It is my true pleasure and privilege to serve as your new editor-in-chief!
As a member of the Editorial Board, and then an associate editor over the last 3 years, I have been mentored by Al Stammers, Bob Groom, and Julie Wegner, the last three editor-in-chiefs, and have been impressed with how much the journal had progressed during their productive tenures. These are big shoes to fill, but I pledge to do my best to continue this advancement, with a passion from having benefitted greatly through this journal since my earliest encounter with the perfusion profession. This happened during my undergraduate bioengineering years at Syracuse University, well before “www” existed. I was hungrily seeking more information about this profession that I was considering making my own. I prowled the stacks of the next-door SUNY Upstate Medical Center Library, and my efforts were rewarded when I finally found JECT! I can’t say I understood everything I read then, but thinking back, I remember the thrill of discovering new knowledge. To this day, I feel that JECT was, and is, one of the best academic tools to represent our profession and to disseminate information about what we do as well as how to improve our practices. I value this opportunity to serve our profession. I suppose it was aspirations to serve like this that made me decide to pursue a PhD in physiology while in perfusion school in the first place. NIH training grants funded my studies and I always aim to pay that forward!
As I was preparing for my inaugural issue, we learnt of the passing of the editor-in-chief of our society’s inaugural issue from his widow. If you look at the list of past EICs, Edward C. Berger is listed first (1969–1972). He was also the 3rd AmSECT president. I did not have the good fortune of meeting him, and even though it has been a year since he passed (obituary date: March 25, 2018), I would like to pay tribute to him because I can only imagine how much more formidable a challenge it must have been to launch a completely new journal in our then-young profession! Of his many activities that served our profession, this one resulted in our thriving journal. Thank you, Ed Berger—may you rest in peace with the satisfaction of knowing your legacy here will continue.
To be honest, the challenge of leading this journal has been a bit daunting. But I am comforted by the fact that we have a strong editorial board and associate editors whom I have gotten to know well over the last few years and who have been committed to mentoring me. Furthermore, while under training with Dr. Wegner, I have come to realize just how wonderful our peer reviewers are and how vital a role they play. As a consumer of the journal, I may not have really appreciated just how necessary these cogs are in the most important wheel of the publication machinery! To the authors, the peer reviewer may often be regarded as the obstacle to overcome for publication. In reality, our best peer reviewers do much more than act like umpires making decisions. During my stint as editor-in-chief-in-training, a further perspective emerged. I now realize that I will be absolutely dependent on the willingness of our peer reviewers to say yes when I ask them to volunteer their time to review our manuscripts. The “ask” is more than that as I will also need them to do it in a timely fashion and with enough feedback and recommendations to help make decisions and for the authors to revise appropriately. This is a lot to ask! And so I would like to start my tenure in this position by recognizing all our peer reviewers ahead of time for their service to our journal. In addition, whereas we have always had devoted perfusionists as excellent peer reviewers, I would like to make everyone aware that we also have extremely dedicated non-perfusionists making frequent valuable contributions. In particular, I became aware that physicians like Drs. Kramer and Hessel (see editorial board member list) have said “yes” frequently and have been conducting attentive and extensive peer reviews. I welcome your continued mentorship of our authors and your service to the journal and hope that all our peer reviewers will continue saying yes as we continue in our efforts to carry JECT to new heights in boosting academic activity in perfusion sciences.
I look forward to meeting and thanking all peer reviewers personally someday, so if you happen to attend an AmSECT International meeting, please seek me out and introduce yourself. Likewise to all authors and readers, I welcome your contact by e-mail (JECTeditor@amsect.org) on any matter, as I aim to serve you well as your next editor-in-chief.