Excellent Journal Research Articles

Does it pay to cooperate? A bibliometric case study in molecular biology

Various bibliometric studies report that multiinstitutional or multinational authored papers are more frequently cited than papers that come from a single institute. The conclusion, however, that there is a systematic improvement of scientific success by cooperation on every level of scientific research in leading or mediocre research institutes might be misleading: In a citation analysis of 13 well-known research institutes in molecular biology there was no difference in the average citations per paper with regard to cooperations. In a subsample of 7 German institutes that difference found could be explained by selfcitations. In another case, all articles of a two year sample of an excellent journal in molecular biology, the EMBO-Journal, the same phenomenon could be observed: Differences in the average citations per article with regard to cooperations could be explained by selfcitations.

Change and Constancy

Founded by Dr. Richard Wenzel in 1980, the journal Infection Control prospered under his careful guidance. In 1988, it became the official journal of the Society for Hospital Epidemiology of America and was retitled Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology. This affiliation benefited both the Society and the Journal, and has seen each grow in size, stature, and influence over the intervening half-decade. Buttressed by his success as the founder of one highly successful medical journal, Dick has elected to resign as editor of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology in order to launch a new journal, Clinical Performance and Quality Health Care. Robyn Hepker will remain with Dick at the University of Iowa as managing editor of his new journal. Their talents, energy, and leadership assure success for their new endeavor. I know I speak for all of us in extending to them our deepest thanks and our best wishes. As of January 1, 1993, the editorial home of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology has moved to Vanderbilt University. I am honored to have been selected by the Society to serve as editor, and at the same time humbled by the challenge to maintain and improve the quality of an already excellent journal. The occasion of naming a new editor provides an opportunity to evaluate anew the role and direction of the Journal and to consider how to move it to new levels of excellence. As the official journal of our Society, Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology is the principal vehicle through which the Society seeks to advance the science of hospital epidemiology and the interests of hospital epidemiologists. The field of hospital epidemiology is vibrant and growing. We face many new challenges in infection control (and, alas, some old challenges revisited), while at the same time changes and initiatives elsewhere in the hospital increasingly call on our skills and expertise. Our agenda for the Journal is simple: Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology should be recognized as the premier journal of hospital epidemiology, in all its facets. The Journal will continue its strong focus on infection control, while at the same time following the injunction to reach beyond nosocomial infections to the rates, distributions, preventive measures, and cost benefit studies of all adverse events in patie ts' by soliciting contributions reflecting the full range of hospital epidemiology. If you examine the masthead at the front of the Journal, you will see evidence of change and of constancy. Both are represented in the new Editorial Committee, based in Nashville; many of its members have longstanding ties to the Journal. This Committee will provide ongoing editorial and strategic guidance to the Journal. The Editorial and International Advisory Boards reflect strength and diversity; the Section Editors reliably contribute material that is timely and pertinent. Changes in these areas will be incremental and will reflect opportunities to develop new areas of interest to the readership and to involve additional talented individuals in the life of the Journal. We are developing a number of new sections that we hope to unveil during the course of this year, and we welcome your suggestions regarding useful section topics. In addition, if you are not currently on our panel of reviewers but would like to be, please write me outlining your areas of interest. I know that if the Journal is to continue to grow in size and influence over the next decade, it largely will be due to the skills of the Associate and Section editors and the Editorial Boards, and, in particular, to the continued interest and support shown by you, the readership. This is the forum in which we who work in hospital epidemiology speak to each other of our discoveries and our concerns. Share with us your experiences and let us know how well we are meeting your needs. I look forward to working with you to present our thoughts and efforts through the voice of our Journal.

Acquiring Criteria of Excellence for Scholarly Journals in Music

We selected 24 journals to represent scholarly publication in the academic fields of music in the United States. We then contacted each editor, along with two members of each journals editorial committee and 48 publishing scholars whose work has appeared in these journals, asking them to identify the characteristics of an excellent scholarly journal in their own field of music. While some responses were specific to individual branches of music scholarship, a number of generic indicators of journal quality emerged that are endorsed by all branches of academic scholarship in music.

Group Process as Diagnostic

As a general policy, Small Group Research does not publish articles dealing with family therapy; there are several excellent journals that deal exclusively with this topic. We have decided to include this set of articles because they are tied together by a common methodology that appears to have broader relevance for the study of groups. Because the theory and method underlying these articles may not be familiar to many of our readers, we have also decided to include a brief article that provides background information on formal methods of group process analysis. For many years, work on group process was conducted primarily in the small group laboratory. In recent years, more and more research has moved to the field. We have shifted from the development of basic theory and methodology to practical application. This brief introduction to group process summarizes the methodology and recent applications.

