Stepping Up to the Plate

This being baseball season, “stepping up to the plate” seems an appropriate metaphor to describe the challenge and exhilaration we feel coaching a new team of deputy editors as we assume responsibility for the Journal of General Internal Medicine (JGIM). We are honored to be the next coeditors of JGIM. We follow a distinguished cadre of Editors—Suzanne and Robert Fletcher,¹ David Dale,² Sankey Williams,³ and Eric Bass⁴—who have guided the Journal to its current position as one of the best general medical journals in the world. In the past year, online access to JGIM doubled with close to 200,000 articles downloaded, JGIM's latest impact factor was 2.75 ranking it 15th among all general and internal medicine journals,⁵ and in “The Best of JGIM,” Eric Bass⁶ describes a wide array of articles on medical education, research, and clinical care that have been heavily cited in other articles and accessed electronically. Because of the work of these editors, our job will be easier.

Over the next 5 years, our mission is to make JGIM one of the world's top-ten medical journals while remaining responsive to the needs and views of SGIM members. This vision rests on two closely related principles: 1) JGIM should be the most common peer-reviewed journal in which SGIM members publish their scholarly work, reflecting SGIM's diverse members and their tripartite academic missions of service, teaching, and research; and 2) JGIM should serve our patients and their community by publishing the highest quality articles reflecting important advances in clinical care, the delivery of health services, and the education of their physicians. Our vision is also based on two underlying values: 1) peer review, although not infallible, is the best existing method for assuring JGIM's readership that published articles are of the highest quality and relevant to JGIM's mission, vision, and values; and 2) each article submitted to JGIM, whether ultimately accepted or rejected, should be improved by the peer review and editorial processes.

We see JGIM as first serving SGIM's members, who are predominantly members of academic divisions of general internal medicine, comprise a sizable majority of directors and associate directors of internal medicine residency and clerkship programs, and do much of the teaching of internal medicine to residents and medical students. Hence, JGIM should publish more content related to medical education than most (if not all) competing general medical journals. General internists are also more often involved in quality improvement and other health systems issues than are other academic physicians. Hence, JGIM should contain more heath services research and clinical epidemiologic articles than most general medical journals while maintaining its commitment to clinical care research. Instead of occupying a niche in the world of medical publishing (“niche” being a concept often too confining for academic general internists), we see JGIM as being the intersection between clinical medicine, clinical care research, health services research, and medical education. This intersection is filled with highly topical and controversial topics (e.g., patient safety, health system reform) that are likely to receive wide attention and citation. We will be dedicated to publishing articles that other clinicians, scientists, educators, and administrators will find useful and will cite in their own manuscripts that, in turn, will enhance the impact of JGIM and its authors. Clinical reviews are particularly helpful to JGIM's readers, and clinician scholars are encouraged to submit them. Finally, we will strive to continue JGIM's tradition of providing authors and reviewers highly personal, efficient, and top quality service in managing and reviewing manuscripts.

In this context, we begin our tenure with four specific goals for the Journal: 1) decrease the time from manuscript receipt to first author notification to a median of 45 days or less; 2) increase the total number of peer-reviewed articles published by at least 15% without requiring an increase in subscription costs; 3) increase the number of articles on medical education and doctor-patient interactions, and 4) enhance the development and use of the Internet-based electronic version of JGIM.

We are fortunate to have a talented corps of 18 deputy editors who will maintain the quality and timeliness of manuscript reviews (Table 1). We consider ourselves “deputy editors” as we will be acting as such for articles that fall into our areas of interest and expertise. We have expanded and decentralized our editorial team to diversify the team's backgrounds, expertise, and interests. To streamline the review process, we have expanded the role of the deputy editors in reviewing and making editorial decisions about manuscripts. We will also take full advantage of the Internet in processing manuscripts and monitoring Journal operations.

Table 1.

