The Next Iteration of The Journal of the American Board of Family Practice

The Journal of the American Board of Family Practice has made the transition to a fully on-line journal. This widely accessible format promises to increase the visibility of the Journal to clinicians, residents, and researchers, plus it will promote greater awareness of the important work of the American Board of Family Practice.

Your new editors intend to take full advantage of the capabilities of the on-line format to improve usefulness during the coming years. Many thanks to Dr. John Geyman, outgoing editor (see Dr. Paul Young’s tribute at the front of the May-June issue), for all of his work over the years promoting excellence in family medicine research and specifically for making the initial transition to the electronic format.

Times are a-changing. Perhaps (oops, I know “perhaps” is wrong) some of you are like me. I can appreciate the ways technology helps through items such as better computer diagnostic tools, 24-hour bank tellers, on-line airline reservations, and Amazon.com, but sometimes I also fear it, such as how/when/why to switch our office to a computerized medical record system and—most important for this editorial—fully computerized electronic journals.

Let’s face it, we are familiar with: journals-in-the-john, journals-on-the-run, journals-stacked-on-the-shelf. Perhaps (and yes, “perhaps” is now the right word) you are regularly using PubMed, Medscape, Up-to-Date, or other on-line literature or knowledge databases. For you, it might be a slight leap to this new on-line–only format for the journal. If, however, you are among those who are still not entirely comfortable in the electronic age, we invite you to explore the Journal Web site. You can have it all: The manuscripts are easily accessed and read on the computer screen. You can also print out high-quality, readable copies of the latest family practice research to read at your leisure. Your office will be neater, too—no more worries about running out of shelf space for journal storage.

We are now fully electronic in final publication but not yet in all of the editorial processing. This transition presents many challenges, some of which are beyond us alone, but help is available through the marvelous assistance and support of the American Board of Family Practice, as well as from outside entities, namely, Cadmus Professional Communications and HighWire Press. We are moving toward totally on-line manuscript submission.

We will take advantage of our electronic format to make JABFP more pleasing to the eye and reader-friendly. Some changes will occur immediately; some will take time to develop. The articles will be easily readable on the computer screen. We want to make rapid responses from readers easier for you to send, thus making for lively, stimulating discussion among your colleagues. Please join in.

Through all this, we will be emphasizing the relevance to the clinical practice of family medicine.

Through our experiences in family medicine as clinicians, researchers, authors, and editors, we have learned a few key items that we will bring to JABFP:

• Family physicians have diverse, eclectic interests and needs. Thus, we will provide a broad range of types of articles and science from case reports, clinical reviews, hard-core science, and the epidemiologic and social sciences—as long as they are pertinent and helpful to the practice of family medicine.

• Family physicians like easy-to-read tables and figures, clarity of message, and take-home points. Thus, a considerable part of our editing effort will go toward making this happen.

• Contrary to common opinion, family physicians value their learning from research articles as much as from clinical reviews. (When we asked family physicians which articles in the Archives of Family Medicine changed their practice, they mentioned research articles more often than clinical reviews.) Thus, we will make sure research articles provide clinically appropriate information related to their subject matter.

• We want to expand the domain of the JABFP. We encourage submissions in such areas as sports medicine, rural medicine, and geriatrics, papers that you might have previously targeted to specialty journals. We plan to create a niche for articles on clinical and research ethics.

• We need help to make this journal the best it can be. Thus, we will ask for your input, your service as peer reviewers of articles, your submission of material for publication, and your readership.

One of our goals is to improve the quality of care in family practice. This is not to say we do not have good quality of care, but that new information can and does improve how we treat our patients. As such, we will publish research in family medicine. This is not just an illusory, fuzzy goal, but a drive. It has been a driver for careers, and a driver of the American Board of Family Practice’s decision to establish and maintain the Journal. To help make this goal happen, we have complete editorial freedom.