Debut issue of Journal of Energy in Southern Africa. 1990. Volume 1 Issue 1

EDITORIAL BY THE NATIONAL ENERGY COUNCILEnergy research in Southern Africa is currently being conducted over a wide front. It varies from sharply focused and specialised technical research at one end of the spectrum, to multi-disciplinary applied research into appropriateenergy technology at the other. Likewise, diverse organisations are involved, from government institutions to the individual in the private sector. It is an unfortunate fact however, that researchers and decision-makers are not adequately informed about ongoing research, and about the results and implications of research already completed. Admittedly, researchers do publish their results in a variety of journals, both locally and internationally. But whilst this meets the needs of the researcher, it does not satisfy the needs of the energy community at large in order to gain an overall impression of the research scene and the results achieved. To improve the communication of ongoing energy research in this country, the National Energy Council (NEC) has undertaken to offer financial support for the first two years of this new journal. Through this journal, the NEC hopes to stimulate the local energy debate, thereby providing appropriate information not only to policy- and decision-makers, but to all researchers and other interested parties. The energy sector deals with scarce resources, such as manpower, money, the natural environment and fossil fuels, all of which need to be used optimally. As always, competition is an important factor, making appropriate information essential.The journal is being launched at a time when the NEC is changing its approach from sponsoring objective-driven research and development to one supporting outputdriven research and development, where the production of tangible results involving specific receivers is stressed. The output of this project to support the initial launching of this journal is to publish six issues over the two-year contract period, resulting in an eventual subscription target of 500. It will focus on the results of applied research within Southern Africa. The readership of the journal will, hopefully, come from the ranks of the energy decision-makers and researchers from government departments, Eskom, local authorities, and oil, coal and renewable energy companies, as well as consultants and manufacturers of energy products and systems. Much could be said about the purpose and the approach to local energy research and development. It becomes a particularly thorny issue in a relatively small geographical area such as ours, where aspects such as the following are constantly debated:• a suitable balance between basic and applied research• the timing and extent of local research in relation to that in other countries• the respective R&D responsibilities of the public and private sector• the development of local expertise, products and solutions as opposed to acquiring them from other countries• pure technical research versus applied multi-disciplinary and field research The journal will, no doubt, be covering the majority of these topics in due course.Undoubtedly, the reaction to and feedback from its readers is the lifeblood of a publication of this nature. Suitable contributions, such as review articles and analyses of trends in local research and development, from researchers,decision-makers and readers in all disciplines and fields of energy, are therefore warmly welcomed. Readers may also wish to submit book reviews and reports on conferences and visits abroad. The impact and credibility of this journal will be dependent on the contributions of the researcher, evaluator, reviewer,analyst and commentator. To assist in producing a journal of excellence, the Editorial Committee looks forward to a lively exchange of ideas with readers. Ultimately, it is hoped that this journal will contribute to a visionary, ethicaland responsive energy sector.

New West, True West: Interpreting The Region's History

say to my colleague in Chinese studies that I teach western history. Doesn't almost everyone in this department, he complains. history of England, Germany, France, Italy-it is all western history in our courses. Nobody here knows or cares anything about the East. I cut him short to explain that what I mean by the is not Europe, not the whole of western civilization. My is the American West: that fabled land where the restless pioneer moves ever forward, settling one frontier after another; where the American character becomes self-reliant, democratic, and endlessly eager for the new; where we strip off the garments of civilization and don a rude buckskin shirt; where millions of dejected immigrants gather from around the world to be rejuvenated as Americans, sounding together a manly, wild, barbaric yawp of freedom. That is my West: precisely that and nothing more. Oh, my colleague ventures, more perplexed now than cantankerous, you mean 'the West'the frontier, Indians, Clint Eastwood? I nod vaguely and sidle off. It is all so hard to convey over a single, polite glass of academic sherry. For a field that has been around so long, western American history can be frustratingly difficult to pin down. Soon it will be a full century old. Often, with such advanced age comes a clarity of purpose as well as a record of achievement. Not so in this case. The record is impressive enough: the field now has several excellent journals, regularly holds good scholarly conferences, and boasts an immense bibliography that no one could read in a lifetime. But as for clarity of purpose, the field is still groping about in adolescence. It doesn't quite know who it is or what it wants to be when it grows up. What are its boundaries? Where is West and where is not? There is still no settled, mature answer. There is, to be sure, an established body of writing about the history of the West, and usually it would be to such a body that we would turn for resolving what the field of study is or ought to be. In this case, however,

Building a base

AGU has benefited the academic geophysical community since its inception. It has become a major medium of scientific communication through its excellent journals and meetings. It represents us at international meetings and has assisted those who have traveled to such meetings. Also, in these times when academic science, particularly basic science, is under some pressure, AGU can serve an important role in presenting the case for basic research in public forums. For all these reasons AGU deserves the support of the academic community, but why should we contribute to AGU‐GIFT? Do we not already pay dues?

