The Journal of Virology: a Personal Retrospective

As the title suggests, this article does not pretend to be a history of the Journal of Virology. When Tom Shenk asked me to write a minireview about the history of the Journal of Virology for the American Society for Microbiology centennial celebration, I accepted with alacrity. After all, as founding editor in chief, a position I held for 15 years, I not only had an obligation to undertake this review but also had a fairly large stake in the future as well as the past of this enterprise. Gradually, I began to have second thoughts and some misgivings about accepting the offer to write such a history. It dawned on me that I had kept no records of the events that led to the founding of the journal or of its early history. In fact, I had disposed of all my Journal of Virology files a few years ago when I gave up my chairman’s office. All I had to rely on for such an undertaking was my memory, undoubtedly faulty and progressively so as the years go by. Therefore, this article can in no way be construed as true, documented history; it is instead the reminiscences of someone who is a bit too close to his subject but, nevertheless, feels that he has retained his objectivity. In fact, many of the events are still vividly impressed on my mind and quite clearly retrievable. What I cannot be held accountable for are the exact dates and exact sequences of events. I must leave the precise details, chapter and verse, to a real historian who is willing to dig up and go through all the documentation as well as to interview all the relevant players in this saga, which would be no mean task.

I am not privy to the discussions that led to the founding of the Journal of Virology, but they are undoubtedly extensive and well documented in the minutes of meetings of the Society and especially the Council and the Council Policy Committee (CPC). These discussions certainly took place in the early 1960s, not too long after the Society saw fit to change its name from the Society of American Bacteriologists to the American Society for Microbiology, in recognition of the fact that including microorganisms other than bacteria would greatly expand the horizons and membership of the Society. Until 1967, the ASM published only three scientific journals: the Journal of Bacteriology, Applied Microbiology, and Bacteriological Reviews. Not until January 1965 did the Journal of Bacteriology divide its table of contents into sections such as Taxonomy, Infection and Immunity, and Virology. Quite obviously, one good reason for dividing the table of contents into sections was to attract research papers in different disciplines of microbiology, with the ultimate intention of estimating the need and demand for starting new journals published under the auspices of the ASM.

In July 1964, Harold S. Ginsberg, then at the University of Pennsylvania, was appointed an editor of the Journal of Bacteriology with primary responsibility for the soon-to-be-formed Virology section. The editor in chief at the time was William B. Sarles, and one of the other editors was L. Leon Campbell, Jr., who succeeded Sarles as editor in chief in July 1965. Under the leadership of my good friend Harry Ginsberg, the Virology section of the Journal of Bacteriology grew in size and the quality of the manuscripts submitted improved. The obvious reason for appointing Ginsberg as the Virology section editor was to ultimately appoint him editor in chief of a new ASM virology journal. I do not know why Harry Ginsberg resigned as the Virology section editor of the Journal of Bacteriology in June 1966, close to the time when the Journal of Virology was launched.

In July 1966, I was appointed Virology section editor of the Journal of Bacteriology, succeeding Harold S. Ginsberg. I do not know who nominated me for this position, but I strongly suspect the primary nominator was Harry Ginsberg. One day, early in 1966 or perhaps late 1965, I received a letter and telephone call from Leon Campbell, then editor in chief of the Journal of Bacteriology and chairman of the ASM’s Publications Board. Leon asked me if I would like to be considered for the position of Virology section editor of the Journal of Bacteriology and, prospectively, as editor in chief of a new virology journal. After assenting, I was invited to attend a meeting to discuss the prospects at the editorial office of the Journal of Bacteriology, then in Ann Arbor, Mich. That 2-day meeting, entirely with Leon Campbell and the ASM managing editor, Robert A. Day, was a remarkable experience and stands out vividly in my memory. Much of the 2-day discussion took place in a bar and ranged over subjects as diverse as the science of virology, the publications industry, the nature of scientific societies, finances, educational philosophy, ethics, and the social fabric. I expressed my opinions on the future of virology as a science and how this view could be fostered by a publication such as the one proposed, as well as the potential impact of the journal on the American Society for Microbiology. I also expressed some reservations about starting a new journal in competition with the well-established Academic Press journal Virology, which had an excellent reputation and to which many virus researchers, including myself, submitted their very best papers. The response to my reservations by Campbell and Day was decisive: the new virology journal would not be a commercial enterprise, and as a nonprofit society journal, it would have a much lower subscription rate for ASM members and would be more widely distributed. Moreover, the quality control and high standards of the ASM Publications Office would provide a product that would attract the best research papers from the leading virologists throughout the world. I was convinced, and in retrospect, how right they were. I have never met such competent, erudite, energetic, and convincing but laid-back and easygoing sociable characters as Leon Campbell and Bob Day; they were truly a team. Years ago in one of my editorial reports published in ASM News, I referred to them as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. They accomplished a miracle in making the American Society for Microbiology one of the world’s premier scientific publishers. They became great role models and truly good friends.

