Milestones for Palliative & Supportive Care

With the publication of Volume 3, Number 4 of our journal, Palliative & Supportive Care, we have reached several important milestones that are noteworthy. I am pleased to say that with this issue, we successfully conclude the third year of publication of our new journal, whose acceptance in the scientific and academic community was not a matter of certitude. We had the idealistic mission of providing an intellectual and journalistic home for that small (but growing) band of academicians around the world who were focusing their work in palliative care, with particular emphasis on the psychiatric, existential, and spiritual aspects of care. We have survived! Our survival is due, in no small part, to the contributions of researchers all around the world who have so graciously and generously submitted their work to us for publication. Palliative & Supportive Care is truly an international journal, with authors from more than 15 countries contributing to the journal these past three years. Our thanks also to our wonderful Editorial Board and dedicated reviewers. I know that I speak on behalf of my coeditors, Drs. Chochinov and Wein, when I say that these three years have been extraordinarily challenging, exciting, and extremely rewarding. However, none of it would be possible without the dedication of our Managing Editor, Donna Cassetta, and the wonderful support of the staff at Cambridge University Press, which publishes our journal.

We have done more this year than merely survive. We have achieved a major milestone in the life of a new journal. We are very proud to announce that, in November 2005, the National Library of Medicine selected Palliative & Supportive Care for inclusion in MEDLINE. The selection of Palliative & Supportive Care for inclusion in MEDLINE is retroactive to Volume 1, Number 1, which means that all articles published to date in Palliative & Supportive Care and in the future will be accessible to Internet searches through such library databases as PubMed and others. This is a major accomplishment for any new journal, and we are proud that Palliative & Supportive Care has been selected for this honor at such an early stage in the life of a new journal. Our contributors can now be confident that their work, published in Palliative & Supportive Care, will be accessible to the entire academic world. We urge all potential contributors who may have been waiting for Palliative & Supportive Care to achieve this milestone before contributing their scholarly work to wait no more.

In the coming year, we will be bringing new innovations to the journal to increase the value of the journal to our readership. I urge our readers to look for a forthcoming special issue with papers from a recent conference entitled, “Controversies in End of Life Care: Terri Schiavo's Lessons.” This special issue will be guest coedited by Lewis Cohen, M.D., one of the conference's organizers. Readers can be reassured that we will continue to bring them high quality original research, with both quantitative and qualitative studies well represented. We have received quite a bit of positive feedback regarding our “Clinical Update” section, which lists important papers of interest to our readership that have appeared in other journals. We urge our readers and contributors to consider sending more personal and creative writing to the journal for inclusion in the “Personal Essays/Reflections” section.

Finally, a last word of appreciation and thanks to all who support our journal. Together we have created and nurtured something of value. What we have created is still young and vulnerable. The future is unknown, but today we look toward the future with hope.