Structural History and Yugoslav Marxism

This manual on the development, form, and directions of historical science is noteworthy not only for itself but for the dialogue it has precipitated in Yugoslavia. Mirjana Gross is a professor of history at the University of Zagreb and one of Yugoslavia's most eminent and active historians. She is an editor of an excellent journal, Casopis za suvremenu povijest (Journal of Contemporary History), published by the Institute for the History of the Workers' Movement in Croatia. A frequent participant in international as well as Yugoslav historical meetings, Professor Gross spent the academic year 1978-79 as a visiting professor at the University of Virginia and lectured at various American universities from coast to coast. Among her many writings, the best known are in the field of modern, particularly nineteenth-century, Croatian history. She was a major contributor, with Jaroslav Sidak, Igor Karaman, and Dragovan Sepic, to a useful and most welcome survey of Croatian history published in 1968, Povijest hrvatskog naroda 1860-1914. In 1973, Professor Gross published an impressive monograph, Povijest pravaske ideologije, which deals with the history of the ideological development of the Croatian Party of Rights in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The book is an exhaustive analysis of a significant aspect of modern Croatian nationalism. A mature scholar of recognized standing, Mirjana Gross had no need to venture beyond her securely established domain into the tangled thickets of historiography and its ideologies and methodologies. Yet she was persuaded by a sense of professional obligation to write a work which has significance both as a useful manual and as a reflection of her own beliefs concerning the significance and future of the historical profession. Professor Gross has written a competent and informative survey, intended particularly to meet the needs of students of history at the University of Zagreb. The book deals, first, with the development of historiography in Western civilization from ancient times to the early 1970s, and second, with the methodology of historical inquiry. All this is presented with a wealth of footnotes and charts, a bibliography (compiled by Stefanija Popovic) of major ancient and modern historical works cited in the text which are available in Serbo-Croatian translation, an English summary (which, alas, repeatedly refers to the French Annalistes as analysts), and a serviceable index. Any country would be glad to have such a solidly packed, conscientiously written, and critically penetrating handbook, especially one that is so up to date and, indeed, forward-looking. Western historical scholars will find nothing in this book that is new or not available elsewhere. Professor Gross's account of historiography is fairly conven-

Semiotic Aesthetics and Aesthetic Education

Because of the dearth of system, as well as of confidence, with which I enter upon this discussion, it will be helpful to me, at least, to set up an initial framework for it. Not that the framework itself is exempt from critical examination; but where it does not go seriously wrong, it may justify itself by sorting and relating the various kinds of question that will turn up. One of my difficulties is that I have been reading (partly re-reading) my way through the six extant volumes of the Journal of Aesthetic Education, and perhaps I have been reading too fast. This is an excellent journal, admirably edited by Ralph Smith, and it provides a rich sense of the range of questions involved in aesthetic education, as well as many and varied answers to them. But too large a dose can be bewildering. Unless I adopt a simplified schema, even if it is somewhat ad hoc, I can't see how to draw out a few of the questions for special attention, without getting entangled in the rest.

Letter: Sewage as a resource.

Comments and Corrections1 March 1975Sewage as a ResourceSTEPHEN R. REDMOND, M.D.STEPHEN R. REDMOND, M.D.Search for more papers by this authorAuthor, Article, and Disclosure Informationhttps://doi.org/10.7326/0003-4819-82-3-425_1 SectionsAboutPDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsPermissions ShareFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail ExcerptTo the editor: The editorial by Udall and Stansbury (Ann Intern Med 81:849-850, 1974) "Sewage: Our Most Neglected Resource" is ill informed, illogical, and ill conceived. Naturally there are the customary blast at public health professionals, the snide references to sanitary engineers, and the sly innuendo that water pollution experts and state health authorities are in the hip pocket of the industrial establishment.I question the appearance of this not so solid waste on the pages of your otherwise excellent journal. It is apparent the authors have given little thought to the densely populated urban areas of this country where... This content is PDF only. To continue reading please click on the PDF icon. Author, Article, and Disclosure InformationAffiliations: Dutchess County Department of Health 22 Market Street Poughkeepsie, New York 12601 PreviousarticleNextarticle Advertisement FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Metrics 1 March 1975Volume 82, Issue 3Page: 425-425KeywordsEngineersHipPollutionPrevention, policy, and public healthUrban areas Issue Published: 1 March 1975 PDF DownloadLoading ...

