Stepping up to the plate

This being baseball season, “stepping up to the plate” seems an appropriate metaphor to describe the challenge and exhilaration we feel coaching a new team of deputy editors as we assume responsibility for the Journal of General Internal Medicine (JGIM). We are honored to be the next coeditors of JGIM. We follow a distinguished cadre of Editors—Suzanne and Robert Fletcher,1 David Dale,2 Sankey Williams,3 and Eric Bass4—who have guided the Journal to its current position as one of the best general medical journals in the world. In the past year, online access to JGIM doubled with close to 200,000 articles downloaded, JGIM's latest impact factor was 2.75 ranking it 15th among all general and internal medicine journals,5 and in “The Best of JGIM,” Eric Bass6 describes a wide array of articles on medical education, research, and clinical care that have been heavily cited in other articles and accessed electronically. Because of the work of these editors, our job will be easier. Over the next 5 years, our mission is to make JGIM one of the world's top-ten medical journals while remaining responsive to the needs and views of SGIM members. This vision rests on two closely related principles: 1) JGIM should be the most common peer-reviewed journal in which SGIM members publish their scholarly work, reflecting SGIM's diverse members and their tripartite academic missions of service, teaching, and research; and 2) JGIM should serve our patients and their community by publishing the highest quality articles reflecting important advances in clinical care, the delivery of health services, and the education of their physicians. Our vision is also based on two underlying values: 1) peer review, although not infallible, is the best existing method for assuring JGIM's readership that published articles are of the highest quality and relevant to JGIM's mission, vision, and values; and 2) each article submitted to JGIM, whether ultimately accepted or rejected, should be improved by the peer review and editorial processes. We see JGIM as first serving SGIM's members, who are predominantly members of academic divisions of general internal medicine, comprise a sizable majority of directors and associate directors of internal medicine residency and clerkship programs, and do much of the teaching of internal medicine to residents and medical students. Hence, JGIM should publish more content related to medical education than most (if not all) competing general medical journals. General internists are also more often involved in quality improvement and other health systems issues than are other academic physicians. Hence, JGIM should contain more heath services research and clinical epidemiologic articles than most general medical journals while maintaining its commitment to clinical care research. Instead of occupying a niche in the world of medical publishing (“niche” being a concept often too confining for academic general internists), we see JGIM as being the intersection between clinical medicine, clinical care research, health services research, and medical education. This intersection is filled with highly topical and controversial topics (e.g., patient safety, health system reform) that are likely to receive wide attention and citation. We will be dedicated to publishing articles that other clinicians, scientists, educators, and administrators will find useful and will cite in their own manuscripts that, in turn, will enhance the impact of JGIM and its authors. Clinical reviews are particularly helpful to JGIM's readers, and clinician scholars are encouraged to submit them. Finally, we will strive to continue JGIM's tradition of providing authors and reviewers highly personal, efficient, and top quality service in managing and reviewing manuscripts. In this context, we begin our tenure with four specific goals for the Journal: 1) decrease the time from manuscript receipt to first author notification to a median of 45 days or less; 2) increase the total number of peer-reviewed articles published by at least 15% without requiring an increase in subscription costs; 3) increase the number of articles on medical education and doctor-patient interactions, and 4) enhance the development and use of the Internet-based electronic version of JGIM. We are fortunate to have a talented corps of 18 deputy editors who will maintain the quality and timeliness of manuscript reviews (Table 1). We consider ourselves “deputy editors” as we will be acting as such for articles that fall into our areas of interest and expertise. We have expanded and decentralized our editorial team to diversify the team's backgrounds, expertise, and interests. To streamline the review process, we have expanded the role of the deputy editors in reviewing and making editorial decisions about manuscripts. We will also take full advantage of the Internet in processing manuscripts and monitoring Journal operations. Table 1 JGIM Deputy Editors We close by asking SGIM members and JGIM readers to participate with us in three ways. First, because scholarship is at the heart of progress in academic medicine, we encourage SGIM members to write articles relevant to their area(s) of focus and submit them to JGIM. A recent survey by the SGIM office shows that a high percentage of SGIM members read JGIM regularly. Hence, it is the best vehicle to present your work to your SGIM colleagues. Second, please consider being a reviewer. We recognize that this is sometimes viewed as a thankless job, but it represents an important professional obligation. Careful, timely reviews are the life's blood of all peer-reviewed journals. and third, we strongly urge you to provide us with suggestions and feedback about journal operations and how we might improve our review processes and the content of JGIM. Finally, we thank you in advance for your support and participation and also thank the SGIM Council for providing us this opportunity for personal growth and service to our professional community. We especially thank Eric Bass and his editorial team for handing us a terrific journal to manage. We are excited to be working with SGIM and the readers of JGIM and wholeheartedly agree with Suzanne and Robert Fletcher: “There can be no greater satisfaction, no greater connection with a field, than to edit the Society's journal.”