Editorial

Joan Heller Brown

Astute readers ofMolecular Pharmacology no doubt have noted this issue's new cover. The gold hue remains, but elements of a new design appear, linked to the covers of ASPET's other three journals. A number of other initiatives are slated for the ASPET journals early this year. One is the centralization of the editorial offices at ASPET in Bethesda, a process that takes effect for Molecular Pharmacology on January 1, 2000. Manuscripts will be submitted to Bethesda, and all communication will be carried out from this office. Rich Dodenhoff, ASPET's Journals Director, and June Dreskin, ASPET's new Managing Editor, will coordinate this process and expedite the central handling of Molecular Pharmacology. The Board of Publications Trustees decided to centralize manuscript submission and tracking for several reasons. It relieves the journal editors of the responsibilities of establishing and managing a manuscript office and staff and allows the editors to concentrate on journal content. The Bethesda staff will also put in place an online manuscript submission and tracking system, expected to be available in late 2000.

Beginning January 1, 2000, I assume responsibility as Editor of Molecular Pharmacology. I will be joined in my efforts by an outstanding new group of Associate Editors, including several of my distinguished colleagues in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of California San Diego: Drs. Paul Insel, Alexandra Newton, Palmer Taylor, and Robert Tukey. Dr. Robert Kass, Chairman of the Department of Pharmacology at Columbia University, will also join us. Dr. Michael Gottesman, who has served as a dedicated Associate Editor for the past 5 years, will continue in the initial year.

The journal and ASPET owe a tremendous debt of thanks to Dr. Ray Dingledine, who has stewarded the journal since 1995. Dr. Dingledine and the Associate Editors who served with him (Drs. P. Jeffrey Conn, Michael Gottesman, Kenneth Minneman, Edward Morgan, and Richard Neubig) not only maintained the remarkably high standards of the journal, but significantly sped the process from review to publication, brought new and changing art to the cover, and attracted outstanding manuscripts in ever-growing fields. Esmeralda Galán has run the editorial office with skill and dedication, ably assisted most recently by Sarah Dergarabedian. Their “class act” will be a challenge to follow, with much to imitate and little to fix. Nonetheless, in the spirit of a new leadership, a new millennium, and a renaissance in biology, genetics, and technology, it is appropriate to set our goals even higher.

A major goal of the new editors and editorial board is to foster the expansion of the journal by attracting better and more seminal papers and by increasing readership. There will be new members added to the editorial board, and we hope that their prominence will attract quality submissions on a wide range of subjects relating to molecular pharmacology. Minireviews, which appeared sporadically in past years, will become a more frequent feature. Dr. Laurence Brunton will serve as Minireviews Editor and will solicit topical reviews at the suggestion of the Associate Editors and readers. In addition, short commentaries on selected noteworthy papers published in each issue will be included as “Perspectives.” There are several research areas of interest to molecular pharmacologists that have not been as fully represented as the new editorial team would like. These include signal transduction, cancer biology, gene expression, genomics, and molecular modeling. We ask that you join us in encouraging submissions in these areas.

We take considerable pride in the efforts of our reviewers to provide constructive critiques that add dimension and clarity to the interpretation and presentation of sophisticated experiments. At the same time, we are conscious of the need to expedite rather than to slow the time to publication and have set as a mission the need to capture more papers that report high-impact and novel findings. We intend to dispel the perception thatMolecular Pharmacology reviews are “nitpicking” and soften the journal's image by removing this barrier. Our ultimate goal is to ensure that Molecular Pharmacology is used by the entire scientific community as the journal of choice for elucidating molecular targets and defining technologic advances that will inform drug discovery in the 21st century. We look forward to working with readers and reviewers in this exciting task.