I am writing this Editorial to inform IJH readers and contributors that I have retired as Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Hyperthermia. Nancy Dewhirst will join me in retirement, stepping down as Executive Manager. There are important reasons to make this decision, but a simple explanation is that it is time for someone else to take over the Journal and steer it toward its next level of excellence. I made the announcement of the intended retirement to Taylor and Francis and the Editorial Board in July. Section Editors of the Board were invited to apply for the Editor-in-Chief position.
I am pleased to announce that after careful consideration, that Professor Hans Crezee was chosen by Taylor and Francis as the new Editor-in-Chief, effective January 1, 2024. Over the next several months we will be working with Dr. Crezee to ensure that there is a smooth transition to new leadership.
Brief biosketch of Professor Crezee’s credentials
Hans Crezee’s experience and reputation will go a long way toward making the next steps in the history of the International Journal of Hyperthermia. Below is a summary of Dr. Crezee’s academic accomplishments, which are highly credible.
Hans Crezee received his M.Sc. degree in experimental physics at the Free University of Amsterdam in 1986 and his Ph.D. degree at the University of Utrecht in 1993. Since 2000 he has had an appointment in the Department of Radiation Oncology of the Amsterdam University Medical Centres/University of Amsterdam in the field of hyperthermia research. He has been Principal Investigator for hyperthermia research since 2008.
Hans Crezee’s main research interests include preclinical research on mechanisms and optimal uses of clinical hyperthermia, creation of new and improved hyperthermia delivery techniques, maintenance of solid quality assurance standards and thorough analysis and evaluation of clinical results. His research program covers the three disciplines biology, physics and clinical applications of thermal therapy. This approach reflects his firm belief that combining input from different disciplines is essential for the ultimate clinical success of thermal therapies. Along the way, he has developed interests and conducted research in HIPEC and thermal ablation.
Hans Crezee has been project leader for 12 research projects, and co-PI for 7 research projects. Most projects were supported by the Dutch Cancer Society KWF, the European Union, the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research NWO and the Dutch children cancer fund KiKa. Prestigious projects include coordination of a large Horizon 2020 European consortium project. He has more than 230 peer reviewed publications, more than 180 listed on PubMed, with an h-index = 51.
He has served as Councilor for the Society for Thermal Medicine and as a Board member, Secretary and President of the European Society for Hyperthermic Oncology. He has also served as Guest Editor and Section Editor for the International Journal of Hyperthermia.
In 2018 Professor Crezee was awarded the annual award of the European Society for Hyperthermic Oncology, in 2023 the biennial George Hahn award of the Society for Thermal Medicine.
Historical perspective
I was selected to assume the position as North American Editor in 1993, taking over from George Hahn. George was one of the four original Editors of IJH. The other three were Jens Overgaard, Stan Field and Tsudomu Sugahara. The board leadership represented the three founding societies: The North American Hyperthermia Society (NAHS), The European Society for Hyperthermic Oncology and the Japanese Hyperthermia Society. In later years, the NAHS was renamed the Society for Thermal Medicine and the Japanese Society took the name of the Japanese Society for Thermal Medicine. These same three societies have maintained their positions as Sponsoring Societies for IJH.
When I took over the position of North American Editor, the journal was managed using paper. That is, all reviewers were sent paper copies of manuscripts and reviews were sent back by snail mail or FAX. The result of this archaic process was an incredibly long review cycle time of several months. Further, the impact factor was barely above 1 and was sinking.
In 1995 the Senior Editors from the other two Societies agreed to step down and I was named as Editor-in-Chief. This consolidation enabled a centralized center for manuscript triage and reviewer assignment. Nancy joined my office as Managing Editor in 1998. The review cycle time began to shorten. With the advent of email, we were able to shorten the review time further. But, it was not until we successfully lobbied to go to on line submission and review that the whole process was substantially shortened to an average of 23 days, which is what is has continued to be until today.