My tenure as Virology section editor of the Journal of Bacteriology was 6 months, and the ASM Council confirmed my appointment as editor in chief of the Journal of Virology, effective January 1967. Before the new journal could appear, I had to make a decision about the nature of the research that would be published; this was done after consulting Leon Campbell and others. Despite my background as a clinician with considerable experience in viral and other infectious diseases, I decided that the papers acceptable for the new journal should be limited in large measure to research in basic virology, essentially at the molecular level. The basis for this decision, in retrospect perhaps erroneous, was that large numbers of papers on viral diseases would dissuade researchers in basic virology from submitting their best and most seminal papers to the Journal of Virology instead of our competitor Virology, which was and still is devoted to publishing basic virology papers. This decision to limit the scope of the Journal of Virology to basic research engendered a considerable amount of controversy among some members of the American Society for Microbiology who had supported the concept of the new journal because they believed that it would be an outlet for clinical virology papers. The animosity generated by this decision of mine lasted quite a few years, even though, in my defense, we did compete well with Virology for basic virology research papers. Another decision of mine was not to portray the Journal of Virology as a major outlet for plant virology research, essentially because our competitor, Virology, had emphasized plant viruses to such a degree that this area had become a paramount part of their publishing effort and most plant virologists looked upon Virology as their journal. Moreover, very few plant virologists were members of the ASM; they apparently supported other societies. However, many virologists in general were not members of the ASM, which still had the image of a predominantly bacteriological society. One of the purposes for starting a virology journal was to encourage more virologists to become members of the ASM. In addition to animal virologists, the ASM had a reasonable number of bacterial virologists as members, among whom was Salvador Luria, who became president of the American Society for Microbiology soon after the Journal of Virology was launched and was a strong supporter of the new virology journal. This left basic research on DNA animal viruses, RNA animal viruses, and bacteriophages as the major subject areas for papers in the Journal of Virology.

The inclusion of papers on bacteriophages, then the hottest research area in molecular biology, in the Journal of Virology provided a potential for conflict and overlap with the Journal of Bacteriology, which was already publishing research papers on bacteriophages, particularly temperate phages that alter bacterial cell functions. The decision was made to let the authors choose the journal to which their papers were submitted. The editors of the two journals were extremely accommodating, and I can recall no serious disagreements ever arising. Similar accommodations among editors were readily made when the ASM began publishing additional journals whose contents occasionally overlapped with that of the Journal of Virology.

Logically, new editors of the Journal of Virology were chosen from among those doing basic research in the areas of bacteriophages, DNA animal viruses, and RNA animal viruses. After much consultation with the virology community, I decided to nominate Norman P. Salzman of the National Institutes of Health and Lloyd M. Kozloff of the University of Colorado Medical Center as editors, primarily for coverage of DNA animal viruses and bacteriophages, respectively. They accepted and were promptly appointed by the ASM Publications Board and Council. I covered RNA animal viruses. The three of us shared responsibility for papers on plant and other viruses. Papers submitted to the Publications Office were assigned to the appropriate editor by Bob Day and his staff or to another ASM journal with the author’s permission, if deemed appropriate. As is still the case, the responsible editor would assign the paper to at least two members of the editorial board of the journal for review or to ad hoc reviewers at his discretion. Unlike some other journals, the final decision for publication or rejection of a paper rested entirely with the editor and not the editor in chief. The original editorial board of the Journal of Virology consisted of the following 19 members, appointed by the editor in chief in consultation with his coeditors: Allan M. Campbell, John F. Enders, Richard M. Franklin, Harold S. Ginsberg, Angus Graham, Maurice Green, Leonard Hayflick, Werner Henle, John Holland, Klaus Hummeler, Paul J. Kaesberg, Edwin D. Kilbourne, Margaret Lieb, Joseph Melnick, Kenneth Paigen, Fred Rasmussen, Waclaw Szybalski, Peter Vogt, and Julius Youngner. By comparison, the current (1999) Journal of Virology has 15 editors (including the editor in chief) and 223 members of the editorial board. The term of a member of the editorial board is 3 years but is renewable. I remember writing to Allan Campbell when his term ended and asking him to renew his editorial board membership, saying he might as well, because if he did not, I would send him papers to review anyway and perhaps more. Campbell’s classic reply was that he would agree to serve another term but only if I sent him good papers to review because he hated bad papers. This relaxed and convivial atmosphere and collegiality permeated the atmosphere of the fledgling journal.

