FIGUREFIGURE
As I move into the position of Editor-in-chief of JCR for 2004-2007, I first want to thank Gary Balady, MD, and his Associate Editors, Mark Williams, PhD, Andy Ries, MD, and Phil Greenland, MD, for an absolutely excellent job of editing JCR for the past 3 years. Mark and Andy will be staying on for 3 more years as Associate Editors, but Phil Greenland will be moving on, as he will become Editor-in-Chief of the highly prestigious AMA journal, The Archives of Internal Medicine. We are proud of his association with JCR for the past 3 years as he provided us with wisdom, experience, and invaluable support. Accordingly, I have recruited a new Associate Editor: Erika Froelicher, RN, PhD, to fill that position. Her expertise in clinical nursing and her extensive research experience in cardiac rehabilitation and preventive cardiology will serve our readers well. Gary Balady, MD will remain as Co-editor.
Dr Balady's leadership has resulted in many advances at JCR in the past 3 years. These include the implementation of a simplified electronic submission process that has resulted in the fact that JCR now receives more than 100 manuscript submissions each year, an increase of more than 70% compared with 4 years ago. The Editorial Board has been expanded with inclusion of international experts in preventive cardiology. Turnaround time for manuscript review has been shortened and we will work on this further.
A new feature that started in the January/February 2004 issue is the availability of Continuing Education credits for our readers. This is in addition to our recently instituted Clinical Reviews, Clinical Case Reports, and Editorials devoted to newly published manuscripts, all written by established experts in the field.
I hope to continue to advance the excellence of JCR by including an increased number of articles per issue. This is made possible by word count limitations we have instituted over the past 12 months. I also hope to continue to advance a focus on Cardiopulmonary Prevention, added to the topics of Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation and Exercise Physiology that we have emphasized in the past. No medical journal has clearly staked out the territory of Preventive Cardiology or Pulmonology and this seems a natural direction for the Journal, to further increase its impact. In our clinical lives, we do not wait for a cardiac event or late-stage chronic lung disease before instituting aggressive preventive measures, therefore the Journal should move some of its focus to earlier in the preventive process as well.
Finally, we need to address the expanded role of the Nurse Clinician in the delivery of preventive services in many settings, including cardiopulmonary rehabilitation centers, chronic disease management programs, lipid clinics, and weight loss programs.
With Gary Balady's 3 years of experience at the helm to guide me, I am confident that we can further move JCR to the top of the field of Cardiopulmonary Prevention and Rehabilitation.