Goodbye

Abstract

In 2002, the editorial office of the Journal of Andrology migrated eastward from Minneapolis after 10 years in Minnesota and went to New York, where it operated out of a cubicle at the Population Council and the office of the chair of the Department of Urology at Weill Cornell Medical College. Although this transition was only five years ago, it marked another era for the journal. During our time as editors, processing of manuscripts, spanning file submission to final publication, became a completely digital process. The editorial office ceased to be a major customer of Federal Express and relied more heavily on local information technology personnel to transmit files. The passage of the physical to virtual reality culminated in a decision in 2005 to administer the editorial office out of Madison, Wisconsin, with Jansen Editorial Services and use the online manuscript tracking system of HighWire Press. Many aspects of the journal's operations have become automated, but the fundamental parts of being an editor have been retained. That comes down to the humbling responsibility of defining the clinical and basic science of andrology. Although we grew accustomed to the winnowing of submitted manuscripts and the selective acceptances for publication after receiving the critical appraisals and evaluations of our reviewers, the thrill of being at the forefront of andrology research was sustained. We remain grateful to the American Society of Andrology for entrusting us with this responsibility and shall fondly remember interactions with all of the various people with whom we came into contact. We cannot go without naming a few: our section editors and members of the editorial board, the ad hoc reviewers, the two chairs of the Publication Committee (Bernard Robaire and Marvin Meistrich), Jennifer Bellask, the editorial assistant who was instrumental in setting up our office shop in New York, and Judy Jansen and her staff for moving the journal to online editorial management. Under the capable direction of the new team of editors—Bud Burnett, Sally Perreault, and Jay Sandlow—the journal will undoubtedly change, which we support, to reflect the ongoing progress of our field. We do not know what the next report of a genetic deletion affecting spermatogenesis or future advance in culture and genomic manipulation of spermatogonial stem cells will be, but we expect that the most interesting and exciting results of the world's andrological investigators will continue to grace our pages.