The close relationship among the three original editors of the Journal of Virology led to an enduring and close friendship, particularly between me and Normal Salzman, who, living in Bethesda, Md., was geographically close. This relationship included our respective spouses, and we had many enjoyable social meetings in Bethesda, Charlottesville, and, not infrequently, abroad long after we both retired from the Journal of Virology. Norman’s recent death, so untimely and premature, was a disastrous blow, not only for his family, but also for me, my wife, and his multitude of friends and colleagues, as well as the science of virology. The Journal of Virology stands as a testimonial to Norman Salzman, who was truly the major force in its success. We miss him sorely.

The first meeting of the three journal editors to establish ground rules and working relations took place in 1966 in Bethesda, the location of the new headquarters of the ASM Publications Office (Fig. 1). Meeting with Norman Salzman, Lloyd Kozloff, and me was Managing Editor Robert Day, who outlined in detail all the policies and operating procedures of the ASM Publications Office, which he ran like a tight ship and with extraordinary efficiency. As we learned then and over the years, Bob Day was an incomparable resource and an enormous help for us amateurs. He was a hard editorial taskmaster with a sense for literary value and the immortality of the printed word. He kept reminding us of the necessity for clarity and precision in the use of the English language and that what we printed had to be understood by archaeologists who uncovered our efforts millenniums later. He was particularly a stickler on use of abbreviations that bordered on scientific jargon and were of no meaning to scientists not in the field and certainly not to the general public; it took several years before he would let us use the terms DNA and RNA in the titles of papers without first referring to them as deoxyribonucleic acid and ribonucleic acid. One of Day’s major missions was to make all the ASM journals reader friendly, often to the chagrin of the authors and editors. A good example was his insistence on retaining the system of citing references by number but alphabetizing them in the list of references; this made for easy reading but made it difficult for the author to keep them straight or to add a reference after the paper had been written. Day’s office won all the arguments, and in retrospect, this made for superior journals.

FIG. 1.

The founding editors of the Journal of Virology confer at their first organizational meeting in 1966. From left to right are Lloyd Kozloff, Robert Wagner, and the late Norman Salzman.

Bob Day also helped set up our individual editorial offices and provided us with budgets for office expenses and secretarial assistance. It was a smooth operation, with the Bethesda, and later the Washington, Publications Office always readily available for help and advice. He and Leon Campbell also reminded us that we were volunteers receiving no remuneration and that our own personal papers submitted for publication to the Journal of Virology would receive no special consideration, unlike the practise in other, non-ASM journals, but would be anonymously reviewed and handled by another editor. I always felt that papers from my laboratory received more-severe scrutiny than most others. We three editors agreed on high, almost draconian, standards of rigorous review to establish the highest publication standards. We agreed that rapid review, fast turnaround time, and early publication were essential to help establish the journal’s reputation. This meant that each editor had to pressure reviewers to evaluate manuscripts promptly and that we had to adhere as closely as possible to the 2-week review period. Bob Day was adamant about rapid and meticulous copyediting of accepted manuscripts and rode herd on the copy editors and printer to get each paper into the next available edition of the journal. Our rapid publication policy was so successful that it prompted a telephone call to me from my good friend George Hirst, founding editor in chief of our competitor Virology, who wanted to know if we were telling the truth in citing our submission dates and acceptance dates of published manuscripts and, if we were, how we did it. The only answer I could give to George Hirst was that, like Avis in the rental-car business, we were second aspiring to be first and had to try harder. Incidentally, my relations with George Hirst and his successor as editor in chief, my good friend Bill Joklik, were always extremely cordial and mutually supportive of our respective journals; there was never any feeling of animosity or unfriendly competitiveness, and we freely exchanged information and not infrequently published in each other’s journals.

