A global perspective

Abstract

As we near the end of 1995, the editorial office projects another increase in submitted manuscripts with the year's total exceeding 550 submissions. As of October 1995, 600 manuscripts are currently in the review process and we will have published 237 manuscripts with the December 1995 issue. The current acceptance rate for Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise is 35%, and we remain the highest citation ranked journal in the Sports Sciences category with an impact factor of 1.556 and an immediacy index of 0.234. These factors place the Journal in the 80th percentile of the impact factor ranking of more than 4200 citation indexed life science journals. In 1996, the College begins a major capital campaign focused on building for the next millennium. An essential foundation of the planning for the next millennium is the establishment of a Worldwide Resource Center for the Advancement of Sports Medicine and Exercise Science. Such an ambitious goal was not established without the confidence that other nations look to the American College of Sports Medicine as a leading organization in the area of science and medicine of sports. Indeed, two of the College's major membership programs, the Annual Meeting and the journal, Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, draw the involvement of both international members and nonmembers. Our 1995 Annual Meeting attracted 538 representatives from 46 countries, while 50% of the attendees at the recent Basic Science Specialty Conference on the Regulation of Oxidative Metabolism and Blood Flow in Skeletal Muscle were from the international community. In 1995, 40% of the Journal's submitted manuscripts were received from the international community; 25% of these submissions came from Europe. With the goal of the industrialized nations to establish a global economy in the 1990s, it behooves the College and the Journal to shed their provincialism and plan for a leadership role in the worldwide emergence of sports medicine and exercise science. Why do other organizations, well established in other nations, look toward the college as a leader? To answer the question, I will use the Annual Meeting and the Journal as exemplary College programs that provide an interdisciplinary base upon which scientists and clinicians build professional camaraderie and respect. It is my opinion that the College leadership should do all in its power to maintain the interdisciplinary scientific nature of the organization, as it is because of the College's scientific base and its peer-reviewed Journal (citation indexed) that we have attracted the national and international renowned committed professionals to develop and establish our cardiac rehabilitation, exercise fitness, and continuing medical education programs, which have achieved worldwide acceptance. It is my goal that the Journal reflect this global perspective. I am sure you, as readers, have noticed the increased number of published manuscripts from international investigators. In response to this international expansion, I have increased the number of international representatives on the Editorial Board and as Foreign Consulting Editors, and have recruited our first international Associate Editor. In addition, the College and the Journal's publisher, Williams & Wilkins, are currently investigating collaborative publishing with European organizations and are investigating both marketing expansion and collaborative publishing in the Pacific Rim nations of China, Korea, Japan, and Australia, and the South American Continent. I expect the content of the Journal to continue to reflect the international involvement in the science of sports medicine and exercise throughout 1996. The Journal will publish the proceedings of the recent International Workshop on Cardiovascular Research in Space, sponsored by NASA and which is the first in a series of five international workshops on the life sciences in space. The proceedings of the past-ACSM specialty conference, an international meeting in both attendance and presentation, will be published in the first part of the year. It is my expectation that by internationalizing the Journal and maintaining our scientific rigor of peer-review acceptance, we will become attractive to our member scientists and physicians as a journal in which they will feel honored to publish their best work. Peter B. Raven Editor-in-Chief