Annals Faces the Future: Quicker Service, Broader Access, Tailored Formats

A [wo]man without his [or her] medical journals in this age is not far from the end of his [or her] professional race.

–John Hamilcar Hollister, 1893

First published in 1927, Annals has a distinguished history and lofty aims (1). Our mission is to educate clinicians with a mix of original research; literature syntheses; and commentary about medicine, public health, and related public policy. We are striving to produce a timely, credible journal that so thoroughly engages readers that they think of Annals as a “must read.” To accomplish this, we must reach a wide audience with timely articles of compelling interest, which means taking full advantage of the computer in our work at the journal.

The tools for running a journal and disseminating its contents are changing rapidly. We still send out truckloads of paper every 2 weeks, but now we also disseminate gigabytes of information electronically to subscribers who access journals from the Internet (2), to patients who surf the Web for medical information from journals and other sources (3), and to physicians who use hand-held computers in daily practice (4, 5). We expect that these trends will accelerate in accord with several recent reports that have urged use of modern information technology to deliver knowledge (6-8). Annals has published electronically since 1996, and we started to use the computer to manage peer review and track manuscript flow in 1998. In this editorial, we describe new developments in electronic processes to help us serve our authors, reviewers, and readers.