THE EVOLUTION of JCHIMP

Abstract

In the last issue, which was the first issue of JCHIMP, I discussed the origins and background of the journal (1). The journal was conceived in late summer 2010 and emerged with the first issue in May 2011. At the outset we were not certain of our direction beyond the fact that we wanted to be a clinically oriented, general internal medicine journal supporting the interests of community teaching hospitals and the trainees and faculty who work in them. It can be difficult to conduct scholarly work in the community setting in comparison to many universitybased programs because of institutional culture, emphasis on clinical volumes, and lack of resources. Nevertheless, good scholarly work has been evident in venues like the American College of Physicians Associates Meeting each year where residents and students present clinical vignettes and other scholarly work of high quality. Too often, the scholarly effort ends there; JCHIMP provides further options. Contracting with Co-Action Publishing in Stockholm has had a major positive impact. Our 15 member editorial board and over 110 reviewers are a testimony to broad support and interest - even at this early stage. In our first issue, David Solomon, champion of open access medical journals, pointed out the glowing future of electronic open access journals as the numbers are increasing and the quality improving (2). We believe that our journal, JCHIMP, will fill a much needed niche of internal medicine open access journals that focus on community programs and the people who work and study there. (Published: 18 July 2011) Citation: Journal of Community Hospital Internal Medicine Perspectives 2011, 1 : 7292 - DOI: 10.3402/jchimp.v1i2.7292