© Veterinary Sciences Tomorrow - Issue 1 - January 2001
Editorial
Veterinary Sciences Tomorrow (VST) is a refereed electronic
'current awareness' journal aimed at building a global community of animal
health researchers with a sense of identity and quality. It will provide
state-of-the-art reviews for scientists, academic teachers, graduate students
and policy makers and will publish facts, interpretation and opinion on current
issues of importance for comparative pathobiology and veterinary public health,
encouraging interdisciplinary exchange."
As a mission statement, this is
ambitious, and we like to think it is distinct from what we have seen on the
Web. Indeed, there are many animal health-related publications available
already. You only need to look at the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI)
listings to find there are 138 paper journals ranked in the bibliometric
category 'veterinary sciences' (1998) and a comprehensive search of the
internet, using Copernic Pro
2000 yields 84 sites containing the term 'veterinary sciences' (there were
78 when we searched last, in September). So why start another publication? Is
there a need for one?
We believe there is, for several reasons. First,
‘veterinary sciences' is a highly indiscriminate category and consequently
includes much practice-orientated information. Second, readers from within the
veterinary scientific, that is the knowledge-generating, arena are segmented and
often take little notice of events outside their own discipline, let alone in
other fields of biomedical research. Third, the plethora of accessible
information is forbidding, rather than stimulating, to most people, and
searching for specific material has become a time-consuming chore. We wish to
provide our readers with a one-stop site from where they can mine the
information they are looking for, in an attractive and stimulating environment
that is unique to the medium of electronic publishing. With the beginning of a
new millennium and the overwhelming expansion in the use of computers, both in
the home and place of work, there is an ever-increasing demand for rapid, easy
access to information and we intend to fulfill this need for our readers. Our
journal's objectives are complementary to those of the International Veterinary
Information Service (IVIS), which publishes full-featured veterinary texts,
amongst others.
Two of the review articles in this first issue are on
virology - which is by no means representative - it reflects rather my
scientific background than journal policy. As expressed by the term
'interdisciplinary exchange' in our mission statement, there will be articles
from e.g. anaesthesiology, anatomy, behavioural science, biochemistry,
biotechnology, cell biology, clinical chemistry, dentistry, dermatology,
diagnostic imaging, endocrinology, epidemiology, ethics, genetics, herd health
management, veterinary science history, immunology, internal medicine,
laboratory animal science, microbiology, neurology, nutrition science, oncology,
ophthalmology, parasitology, pathology, pharmacology, physiology, reproduction
science, surgery, toxicology, tropical disease research, veterinary public
health research, and virology. I am sure that this list is incomplete; as I am
certain that it will grow.
Finally, I should like to thank our
'beta-testers', some 90 scientists, journal publishers, librarians, and PhD
students, who provided constructive criticism. We will listen to you, our
readers, and try to make Veterinary Sciences Tomorrow your favorite one-stop
website for scientific information.
Enjoy the journal and please
let us know what you think - we promise to react to your
comments.
Professor Marian C. Horzinek
Editor-in-Chief Veterinary
Sciences Tomorrow
Department of Infectious Diseases and Immunology,
Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Utrecht University, P.O. Box 80163, 3508 TD
Utrecht, The Netherlands
© 2000 Veterinary Sciences Tomorrow