Thorax 1996–2002

The year 1996 was a strange one. Dolly the sheep was cloned and Britain was embroiled in an epidemic of mad cow disease. Nottingham Forest football team were in the premier league. Amid this confusion, two different beasts were appointed to the editorship of Thorax, one a cell biologist and the other an epidemiologist. This was the first time Thorax had joint editors rather than a dictatorial structure. Would it work? How would we run the journal?

The main indicator of scientific quality of a journal then, as now, was the impact factor and, for all its failings, it at least provided something objective which was measurable against comparator journals. At that time the impact factor of Thorax was rather low and we were concerned that, as competitor journals expanded, we might be left in their wake. We decided that lean and mean was best. We would concentrate on quality at the expense of quantity and hope that by publishing only the best papers we would improve the impact factor. Hopefully this would then make the journal more appealing to contributors for their better papers, and there would be a positive spiral with this policy increasing the number of good …