Growth and the future of the journal

Abstract

Recently there has been significant growth in a number of areas of the APSR that will impact on the Journal. An agreement was signed in April which resulted in the entire membership of the Japanese Respiratory Society joining the APSR, in an en-bloc membership arrangement. We are very pleased to welcome the JRS members to the APSR. It is hoped that this en-bloc membership will be the first of many, and negotiations are currently underway with a number of other national Respiratory organizations for similar membership arrangements to be put in place. As a result of this agreement, the number of subscribers to Respirology has increased from just over 1000 to 11 000. This is not the only growth in Respirology subscriptions. Blackwell Publishing Asia has reported an increase in the number of institutions with consortia access from 1264 in 2002 to 1702 in 2003—an increase of 35%. There has been a corresponding increase in the online usage, with Abstracts being accessed just over 6300 times in December 2003 compared with 1000 times in January 2003. This greater awareness of the Journal has resulted in increased submissions, with the number of new manuscripts increasing by 43% in the first 6 months of 2004. This has put pressure on our capacity to publish accepted manuscripts in a timely fashion; we are now using our maximum page limit with no blank pages. I am pleased to announce that Respirology will publish five issues starting in January in 2005. In this issue, the Invited Review Series on Pleural Diseases continues with ‘Mesothelial Cell Proliferation and Apoptosis’ by Courtney Broaddus, who is Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the University of California San Francisco. Her current research interests are the role of apoptosis in protection from asbestos-induced malignancy, mechanisms of asbestos-induced DNA damage, the biological modification of asbestos, and mesothelial cell biology. The second article, ‘Radiology in Pleural Disease’ is by Dr Fergus Gleeson at the Churchill Hospital, Oxford, UK. Fergus Gleeson is the current Roentgen Professor of Radiology for the Royal College of Radiologists and a member of the Standards Committee and Faculty Board for the Royal College of Radiologists. He trained in Thoracic Radiology at Papworth Hospital as well as at UCLA, California. He has a specific interest in pleural imaging and intervention, and has published numerous articles and book chapters on Thoracic Radiology.