Treatment of Basal Cell Carcinoma

To the Editor.— A friend of mine, Gilbert G. Eade, MD, of Seattle does not defend the very excellent comment inThe Journal(228:463, 1974) of Drs. Brodkin, Bleiberg, and Abbey. I confirm their article and voice disagreement with Dr. Eade. In our practice, we see over and over again severe facial destruction because the simple basal cell carcinomas are overlooked by the general practitioner, or are considered innocuous. There are many areas of the body where these lesions are slow-growing for a long time, but we consider those on the edge of the nose, the ear, particularly the concha, the eyelid and inner canthus, and the lips as specific areas where a small lesion can be eradicated without any effort. Nevertheless, they will cause terrific expense and prolongation of therapy if they become so involved that total reconstruction is in order or if in the shorter course of simple

J.A.C.T. Again

When it was first proposed that an Association of Classical Teachers should be formed, there were some who feared that it might, if successful, become either a rival to the Classical Association or, at least, a force to divide and weaken it. The activities of J.A.C.T. and the appearance of its excellent journal, Didaskalos, have now made it quite clear that these fears were groundless. Both organizations can and should exist together and their co-operation has already produced considerable mutual benefits. Indeed, now that so many of our schools are suddenly subject to Protean transformation, it seems almost providential that there should be a responsible and representative association able to speak with an expert voice for classical teachers.

The Reader's Burden

To the Editor:— The Journalhas become an increasingly useful and interesting source of information to me, and, although I am not given to writing letters to the editor, I should like to stress a daily problem facing all doctors in this country in the hope that, under your leadership, something may be done about it. The average internist (I can only speak for men in my own field) has a vast amount of material to analyze if he is to keep up with developments in his specialty. For this purpose he has at his command a group of excellent journals. Most of us manage to read at least some of the significant articles in the journal of our choice. Those of us who are interested in other phases of human activity must limit our time, indeed, budget it wisely. Families grow up around us, civic and professional committee work

A definition of our specialty.

It would seem obvious that the Research Committee, in recommending that the Ward Burdick Award be presented to me, had in mind some alleged and rather vague contributions which I might have made to clinical pathology. I would like to believe this to be true. Previous recipients of the Ward Burdick Award have properly and naturally referred to Dr. Burdick's inspiration to clinical pathologists. His contribution, made over the short span of life granted to him, was monumental when clinical pathology was in its formative years, but it has served, and should serve now, as a beacon by which to chart our course for the future. In reviewing and remembering the excellent papers, based on original research, presented by those who have preceded me in this role, it was with some hesitation and trepidation that I chose a subject dealing with the practice of our specialty and the trends and forces affecting it. There seems to be no doubt that the founders of this Society were desirous of creating an organization which would promote and protect the interests of clinical pathologists, a small, inaudible and little understood group of physicians at that time practicing, privately or in hospitals, laboratory medicine. The wisdom of this step is reflected in the present size of this society, its well known accomplishments, its excellent JOURNAL, and its effective program of continuing education. Its recent progress and growth have been rapid. Many problems affecting the clinical pathologist must have

A review of certain clinical aspects of nutrition

D URING the past decade, many valuable contributions have been made to the knowledge of nutrition. The medical journals have been unable to keep pace with the articles submitted for publication; during the last few years, new journals pertaining to the field of nutrition and chemistry have been established at the rate of one every two weeks. 1 This new knowledge affects every phase and specialty of medicine; in some instances it is to revolutionize standard habits of thought and practice. Many of the reported researches seem primarily theoretical in their nature, yet the theory of yesterday is finding its direct application today in the interpretation and treatment of disease. This new information has not found its way to any considerable extent into dur medical texts; the concepts in many respects are different from those formerly taught in medical courses. The principles of nutrition receive but slight emphasis in the curricula of most of our medical colleges. I t is necessary to go to the current literature to obtain information in this field. Fortunately, several excellent journals now are available, devoted to abstracting and discussing the reports of the world literature along these lines2, 2 This review is limited to some phases of current thought which should be of special interest to the practitioner of medicine. At the close of the nineteenth century, the progress which had been made in the fields of organic pathology and bacteriology gave promise that the conquest of disease lay along these lines. These avenues of thought have dominated medical education, often to the point of subordination of the study of applied physiology. I t is not surprising that the earlier discoveries in nutrition were interpreted according to these concepts. Thus, when Eijkmann s in 1897 demonstrated the value of certain foods in the relief of beriberi, he thought that the effect was one of detoxifying some product ingested or formed in the body. At that time, it was recognized that the food must include certain types of substances, such as had been identified as body components. These consisted of protein, carbohydrate, fat, water and certain mineral salts. Early studies in nutrition were based on observations of living beings whose diets were limited to these constituents. Such feeding experiments were more or less compatible with life and health as long as naturally occurring foods were used. When attempts were made to substitute for these the recognized essentials prepared synthetically, and in relatively pure forms, it was found that experimental animals did

