An MI Questionnaire

I have always wanted to be liked. I mean really liked. By everyone. Sometimes I think my real motivation for making it to graduate school was to continue a long-cultivated compulsion to seek out approval from teachers. I totally sympathized with the actress Sally Field, who, upon winning her second Oscar, while I was still a graduate student, blurted out to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, “You like me! You really like me!” Sympathized, meaning that I understood what she was reacting to. But like most people, I think, I inwardly congratulated myself for feeling embarrassed for her: How silly to personalize one’s professional achievements before one’s peers!

It was the results of a recent questionnaire that got me to thinking about Sally Field’s immortal words. Prior to the questionnaire, we had relied primarily on word-of-mouth feedback from our readers as to how our new publication was being received. All of the oral commentary that we had heard, without exception, had been positive. But knowing that volunteered, face-to-face appraisals of our work might be less than absolutely objective, we decided to ask all ASPET members for their opinions of our first ten issues. Although I felt some trepidation about receiving negative reviews—as an editor, I have learned that I may sometimes be lucky to be liked by anybody!—I knew that we had an obligation to find out what our readers were thinking.

Based on the responses to the questionnaire, ninety percent of ASPET members regard themselves as “regular readers” of MOLECULAR INTERVENTIONS. Of these, at least ninety-five percent believe that we are meeting our mission of representing and informing the scholarly community that is committed to pharmacology and related disciplines. I could not possibly overstate my thanks to those ASPET members (over twenty-five percent of total membership!) who took the time to fill out our questionnaire.

After my first tally of respondents, I walked into the office of ASPET Executive Officer Christie Carrico to share the good news. “They like us!” I told her, exuberantly. “They really like us!” I don’t know whether Christie was embarrassed by my exuberance, or whether she was just too busy running ASPET’s many other initiatives to engage in my moment. “What’s not to like?” she asked dryly.

So much for afterglow. MOLECULAR INTERVENTIONS indeed has many challenges ahead of it, and we will be working hard to meet them. Not only will we be trying to win over the minority of readers who are not fully satisfied, but in early 2003, we will also be asking National Library of Medicine Literature Selection Technical Review Committee (LSTRC) to index us in PubMed. Certainly, LSTRC members will look at our Reviews of current biomedical trends, invited from leaders in research, and our Viewpoints, initiated a couple of issues ago by Associate Editor John Nelson to look at cutting-edge original research, and slate us for indexing.

Stand by. We’ll be sure to let our readers know if they really like us.

From the recent MI questionnaire…

Do you read MI regulary? 90% (yes)

Is MI meeting its mission? 95% (yes)

• ©American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Theraputics 2002