At the risk of this minireview becoming excessively autobiographical, I feel compelled to mention a series of personal events that impacted on the early days leading up to the publication of the first issue of the Journal of Virology. I was on the faculty of the Medical School of Johns Hopkins University when Leon Campbell and I began discussing founding a new ASM journal. I had already made preliminary plans for a sabbatical leave starting in January 1967. I saw no reason to be concerned about a sabbatical interfering with my duties on the journal and, as I recall, neither did Leon Campbell. At the same time, I had agreed to begin serving the following year on the Virology Study Section of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as well as the Etiology Grants Review Panel of the American Cancer Society. As I was relatively young and as this occurred during a much more relaxed era of scientific research, I can recall no qualms about taking on three major extracurricular jobs. Somewhat more sobering, perhaps, was the offer shortly thereafter to assume the chairmanship of the Department of Microbiology at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, which was embarking, with substantial NIH support, on redirecting their efforts in the basic medical sciences to fundamental research. The temptation was too great, and I accepted the job, starting 1 January 1967, with the understanding that the first 6 to 7 months would be spent on my planned sabbatical with Henry Harris at Oxford University. It turned out to be a profitable and glorious time and included the opportunity to roam about the United Kingdom attending meetings and presenting talks and seminars. One seminar that related to the Journal of Virology was at the University of Birmingham at the invitation of Professor Peter Wildy, who, unbeknownst to me, had recently become the founding editor in chief of the Journal of General Virology, which was to be published in Great Britain beginning at exactly the same time as the Journal of Virology. I had a wonderful time with Peter, his family, and colleagues after I assured him that I and the American Society for Microbiology had absolutely no intention of undercutting the British Society for General Microbiology by starting a virology journal just to compete with the British virology journal. Peter Wildy and I remained good friends, and I saw him frequently after he moved to Cambridge University. In fact, to my eye, there were always very cordial and collegial relationships among the three premier virus research journals: Virology (the blue journal), the Journal of General Virology (the red journal), and the Journal of Virology (the yellow journal in its early days); the color-coded eponyms were given by Peter Wildy, based on the colors of their respective covers.

The first issue of the Journal of Virology appeared in February 1967, during the time I was in England. The papers appearing in the first and the second issues of the journal were accepted for publication during the time I was still resident in Baltimore. In order to launch the journal properly, many of the early published papers were solicited by Norman Salzman, Lloyd Kozloff, and me. Norman and Lloyd graciously covered for me during my 7-month sabbatical. Volume 1 comprised six bimonthly issues extending over the 1967 calendar year. The first volume consisted of 1,283 pages; compare that with the 1998 Journal of Virology (volume 72), which was 10,327 pages (of a larger size and in a new format), roughly equivalent to a 10-fold increase in size in 32 years. The authors of the first paper ever published in the Journal of Virology were Werner Henle and his colleagues (2). Quite a few other distinguished virologists published papers in volume 1, among them Fred Brown, Robert Chanock, Richard Franklin, Harry Ginsberg, Angus Graham, Maurice Green, Robert Haselkorn, Robert Huebner, Hilary Koprowski, Edwin Lennette, Karl Maramorosch, Joseph Melnick, Erling Norrby, Elmer Pfefferkorn, Lennart Philipson, Norman Salzman, Aaron Shatkin, Robert Sinsheimer, Sol Spiegelman, Volker ter Meulen, and Peter Vogt. From the beginning, the Journal of Virology had an international flavor, with papers in volume 1 emanating from authors in Austria, Australia, England, Germany, Japan, and Sweden.

By 1968, the Journal of Virology was being published monthly, and in 1969, it was published in two volumes a year instead of one; the two volumes (volumes 3 and 4) published in 1969 printed out to 1,540 pages. Growth was steady thereafter, reaching 4,035 pages in 1976, at which time the journal was published in four volumes a year. The editorial workload had increased significantly enough to warrant an increase in the number of editors to five, with Myron (Mike) Levine joining us in 1972 and Aaron Shatkin joining us in 1973. By 1975, having served two 5-year terms with great distinction, Norman Salzman and Lloyd Kozloff decided to resign and get on with their lives and research. Replacing them were Dwight Anderson and Lennart Philipson, joining Mike Levine, Aaron Shatkin, and me as the five editors, three to cover animal viruses and two to cover bacteriophages, even though Mike Levine was gradually moving into herpesvirus research. The appointment of Lennart Philipson, a European scientist, as an editor was a calculated risk based on a greatly expanding number of papers contributed by overseas virologists, particularly from Europe. Lennart Philipson was then on the faculty of the University of Uppsala in Sweden and was recognized as a superb scientist and as a fine contributor to the Journal of Virology with service on the editorial board. Lennart did a wonderful job as editor and was readily able to serve as a prime conduit for submission of papers from European laboratories. In retrospect, the logistics of how the ASM Publications Office handled submitted and accepted manuscripts made it a daunting and cumbersome job. I can certainly attest to the problems of editing a journal based in the United States from a station abroad. In 1976, I took sabbatical leave again in Oxford to work in the Medical Research Council Cellular Immunology Laboratory of James Gowans. I naively decided there was no reason to interrupt my editorial duties, so I moved my editorial office to my flat just outside Oxford, with a rented typewriter and my wife as secretary, funded by the ASM Publications Office with the blessings of Leon Campbell and Bob Day. Routing and rerouting manuscripts turned out to be an interminable task, to which my wife can readily attest. We had to use British postage to mail manuscripts of course, and my wife had to repeatedly convince our local postmistress in Iffley village that we were forced to send everything by airmail and not by surface mail, the cost of which appalled the parsimonious postmistress. Therefore, although the Journal of Virology is truly international in scope, I and Lennart Philipson strongly recommended that it not be edited abroad.

