The New Circulation Research

Abstract

“Wisdom is to know that we don’t know.” — —Socrates, 469–399 BC “The first thing we must do when seeking knowledge is to reject the presumptuousness of knowing, for it is not possible to learn that which we claim to know.” — —Epictetus, 55–135 “Doubt is the beginning of knowledge.” — —Rene Descartes, 1596–1650 “All that we know is infinitely less than all that still remains unknown.” — —William Harvey, 1578–1657 In retrospect, it was inevitable. Originally conceived along the lines of the standard inaugural message of a new editorial team (ie, a brief, general statement that is traditionally published at the time of the editorial transition), this article has gradually grown in scope and depth, morphing into what has become a veritable manifesto—a comprehensive account of my vision for Circulation Research . This metamorphosis was the result of my reflections on some basic questions: What is the purpose of an inaugural editorial? Do readers prefer to be given just a glimpse of what is coming or do they want to know the whole story—the entire array of new initiatives and policies that are transforming the journal? Is there an inherent advantage in incompleteness and/or superficiality? The answer to these questions was obvious to me. The changes that are taking place at Circulation Research are too numerous, too profound, and too important to be compressed into a few paragraphs, nor did I see any point in describing them in a manner that would be haphazard, ambiguous, and/or incomplete (for example, omitting most of them just to be brief). And so, what was originally supposed to be a two-page Editorial has ballooned into a manuscript longer than a Regular Article. I ask the readers not to ascribe this unusual length to an inadequate effort on my part to be succinct. While …