Welcome 2020 and a New Journal: Annals of Headache Medicine
Authors: Narouze Samer 
Published: January 2020

Wish you all a blessed prosperous 2020 and would like to welcome you to “Annals of Headache Medicine”.

The headache medicine field continues to be very pertinent and vibrant with the many recent seminal discoveries that substantially challenged our traditional understanding of headaches pathophysiology and shed the light on new neurobiological, mechanistic, and functional insights into headaches.

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and National Center for Health Statistics‎1 www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_10/sr10_260.pdf;
• 14% of adults suffer from migraine or severe headache
• 14% of adults suffer from neck pain
• 5% of adults suffer from face pain
Up to 20% of patients don't respond to or cannot tolerate medications. Therefore; multimodal interdisciplinary approach is paramount for pain relief and to improve function.

Based on the above statistics, patients with chronic headaches, neck pain, and orofacial pain outnumber patients with chronic back pain and represent an important public health problem that cannot be ignored anymore. Despite the need to address this public health problem, many physicians and other health care professionals are not adequately educated to contribute to the cultural transformation in the perception and treatment of people with headaches and pain.

The need for an interdisciplinary approach and timely interactions between different physicians with unique backgrounds are essential to the success of such cultural transformation.

The necessity for this approach prompted the birth of the American Interventional Headache Society (AIHS). The purpose of AIHS (www.interventionalheadache.net/) is to foster awareness, promote, and advance headache, neck and orofacial pain science through research, education, and advanced patient care. With the great success of AIHS, it became quite evident the need for an interdisciplinary headache journal, where healthcare professionals from diverse specialties (neurology, internal medicine, primary care, pain medicine, anesthesiology pain management, neurosurgery, oral surgery, clinical and basic science researchers)have a common platform to share and exchange knowledge, experience, and new research.

The AIHS board decided to sponsor a new open access journal - Annals of Headache Medicine (AHM). Open access journals are now established as an integral part of the medical landscape. In fact, it seems likely that in the near future, the majority of medical journals will become open access. While the overall costs of online journals are usually lower than that of print journals, there are real costs associated with editing, formatting, and indexing of online issues. AIHS acknowledges that financial barriers can create a firewall that hinders the widespread exchange of research; accordingly, the publication fee will be waived for all authors. The plan is to have a free submission for the next 2-3 years, and then after the publication fee may be reevaluated and adjusted according to the existing circumstances.

Free submission will ensure that the peer review process and editorial decisions will be independent of financial considerations. The provision of an impact factor is delayed for all new journals for obvious reasons. The AHM board is working hard towards generating an impact factor as soon as possible as well as inclusion in major bibliographic databases such as PubMed. We are currently registered at CrossRef and all published manuscripts have designated DOI numbers for citations and referencing.

I’m honored to be the founder and first Editor-in-Chief for “Annals of Headache Medicine - AHM”. The trust that AIHS board has bestowed on me will motivate me to do my very best serving our readership. My long professional career in both academia and private practice and my clinical background as headache specialist, anesthesiologist and pain medicine specialist will guide me while navigating my new role.
We are committed to the highest scientific and ethical standards. Peer review is the cornerstone for the success of any journal. I would like to personally offer my sincere thanks the associate editors and the editorial board of AHM (www.ahmjournal.com/editorial-board/) who will bring their rich diverse expertise and unmatched dedication to ensure transparent, high quality, and rapid review process.