EUROPEAN  TISSUE  REPAIR  SOCIETY

WOUND REPAIR AND REGENERATION · AN OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF THE ETRS
William J. Lindblad, PhD, Editor in Chief

The field of wound healing and tissue regeneration represents a tremendously diverse area of clinical and scientific activity encompassing the most basic of wound care therapies to the most advanced analysis of cellular regulatory mechanisms. But within this diversity, there is a unifying desire to understand and treat injured human tissues. The journal Wound Repair and Regeneration was established as a mechanism to disseminate this wide array of information in a peer-reviewed, authoritative periodical.

One of the unique characteristics of the periodical is that it strives to unify the literature for the practitioners and researchers within the discipline, and in fact to help control the fragmentation of information. Because of the diverse array of topics included under the rubric wound healing, one can find articles in a myriad of clinical speciality and research publications. Unfortunately, this tends to minimize the significance of the field within the overall clinical/research enterprise and increases the difficulty in searching the literature for relevant information.

For the past eight years, we have developed a periodical that encompasses the diversity of the field in a manner that hopefully provides our readers with a level of confidence in the quality of the material presented. This development has included the recognition of the periodical as appropriate for inclusion in the two predominate journal indexing services, PubMed and Current Contents. Inclusion in these two databases, places the journal in a select position occupied by less than 10% of the periodicals published in the biomedical and clinical sciences. It also increases the ability of our articles being seen by a much wider audience, and increases the likelihood of an article being cited by others.

Another unique aspect of the Journal, is that it is sponsored by four international societies representing researchers and clinicians throughout the world. It can therefore represent the field globally like no other periodical can. These societies include the European Tissue Repair Society which joined with the Wound Healing Society as initial sponsors of the publication. This sponsorship is reflected in two Associate Editors in Europe, and significant representation on both the Editorial Board and Publication Committee.

I would like to urge all members of the ETRS to support the Journal by submitting manuscripts, but most importantly by using the Journal contents in their research and clinical practice. We derive little use from a publication that is rarely opened but simply placed on a shelf and forgotten. Our desire is for the publication to become an essential read, and to provide important new information to advance the research mission and clinical practice of our subscribers. By all means, send us your manuscripts, but if you have an opportunity to need a reference check our pages first by reviewing our back issue indices or Table of Contents on our web site at:

http://wizard.pharm.wayne.edu/wrr/WRR.HTM.

This is also a good opportunity to inform the ETRS membership that our publisher Blackwell Science, Inc. has placed the Journal online and it can now be accessed through the Synergy web site at:

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com

This site allows one to obtain full text copies of all of our current articles. All members of the ETRS will receive in late summer / early autumn, notification from Blackwell on how to access the Synergy web site without charge for full articles. For non-members or non-subscribers to the Journal an access fee is charged for each fill text journal article that is viewed or printed. Having an online version of the Journal represents a significant step in maintaining the viability of the Journal as electronic publishing begins to mature.

I believe the Journal has come a long way over the past eight years, and I foresee an exciting future for the periodical and the field in general. Please consider yourself a part of these advances and contribute to the further development of our Journal. As always, feel free to contact me directly at: aa0823@wayne.edu with comments or concerns.

William J. Lindblad, PhD Editor-in-Chief Wound Repair and Regeneration