CARJ Continues to Move Forward: New Things to Look for in 2012

Article Outline

• Copyright

Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.

Helen Keller, American author and political activist (1880-1968)

The Canadian Association of Radiologists Journal (CARJ) continues to move forward, with 2011 being a good year overall. Submissions to the Journal have continued to increase, with more than 115 manuscript submissions during the 2011 year. The increased number of submissions has put us in the situation in which we have had to increase the rejection rate of manuscripts, which has also, unfortunately, resulted in something of a backlog of manuscripts for publication; however, this is less an alarming situation than when the current editorial team had taken over the Journal more than 2 years ago. At that time, there were barely enough manuscripts available for the next issue of the Journal. I am also pleased to report that the overall quality of submissions has increased, and, it is hoped that, in the coming years, the impact factor of the Journal will reflect this.

We are also adding a new deputy editor to the Journal, David Valenti, MD, of McGill University. Dr Valenti is an interventional radiologist, and he will be helping us with a new undertaking that CARJ has embarked upon this year. The Canadian Interventional Radiology Association (CIRA) has agreed to collaborate with the Canadian Association of Radiologists (CAR) in producing a CIRA supplemental issue, which will appear alongside the regular August CARJ. In this way, Canadian interventional radiologists will be able to have a new voice in the literature, providing a Canadian perspective and also addressing uniquely Canadian issues. This also expands the number of total pages available to CARJ. Both the CAR and CIRA should benefit from this collaborative undertaking, which has a further advantage of providing an economy of scale for both organizations in this publication project.

Significant changes will occur with the Continuing Medical Education (CME) feature of the Journal, “Insights4Imaging” (I4I), which appears in every issue of CARJ. A printed version of the CME I4I questions will no longer appear in the Journal. They will be transferred to a dedicated Web site (www.cpd.car.ca). This Web site will allow readers to score their answers online and submit the answers to their questions electronically, which will save readers the trouble of having to make paper copies of the questions, answer them, and mail them. This will also provide an enormous amount of time saving for the CAR and CARJ, because paper copies have proven to be unwieldy and result in a very tedious and very time-consuming process for this important feature of the Journal. This year, 238 quizzes were submitted, which led to the awarding of 896 CME credits, a 30% increase over the previous year. The CME feature of the Journal has been formally reaccredited by the Royal College of Physicians of Canada. Dedicated readers of the Journal should be able to acquire approximately 20 CME hours over the next year, which corresponds to 60 Royal College credits, a significant portion of the annual CME requirement. I should also point out that the reviewers of CARJ articles can also claim CME credits by claiming reviews as learning projects. I encourage readers to consider becoming CARJ reviewers. One of the main impediments to rapid turnaround of articles for the Journal has been the restricted number of reviewers available to us.

We hope you will agree that the Journal is continuing to improve. We welcome constructive suggestions for further improvement of the Journal.