CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians--What's New and What's Not
Authors: T. Gansler, H. J. Eyre
Journal: CA A Cancer Journal for Clinicians (2002)

Looking back, this past year has been as exciting as it's been productive for CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. We've implemented several changes that we feel will enhance the journal's content and accessibility and make it more useful and user-friendly for our readers. Since its inception in 1950, CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians has served as the flagship journal for the American Cancer Society (ACS), and provided a peer-reviewed vehicle for the publication of solicited review articles of interest to oncologists, primary care physicians, nurses, other physicians, and other health care professionals. With a diverse readership of over 140,000 health care professionals, CA has the largest circulation of any oncology journal. Most recently, the ISI Journal Citation Reports showed that CA has retained its top ranking as the #1 cited journal out of 107 journals listed in the category of oncology. According to a recent study conducted by the American Medical Association (AMA), 78 percent of physicians reported using the World Wide Web, and almost half of physicians feel the Internet has an impact on the way they practice medicine.1 According to the AMA, the typical physician spent 4.3 hours of each week online in 1997. By 2001, time spent online by the average doctor increased to 7.1 hours a week; and respondents predicted their time online would increase to 9.6 hours a week by the first half of 2002. A second survey conducted by the AMA found that 74 to 84 percent of physicians used the Internet in search of medical information, and 64 to 70 percent reported using the Internet to earn Continuing Medical Education (CME) credit.2 As more clinicians than ever before are going online for medical information and CME credit, CA is moving forward in both of these areas. In September 2002, the American Cancer Society launched CA Online—a new Web site specific to CA, available at http://CAonline.AmCancerSoc.org. Our new site offers greater overall functionality making it easier to navigate, and introduces a number of practical features geared toward the online needs of health care professionals. CA Online is published for the ACS by HighWire Press, a division of Stanford University. HighWire Press publishes over 300 society or organizational journals including The New England Journal of Medicine, BMJ, Science, and Nature. • Free full-text HTML and PDF versions of all articles published since 2001, PDF files of issues dating back to 1990, abstracts for issues published from 1979 to the present, and the table of contents for issues dating back to 1965. • Journal articles, fully searchable by keyword, author, title, volume, issue, and/or page number. • Direct links from the reference section of CA articles to full-text views of articles (for citations from other journals published by HighWire) and MEDLINE abstracts (for other citations). • eLetters to the Editor to facilitate online discussion of CA articles. • Free e-mail alerts containing the table of contents of the most recent issue online. • Free, convenient, and fast online CME testing with automatic scoring, printable certificates, and documentation of each participant's CME history. As excited as we are about our new Web site, what excites us most is the information itself. That's why we are especially pleased to announce the addition of several Associate Editors to CA's Editorial Board. We are honored to welcome aboard Patricia A. Ganz, MD, Professor, Schools of Medicine and Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles, and Director, Division of Cancer Prevention and Control Research, Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, Los Angeles, CA (medical oncology); Mack Roach, III, MD, Professor, Radiation Oncology, University of California, San Francisco, CA (radiation oncology); Andrew Vickers, PhD, Assistant Attending Research Methodologist, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY (complementary and alternative medicine); and William C. Wood, MD, Chairman, Department of Surgery, Emory University, Atlanta, GA (surgical oncology) as our new Associate Editors. And we are grateful to John J. Stevens, MD, Vice President for Extramural Grants, American Cancer Society, Atlanta, GA (basic science); Michael Thun, MD, Vice President, Epidemiology and Surveillance Research, American Cancer Society, Atlanta, GA (epidemiology); and Richard Wender, MD, Clinical Professor and Vice Chairman, Department of Family Medicine, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, PA (primary care)—for having served previously on our Editorial Advisory Board—and for their continued participation with the journal as Associate Editors. All experts in their fields, these Associate Editors will guide our choice of topics, authors, and reviewers for new articles, and will advise us on editorial procedures and policies that, in turn, will continue to advance the journal's mission. In over a half century of CA's history, the one thing that has remained constant is our journal's mission—to provide current information to clinicians about best practices in cancer prevention, early detection, and treatment in an effort to help reduce cancer incidence and mortality rates and improve quality of life for people living with cancer in the United States and worldwide.