Resolution: Refresh, Recharge, Renew

The beginning of this New Year invites us to pause for a moment of reflection. It also enables us to embrace new challenges, to refresh, recharge, and renew our dedication and commitment to you, our readers, our authors, and fellow editors, and ultimately to cancer patients worldwide. In the long-honored tradition of New Year's Resolutions, your Editors of The Oncologist are pleased to announce several changes that promise to impact all of our Journal's stakeholders. Bruce A. Chabner Editor-in-Chief Now entering its 18th year, The Oncologist has always been guided by its mission to serve the physician entrusted with cancer patient care by making new advances in cancer research meaningful to the practice of oncology. This mission informs the new design you see – and will see – in these pages. Every research and review article now highlights the critical take-home message in a statement we call Implications for Practice. Found on the first page of each article, Implications for Practice describes the article's significance and clearly defines its potential impact and importance, especially in terms of its clinical applications. In addition, the most impactful findings from review articles will be highlighted separately in “call out boxes.” Also in this new layout, CME articles are easier to locate in the print edition, thanks to their shaded edge tabs—just thumb quickly to the shaded pages to find accredited CME content. Finally, the cover now prints page numbers for all articles, making it easy for you to find the content that interests you most. As we refresh the layout to better address your needs, we also revisit the mission that drives the content we publish by rededicating these pages to articles with the most clinical relevance. Excellent research is being published in a growing number of journals. In this environment, The Oncologist reaffirms its commitment to reviews and original research that do the best job of translating bench to bedside. In an information-rich world, the best publications distinguish themselves by how they filter and select information for the reader. The Oncologist seeks to serve you, our reader, with a crisp focus on peer-accepted papers that have a clear and direct clinical application for our global readership. As the global readership of the Journal grows, we further support this mission by publishing separate editions for Europe and China. Featuring European and Chinese Perspectives, these editions provide expert, up-to-date information on topics that are most relevant to the European and Chinese oncology communities through a combination of print articles and online material. We have also worked to enhance the publishing experience for our authors. Beginning early in 2013, we transition to a new, more robust online editorial system with the promise of a streamlined and speedier submission and review process. We expect this investment to pay immediate returns for our authors, offering more rapid decisions and faster time to publication. Speed is vital for the best scientific publications, and we resolve to redouble our efforts in this arena. Finally, your Journal could not achieve its mission without the rigorous and dedicated stewardship of its founding editors. We applaud the leadership and are grateful for the vision of three of these senior editors, and we take pardonable pride in promoting them to our Emeritus Editorial Board. Frank Balis, Eli Glatstein, and John Niederhuber each have helped guide the Journal's editorial mission and they have earned our gratitude for the energy and optimism necessary to undertake the lofty goal they were charged with 18 years ago. We are also delighted to announce that Richard M. Goldberg, who has ably co-edited the Gastrointestinal Section since 2006, has been appointed a Senior Editor. Rich's experience as a celebrated physician-scientist and compassionate oncologist (and his editorial acumen) stand him in good stead to help guide The Oncologist as we approach our third decade. In addition to his editorial leadership, Rich will also help to promote new synergies between the Journal and the Society for Translational Oncology (STO) that he co-chairs with fellow Senior Editor, Patrick G. Johnston. Working as Senior Editors and as STO co-chairs, Rich and Paddy will forge an even tighter link between The Oncologist and STO. This sets the stage for the introduction, early in 2013, of a broad educational platform at www.theoncologist.com, designed to bring together the Journal's important peer-reviewed content and the key thought leadership showcased by the Society for Translational Oncology in video lectures, roundtable discussions, and interviews. This integrated educational gateway, deployed on all mobile platforms (e.g., iPhone, iPad, Android, etc.), will put the latest research and opinion critical in the practice of oncology and patient care at the fingertips of busy clinicians around the world. This powerful educational platform, coupled with the new and inviting look for the Journal, and a new manuscript management system all bode well for an energized 2013. We at The Oncologist wish our readers and our authors a successful and productive 2013.