Fertility and Sterility On Air - Editors in Chief Bonus Episode

Join current F&S editors Drs. Micah Hill, Kurt Barnhart, and Allison Eubanks in an engaging discussion with past Editors-in-Chief, Drs. Alan DeCherney, Craig Niederberger, and Antonio Pellicer!

View Fertility and Sterility at https://www.fertstert.org/

Welcome to Fertility and Sterility On Air, the podcast where you can stay current on the latest global research in the field of reproductive medicine. This podcast brings you an overview of this month's journal, in-depth discussion with audience, and other special features. F&S On Air is brought to you by Fertility and Sterility family of journals in conjunction with the American Society for Reproductive Medicine and is hosted by Dr. Kurt Barnhart, Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Eve Feinberg, Editorial Editor, Dr. Micah Hill, Media Editor, and Dr. Pietro Bortoletto, Interactive Associate-in-Chief.

Good morning and welcome to a special episode of Fertility and Sterility On Air as we celebrate the 75th anniversary of the journal. I'm joined this morning with a very illustrious group of former and current Editor-in-Chiefs of the journal. My co-host this morning is Allison Eubanks, a fellow from the NIH who is the Editorial Fellow for the journal, and it was her idea to put this together.

Good morning, Allison. Good morning. Thank you for agreeing to host this fantastic group of Editors-in-Chiefs, and I'm excited to learn all of their knowledge they've gained from their roles.

So I'm going to introduce each of our Editors-in-Chiefs. I'm going to start back in time. So we have Alan DeCherney, who is Editor-in-Chief from 1997 to 2011.

Good morning, Alan. Morning. We also have Antonio Pellicer and Craig Niederberger, who were co-Editors-in-Chief for the decade of 2011 to 2021.

Good morning, Craig and Tony. Good morning. Good morning.

And, of course, last but not least, our current Editor-in-Chief, Kurt Barnhart, who's been Editor-in-Chief since 2021. So altogether, we have 38 years of Editor-in-Chief experience for the journal on this call, so we're very excited to just dive in and hear from you. So, Alan, let's start back with you and just work forward in time.

When you took over as Editor-in-Chief for the journal in 1997, what was the landscape of publishing like, and what did you see as the main vision that you wanted to accomplish during your time as Editor? I was at UCLA. I received 20 boxes of articles, and the delay time was almost a year from submission to publication because none of it was electronic. It was all done by FedEx mail and telephone calls.

After about five years, Elsevier came to me and said they wanted us to be a pilot group to do the journal electronically. So we switched to doing everything on the internet, and it took maybe six months to get mainly the authors and reviewers used to using the internet for reviews. And then it was up and running, which made the management of the journal unbelievably much better because I was able to cut the average time from submission to publication to six months, and it got better over time.

So that was the major change as far as the function of the journal. And my daily schedule was at lunchtime I would send out the reviews, and every Saturday I would take the articles and look at the reviews. And we had roughly 2,000 submissions at that time.

I knew that the internet and electronic publishing was the future, so I wanted to be ahead of the game on that. And we were so lucky that Elsevier allowed us to be one of the first people to do that. I mean, my goal was to publish the best articles that we could.

I mean, I had some subtle changes that I thought were important. I wanted young people. You know, the journal is important for people's careers.

I started some new things. I started a kind of a conversation in the beginning of the journal. I was very high on pictures and illustrations because I knew that that was important.

So I changed that. And another important thing was independence, independence of the journal from ASRM. Now, Bob Rebar was the executive for most of the time that I was the editor.

And, of course, that was helpful. Our philosophy was similar. And I think the journal did quite well.

It became popular. And I think the most important thing editor has is you help people's careers along the way. So I thought that that was an important responsibility.

I'm not sure what other people have to say. Yeah. So moving forward in time, Craig and Tony, you took over for Alan in 2011.

What did you see as the landscape of medical publishing in our space? And what was your vision for the journal? Just what Alan said, that there are a couple of things that spring to mind. And one is the relational aspect of the journal. We're a small, cozy group in an interesting way.

I mean, we're not as big as OBGYN generally or as the American Urological Association. So we're a very personal group. And I think that that's one thing that really appeals a lot to people.

I really sort of owe my life in Fertility and Sterility to Roger Kempers. Because when I was a young reviewer, he took me aside at a meeting personally and said, I like the way that you statistically analyze papers. And that was very meaningful to me.

