Mentorship at Distance: A new initiative of the Journal of Nuclear Cardiology.

The Journal of Nuclear Cardiology embarked recently on a new project, ‘‘Mentorship at Distance.’’ This was envisioned as a service to assist authors and scientists, whose native language is not English, with the publication of their research. The Journal of Nuclear Cardiology is an Englishlanguage journal that aims to reach a worldwide international audience; more than 50 % of the papers submitted to the Journal in 2014 were from outside the United States. This is also true for most, if not all, major cardiology journals. However, only 5.4 % of the world’s population (360 millions in 2007) is native English speaking, although a comparable number (400 millions) speaks English as a second language. English is recognized as the lingua franca in science and business. Speaking a foreign language is one thing, but writing grammatically correct English is something else. Furthermore, writing in English about science and research requires yet another skill. Thus, non-native speakers may be at some disadvantage when attempting to publish their scientific research in the major Englishlanguage professional journals. For speakers of Western languages, it is relatively easy to learn English as a second language, because the (Indo-) European languages are loosely related through grammar and vocabulary. However, for speakers from other language families, it may be substantially more difficult. Not only may the syntax of a language be totally different, but also certain concepts that can be expressed in one language may be impossible or difficult to articulate in another language. All manuscripts submitted to this Journal undergo peer review by experts in the field of cardiovascular imaging. The task of a reviewer is not only to judge the scientific merits of a manuscript, but also to critique and make suggestions on how a manuscript could be improved. The presentation of data may need further clarification, clearer focus, and/or additional analysis. All of us, even the most experienced authors, have felt the ‘‘pain’’ of a thorough review. But, we also have benefited from this valued process and we acknowledge that in the end our work was better because of it. It is easy and regrettably done too often, to reject a manuscript just because of linguistic problems. For cardiovascular imaging, this may mean that a sizable number of new investigators are denied publication rights, and with it the impetus to submit future work and grow academically. Sometimes reviewers of the Journal identify manuscripts from abroad that appear to have potential, but that are not acceptable in its current form. The data may seem to be sound and valuable, but the ‘‘packaging’’ is poor. Such manuscripts may benefit from substantial editing and rewriting. The problem does not always consist of language issues, but can encompass also other shortcomings, such as failure to state a clear purpose of study, improper analysis and presentation of data, and suboptimal scholarly discussion. The Journal now offers authors of selected manuscripts the opportunity to work under the mentorship of experienced authors to improve their manuscript. The reality is that reviewers and editors do not have the time to do the mentoring on routine basis and therefore an independent committee was deemed necessary. In 2014, the Journal established a Committee called ‘‘Mentorship at Distance’’ and one of the authors (FW) is the Chair. Several Board members of the Journal and Associate and Guest editors volunteered to serve on that committee. Thus far, several manuscripts have gone through the ‘‘Mentorship at Distance’’ program. This turned out to Reprint requests: Frans J. Th. Wackers, MD, PhD, FACC, FASNC, Section of Cardiovascular Medicine, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT; frans.wackers@yale.edu J Nucl Cardiol 2015;22:403–4. 1071-3581/$34.00 Copyright 2015 American Society of Nuclear Cardiology.