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Future development of the Journal

As a result of a request from Officers of the British Institute of Radiology, members of the Publications Committee and of the Editorial Board of the BJR have carried out a wide-ranging review of the Journal and received a large amount of feedback from Board Members.

Possible changes considered ranged from the draconian to the fairly trivial but resulted in the overall conclusion that the policy should be one of evolution rather than revolution. For example, the content and ethos of the Journal must continue to reflect the broad range of experience and interests of the BIR membership. Therefore the Journal must remain interdisciplinary and this feature must be developed strongly in the light of threats from more specialized journals.

The current make-up of the Journal relies heavily on original papers and review papers/commentaries pitched at the cutting edge of new developments, supported, as appropriate, by case reports, pictorial reviews, letters to the Editor, book reviews and announcements of meetings. We believe this is, broadly speaking, the right formula for maintaining the international status of the Journal.

Nevertheless, there is room for improvement and some of the changes we plan to introduce are listed below.

1. Editorials will be re-introduced on a regular basis to address a wide range of issues of topical interest.
   
2. We shall place greater emphasis on multidisciplinary issues, especially in review articles and commentaries. We shall seek to encourage the submission of full papers based on areas of research involving cross-fertilization of ideas.
   
3. BIR meetings will be screened for papers that should be written up for the Journal.
   
4. BIR meetings will be used as a greater source of commentaries and editorials.
   
5. We shall commission further series of articles and plan further special issues.
   
6. Member groups who have been reluctant to submit to the Journal in the past will be encouraged to do so. The forthcoming online submission facility should prove attractive to contributors.
   
7. We shall continue to develop other advantages of electronic publishing—e.g. publishing electronically ahead of publishing in print.
   
8. The role of the Overseas Advisory Panel will be reviewed and its membership expanded.
   
9. The President's address and eponymous lectures will continue to be published whenever practicable.
   
10. The book review section will be improved.
    

Three of these actions are discussed further in this Editorial—others will be highlighted in later issues at an appropriate time.

Outreach to other member groups

We are pleased to report that Dr David Manning, reader in Radiography at St Martin's College, Lancaster, has agreed to join the BJR Editorial Board. He has been asked to be proactive in commissioning papers that are pertinent to radiography and radiographers.

Editorials

When "Commentaries" were introduced in 1996 following the last major review of the Journal, they were intended to cover a wide range of topical issues including editorial-type matters. However, it is clear from many of the responses to our enquiry that this objective is no longer being met.

Therefore "Editorials" will be re-instated. As their name implies, they will deal with matters of editorial interest including, for example:

1. clarification from time to time of the purpose and objectives of the Journal;
   
2. announcement of changes to the structure of the Journal or new initiatives;
   
3. drawing attention to important articles in the issue, and to other BIR publications, e.g. Special Issues, the Imaging journal, or perhaps a series of papers;
   
4. brief informed comment on matters of topical interest;
   
5. important current or historical events in the radiological calendar.
   

They will be written by members of the Editorial Board and normally will not be more than one page in length.

"Commentaries" based on BIR meetings

"Commentaries" will be retained as the title for generally longer articles on specific, sometimes controversial, subjects that are currently of topical interest. Some fine-tuning will appear in the "Instructions for authors" on "Commentaries". For example the Publications Committee has agreed that a suitable word range for "Commentaries" in the future would be 800–2500 words to permit shorter contributions in this category.

"Commentaries" may continue to be proffered, as at present, thus allowing all readers to air their views on matters of topical interest, but an increasing attempt will be made to base "Commentaries" on the subject matter of scientific meetings. These "Commentaries" will normally be written by a member of the BJR Editorial Board or by a Meeting Organizer. They will focus on a discussion or review of one or more topics raised at the meeting, making general points of clarification or summary and raising controversial issues or pointers for the future.

A straightforward report of the meeting might not be considered appropriate.

Every effort will be made to fast-track "Commentaries" based on meetings through the refereeing process so that their appearance in print is timely.

Conclusion

We hope that as the changes outlined above are gradually introduced they will improve both the quality of the Journal and your enjoyment of it. Development of the Journal will be kept under review and we shall be seeking further feedback on ways in which it can be improved.

Please remember, however, that the majority of the Journal will continue to comprise original submitted material. Please send us your good papers and encourage your colleagues to do likewise. These are the lifeblood of the Journal and a clear message from the review was that we must not lower our scientific and clinical standards.

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