The final major push to modernize the Journal was to move to Open Access. With approval of the Editorial Board and with tremendous cooperation and investment from Taylor and Francis, Open Access was initiated in 2019. The plethora of benefits associated with Open Access has enabled a move toward modernization that is a paradigm shift for the Journal.
We addressed the issue of increasing the Impact Factor in several ways:
We initiated a series of Special Issues, that contained collections of articles focused around a theme. The first Special Issue, edited by Elizabeth Repasky and Rolf Issels, was published in 2002 with a prescient theme of Hyperthermia and Tumor Immunology. From 2002 until 2021, we published nearly two dozen special issues that focused on a range of hot topics and emerging technologies. There is no question that the Special Issues initiatives increased the impact factor as these papers continue to be the most highly cited on a year-to-year basis. In fact, in the two years after publication of two special issues on HIFU, the impact factor rose to over 4.
In 2022, we switched from doing Special Issues to Special Collections. There are many advantages of doing Special Collections, as they are easily identified by a variety of Search Engines and papers are published as soon as they are accepted. We strongly believe that this will have an important influence on the Impact Factor.
We initiated the Editor’s Awards. This initiative served to highlight the best papers written by scholars in training or young investigators. This has stimulated a number of young investigators to remain in the field, thereby enabling training of the next generation of leading scientists.
We expanded the field of journal topics to include thermal ablation, lasers, nanotechnology, HIFU, HIPEC and Heat Stress/Heat Stroke. To accommodate these new fields, we expanded the Editorial Board to provide content expertise for review.
In the past two years, Taylor and Francis has undertaken important steps to bring IJH in line with best modern publishing practices and to further its reputation within the publishing industry:
They have expanded the Special Collections initiative by adding new Editors at the publisher’s level, who will work with the Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board to identify areas of expansion and then assist Editors in finding potential authors and appropriate reviewers. This new initiative is very similar in focus to that used by journals like Cancers and Frontiers in Oncology. Three Special Collections are underway currently using this new initiative including High Intensity Ultrasound, Nanotechnology and Histotripsy. The latter Special Collection, edited by Suzanne Leblang and Timothy Ziemlewicz, comes on the heels of the recent FDA approval of this modality for selected tumors.
T&F automatically provides a plagiarism evaluation of each paper. Since this was initiated, we have found several papers where text needed to be redone to avoid plagiarism with other papers. We have also identified papers where the authors were attempting to publish material that was already published by the same group or even other groups previously.
IJH services automatically scan all papers for English errors and these are added to the Editor’s notes so that authors know to obtain English speaking editor’s assistance, and
T&F recently enacted a reviewer assist program, which we hope will facilitate more rapid identification of suitable reviewers.
I need to thank Taylor and Francis for their support over the years that has enabled the successful initiation of many of the new procedures and programs that I discussed above. Special thanks go out to Ms. Sophie Aves (Fagg), who has provided steadfast and loyal support for the past several years, especially during and after the transition to Open Access. I must also recognize the efforts of Nancy Dewhirst, who has played a pivotal role in implementing the transitions that we envisioned over the past 25 years. Her daily allegiance to the Journal affairs, attention to detail and corporate memory of how to identify best reviewers will be hard to replace. Her enthusiasm for the Special Issues initiative extended to her taking a leadership role in the creation of several issues. I must also thank the past and current Editorial Board. The Board has taken their responsibilities seriously, enabling identification of consistently high-quality reviews, while maintaining review cycle times largely within established guidelines. Several Editors participated in the creation and organization of Special Issues, Special Collections and Editor’s Awards. It is the collective wisdom of this Board that has maintained the journal at the cutting edge of thermal therapies.
I want to let you know that both Nancy and I have enjoyed seeing the growth of the Journal in terms of its breadth and reputation. We will miss seeing many of you at various conference venues, etc. But, it is now time for us to go forward into our retirement to enjoy many new opportunities and adventures.