Inheriting a Jewel: A Thrilling Challenge

 

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It is an honor and a challenge for both of us to take over the editorship of Seminars in Liver Disease (SLD) following the leadership of Paul Berk for more than three decades. Because of Paul's intellect, drive, vision, and ability to engage international experts, SLD is fully established as a major source of information and updated knowledge in the field of hepatology. As such, it owns a deserved reputation as a high-quality review journal. Indeed, looking back at what we have learned over our individual careers, we realize that we are indebted to SLD both from reading SLD articles and from writing and editing for this prestigious journal. Hence, our acceptance to take over the editorship was highly motivated to ensure that SLD was preserved and strengthened as an asset for the field of hepatology.

Having expressed this commitment and willingness to co-edit Seminars in Liver Disease, we are fully aware that the competition is fierce in the field and that all journals have an identical goal: to develop and grow an extensive readership and to publish the latest and most pertinent information. Ultimately, this translates into quoting manuscripts in future publications, which is what drives the well-known Impact Factor (IF). However, this is not the only tool that informs the quality of a journal; the readership and IF of a review journal should not be directly compared to a journal devoted to original articles plus reviews/editorials. We have in our hands the leading review journal in hepatology and we are committed to keep it as such.

To achieve our goals, we will move away from the single-topic thematic format. We plan to include diverse review articles within each issue. Each issue will include approximately six long reviews and two concise reviews, which will allow a better distribution of pages and help serve different goals (extensive overviews and brief updates). In addition, this lack of adherence to a single topic per issue will allow fast publication of the received manuscripts so that there is minimal publication delay in these timely and topical contributions. Also, the publication will appear immediately on the web so that it can be read and quoted directly after acceptance. This availability will increase manuscript downloads and subsequent citations (back to the IF goal). At the same time, faster publication requires a major editorial effort that is no longer feasible by a single editor and a small group of associate editors.

We have assembled a large and diverse group of international experts in different fields of hepatology to serve as an editorial team. They will be instrumental in identifying topics and inviting the best authors for such contributions while also managing the web-based review process. This will ensure a faster publication process and guarantee that all published contributions are of top quality and interest to the readership. We will use a graphic designer who will “brand” the figures and tables with our specific journal profile so that when these materials are used in presentations in meetings and conferences, the SLD brand is disseminated. Furthermore, the modified design will help authors deliver eye-catching concepts. It is also worth mentioning that we will also accept noninvited submissions. These articles will undergo the usual review process and, if deemed exceptional, will be published. This policy has already been initiated by Paul Berk and has resulted in several contributions with a major impact on the field.

In summary, we are happy and proud to succeed Paul in this enterprise, although we find the mantle of editorship daunting given his success. Indeed, it has taken two of us to replace him! We also realize that the success of SLD will require major investments of energy and creativity. All of the Board members share this philosophy and have started to work toward planning the first issue for 2017.