March, 2014
Dear Colleagues,
This brief newsletter is to extend greetings from the Board and the staff at the ANA and to say that all is thriving here, even as we approach the Ides of March.
This has been a milestone quarter for publications of the ANA. As you have probably already noted, the Annals of Neurology is now out under the leadership of Clif Saper, whose team in Boston is now functioning with a full head of steam. I encourage everyone to read Clif’s initial editorial “Passages 2014” which provides an excellent roadmap for Annals under his stewardship. Particularly engaging are new sections devoted to clinical neurology (Neurology Grand Rounds) and career development (NeuroGenesis).
Also out now is the Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology, our open-access journal (which we affectionately call ACTN). Getting access to ACTN is as easy as a quick Google entry, which opens the portal to full content, without usernames or password – a real plus. As Jack Kessler says in his inaugural editorial, this is a super vehicle to provide rapid publication of peer-reviewed, quality content in a fully-open setting. In a sense, this is a powerful statement that the ANA is indeed opening its doors more widely, encouraging engagement with the broadest possible community of neurologists.
In addition to these forward-looking activities, we are trying to be more effective in looking backward. Specifically, we are making a major effort to organize our extensive ANA archives, hoping to enhance accessibility and utility of this resource. These archives contain materials going back essentially to the founding of the ANA in 1875 and thus are an invaluable record of academic neurology and neurobiology. We are undertaking three efforts in this regard. First, we are considering how best to locate the archives, hopefully in a user friendly setting in which the material can be optimally organized and accessible. Second, we are beginning the process of digitizing key elements of the library, with the goal of getting them onto the web. And third, we are looking for one or more colleagues who are interested in helping us write a history of the ANA, building on this collection. (You may recall that in 2001 Dr. Rowland prepared a wonderful history of the NINDS at its 50th anniversary – a superb model for any such retrospective.) Please let us know if you are interested in this endeavor.
Sincerely,
Robert H. Brown, Jr., D.Phil., M.D.
University of Massachusetts
President, American Neurological Association