PulmCCM Journal Publishes First Issue
I am proud to announce the publication of the first issue of PulmCCM Journal, a new online peer-reviewed journal in respiratory and critical care medicine. Please click through to read edition 1, volume 1, issue 1 online now:
Starting a journal as an extension of a blog designed to cope with an overabundance of journals may seem paradoxical, but the truth is PulmCCM Journal is the purer expression of PulmCCM's mission. After curating and summarizing almost 1,000 articles over the past 4 years, I realize the PulmCCM blog at times contributes to the same problem it tries to solve.
PulmCCM's focus on big studies and breaking news (hopefully with a fresh angle) helps disseminate important findings, and that can be good, but only if we firmly ground those findings in the earth of the garden from which they grew. Rather than the novelty of chasing exciting vogues, what we all really need most is a continuing deep explication of clinical topics, written by colleagues incorporating the full body of available knowledge.
My vision and hope is that PulmCCM Journal will grow to become a major library for such reviews, increasing access worldwide to the best available knowledge and practices for the care of patients with critical illness or respiratory disease.
The leading journals all publish review articles, and a handful of titles exclusively publish state-of-the-art reviews based in clinical topics or themes. PulmCCM Journal differs from these in three important ways: the journal is 100% open access (free), charges authors no publication fees (compared to $3,500 per article charged to authors by leading journals), and allows authors to retain copyright to their work.
Because PulmCCM Journal is online-only, reviews will also be efficiently updated to reflect changes in the evidence. In this way, PulmCCM Journal will also strive to approximate the popular but expensive subscription services that offer to keep physicians "up to date."
I would be remiss not to thank personally the incredible group of editors who have signed on to this new endeavor, including Drs. Daniel Brodie of Columbia, Michael Donahoe of Pittsburgh, Heidi Frankel of USC, Peter Fedullo of UCSD, Erin Kross at University of Washington, Fabien Maldonado and Darlene Nelson at Mayo, Paul Marik of EVMS, Marvin Schwarz of University of Colorado, Jonathan Truwit of University of Virginia, Allan Walkey of Boston University, and M. Elizabeth Wilcox of University of Toronto. I also am deeply grateful to every author and peer reviewer who put in real work for a journal that didn't exist yet.
PulmCCM Journal's second-highest priority, after publishing great intellectual work, is indexing in PubMed -- but those goals are really the same. Based on the quality of existing work, we see a high likelihood of acceptance into PubMed indexing once enough articles are published to permit a review on its merits. After indexing in PubMed, all previously published articles will be indexed, providing all authors with academic citations.
To everyone with knowledge and training in our specialties, and the passion to learn and teach: please share your energies and gifts with the world by contributing concise clinical reviews or peer-reviewing articles for PulmCCM Journal. Writing a great review article doesn't require a pedigree as a world expert, as Blair Westerly and Jon-Emile Kenney (both early in their careers) show impressively in this first issue. More information on how to emulate their successes can be found here; you can join as a peer reviewer here.
Sincerely,
Matthew Hoffman, MD on behalf of the PulmCCM Journal Editorial Board