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Show The Way We've Been: The Journal of Neuro-Ophthalmology, 2001-2010 This issue marks a transition between the third and fourth epochs of the Journal of Neuro-Ophthalmology. The editorial material and the Editorial Board belong to the third epoch; the new Journal design represents the fourth epoch. With the next (June) issue, Dr. Lanning Kline (University of Alabama) will take over as the new editor with a new Editorial Board (see Message from the New Editor in this issue of the Journal). The Journal began in 1981 with Dr. J. Lawton Smith as founding editor. For the next 13 years, it remained very much ‘‘Dr. Smith's journal,'' with many articles originating in his home institution, the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, University of Miami, and Dr. Smith writing a commentary on each one. In 1994, the Journal moved to Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, as Dr. Ronald M. Burde became the second editor. Submissions began to come from across North America and even overseas. Articles expounding on experimental basic science were more prominent. In 2001, the editorial office moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, as I became the third editor. During this epoch, the journal remained quarterly but got a new design and its page count edged up to 100 pages per issue as the number of submissions doubled. With more than 50% of articles coming from outside North America, the journal became truly international. We are especially pleased to have published so many articles from Asia, including the People's Republic of China. Among the published articles from foreign countries, the largest number came from Japan, Israel, Turkey, India, and South Korea. The receipt, processing, review, and copyediting of text and illustrations became entirely electronic. No more paper! No more mailing costs! The Journal's website was born. Subscribers could now choose between a handheld hard copy and a screen copy. Video to illustrate eye movements began to appear in the web version. Our publisher reduced the embargo on published articles in the Journal to 1 year. All electronic content was released after that time into the public domain, so that full-text versions could be read at no charge by anyone with access to the Internet and a search engine! With such a short embargo (matched by very few peer-reviewed journals), we were able to guarantee our authors an enormously expanded readership. We introduced a ‘‘double masked'' process for peer review. Authors did not know who had reviewed their papers (standard practice) and reviewers did not know who had written them (not standard practice). Such a balanced review process, we believed, would give authors a fairer shot. But when we canvassed the opinions of some seasoned reviewers, several insisted that not knowing who had written the paper would hamper their judgment because the track record of the authors is an important element in making that judgment! The Journal's editorial board strongly favored double masking, but several members were convinced that they would still know who had written the articles. Nearly everyone guessed wrong. Reviewers were even wrong in deciding whether articles had come from North America or abroad! The number of illustrations increased dramatically, most of them relating to brain imaging, which has become an integral part of our specialty. Annual reviews of afferent and efferent neuro-ophthalmology, which were a feature in the second epoch of the Journal, were replaced by commissioned State-of-the-Art pieces on ‘‘hot topics'' in wide-ranging disciplines including neuroimaging, radiation oncology, neurobiology, medical resource allocation, and even open access publishing. To give our readers a brief view of what was happening in neuro-ophthalmology around the world, we started covering the more important meetings, including those of the American Academy of Neurology and the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthal-mology. Our roving reporters (Mark Moster, MD, Howard Pomeranz, MD, PhD, and Swaraj Bose, MD) scurried to the relevant presentations and dispatched learned summa-ries. We even covered our own annual North American Neuro-Ophthalmology Society meetings, partly as an excuse to publish candid photographs of our members. ‘‘You can talk, you can talk, but you gotta know the territory.'' So said the salesmen in the famed American musical comedy, The Music Man. Knowing the territory was the job of our reviewers-several hundred of them. If the quality of the publications has gone up, it is largely their doing. The members of the Editorial Board absorbed most of that task, but there were others who rendered extraordinary service. For special thanks, I single out the Editorial Board members in Ann Arbor. Wayne Cornblath, MD, sized up problematic papers with blazing acumen. Steve Gebarski, MD, our consultant neuroradiologist, took on the huge burden of certifying imaging studies and offering to choose better illustrations from CDs that authors sent in. Dheeraj Gandhi, MD, an interventional neuroradiologist, spent hours analyzing nuances in vascular images and guiding Trobe: J Neuro-Ophthalmol 2010; 30: 3-4 3 Message from the Departing Editor authors toward a better selection. Andrew Lieberman, MD, PhD, gave valuable advice in neuropathology. Oren Sagher, MD, provided help on neurosurgical submissions. David Musch, PhD, brought epidemiologic and biosta-tistical expertise when we needed it. Gale Oren, MILS, the librarian of the Kellogg Eye Center, reviewed every refer-ence of every article accepted for publication. She corrected bibliographic errors in 30% of those references! Richard Hackel, MA, CRA, and Robert Prusak, CRA, applied their skills in Adobe PhotoShop to the illustrations, transforming them into images that would look pretty in print. Most importantly, there are the Journal's three magnif-icent editorial assistants. Jill Hanekamp developed the first electronic platform for the Journal. Mireille Prusak refined it. Donna Donato made it even better. During this decade they processed more than 2,000 manuscripts and never lost one. The editorial office did not use a standardized manuscript processing system, which has become standard for most journals (and will be used in the fourth epoch of the Journal) because we pledged to offer the personalized service of a boutique operation. I hope our authors would agree that we made good on that pledge. It has been a privilege to be the editor. I have had great satisfaction in working with and learning from our authors and especially in attracting so many submissions from Asia, an exciting source of things to come. Best wishes to my successor, who will inherit a splendid emblem of the fascinating field of neuro-ophthalmology. Jonathan D. Trobe, MD Editor-in-Chief, 2001-2010 FIG. 1. The Journal's Ann Arbor Editorial Office crew, 2001-2010. Seated (left to right): Gale Oren, Librarian; Jill Hanekamp, Editorial Assistant, 2001-2003; Mireille Prusak, Editorial Assistant, 2003-2008. Standing (left to right): Donna Donato, Editorial Assistant, 2008-2010, Robert Prusak and Richard Hackel, Media Editors, and Jonathan Trobe, Editor-in-Chief. Message from the Departing Editor 4 Trobe: J Neuro-Ophthalmol 2010; 30: 3-4 |
