With today's advanced technology, the World Wide Web has accelerated the exchange of information to reach nearly warp-speed results. Instant information is available with the mere pressing of our fingertips to a computer or cell phone keyboard-reaching around the globe disseminating key facts to the wound care community, consumers, and academe. The quality and quantity of the immense amount of informatics related to healthcare in general, and wound care specifically, are highly fragmented and, at times, can be overwhelming to the end user. The hunter and gatherer of useful and timely clinically relevant information must sift through layers of Web sites, homepages, advertisements, and just plain litter strewn along the information highway.
To streamline this gathering of information, our goal at Advances in Skin & Wound Care journal is to provide you with "one-stop shopping" for all your online needs. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, our publisher and a Wolters Kluwer company, recently launched myLWW, a new, more personalized innovative interface that integrates medical journal content and various media to enable collaboration and sharing among wound care practitioners and other medical professionals. Although the site is changing, our Web address remains the same: http://www.woundcarejournal.com.
Our new site will be easy to navigate, and throughout the coming year added features will include:
* all issues ofAdvances in Skin & Wound Carefrom 1988 forward. All articles will be free to subscribers.
* online-only text, including news reports; links to resources for nurses, physicians, and patients; and announcements of new developments in wound care and healthcare.
* podcasts and videos. We plan to soon feature an audio description of highlights from the monthly issue, as well as podcast interviews with authors and others on various topics. We will welcome video submissions of procedures and cases (with patient permission) and ideas for posting peer-reviewed audio or video material.
* editors' picks and top picks on the home page that tell readers what we think is particularly noteworthy and what articles users have accessed most often.
* information for authors, as well as reviewers, patients, and journalists.
* blogs, introducing you to new and diverse peers and professionals in the field.
* networking opportunities, including readers' comments on articles and other posts about wound care and healthcare.
* opportunities to create your own collections of articles and audiovisual extras and the option of receiving really simple syndication (RSS) feeds and e-mailed news alerts. RSS is a group of Web feed formats that can be used to publish frequently updated works, such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, or video, all in a standard format.
These and other features will be unveiled over the coming year, so visit the site regularly and let us know what you think.
We recognize our readers want a high-quality print journal combined with interactive media to further elucidate topics that are critical to wound care. This includes collaboration and information sharing with thought and content leaders in the field. Having watched most of the major newspapers, such as the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, adapt to their readers' fast-paced thirst for the multifaceted streams of information mentioned here, we want to assure you we understand that 90% of communication is listening. We hear you and are adapting to your needs.
Don't be surprised if the next wound care professional that you see tapping on the keys of a BlackBerry, laptop, or iPhone is visiting the profusion of wound care materials in the many new formats we offer at http://www.woundcarejournal.com.
Richard "Sal" Salcido, MD