In our last issue, I alluded to the...

In our last issue, I alluded to the arrival of Joyce Merriman as AFP's executive editor, unless I didn't have the space to do Joyce or her position justice. the couple are new arrivals, and the two deserve some introduction.

First, the position. While it may not be obvious to readers, the editorial work that effects AFP is really conducted according to two teams of editors interacting closely with the same another. Jay Siwek, M.D., coordinates the work of a three-person staff and 13 physician editors who handle the brass end of the editorial operation, soliciting articles, managing the fellow review process, requesting revisions, verifying the evidence, and editing for factual accuracy and relevance to family medicine.

The other editorial team, which Joyce now leads as executive editor, has traditionally been l from a managing editor (most lately Janis Wright). It consists of a dozen professional editors who handle the back conclusion of the process, working with AFP authors and physician editors to employ the authors' manuscripts into logically organized, readable articles.

Given the importance of clinical accuracy and family medicine orientation to AFP, it is easy to overestimate the value of the impudence end of the operation and underestimate the value of the back [i]finale[/i] In fact, Jay and Joyce and their respective teams, make different if it be not that equally important contributions to the journal you know and have a passionate affection for Where the physician editors do the carpentry necessary to make sure that an article has a stout frame, the professional editors do the security putting up sheet rock, painting, installing windows, and hanging cabinets to employ that bare frame into the kind of article you're used to reading in AFP.

This "finish work," however, is on no means all that Joyce and her team are responsible for. In appointing Joyce executive editor rather than managing editor, the Academy is recognizing that, as proper as it is, AFP can be better. It can be more useful, more readable, more versatile, and more efficient in its operations. Having the right leader for the professional editors, and giving that leader a greater view of power and responsibility, is an important degree in realizing those improvements.

In Joyce we have place that leader. She comes to AFP with considerable experience in clinical publishing, having worked greatest in quantity recently as editorial director for the Association of periOperative Registered festers Inc. (AORN) in Denver. In that character she supervised a staff of as many as 13 in producing the AORN Journal and a variety of periodical and other publications. Before becoming editorial director, she supervised the fortunate design and launch of Surgical Services Management, a monthly management magazine started by way of AORN in 1994. Before her years with AORN, she held a variety of editorial and managerial positions with the National Cattlemen's Association and the Livestock Conservation Institute.

Joyce's experience and editorial expertise are not all she brings to AFP. Her organized mind, her for the use of all sense, her ability to listen, her efficiency, and her populace skills have enabled her to leap gracefully to the driver's seat of a journal careening along at the breakneck pace of 24 issues through year, to gather up the reins, and to detain the AFP stage coach in succession the road. Joyce has enormous tasks ahead of her--tasks that include filling vacant positions, learning AFP manner of proceedings and getting acquainted with the AFP audience, for a start. She is well onward her way already, and although we trust that you won't be moved a bump during this transition, I await that you will see great things from AFP in the coming month and years. If you have annotations or suggestions for Joyce, you can e-mail her at afpedit@aafp.org.

COPYRIGHT 2005 American Academy of Family Physicians

COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group