Molecular Therapy Moves on to a New Editor-in-Chief
Authors: David A Williams
Journal: Molecular Therapy (2009)

As Molecular Therapy transitions to a new Editor-in-Chief (EIC), I take the opportunity to thank those who have supported me over the past five years in this role and to take stock of the Journal and pressing issues for the field. The Society has chosen Malcolm Brenner to become EIC, and he will formally begin his role in January. Many of you know Malcolm, or at least know of his work. He will be an outstanding EIC. Malcolm, Rob Frederickson, and I have already begun the transition so as to ensure no interruption in the publication process. I am sure Malcolm will bring great new ideas to the running of the Journal. The Journal is in very solid shape. Over the past five years, its impact factor (IF) has continued to increase (this year it is 5.970), whereas those of the other main gene therapy journals have consistently declined over the same period. Institutional subscriptions continue to increase. We have been able to maintain a healthy acceptance rate of approximately 33%. Thanks largely to our reviewers, and mostly to Rob Fredrickson's constant diligence, our average time to first decision has remained constant at roughly 3 weeks, one of the best turnaround times of major journals. We are into the third year of a new publishing contract with Nature Publishing Group (NPG), and Rob and I could not be more pleased with the working relationship with this highly professional publisher. The Journal's new look has met with great acceptance by the readership and has received compliments from many. Thanks to NPG staffers’ hard work, time to hardcopy publication is 70 business days from receipt, and 86% of articles appear electronically within 30 days of receipt after acceptance. In the first 6 months of 2009, Molecular Therapy's website received nearly 300,000 visits and more than 200,000 article downloads. The Journal's revenues, which provide substantial support for the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy (ASGCT), have exceeded what we anticipated when our new publishing contract was signed. We were one of the first journals to offer a hybrid author-pays option for open access. Although we did not accomplish everything I would have liked (our failure to reach a collaborative agreement with several European gene therapy societies is the most disappointing of these), I feel we are leaving the Journal in a very healthy condition for Malcolm and the Society. I thank Elizabeth Durzy (NPG Publishing Manager) and Tony Dunlap (NPG Senior Production Editor), who have provided extraordinary publishing guidance and support for Molecular Therapy during the publishing transition and in the intervening years. Rob and I have both been impressed with NPG's availability, accountability, and enthusiasm for the Journal. I also thank the ASGCT for their ongoing support. The Associate Editors have contributed enormously to our review process and to helping us develop new ideas for reviews—and in many cases actually contributing these reviews. They have also provided great ideas through quarterly teleconferences in which both interesting and mundane issues have been discussed. Finally, I thank members of my office staff, Keisha Steward and Kristie Gilb (in Cincinnati) and Elise Porter and Miriam Edlund (in Boston), who have contributed a significant amount of administrative time preparing meetings, meeting agendas, and slides for the Journal and the Society. Most of all, I thank Rob Frederickson. I have met with Rob on a biweekly basis for five years and often “talk” with him by e-mail several times a day. I am so impressed by his dedication to the Journal, his sense of fairness in the review process, and his willingness to listen to suggestions and ideas provided by others. Rob also has an uncanny ability to understand how certain articles fit into the overall goals of the Journal, an attribute that clearly enhances the readability of nearly every issue of the Journal. He has become a friend in the process of being a colleague. I wish him all the best in the coming years. After five years as EIC and more than 20 years in the field (our initial gene transfer article was published in Nature in 1986), I am left with one increasingly clear opinion. Although the science of the field is robust, our nonharmonized system of funding and regulatory oversight of clinical trials is a major impediment to progress for patients with terrible diseases and is the major reason that many of the recent great contributions to the field have derived from clinical trials in Europe. The excessive scrutiny with respect to therapeutics—now 20 years in development—is unique and should be reviewed and the regulatory structures re-examined. I think the ASGCT should focus on this issue and that you, as readers and Society members, should push the Society leadership to continue and even increase its hard work in this area. Thank you all for your support of the Journal in the past, and good luck and good fortune to Malcolm in the next five years.