The e-Journal of Cardiology Practice: from where it came and where it’s going now…

Take-home messages:

1. The origin of the journal as a journal by fax
2. The “e-Journal” begins with the aim of helping busy clinicians
3. The future: use of modern technology

Introduction:  from where it came…

The very beginning of this journal is to be found in an entity set up many years ago by the one of the French industry partners of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).

The goal of the original publication was to provide physicians with new and recent data in the cardiovascular field. The field was kept purposely broad, ranging from clinical to interventional with the original papers focused more on new drugs or new scientific arguments to use a certain class of drugs or to restrict their use.

It was sent by fax.

I was asked at that time, to critically observe what was submitted and to give negative advice when a message was pushed by an entity with a non-scientific background; my advice was always taken into consideration and decisions were made accordingly.

By the end of past century, the use of the fax was declining, creating space for newer technologies to bring information directly to the busy specialist. As a consequence, our industry partner decided to stop with the “journal-by-fax”. However, the structure was well appreciated and attracted the attention of the ESC, which adopted it as an excellent new tool to bring information to practicing cardiologists.

An editorial company was appointed to correct format and language issues as well as a number of practical aspects. The texts would be clear and short with information useful in daily clinical practice. The fax was no longer used and was replaced by e-mail delivery and so the “e-Journal” was born – the publication you are now reading and which we have all known for several years now. We’ll speak about the historical work done since the beginning of the journal a little later.

Recently, the direction of the ESC and many colleagues started feeling that an update of the e-Journal towards more current forms of communication and that employed all the new media formats would be suitable. This evolution would take advantage of all the latest communication technology and allow us to transmit information more efficiently to physicians in formats that they have become accustomed to today.

Historical moments of the e-Journal

Many cardiologists, including well-known experts in the field, have agreed to participate in both our e-Journal and Fax journal adventure.

In most cases, we proceeded by first defining a specific field and described the sort of topics we needed in that field. For example, we decided to approach valve disease and asked authors to describe causes, new paths for diagnosis; finally, we wrapped up on current ways to treat the disease.

After this was determined, a call for participation was sent out to hundreds of cardiologists inviting them to submit an abstract. Documents were critically examined, and a score was given. The authors of the abstracts with the best scores were invited to write a full paper on the topic. After careful analysis, including suggestions for improvement, the papers were accepted or rejected.

Often, at the end of such a series, experts were invited to comment on the texts and the messages for physicians and to highlight what should be known and implemented in their daily activities; often, the experts added their views for the future.

In addition to this formal process, some papers were received spontaneously from authors while others were invited in the context of an important new advance.

In this way, many highly important series and clinical reviews have been published in the past and this will continue in the future with the new “journal” (3). Examples include those on mitral and aortic valve disease |1], hypertension and peripheral artery disease [2], atrial fibrillation and defining total cardiovascular risks and modes for prevention (3).

From time to time, short papers on the history of a cardiac disease were also published: a very enjoyable break for evening or weekend reading [4]. Highlights of meetings such the yearly ESC meeting were also provided.

The completed articles were then sent by e-mail to about 40,000 subscribers for the last 20 years, from north to south, from east to west, three times a month and have become a useful source of information for practicing cardiologists and scientists all over the world.

The future

The name of the e-Journal will now be changed to “CardioPractice”, but new proposals are still coming in. Issues will consist of two parts, one “Editorial” part and a second “Media” section.

In the editorial section, two papers will be made available that embody all the same key characteristics of the articles we described above: an easy-to-read format with critical and useful information for the practicing cardiologist.

However, the format of these papers will be quite different from those of the e-Journal papers, starting with a series of interactive “Take-home messages” allowing clinicians to immediately see the specific paragraphs that could help them in their practice. The reader can simply click on each individual “Take-home message” to go directly to that part of the text. The characters will be more readable and include, as necessary, one or two tables or figures.

“CardioPractice” will be sent once a month to at least 50,000 e-mail addresses or more. If successful, the rate of publication could increase.

The second part will be totally new and include video interviews with experts, webinars, as well as enhanced and interactive figures or tables. There are also plans to create Q&A sessions and a comment section for presentations as well.

Our hopes

As always, our hopes remain constant:

• to provide clear messages to practicing cardiologists to help them in their clinical practice. 
• to offer a more modern approach and increase accessibility to content by adapting to today’s technology.
• to become a contact tool linking cardiologists from all over the world to the ESC and European Cardiology Practice in general
• to provide a forum for exchange with our readers by taking questions, suggestions and comments from the readers.

We thank you

We would like to send our most sincere thanks and appreciation to the many authors of these excellent papers, to our readers, to the co-editors, to the chairpersons and members of the Council for Cardiology, to the editorial team at SAVI and to the European Society of Cardiology for accepting the “e-Journal” as a full member of the ESC publications.