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Editor, Proceedings of the American Thoracic Society, Chicago, Illinois
In the past 15 months, PATS editors have created a new journal for the society—something superseding the supplements of the AJRCCM and opening additional educational horizons. The leadership of the ATS has encouraged me to share with the readers my evolving vision as Editor. This editorial necessarily begins with a restatement of the goals I formulated with the leadership as articulated in my first editorial (1).
The primary goal of PATS was to create a journal containing one or more topical symposia to provide in-depth insight into contemporary issues of clinical and/or scientific importance to the members of our Society. The notion is to march from bench to bedside in each symposium, recognizing at the same time that purely clinical or purely basic proceedings also have a place in our Society.
To approach topics that might not normally be sponsored by industry, we have created the virtual symposium—symposia without actual meetings that assemble talent from around the world to elucidate broad-based topics. The only agenda of these symposia is the interest of our readers. I believe the ATS will continue to establish itself as the premiere Society for delivering cutting-edge information in respiratory and critical care medicine. To date, we have published three virtual symposia: The Compromised Host, Clinical and Research Frontiers in Pulmonary Imaging, and the Masters Series. I gauge the response to be very positive to these endeavors, and I thank our sponsors in industry, who agreed to support publication of these symposia without prior knowledge of their content. These include Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, and Boehringer Ingelheim. The expectation is that we may be able to move beyond the two symposia per year that are now budgeted by the Society and to develop a new concept as PATS emerges as a journal. We need to establish our educational goals and follow them wherever they lead.
It is particularly gratifying that the diverse conferences in the fields of stem cell research, genomics, epidemiology, radiology, clinic respiratory medicine, and some "regulars" in airway disease (Transatlantic Airway Conference and the Lund Conference) and critical care science (the Pittsburgh Conference) continue to tie into the high standards of nonpromotional science that we have set for the Journal. It is logical and appropriate that industry supports these symposia in the spirit of the American Medical Association and Pharmaceutical Manufacturers' Association guidelines. We are particularly gratified by the rapidity with which PATS has been selected for citation by PubMed/Medline, as well as by Chemical Abstracts. In time, we will seek an ISI citation factor; however, this requires two years of retrospective evaluation. As PATS is still in a formative process, we want to enter as soon as we can present the full spectrum of our work.
The Journal has other Society functions. The proceedings of the Society are the Proceedings in PATS. Thus far, we are including ATS Workshop Reports as well as the abstracts of our International Conference, which are neither Blue nor Red. In addition, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the National Institute for Environmental Health and Science, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other private nongovernmental agencies have approached us regarding publication. We are only too delighted to help in disseminating their reports.
This year we look forward to publishing six to eight volumes, including two virtual symposia: the Masters Series (included in the PATS 3[1] March issue) and Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis. For 2007, we plan to lead off with a symposium on Genomics of Respiratory Disease. We thus will have covered in these symposia major frontiers that have been identified for the next generation, including genomics and imaging.
I have no way of telling how often these symposia will be cited. Our symposia, workshops, and summaries certainly will be read by our members, and we are moving to make CME credit available to readers. Reviewers of articles now can obtain up to 3 hours of CME credit per paper (limit/year = 15). As my current goal is focused on a journal of high utility to our readers, we will strongly discourage the use of some tricks of the trade to achieve impact-factor ratings. Self-citation is not encouraged, and there will be no reviews designed to do so. References will be those that the reader needs wherever they are found. Some editions may be highly focused toward one segment of the readership and of little interest to others. In aggregate, though, we are on an interesting adventure. Outside agencies and chairs of independently organized conferences are contacting us in increasing numbers seeking PATS as a forum for their work. So in the end, I have only one goal: PATS should be the place to find current, definitive reviews of important meetings, real or virtual, and for statements of policy. PATS should be the journal of choice in which to have these published.
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