Ruminations on a new journal

Editorials / Commentaries

CJEM 1999;1(1):14-16

The Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine? ... What? Eh? ... Last December the CAEP Board voted unanimously to make the leap from newsletter to journal. After doing so, they were forced to choose an editor, which is a decision not to be taken lightly. A Board subcommittee deliberated for weeks before offering me the position. It was a tough decision, I'm told, but it would have been tougher had anyone else been willing to take the job.

My first task as editor was to determine why, exactly, we needed a new journal. The CAEP Board had plenty of reasons, but a good editor considers the needs of his or her readers, so I contacted all three of them.

One said, "Grant, Canada is a big country with a lot of diverse emergency physicians. It's time we had our own academic EM journal."

The second said, "I like the relaxed attitude and humour of Communiqué. Don't change a thing."

And the third said, "CJEM should be a forum for Canadian emergency physicians, Canadian research and Canadian issues."

Given this input, we decided that CJEM should be a truly Canadian journal: polite and humble, relaxed and humorous, yet highly scientific - a journal that is just as comfortable in the bathroom as in the recycling bin; a journal that publishes Canadian issues, such as overcrowded hospitals, curling injuries and hypothermia; a journal that tackles controversial matters head-on, such as Why do we spell "humour" with a "u"? and Why is Canada the only country whose élite athletes believe marijuana is a performance-enhancing drug?

The CJEM editorship is a wonderful job - everything a person could want, apart from a source of taxable income - but it's more than just power lunches and cocktail parties. There are challenges galore. The first thing you notice when you become the editor of a new journal is that you have no articles to publish. This is good. It allows you to determine, without undue influence, the direction the journal should take. The second thing you notice when you become the editor of a major national publication is that you must interact with people from other parts of the country. This is easier said than done. Canada is a large country with inconvenient regions known as "time zones." Time zones are a fascinating phenomena that plague editors the world over.

I have tried to explain the scientific principles behind time zones on many occasions. However, it is a complex subject, difficult for the common mind to grasp so, using a hypothetical person from Toronto, I offer this illustration.

Every morning, at 8 o'clock sharp, our perplexed but well-meaning Torontonian pours his morning coffee and rubs his chin thoughtfully, pondering a question that only a journal editor could answer - a question like: "What colour ink will the new journal use? Will it be black like other journals?" Wishing to clarify this or another weighty issue, he calls me in Vancouver. Inexplicably, through the miracle of time zones, his call reaches my bedside telephone THREE HOURS before he even dialled. That's right! Amazingly, my phone rings at 05:00 in the morning. While this sounds unpleasant, it is actually good because, otherwise, my family would sleep through a wonderful sunrise and I would waste hours drooling on my pillow when I could be busily rejecting peoples' articles for no reason whatsoever. After clarifying the ink issue, our hypothetical Torontonian returns to his work, still rubbing his chin, wondering why West-Coasters are so damn snarky.

Having dealt with major problems like "no articles" and "time zones" it comes as a shock to the new editor's system when he realizes he must focus not on science and literature but, rather, on marketing and circulation. The first key strategy our consultants identified was for us to choose a catchy title that would jump out and grab the potential reader. We considered the Canadian Journal of Losing Weight and Having Better Sex and the Canadian Journal of Mostly-Naked Actors and Celebrities (our thanks to Dr. Bruce Campana for this suggestion) before we settled on The Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine.

Which leads me to another issue. Normally I wouldn't clutter up a perfectly good editorial with facts, but the following real-life situation is so humorous I had to include it, even though it's true. The amusing facts are as follows. After we performed a title search and confirmed that no one else publishes a Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine, we successfully registered the name. Then, for reasons I can't recall at the moment, we consulted our lawyers, who determined, by conferring in expensive restaurants, that we could not use that title. Why? you ask. Decades ago, someone trademarked the name "Emergency Medicine."

To the legally untrained mind this doesn't seem like a problem because Emergency Medicine is not the title we chose. However, our lawyers explained that "Canadian" and "Journal" cannot be trademarked, so when lawyers read "Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine" they believe they are reading "Emergency Medicine" and this allows them to sue us. The bottom line is that any title including the words "Emergency Medicine" is off limits.

It's not clear how our situation differs from Annals of Emergency Medicine, the Journal of Emergency Medicine, the Australasian Journal of Emergency Medicine, and a dozen others. The only obvious difference is that these journals do not publish in Canada, but perhaps there is another, correctable explanation. If not, rest assured that I will publish the Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine from wherever I have to - even if it means moving the editorial office to Bermuda or Tahiti.

By which time our Toronto colleagues will have sorted out the conundrum of time zones or I'll have a real office number.