Prestigious Research Journal Gets New Parents
One of the world's premier schizophrenia journals—the Schizophrenia Bulletin—has changed hands.
The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has turned its publication over to the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center and Oxford University Press.
NIMH announced last spring that it intended to stop publishing the Bulletin and that it was looking for a new publisher for it. The principal reason, NIMH Director Thomas Insel, M.D., indicated in a prepared statement, was to ease the journal's transition to an electronic format.
“The Bulletin has served its original purposes well, but in this `electronic age,' the institute needs to consider new ways to inform scientists, clinicians, patients and families, and the general public about schizophrenia research findings.”
A number of organizations in both North America and Europe, including American Psychiatric Publishing Inc., applied for the job. Review of applications took place during the summer. On September 14, Insel announced via the NIMH Web site that NIMH had “selected a collaborative proposal from Oxford University Press and Maryland Psychiatric Research Center to assume publishing responsibilities, beginning with the 2005-dated issues... and is confident that the Bulletin will be in very good hands.”
With this change, William Carpenter Jr., M.D., a professor of psychiatry at the University of Maryland and director of the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, will become editor in chief of the Bulletin and a group of highly respected scientists will serve as associate editors, including Gunvant Thaker, M.D., and Paul Shepard, Ph.D., of the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center; Wayne Fenton, M.D., and Daniel Weinberger, M.D., of NIMH; Charles Schulz, M.D., of the University of Minnesota; Susan Essock, Ph.D., of Mount Sinai School of Medicine; and Robin Murray, M.D., of the Institute of Psychiatry in London.
“The Bulletin will fill a special niche,” Carpenter said. “We want to do well with the things that have traditionally been the journal's strong suit, and this includes theme issues—for example, new treatments for schizophrenia; high-quality critical reviews of topics—say, a review of the effect of stigma; and reports from workshops such as the current NIMH MATRICS reports on cognition in schizophrenia. We will continue special features such as first-person accounts and cover artwork from people with schizophrenia.
“At the same time we'll be introducing some new features. We want to tell good translational research stories that are understandable by a broad audience of clinicians, not just by schizophrenia researchers. We want to be the journal that basic neuroscientists read to learn about the illness and the place for the broad readership to learn about the neuroscience of schizophrenia.”
More information about the Schizophrenia Bulletin is posted online at<www.schizophreniabulletin.oupjournals.org>.▪
