The end of an era

Abstract

Some people claim that you can never have too much of a good thing, so it is with some trepidation that we have decided to step down and let Clinical Ethics continue to grow and flourish with a new editor at the helm. While we both have exciting new ventures to look forward to, it has proven very difficult to leave this particular project. Our editorship has been a pleasure from start to finish and we feel honoured to have been given the task to set up a brand new journal from scratch – a journal which has been genuinely cross-disciplinary, providing practitioners and service-users, as well as interested academics, with material that they can use in an everyday setting. We will particularly miss our colleagues, now friends, on the editorial committee who have supported us tirelessly and enthusiastically. Professor Heather Draper masterminded the virtual ethics committee, ably assisted by her virtual committee members, Adam MacDiarmaid-Gordon, Laura Strumidlo, Bea Teuten and Eleanor Updale. In recent issues, Dr Ainsley Newson has taken on responsibility for the case study section, co-ordinatinng, documenting and commenting on the discussion of real cases by real ethics committees. Dr Anne Slowther initiated and produced the Five-Minute Focus pieces on key ethical issues. Professor Margot Brazier and later Drs Sara Fovargue and Jose Miola have managed the Public Policy and Law section, with Sara and Jose continuing the Five-Minute Focus series with a medical law focus. Formal and informal feedback tells us that these papers are regularly used by academics in their teaching. The Empirical Ethics section was initially edited by Professor Clare Williams, and now Dr Lucy Frith both of whom have encouraged researchers to share their work with us. Professor Anneke Lucassen, our seventh committee member, has worked tirelessly to help take the journal forward and has always assisted when a clinical perspective was particularly important. Every committee meeting has been a pleasure and we will miss the true spirit of collaboration and the complete lack of ego that has characterized the Clinical Ethics team. Throughout the process we have been very ably assisted by our colleagues at the RSM, first Natasha Cohen, then Amreeta Buxani and latterly Delia Siedle. We are grateful for their enthusiasm for the journal and we have worked hard to maintain our reputation for getting every issue in on time. We are indebted to our Editorial Board and all our reviewers for their readiness to say yes to reviewing and to working within our often very tight deadlines. Throughout our editorship, we have resisted the change to electronic submission, instead corresponding directly with authors and reviewers, often over several months and iterations for a single paper, and we like to pride ourselves on the excellent relationships we were able to build and the fact that many authors who might have fallen at the first hurdle were encouraged and helped to revise and resubmit. We have published papers by internationally known experts in many fields as well as practising health-care professionals and medical students who may not normally have thought of themselves as authors of academic papers.