Farewell Editorial: Jeffrey F. Williamson Editor‐in‐Chief, Shiva K. Das Therapy Physics Editor, Mitchell M. Goodsitt Imaging Physics Editor
Year: 2020
Type: editorial
Abstract: As our editorial service to Medical Physics approaches its end on December 31, 2020, we find ourselves experiencing a complicated mixture of sadness, gratitude, pride in achievement, and more than a little anticipation for the opportunity to focus on other professional and personal priorities. Calendar year 2020 marks the 7th year of our service to the Journal. Jeff was the first Editor-in-Chief to have undergone a formal application and interview process in Spring of 2013; was the first editor to have been offered a full-time compensated position; and was the first to distribute this commitment among three co-equal editors by recruiting Shiva Das as the Therapy Physics Editor and Mitch Goodsitt as the Imaging Physics Editor. We are grateful to the AAPM for entrusting the leadership of its flagship scientific journal to us and providing us this unique opportunity to serve the worldwide medical physics community. Without a doubt, serving as Medical Physics Editors has been among the most personally rewarding and intellectually transformative experience of our careers. It has been our privilege to witness and facilitate dissemination of cutting-edge medical physics research, which encompasses a broad and ever-enlarging range of topics, clinical applications, and methodologies. All three of us have improved our analytical and integrative reasoning skills, and have acquired the ability to quickly discern and articulate the basic concepts and principles underlying research tools and problems well outside our expertise domains. We shall forever be better scientists, teachers, and scholars because of this growth experience. We are also grateful for the opportunity to interact and build friendships with the leading thinkers in medical physics and imaging science around the world, often in intellectually and geographic areas remote from our own personal research domains and collaborative networks. Perhaps most rewarding of all have been the many opportunities to help authors, especially trainees and junior investigators, to improve the quality of their scientific work and submissions. It has also been rewarding to facilitate career advancement of early career investigators by recruiting them to service and leadership positions within the Medical Physics Editorial Board and its subcommittees. Finally, we will miss our outstanding AAPM and Wiley colleagues, many of whom we work with on a weekly and sometimes daily basis. Thus, we are sad to leave this incredibly busy but stimulating professional environment as we rejoin the “civilian” academic workforce. Overall, we editors take pride in having steered Medical Physics along a mostly positive trajectory of over the last 7 years. Building on the achievements of past editors, in particular John Laughlin, Colin Orton, and William Hendee, the Journal has grown in terms of impact, academic stature, readership, and overall visibility. While there is vigorous competition from competing publication venues, we believe that Medical Physics is without question the leading scientific journal that publishes exclusively medical physics science content. Below are a few examples of positive innovations introduced and outcomes achieved during our tenure: In summary, we are grateful for the opportunity to have served the international medical physics science community in this unique role. Notwithstanding the many challenges confronting scientific publishing,3 we are delighted to pass on the mantle of editorial leadership of Medical Physics to our successors, secure in the knowledge that we have made an already outstanding venue for dissemination of medical physics science even more useful and attractive to researchers around the world. We are also grateful that AAPM has recruited two outstanding scientists and medical physics leaders, Professors John Boone and Stanley Benedict, to serve as the new Editor-in-Chief and Therapy Physics Editors, respectively, as of January 1, 2021. With the editorial operation in such capable hands, we have no doubt that Medical Physics will continue on its positive trajectory of growth and transformation. We conclude our farewell editorial by thanking a few of the many individuals who have contributed the Journal’s success. We would like to thank AAPM staff members, Michael Woodward, who has played a mission critical roles in managing the Wiley partnership, and Viv Dennis, who has made the Editorial Board transition from an advisory body to a collection of working subgroups possible. We would also like to thank the Managing Editors who served the Journal, starting with the now legendary Penny Slattery,4 Ania Bukowski, Beth Brenner, and ending with our current Managing Editor, Jesse Olander, who collectively have been responsible for many workflow improvements and assisting countless authors. We also thank our able editorial assistants (Patrick Silvestre, Janette Mabanan, and Abdul Hakkim). We are also fortunate to have been supported by able executive managing editors, Bridget D'Amelio (AIPP) and Gillian Greenough (Wiley), and publisher, Matteo Cavalleri, Ph.D. (Wiley). Finally and most importantly, we would like to acknowledge the contributions and enthusiastic support of many volunteers without whom Medical Physics would not be a viable forum for exchange of scientific information. These include our 14 senior associate editors, about 130 Board of Associate Editors members, and 39 editorial board members. as well as Journal department heads (review article co-editors, point/counterpoint co-moderators, book review editor, PhD dissertation abstract editor), working group, subcommittee, and unit members. Finally, we acknowledge the hundreds of guest associate editors and thousands of referees who have contributed to the Journal over the last 7 years.
Source: Medical Physics
DOI: 10.1002/mp.14578
Language: English
Subfield: History and Philosophy of Science
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,700
OpenAlex ID: W3119076716