Editor's note: The opinions expressed in this editorial do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the AAMC or its members. The field of academic medicine is inherently forward looking—educating a new generation of health professionals and scientists, engaging in research to understand disease and health and to develop novel therapies, strengthening clinical services, advancing community collaborations, and nurturing leaders. We who are involved in the work of academic medicine perform it with the fundamental aim of ensuring better health for patients and populations. And we are restless and determined. We do not accept that the current state of our workforce, knowledge, treatments, and capabilities for addressing health needs and improving lives is sufficient. This future orientation thus both inspires us and challenges us, as the true measure of our effectiveness today will be demonstrated in the years to come. In 2026, our journal Academic Medicine will celebrate its 100th anniversary. This occasion is a natural time to reflect on the past, present, and future of our field, as well as the role and evolution of our journal. Since the journal's earliest days as the Bulletin of the Association of American Medical Colleges, our field has expanded and the journal has become a platform for scholarship and dialogue and has progressed in its intention, aspirations, and impact. The journal initially focused on medical education and pedagogy and over the decades broadened in scope to cover education across the health professions as well as the full set of missions of academic medicine.1 Poised on the cusp of the next hundred years, Academic Medicine is making changes to further modernize and to strengthen its role as a platform for scholarship and dialogue in our field. We are excited to be taking the transformational step of moving to Oxford University Press (OUP) as our publisher. OUP is a not-for-profit publishing house with global reach. Its university affiliation and university-related mission of advancing excellence in research, scholarship, and education2 align well with the missions of our journal and our field. OUP's international presence and its intensive efforts to reach the academic community worldwide, including special initiatives in support of engagement with low- and middle-income countries,3 offer exciting opportunities for Academic Medicine. We expect that Academic Medicine will be in good company and will have excellent support with OUP. Half of the journals in OUP's portfolio are in the top quartile of their Web of Science categories by impact factor, and OUP's journals collection is available in over 8,000 academic libraries globally. Many of OUP's journals are published in partnerships with professional societies. We see that OUP is working strategically to ensure that their journals will have increasing availability as the momentum for greater transparency and open science increases and as business models in academic publishing change (e.g., new open access arrangements, including Read and Publish4). A priority for our journal in this move to OUP is the opportunity to further improve the author experience. A key objective is to shorten the timeline both for peer review and for publication of accepted manuscripts. Our approach at OUP will be more time-sensitive and efficient, which we expect will be welcomed by our authors. Academic Medicine editors and staff are working with the OUP team to develop specific resources for our journal, such as updated instructions for authors and clearer style and formatting guidelines. Also, we will be moving away from our time-intensive practice of substantive editing of accepted manuscripts. Our dedicated team of editors and staff will be shifting their focus to collaborating with authors earlier in the peer-review process with goals of moving submissions more quickly and providing personalized guidance regarding revisions and formatting. We will continue to use Editorial Manager as our manuscript submission system, which we hope will make the transition for authors smooth. In 2026, Academic Medicine will transition to online-only publication, aligning with the broad trends in scholarly journal publishing. Our articles are accessed millions of times each year through digital platforms, but our print subscription base has been small in recent years. The move to online-only publication will allow more flexibility and, importantly, will reduce the journal's carbon footprint. We understand that the transition away from print may initially be hard for some of our readers (and, admittedly, for members of our editorial team) and will require some adaptation and revised habits. That said, Academic Medicine will continue to publish its digital issue each month. Our journal will retain all of its current major features—Articles, Research Reports, Scholarly Perspectives, Reviews, Innovation Reports, and Commentaries—as well as its special features—Letters to the Editor, Medicine and the Arts, Teaching and Learning Moments, and AM Last Page. We will continue to call periodically for submissions for Cover Art and for Trainee Letters to the Editor. Academic Medicine will still publish supplements, which are typically organized and reviewed in collaboration with guest editors. Academic Medicine will enter a new phase as it celebrates its centenary in 2026. With our move to OUP, we are positioning the journal to better serve our readers, authors, and reviewers in the future. Changes both in our field and in society have been dramatic, and the pace of change is accelerating. It is clear that we in academic medicine will indeed be inspired and also challenged to fulfill our field's missions. We hope and expect that our journal's value will be demonstrated and celebrated through its contributions over the next hundred years.
Laura Weiss Roberts (Mon,) studied this question.
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