So then, farewell: An editor writes

Abstract

It is now exactly 10 years since I took over editorship of the BJGP . The dominant emotion is one of profound gratitude; I am immensely fortunate to have been allowed to do this job. When Richard Smith left the BMJ he quoted a Woody Allen joke, about the man who swept the floors in the strip club. His friend asks ‘What's the pay?’ ‘Ten dollars a night.’ ‘That's not very much.’ ‘No, but it's all I could afford.’ Unlike Richard, I'm not sure I would have paid for the privilege of doing this wonderful job, but it's a close run thing. Richard also pointed out perhaps the prime responsibility of editors, to be a good steward of their journals, and it's fair to claim I have succeeded in that. It's a source of great satisfaction to know that I am handing the BJGP on in good health, and into such capable hands. There has been more than just stewardship: in the last 10 years we have moved to electronic publishing, and having all the articles submitted and processed electronically. We have moved to open rather than blinded peer review, and that seems both to have been welcomed by authors and reviewers, and to have helped improve the quality of reviews (sorry, no evidence for that last statement); it also, perhaps surprisingly, puts us into a minority among biomedical journals. We have also tried to make the Journal more attractive to readers whose interest is in good clinical work (as opposed to other researchers). This last initiative is only in its infancy, but we have made a start. We should have liked to have got further with this project, but we've discovered that distinguishing between the versions of an article for hardcopy and for electronic publishing involves quite a lot …