Expert Review of Dermatology is a new online and print publication for dermatologists. This foreword, to accompany the first issue, discusses whether or not it (or any other new journal) is needed and, what it is going to provide.
The journal has an editorial board of more than 30 individuals, with a range of interests from basic science to clinical issues, from cosmetic to neoplasms, from investigative to therapeutic, from preventative to political and from theoretical to practical. I should state initially that I have no vested interest or conflicts of interest in writing this editorial or in the journal content. There is no senior dermatological editor (it is purely chance, or perhaps an inability to say ‘no’, that has led to this first editorial being written by myself) – rather, the editorial panel have the task of suggesting topics and/or authors and reviewing manuscripts. The aim of the editorial board is therefore to help create a journal that has a wide range of topics across clinical and scientific dermatology, and that should fulfil educational needs for all of us. We will, of course, rely on authors to achieve this and, on behalf of the editorial board, I would like to thank all contributors. We will also depend on feedback from readers, including any suggestions for topics that they would like to see covered, or replies from possible authors who would write for the journal.
On a wider basis, the journal is one of several that are published by Future Drugs Ltd, thus up-to-date reviews of new drugs, commentary on drugs in development or biological ideas that may lead to new agents are all potential topics for consideration. However, the remit for authors is much wider than this and might include new diagnostic methods or technology, molecular genetics, epidemiology, measurement of disease severity or effects of treatment, adverse drug reactions, ethical issues and general research issues, and future directions for dermatology and reports from scientific meetings.
Is there a need for this type of article? In my view, the simple answer is ‘yes’. When I co-edited the British Journal of Dermatology, we introduced the idea of an editorial giving a broader look at specific articles and, like editors before us, we actively encouraged high-quality review articles. Both of these were frequently commended by the readership as important. Similarly, the continuing medical education articles in journals, such as that of the American Academy of Dermatology, are a major source of information. The sad fact is that all of us are too busy to read everything – snowed under with clinical commitments, and with a constant barrage of government targets and edicts from other national bodies that impinge upon our work. Nobody can keep up to date with all areas of basic science or all areas of clinical diagnosis, and certainly not both together, even within an individual specialty. However, most of us would like to try, and also to understand genetic, scientific, clinical or therapeutic links with other disciplines. The internet may help us to find items, but may give a distorted view or tunnel vision, and the abstract alone may not put topics into their wider context. There are, of course, clinicians who bypass all the science, and scientists who ignore anything printed as being out of date, but for the majority, a timely review is to be celebrated, not discarded.
So what does this volume include? At the time of writing, some articles are still to be confirmed and some may alter, so I do not intend to mention everything, rather to give a flavor. Psoriasis is an area in which therapeutic advances have been made in recent years, notably relating to new biological agents, so systemic therapies are reviewed by Alan Menter and colleagues. However, despite knowledge of the disease for centuries, there are still advances being made in our understanding of its epidemiology, and this is addressed in the review by Joel Gelfand and colleagues.
Melanoma is also well represented in terms of recent advances. Marie-France Demierre has provided an update on therapies, including available but disputed treatments, such as interferon, and also discusses the potential use of agents that alter angiogenesis, while Anja Bosserhoff has written an overview of highlights from a melanoma conference as recent as November, 2005. Other specific disease-related therapeutic updates, all with an emphasis on newer therapies, are provided for cutaneous lupus erythematosus (Jennie Clarke and Victoria Werth), atopic dermatitis (Alicia Miller and Lawrence Eichenfield) and severe acne vulgaris (Michael Gold).
Physical therapies involving lasers (Sajjad Rajpar and Sean Lanigan) or photodynamic therapy (Pavan Nootheti and Mitchel Goldman) are both discussed in a rather more generic fashion, the laser article discussing novel uses for lasers and the photodynamic therapy article covering photorejuvenation as well as lesion-specific indications for this therapy. There are also articles that link clinical science with therapy for patients, including an article on cellular grafting in vitiligo (Jean-Marie Naeyaert and colleagues) and one on the role of T cells in the pathogenesis of mucous membrane pemphigoid (Fenella Wojnarowska and collegues).
While I hope that readers will learn something from, and enjoy, this range of material, I urge you to submit your ideas to the journal team. We want to know what it is that you, the reader, would like to learn and read about.