Year: 2023
Type: editorial
Abstract: My journey through a career of science and my relationship with the AAPM have much to do with the Medical Physics journal. I joined the AAPM as a graduate student in 1981, specifically to receive the journal. I reviewed my first manuscript in 1985—a year out of graduate school, and I recall that required 20 h to complete. I have gotten faster since! Over the decades since, I have served as a reviewer, associate editor, deputy editor, chair of the journal business management committee, and sat on two editor selection committees which ultimately selected Editors Colin Orton (1996) and Jeff Williamson (2013). Most of the papers from my research lab are published in the Medical Physics journal. In 2015 as AAPM president, I charged an ad hoc committee to select a common publisher for both Medical Physics and our sister journal the Journal of Applied Clinical Medical Physics (JACMP). John Hazle led that committee, and our current publisher Wiley was selected in that process. A call for applications for a new Editor-in-Chief was released in late 2019, and I was pleased to see that the “call” included an invitation to reorganize the structure of the editorial team. In my discussions with previous editors Jeff Williamson, Shiva Das, and Mitch Goodsitt, they described a lifestyle where the journal leadership dominated their time—described very aptly as “The Journal Never Sleeps”—meaning that manuscripts are submitted by authors from all over the world, so no matter what time zone you wake up in, there is a cue of manuscripts waiting for your attention. After much thought and discussion with others, I proposed a new organization for the editorial leadership of the journal which involves 15 deputy editors who oversee the manuscript review.1 Importantly, these 15 “DE's” would have both responsibility and decision-making authority over manuscripts. With this new model in hand, I interviewed for the Editor-in-Chief position on March 14, 2020, in Houston—1 month after I married my high school sweetheart, and really only a few days before the travel world I knew so well went dark due to the COVID pandemic. Sometime after that interview, I was invited to serve as Editor-in-Chief with the newly proposed Deputy Editor model. My first act was to invite my astute colleague Stan Benedict to serve as Editor for Therapy, and I was honored and relieved that Stan accepted the invitation. He is chief of radiation therapy physics, and I am chief of the diagnostic radiology physics division at the University of California Davis, so we already had an excellent working relationship. Not only is his office about 200 meters from mine on the sunny Sacramento campus of UC Davis, but he happens to be the principal author of one of the most cited articles published in Medical Physics. Stan and I spent considerable time evaluating, then selecting, the deputy editor candidates, and we drew heavily from recommendations generously provided by the previous editorial team. One of my other editorial organization suggestions was that the managing editor be AAPM staff, rather than staffed by Wiley employees. Angela Keyser and Michael Woodward prescreened many applicants, and I was involved in interviewing the final candidates, and we selected Ms. Elle Thomas as our managing editor. Thank goodness for that, as Elle was experienced with publishing and already knew the software (EJ press) inside and out; this software runs the entire journal operations from submission to acceptance and not surprisingly requires a bit of a learning curve. Stan and I learned very quickly how fortunate we were to have Elle in this position, as she guided us through the EJP software and had a deep background as managing editor for another physics journal. This transition in editorial teams happened deep in the time of COVID, so there was no 2-day face-to-face meetings to pass the reigns, share experiences, and clink glasses with the previous editorial team—we went cold turkey into our new positions with a new editorial model with 15 deputy editors who were as unfamiliar with the EJP software as we were, and on top of this there was a horde of incoming manuscripts—author productivity buoyed by the solitude of the pandemic. We are so grateful to Jeff Williamson, Shiva Das, and Mitch Goodsitt, who spent much time on Zoom with us, and were exceedingly helpful with suggestions across many issues—their magnanimous efforts enabled a smooth transition. As we have turned the corner to 2023, 2+ years into this, we have become quite familiar with the EJ press software which still runs the editorial operations of the Journal. We have enacted a number of changes in journal operations, like all new editorial teams do, and a short summary of these changes are provided here: To promote the careers of the deputy editors, we implemented a change in the EJ press software which allows authors, as they submit their manuscripts, to select from the list of the 15 deputy editors (with their pictures) for their manuscript—up to three deputy editors can be chosen. During the manuscript assignment process, Stan and John largely follow the author's wishes, however, deputy editor workloads also need to be considered in the assignment. As a fringe benefit of this editorial model, there will be numerous candidates with knowledge of the Medical Physics journal operation when it is time for us to step down from journal leadership. Over the past several years, the number of manuscripts submitted to Medical Physics which are focused on artificial intelligence or machine learning has skyrocketed. The number of AI manuscripts now exceeds ¼ of new submissions and will soon be 1/3 of new submissions, as trends continue. Many of these articles are written by computer scientists and not medical physicists, and so to maintain some relevance to medical physics and to promote a more accurate description of the AI methodology, we have implemented a checklist for AI manuscript submissions as described in an editorial.2 While artificial intelligence will likely affect the routine practice of clinical medical physics, it is unlikely that it will continue to be the hotbed of research that it is now. While AI is exciting, we do push back on AI techniques which seek to replace straightforward mathematical calculations grounded in the physics of radiation therapy and diagnostic imaging just for the sake of “all things AI”. It is a distinct privilege to serve currently as the lead editors of Medical Physics. The journal is always on our minds, provides a wonderful challenge to our day jobs, and educates us about the exciting new scientific advances in medical physics methods and technology every day. We recognize that the science described in many of the manuscripts submitted today will help to collectively nudge the field of medical physics forward, tomorrow. For this and many other considerations, it is a profound honor to serve as Editors of the journal, Medical Physics. The authors have nothing to report. The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Source: Medical Physics
DOI: 10.1002/mp.16349
Authors: John M. Boone, Stanley H. Benedict
Language: English
Subfield: History and Philosophy of Science
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4383814645