we felt it was the best available way to get top science in this Journal. The evidence that we succeeded is that the Journal has the highest citation index of any journal in our specialty. Many of our readers expressed the opinion that the Journal was too heavily oriented toward basic science. This was more perception than fact: 50% of the articles were clinical. We did add a new group of articles called Clinical Opinion. These were to be diagnostic or therapeutic strategies of a clinician backed by scientific fact. It is now called evidence-based medicine. This has been a very popular section of the Journal. The AJOG Reviews were also inaugurated during our tenure. A thorough review of a given topic is presented, which brings the reader up to date on a specific topic. These are just a few of the changes we have seen in the Journal. We are certain there will be many more as our specialty continues to expand and change. We are equally certain the Journal will continue to flourish because Elsevier is the largest medical publisher in the world. Working with the new editors in chief and associate editors for the past 12 years only solidifies that optimism. We cannot close this editorial without expressing our deep appreciation to all the publishers with whom we worked at Mosby. They were wonderful colleagues and are close friends. We are also indebted to our managing editors. Without them it would have been an impossible job.