It is with great sadness and yet joy that with this issue I turn over the editorship of Ophthalmic Epidemiology, which I founded and nourished since 1993, to the very competent leadership of Dr. Sheila West.
In the immediate years following my training in epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, I began to attend early presentations of epidemiologic papers and posters at various ophthalmology meetings, including the Clinical and Epidemiologic Research Section of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology. I became very concerned that few presentations were accepted for publication by clinical journals of ophthalmology. As a result, methodologic details and results of many important studies were unavailable to future investigators; this lack of historical continuity led to subsequent ophthalmic researchers unnecessarily repeating similar epidemiologic studies over time at unnecessary cost and wasted valuable time and effort, not having a base of information to build upon.
Since most clinical journals felt “dull epidemiologic data” would not appeal to their clinical readership, I began to look for a publisher with the foresight to support and invest in a novel type of journal. It came to my attention in early 1993 that Dr. Willem van Leeuwen and his wife Carla, from Buren, the Netherlands, publishers of Aeolus Press, a group of small “niche” ophthalmic journals anchored by Current Eye Research, had a similar journal in mind and had contacted several ophthalmologists in Europe looking for a like-minded editor. I sent word of my interest to Willem through mutual friends and an exploratory meeting was arranged at the Atlanta Hartfield airport. We quickly agreed upon the mission, title and overall responsibilities, and within two hours the journal was inaugurated. An editorial board was formed of 13 distinguished and respected ophthalmic epidemiologists from around the globe who constituted a strong advisory group, still almost entirely intact after 14 years. The success of the journal is due in great part to the individual members of the board, all busy investigators in their own right, who have given their very valuable research and administrative time to help nourish and support its nascent development.
Submission of manuscripts was slow in the first years of existence. Three issues were published in 1994, the first year of publication and as submissions slowly increased, four issues were published in 2000 at which time publication was taken over by Swets and Zeitlinger. The journal came under the umbrella of Taylor and Francis Publishers in 2004 and expanded to a bimonthly publication in 2005, its present position today.
Manuscript subscriptions have increased steadily with each year of publication, providing the international community with a broad diversity of articles having topical readership interest. This past year the journal was rated for impact factor along with 18 other ophthalmology journals and found to rank in the upper third percentile, attesting to the journal maturity and reflecting its uniqueness as the only ophthalmic journal devoted exclusively to evidence-based medicine.
With this issue Dr. Sheila West assumes editorship of the journal. Sheila has been in the forefront of ophthalmic epidemiology since its early days as a mature discipline. Sheila is world renown for her ground breaking funded research in both chronic and infectious disease research, most recently in Salisbury, Maryland and Tanzania. She has held major offices within the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology including past president of the organization; she currently holds the title of Professor in the Dana Center for International Health of the Johns Hopkins Medical Institution. Sheila has been on the editorial board of a number of journals, including Ophthalmic Epidemiology since its beginning, Current Eye Research, Investigative Ophthalmology, and Vision Research.
I, the editorial board, and publishers, welcome Sheila as the second editor of Ophthalmic Epidemiology, and look forward to her long and innovative leadership at the helm of the journal.