Things seem to move ever faster in this information age. For 62 years, four issues of The Angle Orthodontist were mailed to our subscribers each year interrupted only by a brief hiatus during World War II. Many of us kept every issue and had them bound to create a useful home or office library.
Starting in 1994, however, a number of changes have irreversibly impacted on this ritual. Under Editor Dave Turpin, The Angle Orthodontist moved from a quarterly to a bimonthly publication. The size and number of pages increased. The information transmitted grew from 391 small pages in 1988 to 576 large pages by 1998, a 47% increase.
These paper publication changes were all only a harbinger of things yet to come. One important paradigm shift occurred when The Angle Orthodontist home page was initiated and abstracts and/or titles began being posted on the Internet. The Angle Orthodontist had entered the digital age!
In 2000 we moved to make The Angle Orthodontist a leading edge electronic publication to complement its long-standing prestige as a paper publication. The home page at http://www.angle.org was redone and enlarged. Beginning with the new millennium, every issue of The Angle Orthodontist was published on the Internet even before the hard copies were mailed. Everything published in The Angle Orthodontist since 2000 is available to anyone with a computer and an Internet connection. Indeed, by the time you read this, every issue published from 1996–99 will have been added to our home page. Everything published in The Angle Orthodontist since 1996 is now available to you anytime at our home page.
Several other less obvious changes also have occurred. Beginning in 2002, the entire review process has been upgraded. Now you can submit your manuscript for publication in The Angle Orthodontist over the Internet. If you are not comfortable doing this, you can still send your article to me and we will enter it for you.
The reviewers receive copies of the manuscript also over the Internet. One big advantage of this is that it does not matter if an author or reviewer lives next door to me or on the other side of the world. The manuscripts are transmitted at the speed of light. Reviewers send their reviews back to me, again on the Internet. While all this is happening you, the author, also can track the progress of your article on the Internet. All of this is done with the same level of confidentiality that existed in the past and, conceptually, could even occur in a single day. The US Mail and associated package carriers (and their charges) are no longer in the loop. The only rate-limiting factor of the review process is the time required by the reviewers to complete their work. When the reviewers are done, the reviews are returned to the author to deal with any suggested revisions. When the author completes this step, the revised manuscript is returned to me and I send it to the printer in Kansas, all over the Internet.
It is important to note that this evolution was possible for one very basic reason. The Angle Orthodontist differs from most other professional publications in that we are published by the EH Angle Education and Research Foundation Inc, a not-for-profit foundation. Allen Press, our superb quality printer, works under a contract with the Foundation to print the journal. This is in contrast to other journals where the publisher and the printer are the same commercial company. A company must focus primarily on the profit motive and that results in the health of the company. The Angle Orthodontist can focus primarily on good science and that results in the health of the journal.
The foresight and support of the Board of Directors of the EH Angle Education and Research Foundation Inc. has made this all possible by initiating and financing these altruistic developments. I get e-mail from orthodontists and orthodontic students all over the world who find The Angle Orthodontist on the Internet. The majority of our articles are submitted from overseas authors. The genie is out of the bottle! The globalization of orthodontics has arrived and is growing faster than many orthodontists realize.
Did I mention the cost of these changes? Oh yes, its all been free to any and all users and we would like to keep it that way. The EH Angle Education and Research Foundation Inc. is a low profile group, but its altruistic work speaks far louder than any words. The Foundation is disseminating cutting edge science to the worldwide scientific community in the original spirit of the Internet. Imagine if all electronic scientific journals were set up like The Angle Orthodontist. It would be a simple matter to link them together and, Voila! An electronic library of all journals would be available to everyone everywhere!
I hope you share with me a sense of pride in these accomplishments of the EH Angle Education and Research Foundation Inc. Orthodontics has given us all a great life that exceeds anything we could have imagined. Please join me in sharing our professional good fortune and help build our profession. Think of how rich we are, the good this foundation is doing and then remember the EH Angle Education and Research Foundation Inc. in your philanthropy.