When he discovered that I was an assistant editor in the 1960s, Alun Beddoe asked me to write a brief article about the early days of Physics in Medicine and Biology in order to `lighten up' the 50th anniversary issue. Forty years is a long time ago and I did not keep a diary, so all I can do is to recall a few memories and reminiscences and hope that they are reasonably accurate and of some interest.
Medical physics in the UK started expanding in the years after World War II, partly because of the number of hospital physicists recruited after the inauguration of the National Health Service in 1948, and also because of the introduction of high energy generators used in radiotherapy (2 MV van de Graaffs, linacs, cobalt-60 teletherapy etc), radioactive isotopes, and increasing concern about radiation protection in such areas as diagnostic radiology.
As they perceived that this would give rise to an increasing number of papers in this area of science, in 1956 the publishers Taylor & Francis launched a new quarterly journal entitled Physics in Medicine and Biology (PMB) in collaboration with the Hospital Physicists' Association (HPA). For various reasons the publication date of an issue began to lag further and further behind the date on the front cover. The journal was not gaining sufficient subscribers and was failing to attract many authors, and there was a serious danger that it was going to cease publication. The HPA Executive Committee discussed whether to make the purchase of PMB compulsory for all HPA members, but decided against it.
As the great majority of papers on medical physics at that time were still published in a wide range of other scientific or medical journals, it was intended, as a service to readers of PMB, that about a quarter of each issue should be devoted to abstracts of selected articles published in other journals. By the 1960s there was an average of well over 200 abstracts in each quarterly issue, written specially for PMB by a team of expert and hard-working volunteers. Over 100 journals were abstracted, many of which were foreign and difficult to obtain. This service, organized by the HPA Abstracts Sub-Committee with Walter Langmead as the first of several Abstracts Editors, was no mean undertaking, but was well worth the effort. By providing information of immediate and practical use to readers, it encouraged them to purchase their personal copies, and thereby helped PMB to survive during its early years.
Apart from the advertisements, other useful features that appeared in the journal included correspondence, brief contributions that went under the headings of scientific, technical or instrumental notes, book reviews, lists of forthcoming events, proceedings of relevant scientific conferences, and obituaries.
Nevertheless, the success of a scientific journal depends in the end on the quality of its submitted or commissioned articles. In 1961 the decision was taken to ask Professor Joseph Rotblat to be the editor. In those days Taylor & Francis were responsible for the publicity, the distribution, liaison with the printers, and all financial matters. The editorial work, including correspondence with authors and referees, preparing the papers for the printer and proof reading, was the responsibility of the editor. Realizing that he could not do this single handed, the new editor enlisted the help of three medical physicists as assistant editors.
Under the energetic and inspired leadership of Rotblat the journal began to prosper. By producing an issue every two months instead of three months, the actual date of publication soon caught up with the date on the front cover. As the publication time decreased, more and more medical physicists decided to send their papers to PMB, and the editor managed to persuade a number of experts to write specially commissioned review articles. Since then PMB has never looked back.
The editing arrangements were as follows. Authors were instructed to send their papers to the editor at St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical School. He (or usually his secretary) would acknowledge receipt and immediately forward the paper to one of the assistant editors, keeping one copy for safety purposes. The assistant editors were then expected to deal with all correspondence with the authors and referees, and in exceptional circumstances to reject a paper if it was quite obviously unsuitable for PMB. Only when the final version of a paper was prepared for the printer was it returned to the editor for his approval and inclusion in the next issue of PMB. The assistant editors also dealt with the subsequent proof reading and any queries.
Most of the papers I had to deal with were fully appropriate for PMB and of high quality, and so presented few problems in editing. There were however a few exceptions, and one incident that still sticks in my memory concerns a paper written by a person who was a professor, no less. I forget the exact details, but it was quite clearly unsuitable for PMB, even if edited. I therefore returned it to the author, apologising and explaining why it had to be rejected. A couple of days later I received an irate phone call from the author asking who I was that had the temerity to reject one of his papers. When I explained that I was an assistant editor he replied that I would not be for much longer as Professor Rotblat was a personal friend of his. I immediately phoned Rotblat and explained the situation. Later in the day I received a phone call from Rotblat who was (as always) terse and to the point: `I read the article. I agree with you. The author did phone me. Don't worry, you won't hear from him again.' End of call. End of problem.
