Pain Medicineand Oxford University Press: Building a Scholarly Pain Community Together

Abstract

Pain Medicine has grown rapidly over its first 16 years thanks to authors from around the world who have contributed their scholarly work for review and publication as well as to the dedication of its editorial board, editorial staff, reviewers, and publisher. This January 2016 issue of Pain Medicine is the first with our new publishing partner, Oxford University Press (OUP), with whom we have forged a very strong 5 year publishing agreement. Oxford, fully aware of the growth of our field and the important roles of our three sponsoring societies (American Academy of Pain Medicine [AAPM], the Spine Intervention Society [SIS], and the Faculty of Pain Medicine at the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists [FPM ANZCA]) in national and international pain medicine, believe, as we do, that Pain Medicine has a bright future. I am most grateful to leaders from these societies as well as from members of our own editorial board (particularly Drs. Bogduk, Harden, Lamer, Maus, and Webster), who assisted in this process. Oxford’s Pain Medicine team, led by Rachel Warren, has worked diligently with our managing editor, Colleen Healy, and editorial and AAPM staff to guarantee a smooth transition from Wiley. Managing publisher Alison Labbate, a strong partner in growing Pain Medicine at Blackwell and then Wiley after their merger, has helped smooth the transition, and we are most grateful for her, and her team’s, service over the years. Oxford joins our Pain Medicine enterprise at an important time in the history of pain medicine research, practice, and policy. The costs of the public health problem of pain and its consequence—opioid over-use—have made health services research increasingly important. We must now consider a population-based approach to managing costs and to improving safety and quality-of-life outcomes, with a focus on primary prevention (engaging people …