EDITOR’S PAGE

Beth Harkness

As historical articles often do, our look back at the past editors of the JNMT in the last issue inspired others who were active in its creation to share their experiences with us. We received an interesting letter from 3 technologists who were involved in the planning and design of the very first issue of JNMT and who continued to serve as news editors for the first 4 issues. Their Technologist News section survives to this day. Jacquie Long Crimins, Mary Simpson, and Cecile Gaigals wrote:

At a time when fledgling chapters were getting organized throughout the country, the New England Chapter of Nuclear Medicine Technologists had taken a leadership position under the local presidency of Mr. Larry Cavendish and begun publication of a New England Chapter newsletter. This monthly print-out came to the attention of the New York office, and we were invited to travel to NYC and present our ideas and material. We were subsequently enlisted to become the initial editorial team for the national JNMT and served as such for a year.

A soon-to-be-published history of the SNM recounts how Glenn Isserstadt was recruited as scientific editor and given just 3 months to get the first edition out. It takes me at least 6 months to get a paper through the review process and into print—and that’s with computers, the internet, and papers that come in without being solicited. Now, we know how Glenn managed it.

This month the 51st Annual Meeting of the SNM will be held in Philadelphia. Each year the JNMT publishes the Technologist Section’s continuing education schedule in March and the abstracts for the Technologist Section’s scientific and educational program in June. This year is just a little bit different—but you might have to look closely to notice. That’s because the annual meeting abstracts published in this issue are reprints. This year they were first published via CD in our sister publication, The Journal of Nuclear Medicine (JNM).

While editors usually prefer to publish first, this arrangement has several advantages for the technologists who have submitted abstracts and for the Technologists Section as a whole. For abstract authors, their abstracts will be indexed through JNM, which has a larger circulation, and, let’s face it, more prestige. Because all members of the Society receive the JNM, but only Technologist Section members receive the JNMT, the Technologist Section benefits by having its scientific and educational program available to all SNM members, including physicians and scientists. And meeting attendees, techs and docs, will have one simple reference for all presentations.

Another innovation in SNM publications is on the horizon. Sometime in the next few months, JNM and JNMT will move to a “publish ahead of print” system for the scientific articles. (The continuing education articles will still be published first in the journals.) Among other things, this means that, in the future, the standard reference for scientific articles will become the online reference, and this will be reflected in the printed version. It also means that papers can be published in a more timely manner, an especially attractive feature for a quarterly journal. Members and subscribers will benefit from faster access to the important scientific work that the journals publish. When the system is up and running, you’ll be able to access articles as soon as they are edited through our online publisher, Highwire Press, at http://tech.snmjournals.org. Welcome to the 21st Century.