As medical physics was a young profession it was very difficult to find good referees and, when found, to avoid losing their goodwill by overloading them with work. One referee did not reply for 18 months despite several reminders; by the time I received his comments (which were negligible) the paper had already been published 9 months previously. Other problems were with referees who went on ego trips, or who made savage and quite unwarranted criticisms of papers. In these cases I either edited the referee's comments or just ignored them. If an author disagreed with a referee's comments I nearly always gave the author the benefit of the doubt; after all, it is the author who is responsible for his paper, not the anonymous referee.
One of the duties of the referees is to detect plagiarisms, but they can still slip through (see PMB 7 (1962) p 1). However I once encountered a strange case of attempted plagiarism by a referee. Some time in the late 1960s I received a paper from an American author on a topic in my field of expertise so I sent it to only one referee whose comments were relatively trivial. I returned the paper to the author with suggestions for a few minor improvements. About two months later I received a letter from his place of work with the sad news that he had died suddenly. I asked them whether the paper should be published posthumously, but they replied that it concerned some of his personal research and that nobody else could really take responsibility for its validity.
About three years later I received a paper that seemed familiar. Luckily, I had kept a copy of the above paper and when I compared the two I found that the text agreed almost word for word, and the illustrations were identical. Curious! Even more curious was the fact that the new author was now the referee to whom I had sent the original paper. In retrospect, what still surprises me is that the referee was sufficiently naive to send the paper to PMB, when if he had sent it to almost any other relevant journal it would have got through without detection.
When Rotblat was away due to his heavy responsibilities with the Pugwash conferences, I took over some of his duties. One of these was to liaise with the person who translated authors' abstracts of the papers into French, German and Russian versions, which were published at the end of each paper. It was the Russian that always seemed to give the most problems. I would receive phone calls from the translator (who sounded Russian, or possibly Polish) asking what the author of a paper precisely meant by a particular sentence. It was no use my replying that it seemed clear enough to me, because slight differences in meaning needed a different translation into Russian. This usually meant me trying to contact the author by phone. This was even more difficult if the paper had been dealt with by one of the other assistant editors. If the author of the paper lived abroad this was impossible in the time available. In some cases I just had to guess, and hope that not many people would read the Russian abstract anyway.
My work as an editor was made a great deal easier with the assistance of my secretary, Val Northen. She kept the filing system in order, wrote some of the routine correspondence herself, and dealt with phone calls when I was out of the office. The same applied to Professor Rotblat's secretary, whose name I have unfortunately forgotten.
When I left medical physics in 1968 to work at the National Physical Laboratory I found myself well below the level of seniority which would have entitled me to a secretary, so I had to write out my letters longhand to be typed by copy typists in the typing pool. Phone calls went unanswered. After a couple of years I gave up the struggle and resigned my editorial duties. Soon after that PMB was purchased from Taylor & Francis by Institute of Physics Publishing and the editing taken over by the office that edited all the other IOP journals, but I did not foresee this.
For the benefit of future readers at the time of the 100th anniversary of PMB in 2056, and whose knowledge of the dates of various technological advances may be a bit hazy, I should explain that, during the period I have described, scientific research, publication of journals and editorial work was carried out before the existence of answer phones, photo-copiers, personal computers, the internet, search engines and online publication. And, of course, before all the other technological advances that may occur between 2006 and 2056.
We must all admire the foresight of Taylor & Francis in launching PMB in 1956, and their willingness to continue supporting it, despite making financial losses in its early years. By the time of its 15th anniversary in 1971, the journal had acquired an international reputation, and its future was assured. However, it could not have achieved this success without the enthusiastic and entirely unpaid efforts of the various editors, referees and abstractors in that period. Tribute must also be paid to those authors who shared our confidence and kept submitting their papers to the journal at a time when its future looked uncertain. And many thanks to all those secretaries whose valuable contributions so often went unacknowledged at the time. Finally, it was a privilege to work with the eminent scientist, Joseph Rotblat, who was to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize many years later.