JGIM Deputy Editors

Name	Institution(s)	Areas of Expertise
Jasjit Ahluwalia, MD, MPH	University of Kansas School of Medicine	Underserved populations, behavioral interventions, clinical research training
Andrew Auerbach, MD	University of California at San Francisco	Hospital medicine, end-of-life care, perioperative medicine, cost-effectiveness analysis
Arlene Bierman, MD, MS	Ontario Women's Health Council; University of Toronto; Inner City Research Unit, St. Michael's Hospital	Aging, socioeconomic determinants of health, access to care, quality of care and performance measurement, health policy
Judith Bowen, MD	Oregon Health and Science University	Medical education, faculty and professional development, medical and clinical ethics
Helen Burstin, MD	Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality	Primary care safety and quality, health care disparities, health information technology, health policy
Marshall Chin, MD, MPH	University of Chicago School of Medicine	Quality of care, chronic disease, vulnerable populations, community-based participatory research
Marion Danis, MD	Department of Clinical Bioethics, National Institutes of Health	Ethics of health policy, ethics of rationing, uninsured, access to care, end-of-life care
Richard Frankel, PhD	Regenstrief Institute, Inc.; Indiana University School of Medicine; Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center	Qualitative research methods, clinician-patient communication, medical malpractice, professionalism, medical education
Martha Gerrity, MD, PhD	Oregon Health and Science University; Portland VA Medical Center	Medical education, measurement methods, survey research
Richard Hoffman, MD, MPH	University of New Mexico; New Mexico VA Health Care System	Clinical epidemiology, health services, meta-analysis, prostate diseases, colorectal cancer screening, diabetes
Ronnie Horner, PhD	Health Disparities Research Program, National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health; Duke University Medical Center	Epidemiology, health disparities, health outcomes, health services research, neurological disorders, translation research
Adina Kalet, MD, MPH	New York University School of Medicine	Medical education, faculty development, performance-based assessment, primary care competencies, vulnerable populations, clinician-patient communication
Victor Montori, MD, MSc,	Mayo Clinic College of Medicine	Organization of care for patients with chronic disease, clinical decision making, evidence-based medicine, meta-analyses, clinical diabetology
Anna Reisman, MD	Yale University School of Medicine	Literature and medicine, creative medical writing, telephone medicine, doctor-patient communication
Somnath Saha, MD, MPH	Oregon Health and Science University; Portland VA Medical Center	Racial disparities in health care, access to care, patient-physician relations
Wally Smith, MD	Virginia Commonwealth University, Medical College of Virginia Campus	Clinical decision making, measuring and improving quality of care, underserved populations, sickle cell disease
David Stern, MD, PhD	University of Michigan Medicine	Medical education, qualitative research, professionalism, international medical education
William Tierney, MD	Indiana University School of Medicine; Regenstrief Institute, Inc.; Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center	Medical informatics, health services research, quality improvement, clinical epidemiology, practice-based research networks, international medicine
Wanzhu Tu, PhD	Regenstrief Institute, Inc.; Indiana University School of Medicine	Biostatistics
Morris Weinberger, PhD	Department of Health Policy and Administration, University of North Carolina; Center for Health Services Research, Durham VA Medical Center	Quality of care, pharmaceutical care, patient-centered care

We close by asking SGIM members and JGIM readers to participate with us in three ways. First, because scholarship is at the heart of progress in academic medicine, we encourage SGIM members to write articles relevant to their area(s) of focus and submit them to JGIM. A recent survey by the SGIM office shows that a high percentage of SGIM members read JGIM regularly. Hence, it is the best vehicle to present your work to your SGIM colleagues. Second, please consider being a reviewer. We recognize that this is sometimes viewed as a thankless job, but it represents an important professional obligation. Careful, timely reviews are the life's blood of all peer-reviewed journals. and third, we strongly urge you to provide us with suggestions and feedback about journal operations and how we might improve our review processes and the content of JGIM. Finally, we thank you in advance for your support and participation and also thank the SGIM Council for providing us this opportunity for personal growth and service to our professional community. We especially thank Eric Bass and his editorial team for handing us a terrific journal to manage. We are excited to be working with SGIM and the readers of JGIM and wholeheartedly agree with Suzanne and Robert Fletcher: “There can be no greater satisfaction, no greater connection with a field, than to edit the Society's journal.”