In 1977, I was appointed to a third 5-year term as editor in chief, but Mike Levine and Aaron Shatkin stepped down as editors after their first terms and were replaced by David Denhardt and Edward Scolnick, respectively, while Harry Ginsberg succeeded Lennart Philipson in 1979. This was a time of transition, not only for the Journal of Virology, but also for other ASM journals, the Publications Board, and the ASM Publications Office. In 1978, Simon Silver became editor in chief of the Journal of Bacteriology, replacing Leon Campbell, who had held the position for more than 10 years. The end of Campbell’s tenure was dictated by a new ASM regulation that limited the tenure of an ASM journal editor to two 5-year terms (my tenure was grandfathered to allow completion of my third term because I was reelected a year previously). Campbell’s departure was followed closely by the resignation as ASM managing editor of Robert Day, Campbell’s close friend and long-time associate. Day was succeeded as managing editor pro tempore by his long-time associate Gisella Pollock and then in 1981 by Walter G. Peter III.

The most significant of these cascading events in the period around 1978 was the forced resignation of Leon Campbell as chairman of the ASM Publications Board. Over the previous decade under Campbell’s leadership, the Publications Board was a dominant force in ASM affairs. The Publications program had grown, and in 1978, ASM was publishing seven journals and many books. Publications accounted for most of the ASM budget, generated enormous visibility for the Society, and undoubtedly led to a quantum jump in ASM membership. The editors in chief of all ASM journals were members of the Publications Board, as were certain ASM officers. We met at least twice a year and worked throughout the year to promote new journals and books, as well as handling other ASM affairs. An example of our accomplishments was the activity of the Publications Board’s Journals Committee, of which I was chairman during the period 1977 to 1982. During this period, we decided it would be fruitful to institute a new ASM journal, to be called Molecular and Cellular Biology. Aaron Shatkin, at the time an editor of the Journal of Virology, was recruited as editor in chief of the new journal, which took off like a rocket to become one of the premier journals in the field. It is interesting to reflect in 1999 on the similarity, almost the interchangeability, of the papers in Molecular and Cellular Biology and those in the Journal of Virology. As science evolves, so do ASM publications. It is also appropriate to give great credit to Helen Whiteley, who succeeded Leon Campbell as chairman of the ASM Publications Board; Helen was a peerless leader and a good friend.

In July 1982, I stepped down as editor in chief of the Journal of Virology after 15 years and was succeeded by my coeditor and friend Edward M. Scolnick, then at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda and later at Merck Sharp & Dohme. By 1982, the size of the journal had increased to 4,518 printed pages. The journal continued to increase in size and scope under the leadership of Ed Scolnick, particularly with the expansion into viral pathogenesis. Robert Krug replaced me as the editor with primary responsibility for RNA viruses, and in 1983, Bernard Fields and Michael Oldstone were appointed editors with primary responsibility for medical virology, viral immunology, and viral pathogenesis, increasing the total number of editors from five to seven. In February 1985, Ed Scolnick resigned as editor in chief of the Journal of Virology to become a president at Merck Sharp & Dohme and was succeeded by Arnold J. Levine of Princeton University. Under Arnie’s tenure, the journal’s expansion in number of pages published, in number of editors, in size of the editorial board, and, I dare say, in the quality and scope of the research published continued. Even the format of the journal changed; in 1984, the size of the journal increased to an 8 × 10 format, allowing more material per page, and starting in 1987, the journal was published as a single volume for each calendar year. The Levine era, along with the shorter Scolnick era, represents a period of enormous growth in the intellectual quality, size, and scope of the Journal of Virology, which can now be considered among the premier biomedical journals of the world. This prosperity has continued since July 1994, when Arnold Levine was succeeded as editor in chief by his Princeton colleague Thomas E. Shenk. I need not remind everyone that volume 72 of the Journal of Virology printed out to 10,327 pages, which is nearly 10 times the size of volume 1 in 1967. The 1999 Table of Contents contains papers in sections such as Structure and Assembly, Replication, Recombination and Evolution, Virus-Cell Interactions, Transformation and Oncogenesis, Gene Therapy, Vaccines and Antiviral Agents, and Pathogenesis and Immunity. In addition to being a virology journal, as its founders envisioned, the Journal of Virology has evolved into a premier research journal of cellular and molecular biology, genetics, oncology, and pathogenesis. There is little question that, in its 32 years of existence, the Journal of Virology has progressed enormously and kept up with the times.

