Editorial

Since the last Newsletter the Publications Committee and the Education and Professional Standards Committees have met. Both these do valuable work for the Federation. The Publications Committee met in London and had a very profitable meeting, the first proper meeting with the new committee. It was noted with enthusiasm that the EJU has changed to electronic submission. My own experience of this with the British Journal of Radiology was that it brought a substantial increase in paper submissions and therefore more work for the Editorial Board but hopefully an even better Journal as a result of this. There is no doubt that easy submission will bring the Journal in line with more and more Scientific and Medical Journals who have gone down this route. It may also give a difficult problem with regard to speed of publication but I am sure the editors will cross this bridge when they come to it.

We also decided that rather than another drive to increase numbers of subscriptions to the Journal across the board we would target certain societies whom we thought may be particularly receptive to such discussions. There was also discussion about whether a one year subscription to the EJU should be included in registration for future congresses but this is a matter which has been considered and rejected previously and is unlikely to receive overwhelming support.

It was also agreed that in order to vary the content of the Newsletter and give the current editor a bit of a rest, the other members of the committee would produce items for the Newsletter on a regular basis. This should start to happen with the next edition, so keep an eye out for that.

The other area of intense discussion was the web site. We owe a great debt of gratitude to Gianna for keeping this up to date and at her suggestion are hopeful she may be able to find a course to help refine her skills even further. If any member of the federation has any suggestions about the web site, hopefully mainly constructive, they would be most welcome.

David W. Pilling

Editor EFSUMB Newsletter