Twenty-Five Years of the JOSPT

GUEST

Twenty-Five Years of the JOSPT George J. Davies, DPT, MED, PT, SCS, ATC, LAT, CSCS 1

EDITORIAL

I

Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy® Downloaded from www.jospt.org at on February 20, 2018. For personal use only. No other uses without permission. Copyright © 2004 Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy®. All rights reserved.

am honored and proud to write this 25th Anniversary Edition editorial on behalf of the late Jim Gould and me. I am also proud of the response from our outstanding profession to the vision expressed in the first editorial published in the Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy 25 years ago by its cofounders and initial coeditors. That vision was ‘‘to further the understanding of basic sciences as applied to musculoskeletal conditions and to promote justification of clinical procedures in orthopaedic and sports medicine.’’1 As Guy Simoneau, the current editor-in-chief of JOSPT, said in his September 2002 editorial,2 ‘‘While the term evidence-based practice was not part of the physical therapy vernacular in 1979, Gould and Davies’ vision for the role of JOSPT could not have been more accurate.’’ Over the past 25 years, how electrifying it has been to see our profession progress up the ladder of evidence in providing the scientific and clinical rationale for the value and efficacy of our interventions! After Dr. Simoneau asked me to write this editorial, I went back and reviewed the first edition of the JOSPT and found myself on a trip down memory lane. More than 25 years ago in the small town of LaCrosse, Wisconsin, 2 unknown physical therapists (James A. Gould and George J. Davies) had an idea to create a publication that would become the premier journal in the world for people interested in orthopaedic and sports physical therapy. We had the concept and the interest, but knew this was going to be quite a formidable task. Of course, not being in a ‘‘hotbed’’ of physical therapy or in a thriving metropolitan area, Jim and I had minimal resources available to facilitate the process. So how did the world’s second largest, peer-reviewed physical therapy publication get started? The answer: with many trials, tribulations, failures, rejections, and most importantly, with much effort and tenacity. In February 1976 at the first American Physical Therapy Association Combined Sections Meeting in Washington, DC, Jim Gould attended the Orthopaedic Section’s business meeting and I went to the Sports Physical Therapy Section’s business meeting. Coincidentally, without knowing of each other’s intent, Jim and I both volunteered to become the newsletter editors for our respective sections. Little did we know what we were getting into or appreciate what the ‘‘newsletters’’ would ultimately become. The sections’ publication started as a quarterly newsletter and then progressed to a quarterly bulletin and eventually a quarterly publication, the JOSPT. The early days of putting each issue together were interesting, to say the least. In the beginning, publishing the Newsletter and Bulletin required demanding, begging, and sometimes even coercing members and friends to send information for publication—a process that continued through the first several issues of the Journal. Once we received manuscripts, we had to edit (often rewrite) them, hand-carry the various conglomerations of material to the printer, review the proofs, pick up the printed publication, manually apply the mailing labels, and finally hand-carry the issues to the post office to be mailed. In the winter (for the holiday editions), the Orthopaedic and Sports Physical Therapy Sections combined their respective newsletter and bulletin to save money. When we received the mailing labels for the Sections from the APTA, we would have a ‘‘labeling party.’’ Jim and Debbie Gould, and Carol, Scott, Steve and I, the Davies’, would 1

Professor, Armstrong Atlantic State University, Department of Physical Therapy, Savannah, GA.

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order pizza and actually peel the labels off the APTA sheets and put them on the combined winter editions of the newsletters/bulletins. Every single issue. Several thousand times. Honest! When the Sections gave us the go-ahead and support to pursue converting the bulletins into a journal, we contacted several publishing companies. We typically received this response: This is who? Calling from where? To do what? We would talk with a publisher, have our proposal rejected, and then move on to the next likely candidate. Although the first edition of JOSPT was published in 1979, it actually took years of behind-the-scenes preparation to produce it. The passion to create the Journal burned deep inside Jim and me and we were going to do everything we could to make it happen.


