A change of the editorial machinery

After 30 years of dedicated editorial work our editor for clinical sciences, Gunnar Ronquist, has decided to move on to other duties. During his guidance an extraordinary increase of the volume and quality of a venerable scientific journal has taken place. Founded as long ago as 1865—Journal of Internal Medicine founded in 1863 (former Acta Medica Scandinavica) is the only older medical journal in Sweden—Upsala Journal of Medical Sciences has changed and improved a lot. It started as a primarily local magazine—Upsala läkareförenings förhandligar—with contributions of varying scientific content, from rather easy ones like local weather reports to discoveries like Ivar Sandström's detailed description of the parathyroid glands. In 1951 the title of the journal was changed to Acta Societatis Medicorum Upsaliensis and then added to the then quite popular series of Acta publications. During this time period, the journal contained a couple of articles that became subjects of Eugene Garfield's Citation Classics that were published weekly for many years in Current Contents.

The change into a journal with more international contributions was effected in 1972, and it was given its present name—Upsala Journal of Medical Sciences. Despite considerable efforts there was only limited success, and with time the journal grew thinner. With the entrance of the new millennium the owner of the journal—i.e. Upsala Medical Society—had to take a firm decision on the matter. In an editorial entitled ‘On the revival of an old and venerable journal' (1) we declared that the journal had to be published by electronic means besides the traditional printing of issues meant for members of the society and subscribers. After some initial practical problems we have now established ourselves at a respectable level in comparison with similar journals (in Thomson Reuters we are ranked number 82 of 155 journals in the subgroup ‘Medicine; general and internal'). This is very much due to the remarkable increase of the submission rate after the introduction of the electronic submission central very efficiently run by Gerd Halvorsen in Oslo [for further details see ref. (2).]. As a consequence of this, hundreds of manuscripts have gathered for review and scoring. In that process Gunnar Ronquist has been instrumental. There are many authors who owe him a debt of gratitude remembering his never-ending interest in improving the quality of their manuscripts. A great and warm thank you to Gunnar Ronquist for these efforts from a grateful scientific community.

As another token of the amount of attention paid to our journal we have noticed that the number of manuscripts downloaded from our home page has increased tremendously over the last couple of years (Figure 1). There is probably no better measure of how our society has fulfilled one of its two basic objectives, namely that of providing and distributing scientific information. The other objective is that of creating a pleasant atmosphere amongst doctors at the hospital and in general practice. One more attractive reason for becoming a member of our society is that you also become a subscriber of the journal for free by such means.

Figure 1. On average one article, freely available at the webpage of Upsala Journal of Medical Sciences, is downloaded every twenty minutes. Note that figures for 2012 are valid for Jan–Oct.

A change of the editorial routines had therefore to be introduced, since it was soon realized that a person like Gunnar Ronquist was impossible to find and recruit for a similar task. Instead, it was decided to go for one editor-in-chief served by a number of associate editors, an organization utilized in most journals of our size. As of 1 January 2013 Arne Andersson will serve as editor-in-chief, and a total of eight persons—most of them previous members of the editorial board—have promised to assist as associate editors. This will hopefully become an efficient group of people for selection of interesting manuscripts and keeping handling times down. At present the average handling time between submission and decision is as low 16 days, which means a decrease from last year's 20 days.

Starting in this first issue of volume 118 we will launch a new series named ‘Case reports from Uppsala University Hospital'. Hopefully that will increase the interest for our journal amongst local doctors, who will now have the opportunity to publish interesting relevant clinical data on cases that are not so common. A relay system will guarantee that the task circulates between different departments.

One more recurrent section in our journal in the future will be the rediscovery of ‘classical papers' of our journal. Background data both on how the research came about and how it has become the basis for future research will be presented by a person acquainted with the field of research. For an old journal like ours there is a gold-mine to dig in. A first article of that kind will hopefully appear in our third issue of this volume.

Finally, you have most certainly noticed that with some interval—actually it has been decided to be every second year—we publish issues on certain scientific themes. In 2010, Lars Oreland edited an issue on ‘Neurobiological research' carried out at our faculty, and Bengt Westermark, at his retirement last year, edited an issue on ‘Frontiers in tumor biology'. Both of them have become smash hits for our journal with numerous citations and other kinds of attention. If you have a good idea for a new issue of this kind, you are welcome to present your case at any convenient time point.

NOTE

You are all welcome to join our spring meeting on Tuesday, April 9th at 5.30 pm. We will meet at the Academic Hospital in order to take part in a presentation by “The National Public Art Council” (Statens konstråd) on “Sjukhusområdets framtida gestaltning”. There will be further detailed information sent to all members of the society in the near future.