50 years of the CJP
The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 50 Years On
Joel Paris, MD
This issue includes a special section that reviews the history of The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, now 50 years old. We invited 3 past editors-in-chief to write about their experiences guiding the Journal over the years. While our founding editor, Rhodes Chalke (1955–1971), is no longer with us, we obtained contributions from our second editor, Fred Lowy (1972–1977), our third, Edward Kingstone (1977–1995), and our fourth, Quentin Rae-Grant (1995–2004).
The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry emerged as a scientific journal in 1955, a time when most publications in psychiatry comprised either clinical reports or expressions of opinion. Over the years, medicine became increasingly scientific, and so did the Journal. The articles by our previous editors document this process, but their comments show that the transition could sometimes be a struggle. For example, one of the questions that all previous editors faced was whether the Journal should be a sounding board for Canadian Psychiatric Association members. This issue was eventually resolved when the editorial board eliminated opinion pieces and decided to publish only empirical articles and systematic reviews. A second question was whether the Journal should function as a “school” for aspiring young authors. This matter was resolved by instituting a single standard for all submissions. Perhaps the most important question was how a Canadian publication competing with the US and the British journals could achieve a respectable impact factor. When articles published in a journal are not quoted elsewhere, they can have little influence. In the end, the Journal only raised its impact factor when it raised the bar for acceptance. The result is that the articles we publish are now more widely read, both inside and outside Canada.
While the Journal has become more rigorous, it still aims to be relevant. Most published articles shed light on the understanding and treatment of mental disorders, and a general psychiatry journal does not publish many basic science papers. The niche that we occupy has also been clarified by our mandate from the Association: The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry publishes science, Canadian Psychiatry Aujourd’hui provides news, and the Annual General Meeting focuses on knowledge transfer.
While the Journal publishes a wide variety of research, its articles usually deal with one piece of a larger puzzle. For this reason, the Journal has emphasized providing its readers with an integration of existing knowledge. Most issues have a thematic In Review section containing articles that examine a broad range of research on clinically relevant topics—and to make the Journal more lively, we have recently added the In Debate section.
This 50th Anniversary special section ends with an article by Peter Tyrer, the editor of the British Journal of Psychiatry, on the future of psychiatric journals. The main question Tyrer raises asks how the Internet will affect journal publishing. On the one hand, the availability of papers on-line has helped our Journal to gain more international visibility. However, if people do all their reading on-line, will the print version of the Journal continue to serve any function? This question is reminiscent of the controversy as to whether books will still be published in the coming century or whether everyone will use a computer to access them. Nevertheless, for most people, there is still no substitute for holding a journal in one’s hand and reading it.
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