Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery: Official Organ of the Plastic Surgery Research Council???A Reality Long Overdue (2007)

Beginning with this issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, the Journal will become an official organ of the Plastic Surgery Research Council, representing the first “official organ” status addition to the Journal in more than 26 years. This addition is the result of a tremendous amount of work, cooperation, insight, and tenacity over the past 2 years on behalf of the Plastic Surgery Research Council, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, the Journal, and our publisher, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. The addition corrects the long-standing omission by our Journal of this most respected group of researchers and innovators in the field of plastic surgery, the Plastic Surgery Research Council. What does this addition mean for our readers worldwide, and why is this such an important and historical milestone for the Journal and our approach to plastic surgery? For the first time, our readers will be able to read, first-hand, all of the abstracts of the Plastic Surgery Research Council’s annual meeting. This is vitally important, because most of what eventually occurs scientifically in plastic surgery is presented in the Council’s abstracts 1 to 2 years in advance of it becoming mainstream with clinical plastic surgery. Therefore, you as a reader, author, or investigator can get a snapshot of these proceedings annually, beginning this year with the supplement to the June issue. This special annual supplement will highlight the 100 plastic surgery research abstracts accepted for presentation at the Council’s annual meeting. The Plastic Surgery Research Council meeting abstract supplement to the Journal will enjoy the benefits that all supplements share: Full indexing in such abstracting services as Index Medicus, Abridged Index Medicus, Current Contents/Clinical Medicine, Life Sciences, Science Citation Index, Research Alert, ISI/BioMed, EMBASE/Excerpta Medica, and BIOSIS; Broad global readership through print and Web subscriptions and online databases such as Ovid. Through the Ovid database, the Journal and its supplements have a potential readership of more than 13 million end-users worldwide; Full color for all figures, if included; and Peer review of all contents. Abstracts will be reviewed by the Council, and only those accepted after undergoing review will be published. Beginning in February of 2007, you will immediately notice on the front cover and the editorial board page that Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery is now an “Official Organ of the Plastic Surgery Research Council.” We are pleased to have the Journal and the American Society of Plastic Surgeons affiliated with the Council in this fashion, and we look forward to the publishing of the Council’s meeting abstracts annually, along with abstracts of the annual Society meeting. This collaboration resulted from the remarkable efforts of numerous people within the Society and the Council, including Council members Greg Evans, Arun Gosain, Michael Longaker, James Bradley, Paul Cederna, Steve Buchman, Bill Kuzon, and Mike Neumeister, to mention just a few. They all worked to bring this idea to fruition and to help the Council’s abstract supplement come to life. In addition, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons/Plastic Surgery Educational Foundation leadership involved in the discussions and decisions included past Society Presidents Bruce Cunningham and Scott Spear, past Foundation President Brian Kinney, Society Executive Vice President Paul Pomerantz and Lynn Kahn, assistant executive director for communications. Of course, we could not execute this supplement without the collaboration and support of our publisher, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, so ably represented by James R. Mulligan, publisher. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery has been the official Journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons since 1946 and is also an official organ of the American Association of Plastic Surgeons, the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, Inc., and the American Society of Maxillofacial Surgeons. “Official organ” status is important to both the Journal and the associated societies in that it publicly declares the collaboration and collegiality with those sister societies. In this day of surgical specialization, subspecialization, and super-subspecialization, the tendency is to dissect and divide the medical world into ever-smaller collectives of practitioners. The goal of the Journal is to serve the specialty of plastic surgery worldwide as the leading peer-reviewed journal, representing the full interests of plastic surgery. This action between the Journal, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, and the Plastic Surgery Research Council will make the connection between basic science research and clinical applications in plastic surgery not only stronger but more pervasive, in the hope of encouraging improved translational research between basic science and clinical research worldwide. In conclusion, we look forward to publishing the Plastic Surgery Research Council annual meeting abstracts in June and to further collaborative efforts with our allied societies.