The Making and Unmaking of a Journal

Much has been made of the recent firing of George Lundberg, the editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) for 17 years. We've heard about timing the publication of papers on “hot” topics, the seeking of media attention, the intrusion of political agendas into scientific journal publishing. We've reacted strongly to strong personalities, puzzled over who should hire and fire journal editors, and rethought the principle of editorial freedom that underlies it all (1-5). What's gotten lost in all the shouting about personalities and principles, unfortunately, is the pragmatic issue of how hard it is to build a journal, and how easy it is to destroy one.

Putting out a biomedical journal is almost as much a performing art as an intellectual exercise, and an enormously complex one at that. Journals are needed because “one of the strictures of the scientific ethos is that a discovery does …