Local Lists of Animals

MAY I make a mild protest against the rather derogatory remarks about local lists of animals in the notice of Bolam's “Birds of Northumberland” in NATURE of December 3 (p. 841)? Natural history studies have made great progress in recent years by the methods practised by Mr. Nicholson, Mr. Elton and others, which find expression in the excellent new Journal of Animal Ecology. But because the new is very good, it does not follow that the old is bad: the two are surely complementary.

THE RADIO FOR HEALTH EDUCATION

To the Editor: —The public prefers good health to poor health; it also prefers good physicians to poor physicians. The public patronizes cults and quackery even, because it is not sufficiently enlightened with regard to matters medical to seek the right help in cases of illness. Various national agencies are engaged in disseminating popular medical information through the public press. Plain facts about disease and health are also being given wide publicity throughHygeia, the excellent health journal of the American Medical Association. In this connection, it is my desire to call attention to another way in which to educate the public in questions bearing on human ills and individual and public health. It seems to me that the American Medical Association, either alone or in cooperation with other national health and welfare organizations, might reach the masses, who are in the greatest need of popular medical information, most successfully

"LEPROSY IN NEW YORK CITY"

To the Editor:— In the interesting article, in the December number of your excellent Journal, on Leprosy in New York City, by Drs. J. A. Fordyce and Fred Wise, the writers state that no case of contagion has been observed in the large city hospital with which one of the writers has been connected during the past thirty years, in spite of the fact that the patients have had open lesions, and have occupied beds in close proximity to other patients. The following cases, which I recently reported ( Brit. M. J. , Jan. 17, 1925), are of moment in this connection, and serve to emphasize the necessity of realizing that although the contagiousness of the disease is apparently slight, it is none the less imperative to guard against it. Case 1.— A boy, aged 12, with nodular leprosy, was born in a southern county in Ireland, and was never out of

Prof. Franklin P. Mall

ALL who are interested in the progress of biology will learn with deep regret of the sudden death of Dr. Franklin P. Mall, of Johns Hopkins University, at the age of fifty-five. It was chiefly owing to his precepts and example that, in little more than a score of years, a complete revolution was wrought in the anatomical departments attached to medical schools throughout the length and breadth of the United States. Dissecting-rooms were changed from places in which routine teaching and perfunctory investigation were carried on to laboratories where exact methods were applied to the elucidation of definite problems. Prof. Mall was thirty-one years of age when he returned in 1893 from a long course of study under the late Prof. His, of Leipzig, to become the first professor of anatomy in Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. He designed his own department, selecting a slimly built, cheap, brick construction, and settled down with his students to combine study with research. He devoted himself to embryological and microscopic investigations, reconstructing his results in the exact model methods practised by Prof. His. His writings cover the whole field of embryology, every contribution representing a permanent addition to knowledge. His pupils left him to fill the various chairs of anatomy as they fell vacant, and carried to their new departments the methods and spirit they had imbibed from Franklin Mall. He took a leading-part in the foundation of the excellent journals which have been established in the United States for the publication of anatomical investigations—the American Journal of Anatomy, the Anatomical Record, and the Journal of Morphology. He pursued the study of human embryology in a more systematic manner than has ever been accomplished by any other man.

UP-TO-DATE JOURNALS.

There is an unfortunate practice—we do not know how far it is unavoidable—of certain medical journals appearing later than their advertised time and yet having nothing on their pages to show the exact date of appearance. We have in mind one otherwise excellent journal which habitually appears about three months late, the October number usually appearing in January, and so on through the year. This is, in one sense of the word, an imposition on its readers, and is more important when one comes to consult files of some years back. For instance, if a journal has an article giving an account of something new, some new discovery of importance, very serious questions of priority might arise, and unless the fact of the delayed appearance were generally known, injustice be done. An article published in a journal dated three months or even one month earlier than its actual appearance might