100th anniversary of Acta Ophthalmologica.

The Year 2023 is particularly important for Acta Ophthalmologica journal. It is an anniversary year, as Acta Ophthalmologica celebrates its 100th anniversary. The journal was founded by Konrad Kristian Karl (K.K.K) Lundsgaard in 1923. The goal was to present the clinical and experimental achievements of the ophthalmological communities of the Nordic countries. With the passage of time and increasing interest from scientific communities in other countries, it has become one of the most visible ophthalmology journals in the world. Acta Ophthalmologica publishes a wide variety of high-quality ophthalmological papers. Here, we present the activities of Acta Ophthalmologica over the past 100 years.

'To see ourselves as others see us'.

Shaw and colleagues, who are medical historians, have published a detailed review of the social history of the British Journal of Anaesthesia (BJA) to celebrate its first 100 years. In this editorial, we note some additional contributions and financial details that are relevant to the development of the BJA into the international high-impact journal it is today.

Cardiovascular research at the Heart of Clinical Science.

Clinical Science was originally established as the journal Heart in 1909 by Sir Thomas Lewis and Sir James Mackenzie. Heart was an influential journal publishing cardiovascular research and was renamed Clinical Science in 1933 to attract broader research interests. Nevertheless, cardiovascular research contributions remain a foundational part of the journal to this day. This editorial provides historical perspective on the journal's cardiovascular origins and includes data related to cardiovascular publications from the past decade. Clinical Science is committed to publishing leading cardiovascular research from the field and looks forward to receiving your submission.

[Do journals need societies, and do societies need journals?] / Le società scientifiche hanno bisogno delle riviste e viceversa?

Starting in the mid-1600s, a number of scientific societies began to establish journals. The aim was to disseminate the knowledge developed by their fellows. The members of the societies were both the authors and reviewers of the articles as well as the main readers. Historically, there has been a tight link between journals, journal publications and a community of scholars working in specific fields of research who contribute to and manage them. In the second half of the 20th century, however, scientific societies began to consider the publication of their own journals primarily as a source of revenue, useful for the economic balance of the societies. The change was mainly due to the interest of libraries in acquiring periodicals to make available to readers. Gradually, the number of authors from outside the societies themselves increased and the link between members and the journals of the associations they belonged to decreased. Today, the national or regional connotations of many scientific societies make them unsuitable for managing a future of scholarly communication that should be open, diverse and fair, and operate on a global scale. As journal publishing has become a global undertaking and moreover, an undertaking that is increasingly mediated through online digital interactions, the author asks, do we need to rethink the structure of the learned societies that underpins them?

How Microbology was produced.

This is the final paper in a series of three historical reviews marking the 75th anniversary of the launch of the Journal of General Microbiology (JGM), now Microbiology. It looks at some of the factors involved in the physical, and the electronic, production of the Journal, and how those factors have evolved since the Journal was launched in 1947. There have, of course, been massive changes in all aspects of production over the past 75 years. Microbiology started with manual typewriters, literal (rather than electronic) cutting and pasting of text at the editing stage, retyping and rechecking, hot-metal setting and printing, and finally postal distribution of complete bound issues. Illustrations, figures and tables presented special challenges. And there was also the considerable chore of having to duplicate and mail out multiple paper copies at the refereeing stage. It was all perfectly manageable, but it took a great deal of time and effort, and became all the more demanding as the Journal grew in scale and geographical reach. The dramatic rate of technical change since then is obvious to all. The technology has allowed each aspect of journal publishing to be done in new and far more convenient ways; and in some important respects it has also changed how we think about the very idea of journal publishing. Through all this, publishing has remained central to what the Microbiology Society is and does.

Self-help for learned journals: Scientific societies and the commerce of publishing in the 1950s.

In the decades after the Second World War, learned society publishers struggled to cope with the expanding output of scientific research and the increased involvement of commercial publishers in the business of publishing research journals. Could learned society journals survive economically in the postwar world, against this competition? Or was the emergence of a sales-based commercial model of publishing - in contrast to the traditional model of subsidized journal publishing - an opportunity to transform the often-fragile finances of learned societies? But there was also an existential threat: if commercial firms could successfully publish scientific journals, were learned society publishers no longer needed? This paper investigates how British learned society publishers adjusted to the new economic realities of the postwar world, through an investigation of the activities organized by the Royal Society of London and the Nuffield Foundation, culminating in the 1963 report Self-Help for Learned Journals. It reveals the postwar decades as the time when scientific research became something to be commodified and sold to libraries, rather than circulated as part of a scholarly mission. It will be essential reading for all those campaigning to transition academic publishing - including learned society publishing - away from the sales-based model once again.

Evolving use of ancestry, ethnicity, and race in genetics research-A survey spanning seven decades.

To inform continuous and rigorous reflection about the description of human populations in genomics research, this study investigates the historical and contemporary use of the terms "ancestry," "ethnicity," "race," and other population labels in The American Journal of Human Genetics from 1949 to 2018. We characterize these terms' frequency of use and assess their odds of co-occurrence with a set of social and genetic topical terms. Throughout The Journal's 70-year history, "ancestry" and "ethnicity" have increased in use, appearing in 33% and 26% of articles in 2009-2018, while the use of "race" has decreased, occurring in 4% of articles in 2009-2018. Although its overall use has declined, the odds of "race" appearing in the presence of "ethnicity" has increased relative to the odds of occurring in its absence. Forms of population descriptors "Caucasian" and "Negro" have largely disappeared from The Journal (<1% of articles in 2009-2018). Conversely, the continental labels "African," "Asian," and "European" have increased in use and appear in 18%, 14%, and 42% of articles from 2009-2018, respectively. Decreasing uses of the terms "race," "Caucasian," and "Negro" are indicative of a transition away from the field's history of explicitly biological race science; at the same time, the increasing use of "ancestry," "ethnicity," and continental labels should serve to motivate ongoing reflection as the terminology used to describe genetic variation continues to evolve.

American Proctology Before 1899, Part 2: The Rise of the Rectal Specialists.

Joseph M. Mathews' study at St. Mark's Hospital (London) in the 1877 to 1878 winter was followed shortly by a landmark move toward specialization in the United States: Mathews' heading of a Special Commission on Rectal Diseases appointed at the 23rd Annual Session of the Kentucky State Medical Society, held April 2 to 4, 1878. Various "rectal specialists," under various makeshift titles, were lecturing and publishing by the mid-1890s. The world's first proctologic journal, published between 1894 and 1898, was Mathews' Medical Quarterly, from its inception interpellating a community of colleagues.

Welcome to Biochemistry Volume 1: No Hyphen Required.

The founding of the journal Biochemistry by the American Chemical Society 60 years ago was a highlight of the Society's growing commitment to chemically driven biochemistry. It was a commitment that was nearly an additional 60 years in the making. In that time, biological chemistry was becoming more molecularly focused. Its relationship to the traditional chemical disciplines became apparent to a generation of young chemists, who grappled with defining the field's core chemical principles and creating new areas of research for a new journal. The path to Biochemistry was exciting, but it was also complex and difficult. Even its naming was arguable.