The digital era

A very warm welcome to the New Year. With the start of 2015 has come a change in the Editorial Board. I am extremely proud to have been given the opportunity to take on the role of Editor-in-Chief of the Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, a role that was originally bestowed upon Sir Cecil Wakeley in 1947. Since then it has been nurtured by successive Editors, not least my predecessor Colin Johnson, to whom I give my personal thanks. All previous Editors have had a significant impact upon the journal’s evolution. I am now the eighth Editor of the Annals since its post-war inception and the first from the surgical specialties. All of my predecessors have striven to remain true to Sir Alfred Webb-Johnson’s affirmed aim to provide its readership with clinically relevant updates. There will be no change in this during my tenure. While there are no immediate plans for any ex cathedra statements – which Sir Alfred Webb-Johnson promised from time to time – there are likely to be great changes to the Annals over the next few years. There is both an inevitability and an immediacy about some of the impending changes, which pre-date my appointment last year. The move to a new digital platform will soon be upon us, bringing with it the benefits of vastly improved mobile access, more and better options for viewing, sharing, saving and downloading articles, and greatly enhanced multimedia capabilities. Our Technical Section is already making the leap into the digital era: authors are now encouraged to submit videos demonstrating their ingenious tips and techniques, to contribute to a video library that we anticipate will become an invaluable knowledge bank for trainees and surgeons alike, and a resource that will take full advantage of the capabilities of our new platform. The online submissions portal OJS has served the Annals well over the years but it is now outdated and somewhat cumbersome both for those submitting articles and for those undertaking peer review. There are more intuitive platforms now available and the Annals will move towards a new submissions management system during the next few months, which should improve the workflow and review times that are so important for authors and editors alike. The Annals looks towards recruiting Section Editors to represent the respective specialties and the subspecialist fields within each of our chosen areas of interest. We hope they will be ambassadors for their respective interest groups. Likewise, the Annals seeks to recruit new reviewers. The peer review process is fundamental to the business of publishing and without it the journal could not function. With increasing demands on all our professional lives, the Editorial Board acknowledges that finding the time to provide this essential service has become ever more challenging. We aim, however, at least to acknowledge the time devoted to the review process, which we hope in turn will be reflected in the individual’s annual appraisals. The Annals also acknowledges the importance of trainees and their submissions. Over the course of the next year we are planning to establish an award for the best publication by a junior doctor within a training grade and which we hope will become an annual event. Finally, there has always been a dialogue between the Editorial Board and its readership and I am keen for this to develop and flourish further. We encourage the submission of letters and comments on published articles and I hope that many of you will consider submitting letters to the editor in addition to your original research. Although change is upon us, the founding philosophy of the Annals remains as relevant today as it has always been. At a time when increasing sub-specialisation would seem to risk an abstracted and disjointed profession, there has always been much more that unites us than that which separates us. The Annals plays a significant role in this respect by both maintaining and strengthening those fundamental surgical ties through the sharing of best surgical practice across the specialties. It is because of this shared heritage that we will continue to learn from each other as we have always done. In doing so, we will continue to drive each other towards more important goals and we will continue to encourage each other to innovate. We will learn and gain succour from each other’s successes and failures, a result of the honest and candid dissemination of surgical results as we strive for ever-better outcomes for our patients. Despite all this, and while I have little doubt that there will be further significant changes to the Annals in the forthcoming years, I am equally assured that it will remain at its heart, as it has always done, a clinically based journal focusing on the practice of surgery, for the benefit of its fellow and members.