Finally, we realized our dream and the first edition of the JOSPT was published, even though the Journal was just another start-up and its editors were unknown entities. I think it took off, in part, because Jim and I were not only editors, but also educators, clinical researchers, and most importantly, practicing clinicians. Jim Gould had traveled all over the world fine-tuning his skills in manual therapy with some of the leading experts in the field, including Cyriax, Maitland, Kaltenborn, and McKenzie. Jim was a gifted manual therapist and clinician. I had had several years of sports medicine experience as an assistant and head athletic trainer prior to attending physical therapy school. Our backgrounds probably explain why the majority of the Orthopaedic and Sports Physical Therapy Section members, as well as outside subscribers, identified with the JOSPT and its content. It was clinician driven—written by practitioners in the field to provide the scientific and clinical rationale for improving the quality of patient care. This vision for the JOSPT stemmed from the fact that most of the Journal’s readers worked in the trenches seeing patients and they looked for guidance in original clinical research, case reports, literature reviews, and pearls of practice. I believe that the respect of our colleagues for the Journal grew because we offered credibility as teachers in a physical therapy program, and most importantly, because we continued to participate in an active clinical practice. In my opinion, if you are going to teach something, especially clinically oriented hands-on courses, you should be practicing it. The JOSPT has steadily matured since its inception in 1979, when it was distributed to approximately 5000 physical therapists who were located almost exclusively in the United States. Today, 25 years later, the JOSPT is indexed in several journal search databases and distributed monthly to nearly 20,000 individuals and institutions (including nearly 2000 who are not members of the Sections). The Journal also has subscribers in 44 countries. Manuscripts published in the Journal over the past 2 years have originated from authors in 10 different countries in addition to the United States. To handle the production and publication of the Journal, the JOSPT now has an office and a staff that includes an executive director, a senior editor, and an editorial/administrative assistant. Subscribers can also access the Journal’s content online through the JOSPT website, www.jospt.org. On behalf of Jim Gould and me, I want to extend thanks to the many individuals who were supportive of developing the JOSPT. It has been exciting to follow the response to the challenge we posed to our profession 25 years ago, to participate in and observe the strides physical therapy has made, and to see how the JOSPT has contributed to the literature and ultimately to the improvement of patient care. I often think of the following analogy between teaching and publication in the JOSPT. As teachers, we hope that the knowledge we impart to students and current clinicians will benefit many more patients than we could ever treat ourselves. Similarly, Jim and I wished for the JOSPT to be a source of education that would reach thousands of physical therapists and countless patients. I hope that through the creation of the Journal, we have helped advance the quality of patient care. I believe we have and I am proud of the contribution we have made to our profession. To our respective families, for their love and support during the early and numerous trying times, to all the Section members who made this happen, to our patients who always challenge and provide us with the motivation to do a better job, Jim and I salute and thank 282

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you. A special thanks and love to Carol—my late wife, best friend, and soul mate of 32 years— for her love and support from the formative years of the JOSPT through the times when the Journal really started to flourish.

GUEST EDITORIAL

While we have come a long way in the last quarter of a century since the first issue of the JOSPT, we still have a long way to go. Again, I challenge our profession to continue to ‘‘step up to the plate’’ and contribute to evidence-based practice, and to support and participate in the APTA 2020 Vision, as the Journal has tried to do. I know that the JOSPT will continue to be the premier journal for clinicians in the area of orthopaedic and sports physical therapy. On behalf of its cofounders and original coeditors, it is my hope that the Journal will continue to make significant contributions to the literature and so to patient care.

REFERENCES


1. Gould JA, Davies GJ. Editorial. J Orthop Sports Phys Ther. 1979;1(1):1. 2. Simoneau GG. JOSPT—This Editor’s Perspective. J Orthop Sports Phys Ther. 2002; 32(9):430-431.

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