Ophthalmic Epidemiology has grown substantially in the last year, and we are well on our way to 200 new submissions annually (up from about 80 when I first took over as Editor in Chief). We have several new faces affiliated with the journal and I am pleased to introduce on the Editorial Board:
Dr. Per Soderberg. An ophthalmologist and professor at Karolinska Institute, Per has long been interested in the lens and cataract, and will help manage our increasing number of submissions in this area.
Dr. Barbara Hawkins: Our guest editor for the Ophthalmic Epidemiology symposium publication this year, Barbara is an expert in clinical trials, specifically for retinal diseases. She is a professor in Ophthalmology at Wilmer Eye Institute and will help us as we move towards publishing clinical trial outcomes.
Dr. Douglas Jabs: professor and chair of the ophthalmology department at Mount Sinai in New York, Doug is an expert in ocular complications of AIDS and Uveitis.
We have also changed our publishers from Taylor and Francis to InformaHealth Care, which had absorbed Taylor and Francis. This transition led to considerable changes in personnel involved with our journal, but we are enjoying a stable team now who are dedicated to publishing our quality material and seeking the widest audience for dissemination.
To top off our challenges, we went to a new platform for manuscript management this last year, while still keeping the old one open for manuscripts still being revised. Our team had to flip back and forth to find manuscripts, a confusing process for the authors as well as the editors! However, the new platform enables us to manage manuscripts far more efficiently, and get feed back to our authors as quickly as possible. We will close the old site in 2008, once all revised manuscripts that meet deadline are in.
With this first issue of Ophthalmic Epidemiology for 2008, I introduce our new Managing Editor, Ms. Ronnie Doyle, who has taken over from Mr. Andrew Broman, who left to take a sane job in Wisconsin. Ronnie is familiar to many of our readers as the managing editor of Ophthalmology, and she brings her considerable expertise and attentiveness to detail for our journal. When you submit manuscripts to Ophthalmic Epidemiology, you will find her your ombudsmen and guide through the submission labyrinth.
When I became Editor in Chief we committed to a 30-day turn-around for new submissions, a goal we are determined to reach and sustain. The last year was a wild ride through challenges of new management, new platforms, and changing the managing editor, but we are on course. In the last month, our average turn around was 30 days, and we will keep this as a centerpiece of our promise, with the help of our wonderful reviewers and Editorial Board members (and Ronnie, who cracks a mean whip). We had published an exciting special issue last year and plan to continue that trend with a special issue on Ophthalmic Economics early this year.
In this issue we thank our reviewers, and I wish to add a special note of gratitude to our authors, who were patient with us, and never lost faith. The Best of the New Year!