Quite a Third Birthday.

Abstract

It was just 3 years ago that I was appointed Editor-in-Chief of Therapeutic Innovation & Regulatory Science (TIRS), just as the journal was first launched. In perspective, it has been a remarkable time, and I wanted to share some of our current activities—accomplished and pending. Our publisher, Sage, has just provided us with our 2015 utilization data. These data represent electronic usage; of course, members also receive a printed copy of the journal. TIRS was accessed electronically over 600,000 times during this past year alone. Of particular note, full-text downloads and PDFs of individual articles exceeded 120,000, representing twice the utilization of 2014. Among the most popular types of articles accessed were those dealing with novel approaches to drug develop and innovation, particularly those representing the research output of large, collaborative groups. Similarly, our podcasts continued to grow (nearly 1500 listens) and further stimulate use of the journal and its articles while spurring discussion at a granular level of the practical approach our journal takes in advancing medical product development. While we are a ‘‘young’’ journal, together with our editorial board, our outstanding publishing staff at DIA, and our partners at Sage, we decided to submit an application to be listed in PubMed, which was submitted in November 2015. This was a huge undertaking, and my enormous thanks goes out to our former editors-in-chief, our current editorial board, external ‘‘users’’ of the journal, and DIA and Sage staff. The National Library of Medicine panel is set to meet in February sometime, and we will hear about whether we have been accepted about the time the March TIRS issue is published. We will certainly let everyone know the outcome. We hope we will be successful; I believe ours was a superb application. If we are, this will likely drive a large increase in submissions of high-quality articles, and greatly increase readership and utilization. I realize that it is far from certain that we will be successful; the review committee receives a large number of submissions, and only a minority are accepted. Either way, I want to thank you all, including our authors and readers, for helping to grow the journal and increasing its impact and for making us a viable candidate for PubMed. After March, we will be exploring a number of ways to improve TIRS, and I look forward to all of your input. For the moment, Happy Birthday TIRS, and many, many more!