Honoring Our Past, Embracing Our Future

Much has changed since the first issue of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD) was published in February of 1963. John F. Kennedy was President, Beatlemania was the rage in the U.K. but hardly anyone knew about the band in the United States, and the Bell Telephone Company (later know as AT&T) was getting ready to launch the newfangled “touch tone phone” with 10 buttons (no star, no hashtag). The Association's newest publication was titled Mental Retardation, a term which had not yet accumulated sufficient baggage to be considered pejorative. Potential authors either prepared their manuscripts on typewriters, or handwrote their manuscripts and solicited the services of typists to produce final drafts. Submissions, distribution of manuscripts to reviewers, reviewer feedback, and editorial decisions were all accomplished though the postal service. Personal computers, online submission systems, and E-journals would have been utterly foreign concepts to the journal's early contributors....