The diabetes crisis and the amount of research connected to the disease is prompting publisher Elsevier to increase the heft and frequency of its Journal of Diabetes and its Complications.
“We are facing a major international public health crisis with the increase of diabetes,” Dr. Vivian Fonseca, the journal’s new editor-in-chief, said in a statement. He added that “dissemination of high-quality research will help stem this epidemic.”
“Our aim,” he said, “is to publish high-quality articles covering all aspects of diabetes, with an emphasis on translating research into clinical practice.”
In addition to Fonseca, who is the chief of endocrinology at Tulane University Medical Center, as well as the president, medicine & science, of the American Diabetes Association, the publication’s revamp includes Drs. Stefano Del Prato in Pisa, Italy, and Steven Kahn from Seattle, both of whom have signed on as associate editors.
Publisher Andrew Miller says the change is long overdue, and that the plan to change things up got under way when he took hold of the publication in 2009. “I felt Elsevier’s footprint in this subject area was too small given the prevalence and challenge of the disease,” he said.
Miller added the page budget for 2012 is already 50% larger than it was in 2011. He said this breaks down to an increase from an average of 72 pages per journal in 2011 to 110 pages in 2012. Miller said the jump in pages is just one sign that the changeover to a bigger format is essential to serve the field. “It was frankly too small a journal in previous years and diabetes as a research subject grew faster than it did,” he said.
Miller said he expects each issue will soon carry around 18 articles as opposed the usual 12. He also says that the journal will most likely abandon its six-times-a-year publishing schedule and become a monthly journal by 2013 or 2014.
From the May 01, 2012 Issue of MM+M - Medical Marketing and Media
