A Message from the Ghost of Editors Past
Julius Wroblewski, MD, FRCPC
Julius Wroblewski, MD, FRCPC, is with the laboratory at Mount Saint Joseph Hospital, Vancouver, British Columbia. Email: jwroblewski@providencehealth.bc.ca.
When I had my “walk in the snow” moment and decided to relinquish the editorship of the CAP Newsletter, I never guessed I would be courted some years later to help write its epitaph. But I am glad to be of service once again.
The plan and vision is, of course, to have the new Canadian Journal of Pathology succeed the old newsletter. I’ve got to admit it’s a bold plan, the creation of a more academically oriented publication (with the possible retention of some old Newsletter functions, too). CJP will be entering an academic journal market already populated with some 500-pound gorillas. Yikes, I’d feel like a mechanic trying to expand and take on the Big Three carmakers. But it might take only one or two hot research pieces for the greater pathology world to take notice. Just one Watson & Crick performance and the game will be on. It’s up to the CAP membership to make this happen.
The idea of a self-sustaining pathology journal is a wonderful thought, too. High-profile ads could give the journal the revenue to be bold and creative in its product. Just don’t let those advertisers think they’re buying soul as well as print space. (Don’t you just hate how all those NHL stadiums feel the need to name themselves after corporate sponsors? Just wait until one hockey city christens its arena Viagra Place. Try explaining that to your 7-year-old kid.)
One great benefit I got from my tour of duty as newsletter editor was getting to peer into a different world, that of publishing. And I don’t just mean the day-to-day mechanics of slapping copy together. The times that I drew from external sources for articles or images granted me experiences of all kinds. There were the publications and publishing houses that were gracious in taking the trouble to do business with a print pipsqueak like me, with correspondence and service that seemed to be comparable to that granted to Random House. Once I even got the chance to successfully ask an author himself (a gifted physician-writer) for publishing permission and, in gratitude, sent him copies. (I wonder what he thought of the outcome.) There was that time when I so wanted to reproduce a most eclectic and witty piece of cartooning, but was stymied by a proprietor that just didn’t understand the folly of pricing oneself out of the market. And then there was the futile attempt to get permission to reproduce a classic journalist’s essay, only to be stonewalled by an arrogant publishing house that subjected me to a varied diet of neglect and half-hearted action. In desperation, I eventually obtained the contact info for the author’s estate, only to be totally ignored when contact was attempted. Gee whiz, I thought to myself. Are the red-hot rubles of an honest but humble pathology publication tainted beyond hope of redemption? Channelling Rodney Dangerfield – “I don’t get no respect! No respect at all!”
As an aside, let me tell you of some continuing medical education gleanings from a series of Harvard Medical School conferences I have attended, these being on the topic of publishing for medical professionals. The lesson that stuck in my mind was the minefield that awaits anyone who fancies that bearing an MD makes one more likely to break into the New York Times Best-Seller List. Never mind the “for starters” of the nature of the market, which is the cold fact that few of the few that get published can ever hope to quit their day jobs. A book printing is like an oil-well drilling: most flop. Even getting to the printing stage is the result of surviving a sadist’s gauntlet of a courtship of both publishers and literary agents who are bombarded to the point of exhaustion by innumerable Crichton wannabes whom they are likely to regard as feral dogs until proven otherwise. I get the inkling that the temper of interactions on the way to the top is expressed in that coarse Russian saying about power relationships: “You’re the boss, I’m s**t. I’m the boss, you’re s**t.”
Well, the relationship between your editors and the CAP membership was never the nasty Hobbesian world described above. I loved the chance to feature all kinds of interesting inputs from our community, and my only regret is that I wasn’t showered with more. Let’s hope that Canadian Journal of Pathology is embraced by one and all as both a reference and a platform.
Cheers, and thanks for all the memories.
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