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American Orthoptic Journal AbstractTo request a single copy of any journal article, contact us at: 608 263-0654 (voice), or journals@wwwtest.uwpress.wisc.edu (email). Articles will be photocopied and mailed within two business days. Please prepay with VISA or MasterCard. Articles up to 29 pages in length are priced at $15.00. Articles containing 30 or more pages are priced at $25.00. For article reprints in quantities of 25-500 please use our online reprint ordering system by clicking Reprint Orders.
Volume 47, 1997, p. vii Editorial 'Anything published more than five years ago does not exist'
The above quotation is from the preface of the new book, The History of Ophthalmology by Albert and Edwards, (reviewed in this issue) and is said to have been made by Virchow shortly before the founding of the American Academy of Ophthalmology in 1896. In the full quotation, Virchow laments that our knowledge of the history of our field "diminishes with each generation of students" and "Even independent young researchers can normally be assumed to have a historical knowledge of no more than three to five years at a maximum." With the availability of the Medline we can now assume that this is not necessarily true since one should be able to search the literature back to 1985 without problem. Unfortunately, not all journals are indexed (notably, (at least for the moment), the new Journal of the American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus, The American Orthoptic Journal and Binocular Vision and Strabismus Quarterly in our field of interest) and one should be careful to include both English language and foreign language publications if one is to avoid a cryptic letter to the Editor, as was seen in a recent issue of Ophthalmology (1997;104:343).
The influence of the Internet on our future ability to obtain information both current and historical, is a question we will have to answer in the not too distant future. I hope our readers have found the home page of AOJ (www.aoj.org) and have discovered that it is now possible to carry out a search on this journal for articles by subject and/or author. We hope this will reduce the number of "lost" papers that have been published in AOJ but not indexed on Medline. (Unfortunately, the number of journals presently on Medline has been limited by cost and despite vigorous requests, we have not been successful in obtaining entry to this world wide index.) With the advent of scientific journals that are now entirely, or partially available on the Internet (Pediatrics, Am J Ophthalmol, Science, etc) one must wonder how we will be able to access these electronic editions in the future. At what point will all journals be published via the Internet with the ability to print out only those articles of interest to the reader? We are told it is coming, the only question is "How soon?" Will such a change allow better retrieval of information? Will "young researchers" (or old, for that matter) have a historical knowledge that is greater than three to five years or will it further limit our vistas to only those who are electronically on line? Even in 1997, not everyone in able to connect to the Internet although the numbers of people who have access has continued to increase exponentially. In addition, less that half have of those who are connected, or at least have an email address, actually use it. So for many, the ability to access information that is solely available electronically, is still not possible. We are in a hiatus between those who prefer to use the library and those who prefer to use the Internet. Neither group has total access to the information they seek. For the time being, AOJ will continue to be published on paper and will slowly achieve total duplication electronically for those who prefer this method.
This issue of AOJ contains a section of papers that were given at the 1996 national meeting of the AACO in recognition of the retirement of Dr. Gunter K. von Noorden. This portion of the meeting was organized by Carol Dickey, C.O. and Paula Edeleman, C.O., and included colleagues, friends and fellows of Dr.von Noorden. We are pleased to be able to publish many of these papers in their original form and to join his well wishers in thanking him for his many contributions to our field. He has served in many capacities from clinician, teacher, author and basic scientist as well as translating papers from the European literature for our understanding. He has been a friend of orthoptics and responsible for the training of both fellows in pediatric ophthalmology and strabismus and orthoptic students in Baltimore and Houston. While he has retired from clinical practice and basic research, he continues to be active in meetings and will undoubtedly continue to teach us all for years to come!
This year's journal contains a number of papers dealing with diplopia and again reflects the increasing interest in the field of neuro-ophthalmology. As in the past, we welcome case reports and review papers in addition to clinical studies. See you on the Internet!
T.D. France, M.D., Editor |
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