Looking Back and Looking Forward: Ten Years as the Editor of Your Journal

Abstract

m s I m I was not invited to be the Editor of Ophthalmology because I could write well. In grade school, I was in a remedial reading class and my lowest grades were always in English. I was invited to be the Editor based primarily on support over the years from my mentors: Morton Goldberg, A. E. Maumenee, Arnal Patz, Al Sommer, Steve Ryan, Stuart Fine, William Tasman, and their colleagues. When Mort came to Wilmer as the new chair, he was editor of the Archives of Ophthalmology and he invited me to be an assistant editor. Steve Ryan had invited me to help edit his Ryan’s Retina textbook. Al Sommer introduced me to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, public health, and health policy, and Stuart Fine introduced me to clinical research and the retina, and Drs. Maumenee, Patz, and Tasman and all my mentors at the Wills Eye Hospital introduced me to many things, including the importance of mentors and mentorship. One reason the journal is as successful as it is relates to its relationship with the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO). It is the members’ journal and will, in part, rise and fall with the AAO, its reach, and its influence. The journal of course is academically and intellectually distinct from the AAO. The rise in prominence of this journal parallels the increasing importance the AAO plays in ophthalmology nationally and internationally. When I became Editor in 2003, the journal was in wonderful shape because of the efforts of former editors and journal staff. Paul Lichter launched the software the journal relies on and Don Minkler sped the transition to more structured and evidencebased manuscripts. Looking back, I am most proud of our increased efficiency. In 2002, the postage budget to mail manuscripts was $30 000 per year. The time from initial receipt of a paper to the initial editorial decision was 120 days. The journal was receiving approximately 800 manuscripts per year. The corresponding numbers today are a postage budget that is negligible and a 30-day median time from submission to initial decision. This year, we will receive approximately 1700 manuscripts. However, the increased efficiency is not my doing; it relates to being in the right place at the right time. By 2003, faxing had become as efficient as had express mail services; using those methods to move papers to reviewers and back to authors cut the 120-day median decision time to 60 days. With the introduction of the web-based editorial system in 2004, the decision time became 30 days. I am also proud of the series of papers on editorship and the special relationships I have had with the editors of many eye journals: Tom Liesegang, Dan Albert, Alexander Brucker, Elias Traboulsi, Joe Hollyfield, and Arun Singh. Please read our journal and learn here, but also take time to learn from them and their journals and from the panoply of eye journals. Special recognition is due to the journal staff, who were flexible, open to change, and became more efficient in the e