Renewal of the Journal

Internal medicine as a clinical subject is in a period of radical changes. Clinical departments of internal medicine are closed at many teaching hospitals and split into subspecialities. Contributing to this process are new requirements for high-tech care and research which are dependent on the knowledge and technologies of the different specialities. At the same time there is an obvious demand to keep internal medicine as a clinical discipline together. There is now a growing awareness for the need of the generalists and internal medicine as the spider in the web to provide acute and subacute care to the growing population of aged patients with complex multiorgan diseases. Also for teaching general internal medicine and have patients for interactive and multidisciplinary research it is necessary to keep internal medicine together as a speciality. ‘General internal medicine largely disappeared just at the time when it was badly needed’ [1, 2]. Since its foundation in 1863 our Journal has supported science within the field of internal medicine. The Journal has passed through several metamorphic steps with changes not only in its name but also language, design and format. A major step was taken in 1989 when Acta Medica Scandinavica, which only published articles from the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands became a truly international journal under the name of Journal of Internal Medicine. Thus, today about 70% of the articles submitted to the Journal come from non-Scandinavian countries. During the year 2000, the Journal published a series of papers illustrating the future of internal medicine as seen by prominent scientists, (‘Internal Medicine in the 21st Century’) with Prof. Sir David Weatherall as Guest Editor. The articles were collected in a supplement to the February issue this year [3]. The front cover of the supplement had a new design with a visionary colour illustration by Urban Frank, illustrating the sequence from DNA and cell to the hopeful future of medicine for the benefit of the patient. The cover of the supplement was a preview of the Journal’s new design which will appear from the July issue this year. The title of the Journal is given a modern touch and the subtitle ‘formerly Acta Medica Scandinavica’ is now removed. In addition, the Journal will introduce a logo ‘JIM’ to appear on the content page and to be used in all our future communications. The cover page of the Journal will be dominated by a colour illustration which alludes to a paper or a theme of the issue. The front picture of the July issue which is connected to the review article on atrial fibrillation by Bertil Ohlsson [4] is an original and never before shown perspective on the atria of the heart. The artist is Urban Frank who has been contracted to illustrate the Journal. He is a well-known medical illustrator who is assisting in the production of posters and booklets for the Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine since many years. All authors are encouraged to include colour pictures in their articles. Urban Frank will give full support in producing such illustrations. It is also our goal to provide a cover illustration related to an article in each of the coming issues of the Journal. This year the Journal has increased the number of commissioned articles such as reviews and mini-symposia written by internationally well recognized scientists. During the first six months of this year, one mini-symposium on haematopoietic gene therapy [5] and nine reviews on subjects such as substance P [6], molecular epidemiology of tuberculosis [7], hepatitis C [8], gene-environment and cancer [9], diet and breast cancer [10], cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes [11] and blood pressure in diabetic neuropathy [12] have appeared in the Journal. It is our aim to include one or more such articles in each issue for the coming years. In the selection of themes for such articles we will seek to provide translational information on current subjects within basic sciences that are of potential interest for clinicians as well as purely clinical reviews. For further information about the Journal, please visit our home-page www.blackwell-science. com/jim which has been updated recently. It is our hope that the modernization of the Journal will be appreciated and further increase its attraction and readability.