1. The Soul of a (J)CHIMP
Recently, the editorial board of JCHIMP was challenged by a manuscript from a discipline other than internal medicine. The topic was relevant across all medical education venues – determining the cost of a learner, but the specific venue was a pediatric emergency department in a community hospital, and clearly did not involve internal medicine residency or faculty (though, interestingly, the study was done by two internists and an emergency medicine doctor that had interest in the topic). Would we consider this topic, though it was not an internal medicine study? Ultimately, the board decided that the questions that the article asked – how do we determine the cost of a learner in a teaching area, how might this affect resourcing and staffing, how does this change teaching and the triaging of patient types in that area – were of broad enough importance to forward the article to reviewers. The article was, ultimately, accepted, as well and published in this issue (). With this precedent, the editorial board signaled that, while it remains true to its core mission of publishing the scholarly activity of community hospital internal medicine residents and faculty, there is room in that mission for the publication of medical education research in other areas that could be universally applicable.
2. Publication process time
When we started JCHIMP IN 2011, there were 4 issues each year. We estimated an average of 10 weeks from submission to potential publication. By 2015, volume 5, in order to handle increasing numbers of submissions and to decrease delays, we increased to 6 issues a year. We also reduced review time limits to 2 weeks from 3.
Our publisher Taylor and Francis has agreed in 2019 to streamline the author check process which will allow manuscripts to be reviewed as soon as they are submitted. We can see the difference already in this issue, volume 9 #2, as co-author attestations was a major bottleneck previously, frequently adding weeks of delays before getting started in the review process.