June 2011 was a change-over for the editorial office of the Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care (SJPHC). Since 2003, editor-in-chief Jakob Kragstrup and editorial secretary Lise Stark have been guiding, managing and promoting the SJPHC. After an incredible eight years as the ‘father and mother’ of SJPHC, it is now time to focus on other tasks.
Jakob Kragstrup was appointed editor-in-chief of the journal after some years as the Danish national editor. Since 1993, Jakob has also been the Research Director of the Research Unit for General Practice in Odense as well as professor at the University of Southern Denmark.
Jakob took over a well-established medical journal that, as many other journals at the time, was paper-based, very little was computerized and the economy was poor. Jakob and Lise took over at a time when there was a tremendous development in the electronic media and a complete change in the way scientific papers were published. Earlier, doctors favoured a paper version of their journal. Suddenly there was an increasing number of open access journals making individual papers became available through the internet to every scientist in the world. This resulted in a considerable increase in the impact for those journals.
At the same time there was a need for more effective editorial pathways to reduce the costs and thereby give the medical journals a possibility to survive. Another important, and perhaps the most important issue in these first years, was the fast growing importance of bibliometric assessment of journals with the impact factor (IF) as the best example.
Therefore, Jakob had to decide how to get from a paper-based Nordic journal to a web-based, high-impact and open-access journal with world-wide impact to family practice. Before 2000, the impact factor of the journal was around 0.5 to 0.8, and today it is around 2. In other words, the impact of the journal has increased at least three-fold, meaning that the individual papers in SJPHC are increasingly used world-wide in the knowledge-base of family medicine.
Another achievement is that the journal now provides free and open access to all readers throughout the world. It also gives first online access which means that papers are published electronically before being published in the paper version.
Jakob not only achieved these important goals for a scientific and international journal. He also, together with innovative people, was involved in establishing the Nordic Federation for General Practice where SJPHC played a central role. With a fantastic business sense combining effective editorial management with the decision to continue with a hard-copy version together with full electronic open access, SJPHC is today in a safer economic position than many other journals.
We know that behind every successful man is a woman. Lise Stark started as a PA for Jakob from the very beginning in Odense, and she naturally took over the secretarial work when Jakob became editor-in-chief. Lise has been exceptional in managing the editorial office. She cares for editors, gives advice to authors, reads proofs and listens to thousands of apologies. And in the end, we always had four high-quality yearly issues of SJPHC.
What many may not be aware of is that a few years after the foundation of Nordic Federation of General Practice (NFGP), Jakob and Lise also took over managing this company. This in fact means that, besides producing an international journal, Lise and Jakob also made it possible for Nordic researchers to attend the Nordic Congresses for General Practice, and for us all to have a Nordic Society for family medicine.
We all owe Jakob and Lise a lot, and I encourage you to send them all the best thoughts. We wish them good luck and success in the time to come.