During the 20th century, the average life expectancy of the world's population doubled. This achievement was largely due to the successful control and prevention of infectious diseases heralded by widespread use of antibiotics and vaccines including the eradication of smallpox. Over optimistic claims of the “end of infectious diseases” were dashed by the late 20th century, when AIDS was discovered and antibiotic resistance emerged. At the beginning of the 21st century, we now face a mounting list of challenges from emerging and reemerging infectious diseases such as SARS, tuberculosis, malaria, avian influenza, swine influenza, MERS, Ebola, and Zika.
The overall impact of this renewed wave of infectious diseases is also influenced heavily by the human activities on the earth including environmental degradation and climate change, human demographic structure and behavior changes, war and conflicts, changes in agricultural practices and land use, urbanization and globalization, fast movement and global transportation, inappropriate use of drugs, microbial evolution and adaptation with resistance. Without significant changes in human activities and increasing awareness of their importance for public health, infectious diseases will not only continue to place a burden on society, but are likely to pose an increasing threat into the future.
In recent years, many countries have reinforced prevention and control efforts against infectious diseases and we have seen an increasing trend of investment in infectious disease research. Noticeably, we have observed increasing usage and growing reception of mathematical modelling to inform and support public health policy and practice. Novel mathematical frameworks and techniques inspired by issues of infectious disease prevention and control have been developed and used to describing the infection dynamics, forecasting epidemic trends and evaluating current and potential intervention strategies. The increasingly active interaction of modelers and infectious disease epidemiologists, clinicians and public health practitioners is reflected in the research publications in infectious disease modelling. According to the Scopus database of Elsevier, the number of published research papers in infectious disease modelling jumped from around 1300 a year in 2005 to 3500 in 2015. These publications are derived from scientists from more than 150 countries, which show broad interests and global needs. Among the total publications, major contributions are made by scientists from the USA (39%), UK and China (both 12.9%), as well as those countries with around 5% of contributions, including India, Canada, France, Australia, Germany, Italy and South Africa. The publication shares reflect the current infectious disease modelling research level in these countries. The rising trends are expected to continue in the future.
While infectious disease modeling is itself a multidisciplinary research field, it is interesting to note that much of infectious disease modelling research is conducted by international collaborating teams. For example, more than two thirds of infectious disease modeling publications led by Chinese scientists are conducted through international collaborations. The spread of diseases recognizes no borders. In response, the infectious disease modelling research has evolved to be and should continue to be conducted across scientific, geographical, social and political boundaries.
With the huge expansion in the field of infectious diseases modelling, there is a critical need for dedicated journals that will provide a focal point of the infectious disease modelling research community. Our journal, Infectious Disease Modelling (IDM) aims to meet this critical need. More than 3500 infectious disease modelling research papers are published in over 100 journals each year. The top 20 journals publishing the most infectious disease modelling papers only account for less than a quarter of the total infectious disease modelling papers. Among the top 20 journals publishing the most infectious disease modelling papers in 2015, one published 6.7% of the total infectious disease modelling papers (Plos One), five between 1 and 1.7% and the rest below 1%. Even after reading a significant portion of the aforementioned journals, one cannot get an overview about infectious disease modelling, our specialized IDM aims to facilitate our readers to get a global view in the field.
In the information age and big data era, huge databases concerning multi-dimensional aspects of infectious disease spread have been or will be collected in many countries and regions. From this viewpoint, the golden time for research on infectious disease modelling has arrived. To meet the challenge and seize the opportunity, more biologically and epidemiologically relevant models need to be developed, for proactive assessment of epidemic potential and impact of prevention and control strategies, for rapid response to emerging infectious disease public health issues, and for retrospective evaluation of intervention policy and programs. Equally importantly, to develop the models and analyses relevant to disease prevention and control, this interdisciplinary research field must also push the frontiers of the computational, mathematical and statistical modeling framework, methodology and technology and must grow the linkage between mathematical modelling and statistical methods inspired by the need to manage large simulation models. IDM will provide a platform to grow the reciprocal linkage between modelers and their end-user communities, and to refine the bidirectional translation between modelling and infectious disease policy and practice.
The IDM Journal aims to promote research in the interface of mathematical modelling, infectious disease data retrieval and analysis, and public health policy and practice. The journal welcomes original research contributing to the enhancement of this interface, understanding the disease transmission dynamics, predicting the epidemic trends, and evaluating options for intervention. The journal encourages review articles of cutting edge methodologies and discussions on strategies of control and intervention to support evidence based public health policy.
The launching of this journal has been the result from a tremendous teamwork of the IDM Editorial Board, made up of around 30 scientists in the IDM fields from across world. The new journal would not have been borne without the generous professional support from the KeAi, a joint Publishing House between the Elsevier and the Chinese Science Press.
The Editorial Board, Infectious Disease Modelling (IDM)
October 8, 2016
Footnotes
Peer review under responsibility of KeAi Communications Co., Ltd.