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Editor's World
- Frank Davidoff, MD, Editor
With this issue, I end my editorship of Annals. When I entered the editor's world six and a half years ago, I shared the common view that editors are in the enviable position of being able to shape a journal, choosing among submitted papers, inviting others, and publishing editorial opinions. Editing Annals has certainly given me that opportunity and more, including the launch of the journal's first fully functional Web site (www.annals.org); publication of supplements on topics ranging from diabetes and hemochromatosis, to the use of large databases, and research on symptoms; as well as series on systematic reviews, physicians as leaders, ambulatory care, and drugs and drug therapy. On my watch, we introduced new journal features, including the Update series, Medical Writings, and On Being a Patient, and redesigned the print journal.
But during this time I've also come to know another and perhaps darker side of editing, namely that authors often see editors as irrelevant at best, or an impediment at worst. Having been a researcher and author in my time, I empathize with their concerns. Research is a creative endeavor, and all authors therefore feel, as I did, that they've done the “real” work. After all, like a parent (or an artist), the author is the one who conceives the project, nurtures it, and gets it ready to send it out into the world (1). By contrast, the journal editorial process seems pretty much like an afterthought, and a rather fussy, mechanical one at that. How can some editor, a perfect stranger, and not even an expert in the field, presume to get in the way of publishing the author's compelling and important piece of work? (Or, as one Annals author recently put it to us, only half-jokingly, “How dare you mess with the Mona …
