A New Publisher and Soon a New Editorial Team | Nature

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Pavilion, 3401 North Broad Street, Philadelphia,. Pennsylvania 19140, USA. E-mail: jrichter@ temple.edu. Figure 1. AJG's impact factor, 2003–2007. 2003. 2004.
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A New Publisher and Soon a New Editorial Team Joel E. Richter, MD, FACP, MACG1 and Nicholas J. Talley, MD, PhD, FACP, FACG2 Am J Gastroenterol 2009;104:268–269; doi:10.1038/ajg.2008.153

Did you notice the new changes when you opened your January issue of the Red Journal? Yes, there was another cover change (the third for our editorial team!) but also, more importantly, new formatting of the sections and an injection of color into all our tables, graphs, and charts. All these changes began this year following the selection by the ACG of Nature Publishing Group as the publisher of the American Journal of Gastroenterology. Let’s review the exciting changes in 2008 and the upcoming events for 2009.

Impact factor In 2007, our impact factor rose for the eighth straight year, to 6.10—nearly a 2.0-point increase over the past five years (Figure 1). We are proud to report that the AJG remains the fifth-ranked journal in our field and, in our view, is the leading clinical journal for US and international gastroenterologists. However, we must not be complacent, as our clinical competition has also improved. Gastrointestinal Endoscopy had a sharp rise in impact factor to sixth place, and Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology received a commendable first

Department of Medicine, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA; 2Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Department of Internal Medicine, Mayo Clinic Florida, Jacksonville, Florida, USA. Correspondence: Joel E. Richter, MD, FACP, MACG, Department of Medicine, Temple University, 3800 Parkinson Pavilion, 3401 North Broad Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19140, USA. E-mail: jrichter@ temple.edu 1

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impact factor, coming in at eighth on the list of the top 45 gastroenterology and hepatology journals.

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A new publisher The editorial team thanks Wiley-Blackwell for its excellent job in improving the Journal and growing our publication numbers over the past five years. We are very pleased with our new publisher, Nature Publishing Group, and the exciting and novel changes they have planned for our journal. With the first issue in January, we presented a thoroughly redesigned journal, one that meets the need for a journal that is easier to search through and read. The new cover incorporates larger, bolder type, and the interior pages are clearly marked at the corners with the article type and organ system, enabling a busy clinician to easily thumb through and find articles on a particular organ system without having to rely on the table of contents. In addition to these structural changes, all tables, graphs, charts, and the study highlights box will now be injected with color using a standard color palette. Readers will find the same level of attention paid to the new website, which will continue to be located at http://www.amjgastro.com. Beginning with the articles published in January 2009, their online counterparts are categorized by topic, making it effortless to search for articles by organ system. In addition, there will be early online publication weekly; the articles will appear online up to five weeks in advance of the print issue.

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Figure 1.  AJG’s impact factor, 2003–2007.

Search for the new Editorial team Fall 2008 saw the solicitation of names for potential new editors for the Journal. Fourteen outstanding candidates from top academic institutions in the United States and Canada applied. From this group, the ACG Executive Committee and Editors chose the six best candidates to give formal presentations to the Committee in New York City on 1 November 2008. The presentations were excellent, and many new and creative ideas were presented to help improve our journal and make it even more clinically and scientifically relevant. We are pleased to announce that the new Editors-inChief for the American Journal of Gastroenterology will be Paul Moayeddi, MD from McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada and William Chey, MD from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan. They will transition with our team over the summer, officially taking over in September, and will be responsible for the January 2010 issue of the Red Journal. Volume 104 | FEBRUARY 2009 www.amjgastro.com

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Thanks It has been an honor and a privilege to serve as Editors-in-Chief of the American Journal of Gastroenterology. We thank all our domestic and international Associate Editors for their dedication to this job, for the many manuscripts that they expertly managed, and for their lively participation in our weekly Wednesdaymorning conference calls. Thanks go to our diligent reviewers, who always strove

© 2009 by the American College of Gastroenterology

to critically improve the quality of our submitted manuscripts, while completing their reviews in two weeks or less. Finally, we must acknowledge our outstanding editorial staff at Omaha (Vince Furlong), Cleveland (Jeannie Bongorno), and Mayo Clinic (Sue Schlichter). They helped keep the manuscripts flowing and the reviewers on time and organized each issue of the Journal. In the end, we hope the constituency that was most pleased with our

efforts was the readership. We appreciate your comments in our yearly surveys and have endeavored to incorporate many of your suggestions. Our goal has never wavered—to be the “premier clinical journal for gastroenterology, endoscopy, and hepatology in the world.” We are pleased with where we have brought the Red Journal and wish the new editorial team great success as they take the helm of the finest clinical GI journal in the world.

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