• Political

“All the world acknowledges that the invention is the greatest event that secular history has recorded….

Science was found lurking in the corners much prosecuted; the invention gave it freedom on land and sea and brought it within reach of every mortal.”

- Mark Twain, 1900

This quote from Mark Twain is excerpted from his article in the Hartford Daily Courant² commemorating the 500th year anniversary of the birth of Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the movable type press. Admittedly, Gutenberg's invention was one of the more significant inventions in the past millennium. It simplified the production of the written work, thereby expanding the audience and facilitating the transfer of information and knowledge. Perhaps nowhere is the transfer of knowledge more crucial than in science and medicine.

“I told you to do it this way.”

“Why?”

“Because, I said so.”

The above exchange is not attributable to any single individual but is almost universal in the field of parenting. With not too much of a stretch, a similar exchange might be imagined between a neurointerventionalist and his or her fellow. This would have especially been true in the infancy of our field. Although the explanation to the question “why?” may have been less curt, more than likely the explanation would have been based on dogma arrived at by careful consideration and clinical experience rather than reasoning proven by scientific method.

“Men have sought to make a world from their own conception and to draw from their own minds all the materials which they employed, but if instead of doing so, they had consulted experience and observation they would have the facts and not opinions to reason about, and might have ultimately arrived at the knowledge of the laws which govern the material world.”

- Sir Francis Bacon, Novum Organum; 1620³

The field of neurointerventional surgery is reaching adulthood. With that maturation comes the responsibility to generate a substrate of principles on which the field is built. These principles should be formed from well designed research rather than opinions which are converted to dogma. Additionally, the field of neurointerventional surgery has an obligation to make the tenants of its foundation readily available to practitioners of its trade.

My apologies for this lengthy preamble but the winding roads of knowledge dissemination and scientific method have led us to the destination of the Journal of NeuroInterventional Surgery (JNIS). JNIS is an exciting new enterprise with immense opportunities. With this vehicle, the field of neurointerventional surgery now has the security of a single home for its evidence based foundation.

As editor-in-chief I am particularly enthusiastic about the new venture of JNIS. I also feel fortunate to have the support of a partnership with the BMJ Publishing Group (http://group.bmj.com) as the publishing engine for the journal. BMJ has a longstanding global reputation of excellence in publishing. In addition to standard editorial production assistance, the partnership with BMJ provides many unique opportunities. One example is that initially JNIS will be bundled with two other BMJ journals; the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, and Practical Neurology. This provides JNIS with instant penetration into institutional libraries world-wide. It also provides individual subscribers of JNIS online access to these two complimentary resources.

JNIS hard copy will initially be published quarterly. However, the online version of the journal will have a rolling update of content at the point of manuscript acceptance. This will insure authors rapid publication of their data. Additionally, BMJ Group is forward thinking enough to have available other digital platforms such as Doc2Doc (http://doc2doc.bmj.com), a professional networking site for doctors worldwide, as well as other exciting features like pod casts which can be applied to the online version of JNIS in the near future.

Obviously, the communication medium has progressed immensely in the period since Gutenberg's movable type press. The possibilities for communicating neurointerventional knowledge seem endless and therefore perhaps too daunting for a single individual to imagine. That being said, I sincerely encourage the readership to contact me at editor{at}jnis.org with suggestions for JNIS. While I cannot guarantee that I will be able to incorporate everyone's ideas, I will guarantee that I will give each one careful and serious consideration.

So, I welcome you to JNIS, the new home for the field of neurointerventional surgery. I look forward to working with you, the readership, and in the coming years to model this home into a structure we can be proud of, which is admired and respected by others and which stands the test of time as a foundation for knowledge.