Editor's Note

Article Outline

• Copyright

So what's new here? As we discussed in the last issue, there will be many changes to the Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery during the next few issues. If you have been a reader for a while, you'll certainly notice some of them. And as the recent political elections in the United States taught us, everybody must be a candidate for change. Notably, the cover is different, changed after we reviewed and vetted numerous covers, trying to make it stand out more for you. The internal appearance of the Journal is also different. The fonts have been changed as well, and we also changed some highlights in various portions of the articles. Both of these changes were suggested by numerous readers of the Journal.

The layout and structure of the Journal will also be different. We will be trying to include some different articles in each issue. Specifically, we want review articles, current concepts articles, and even an occasional technique article, with these articles championed by Review Editor Gerry Williams, MD, now the forthcoming President of the American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons (ASES). Further, the Journal will be separated into sections: Shoulder, Elbow, Basic Science, and Review or other Special Articles. The order of the sections will change from issue to issue, but this will be the basic outline, which hopefully, will allow you to find articles you are interested in more easily. In addition, we will try to group some articles to get something of a forum on certain topics. An example would be if we had several good articles on single-row vs double-row rotator cuff repairs, we would try to present them to you in clusters so you could explore this subject in more depth. From time to time, on more controversial topics or with a possibly controversial article, I hope to have a recognized expert on the topic discuss the article and review it in light of previous literature.

But a lot of the above changes are only cosmetic, although all are designed to make reading the Journal easier and more visually appealing. If you look closely, you'll notice some finer nuisances. The abstracts will eventually be different from the old look, although it takes a bit of time to fully achieve this because of the time lag of getting papers to publication. The new abstracts will eventually have slightly more structure in a standardized format. In addition, they will always contain a series of keywords relating to the main topics in the article, which allows for easier searching when you are trying to find an article in various databases. We will also always include, where pertinent, the level of evidence for each article. This analysis will be done by one of our new Associate Editors, John E. “Jed” Kuhn, MD, well known for his expertise in evidence-based medicine. The articles themselves will also include more information about any possible biases, with disclaimers listed as necessary, and we will always request IRB (Institutional Review Board) information for all such studies.

Hopefully, the above will help improve some of the quality of the papers we publish. But the review method and editorial process is changing as well. If you look at the masthead, you will note that the Editorial Board is much different than in 2008. The old masthead listed editors by regions. As a very international journal, this was born out of the snail-mail era of review. But we wish to show no bias towards any region, and one way we are approaching that is to eliminate regional editors, which is much easier to do now that the Journal is reviewed entirely online. Dr Roger Emery, formerly a European editor from the United Kingdom, has also now assumed a new role for the Journal, that of Deputy International Editor. Together, we hope to make the Journal accessible to all regions, all nations, and all surgeons, both as readers and as authors, with as little bias as possible. You will also note that we have now listed Assistant Editors, who will serve as the principle reviewers for the Journal, although not the only ones. These are reviewers who have stood out, and this is one way we can give them credit for their work on behalf of the Journal. And to further internationalize the Journal, these Assistant Editors, you will note, represent many different countries around the world. On every paper, we hope to include, if possible, one North American reviewer and one international reviewer.

The review process will be different as well. In 2006 Bob Neviaser began instituting the double-blind review of papers, and this will be continued; again, in an attempt to eliminate as much bias as possible in the review process. We have also heard from our authors, who in the past were concerned about the long time to publication in our review process. Several internal changes have been made to expedite this process as much as possible, most of which Bob Neviaser began in 2007-08.

Several things are also available online. The Web site is changing, as is the print Journal. For several years now, case reports have been published only online, and you can find a lot of information on the Web site if you take some time to visit it. Once an article is accepted for publication, it is placed on the Web site even before its publication in hard-copy form. So keeping an eye on the Web site will help you stay completely up to date in the shoulder and elbow world. Finally, we hope to include more technique papers on the Web site, and even video technique papers eventually.

So we are changing. A medical journal is a conduit for learning, and it has been said, “To learn is to change. Education is a process that changes the learner.” Hopefully, all the changes we are enacting will enhance your shoulder and elbow education.