Perinatal Journal: Prenatal and Neonatal Medicine

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Roberta Speyer:  “Hello, this is Roberta Speyer reporting from the World Congress on Perinatal Medicine here in beautiful Barcelona. I have the pleasure today to be with Doctor and Professor Gian Carlo Di Renzo, and he’s going to tell us about a very exciting new journal”

Gian Carlo Di Renzo, MD, PhD:  “Yes, thank you, Roberta. Hello to everyone. From 1996, I was appointed as Editor-in-Chief of the new journal called ‘Prenatal and Neonatal Medicine.’ This journal has raised a lot of interest from our readers and receives a lot of papers. The journal, which was just a quarterly journal, became bi-monthly and we are expanding further. The journal represents many international associations, among them is the European Association of Perinatal Medicine which alone accounts for almost more than 30,000 members.”

Roberta Speyer:  “Is this journal going to be published by Parthenon Publishing?”

Gian Carlo Di Renzo, MD, PhD:  “Yes, it’s already published. 

Roberta Speyer:  “It already is; and there’s going to be some changes and some consolidations in it.  What are the consolidations?”

Gian Carlo Di Renzo, MD, PhD:  “They thought that the new journal that has been acquainted by Parthenon is the Journal of Maternal-Fetal Investigation, and also on a scientific level we thought it was appropriate to have two journals more or less dealing with a very similar subject from the same publisher. Therefore, we’ve been trying for the last year to make an effort to combine the two journals – Prenatal and Neonatal Medicine and the Journal of Maternal-Fetal Investigation. We’ve had a lot of contact with Dev Maulik who is the Chief Editor of the other journal, and we found a very reasonable agreement that the two journals will be combined, they will become monthly, and their readership and the possibility to have a very broad spectrum on the editorial board maintaining some of the very unique features of the Prenatal and Neonatal Medicine journal.”

Roberta Speyer:  “And what are those unique features?”

Gian Carlo Di Renzo, MD, PhD:  “A unique feature is the so-called specialty editors. We divided what we called the Prenatal Neonatal Medicine into different aspects, and every expert (who is expert in the world) have been given the task to take charge and evaluate the paper very simply, very rapidly, and at the same time with the responsibility of the publication of the paper along with the editors. This has hastened the publication time, and it has increased a lot the acquaintance of very good papers because obviously a specialty editor is the man that knows everybody in the field. This is a feature that’s been very agreeable to our readers so we combined this feature with the other very good features of the Journal of Maternal and Fetal Investigation, which is a very dynamic journal; it is a little bit older than ours so it has more experience. The main Editorial Board will be composed, apart from myself and Dev Maulik, by Ola Didrik Saugstad who is a Professor of Pediatrics in Oslo, Charlie Lockwood who is a Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at NYU in New York, Kypros Nicolaides in the UK, and Roberto Romero from the NICHD – the National Institute of Health. Then we have Nishida (Chiba) who is an eminent Neonatologist in Japan, and Istvan Seri who is a Professor of Neonatology in Los Angeles. This Board will be the core group to run this journal. The journal already has a good impact factor and we aim to raise not only our readership but also to raise the standard of our specialty through the communication of a monthly journal. The journal starts again in January of 2002; and I will welcome any paper, any contribution, any letter, or any information that the people that are seeing this interview may wish to send to me.”

Roberta Speyer:  “Wonderful.  We’re going to have a link for our viewers; if you click this link it will take you to the journal, Prenatal and Neonatal Medicine”

Gian Carlo Di Renzo, MD, PhD:  “The European Association of Perinatal Medicine and the Asia & Oceania Association of Perinatal Medicine, the International Society of Perinatal Obstetricians, and the so-called CLAP group - the Latin America Society of Perinatology. So there is a very wide spectrum of societies which are linked to our journal.”

Roberta Speyer:  “We’ll also be providing links so that you can get this journal, hopefully, in the future and we’ll be able to have some excerpts from the journal online.”

Gian Carlo Di Renzo, MD, PhD:  “It’s also on the Internet.”

Roberta Speyer:  “It’s available online, so make sure you check this journal out.  The names that Professor told you about everyone knows they are the top people in the field so it’s certainly going to be a great asset to the community.  Thank you so much for sharing that with us.”

Gian Carlo Di Renzo, MD, PhD: 

“Thank you.”