Whence a Journal….

Abstract

I am reading a book on 16th-century Italian medicine. There were no journals then; there were books, and scholarship was defined as knowledge of texts. Competence in Latin and Greek, and a comprehensive knowledge of Hippocrates and Galen were the coin of the realm. (For clinical renown, excellence was defined by the number of cures accomplished by the practitioner, mostly self-defined). Little had changed in 1500 years; publications rehashed Galen, perhaps with some new insights, none driven by what we consider ‘‘the scientific method.’’ The anatomic explorations of Vesalius were new; it would be hundreds of years more before the germ theory and Pasteur and Koch, the rise of experimental medicine and Claude Bernard, of chemistry/pharmacology and of Paul Ehrlich. It is sobering to realize that essentially all we do in the discovery and development of medical products is a product of the past 50 years. President Roosevelt died of conditions easily treated by what we consider ‘‘old’’ generic drugs. President Kennedy’s son died as a premature neonate. He would have greater than a 95% chance of survival today. So, what is journal? Journals have been filled with articles that might help authors achieve academic promotions and grants. They hopefully act as a way of stimulating new experimentation, better understanding of human biology in health and disease (or whatever field they focus upon). Disciplinary journals are crucial to continuing education and assurance of high standards of practice within that discipline. However, at a time of an explosion of new information and of the need for interdisciplinary collaboration to drive discovery, development, regulation, and use of new novel therapeutics, a journal such as ours needs to be more than that. DIA membership (and those libraries, consortia, and academics who find TIRS valuable and who are not DIA members) represents a huge diversity of backgrounds, interests, and work environments. They include basic scientists, clinical trialists, statisticians, regulatory experts, and medical writers. They may work in large or small pharma, in CROs, in consulting companies, in academia, and/or in government. They may well move from one arena to another. At a recent retreat at which we began defining the future of