In addition to the many satisfactions associated with serving as an editor of the Journal of Virology, or I dare say any peer-reviewed journal, are the not-infrequent tribulations. The inviolate code of ethics of never betraying the identity of the reviewers of submitted papers can pose problems that make more enemies than friends. I remember vividly sending a paper for review to the two referees recommended in a cover letter by the senior author, a world-renowned scientist. The paper came back with two scathing reviews and absolute recommendations for rejection; I had no alternative but to refuse publication, politely and with regrets. This prompted an irate telephone call from the famous scientist excoriating me for not sending his paper for review to the people he recommended and stating that he would never again submit a paper to my journal. I was tempted to tell him that he recommended the two reviewers who rejected his paper, but our ethics do not permit identifying the reviewers and I made an enemy. The concept of identifying reviewers of manuscripts by name was a recurring topic for discussion at meetings of the ASM Publications Board; the danger of undermining the peer review system if reviewers were revealed by name always prevented us from changing our policy.

I must confess to once tampering a bit with the ethic of never revealing the identity of a reviewer. This occurred with a paper on retroviruses in duck cells submitted by Howard Temin (4), probably the most prolific contributor to the Journal of Virology, with the possible exception of Bernard Roizman. Unfortunately, I did not keep a copy of the review, which pointed out that Howard and his colleague had misidentified the species of the Muscovy and Pekin (Anas platyrhynchos) ducks whose cells were being studied. The referee in his review supplied superb drawings of the two different species of ducks, as well as pointing out in a Walt Disney-like drawing that these two species differed from another, Anas donaldus, or Donald Duck. I could not resist sending this review to Howard Temin, who, as I knew he would, immediately identified the reviewer as Peter Vogt, known to all of us as a truly talented artist as well as a great scientist.

One other incident when I slightly overstepped the bounds of editorial ethics comes to mind. It concerns a paper of my own that we had submitted to the Journal of Virology, in which we described for the first time the structural proteins of vesicular stomatitis virus or, for that matter, of any other negative-strand RNA virus, identified by the then-brand-new technique of polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (3). As is our policy, this paper was handled by my coeditor Norman Salzman and anonymously reviewed. To my amazement, several days after its submission I received a paper for review by C. Y. Kang and L. Prevec (1) of McMaster University, submitted on exactly the same day as mine and describing almost the identical experiments with very similar results. I was unsure of the proper ethical procedure, but after consultation with coeditor Norman Salzman, I immediately sent Lud Prevec a copy of my simultaneously submitted manuscript and suggested that we publish them back-to-back in the same issue of the journal, if they were accepted for publication. Lud Prevec and Yong Kang, who became close friends and respected colleagues, readily agreed, and the two papers subsequently appeared in the same issue of the Journal of Virology in 1969. These vignettes reflect in a small way the history of the beginnings of a journal and its trials and tribulations.

In conclusion, I am compelled to say that among the most significant and rewarding events in my scientific career are playing a role in the founding of the Journal of Virology and serving as its editor in chief for 15 memorable years. Today, I burst with pride and amazement when reading each new issue of the journal in print or on the Internet. It has gone far beyond my wildest dreams to become a truly top scientific journal, thanks largely to my successors. Thanks is particularly due for the support of all my colleagues on the original editorial board, who served unselfishly and with great vision, particularly my coeditors Norman Salzman and Lloyd Kozloff. The Journal of Virology is also a tribute to the vision and support of Leon Campbell and the American Society for Microbiology and its staff, particularly Bob Day. Having been a member of the American Society for Microbiology for almost half a century, I am honored and deeply grateful to be asked to contribute this article to the centenary celebration of the society of which we are all so proud.