And when we started, Tony and I were very concerned about what Alan just said, bringing the younger people, not just authors, but as leaders of the journal, into the journal to set the tone and the vision going forward. So we created a group of young people spirited by at least one of the people on the call right now, Kurt Barnhart, and the other sort of senior guy was Bill Schlaff, but the two junior guys. And I do wish that you could see this, because Micah Hill has a very nice gray and white beard.

And he was once a junior guy. And Jim Hotaling, who's now like a vice president of research and innovation at the entire University of Utah. So I think Tony and I did quite well in terms of cultivating the next generation.

And their job was to come up with a vision for the future, which we did and which we enacted. And one of the transition points was to go from paper to electronic form. And Alan did that with the mechanisms of peer review.

We started with the majority of people expecting that the paper journal would land on their desk. And quite a few that when we were transitioning to electronic forms, there was a lot of pushback, a lot of like, we want this to remain in paper. But we really felt that the future was in electronic publishing.

However, the great challenge that we faced was curation. So in electronic publishing, people will encounter it, you know, either via Medline search or PubMed, I guess, is the way to describe it now. But, you know, an electronic search.

And so you just get an article. So what we had to do was we had to come up with ways in which people would look at the journal holistically and say, I want to read that whole journal, or I want to experience that journal. And so, Tony, I'm going to hand it to you to go through the various creative ways that we came up to engage people in this electronic form.

Yeah. Thank you, Craig. For me, it was a great experience as well.

It was very challenging, especially to come after Alan, the chairman, who was my mentor. And he has supported me always. And I remember our first dinner.

I don't know if you remember, Craig, that Alan said, listen, they have selected two to replace me because one was not enough. Oh, I remember. One was not enough.

So I think that for me was also challenging because I was the only not American being selected as editor-in-chief. And it was a great responsibility. And that, in my opinion, resulted in opening our editorial board, not only to the young people, but also more internationally that maybe it was before.

So altogether, I think that that was, let's say, an international touch that came because I was there. And then, as you said, we wanted to enter the field of Internet publishing, electronic publishing, and also the media development, and taking advantage of the influence of the social media that at that time in 2011 was starting to become really strong. We selected Dr. Palter, Steve Palter, as the first media editor for five years.

And then our current editor-in-chief, Kurt Barnhart, took over him the position. And both in these 10 years did a fantastic job. But I remember that we implemented the video articles.

That was absolutely necessary because surgery is an important part of our specialty. We also implemented the dialogue that our intention was to replace all the letters to the editor. But Kurt Barnhart put it again, the letters to the editor.

And I would like to listen maybe some of his reasons that I'm sure he has reasons. But the bottom line of the dialogue was that the different papers that were finally approved and published, they were live papers. It was not publication that finished there.

But people had the opportunity to continue initiating discussions among the different people and especially between these people and the authors. We also implemented the electronic journal club that was very successful and is still ongoing. It was a real decision to explore and explode the electronic tools that we had in our hands for the journal and for the society.

That's great. And before we move on to Kurt, how was it being co-editors-in-chief? Two of you separated by the Atlantic, one a urologist, one an REI. How did that work? What were the pros and cons of that? How did you enjoy that relationship? Yeah, so obviously Tony and I have different subspecialty interests.

And so a lot of people sort of assumed, well, yeah, Craig does urology and Tony does OBGYN. But actually that was not the way that the society in their wisdom wrote the contracts. The society wrote the contracts by swaths of the world.

And truth be told, I mean, you know, the andrology would have been 110 if that. It would have just, you know, been mean to like have Tony do all the work and me just sort of sit back and take glory. So the society and splitting it up by the world did a really kind of cool thing.

And so I had North America and Asia and Tony had Europe and South America. And there were some places that, you know, we had such deep relationships that we kind of like shared. Mexico, for example, the Middle East.

But that was the way that it was written. And so from the very beginning, it was very clear that we had this sort of global outreach as part of our mission. And so we really sort of covered the world.

I mean, you know, we traveled a lot independently to interact with people around the world. So I would say kind of like number one in terms of our interaction was to cover the globe. And, you know, we both kind of love to do that.

But the core, though, is that is that I know myself, I'm not a good sort of like solo player. I've always looked for a team. And so when given a team and it was an arranged marriage, the ASRM said, you know, we'd like you guys to work together.

It was like I jumped at the chance because I knew of Tony. I didn't know him personally at that time. But I knew that he was one of the great innovators in reproductive medicine and, you know, had conducted all of these incredible trials, reported them out in Fertility and Sterility as someone from, you know, Europe.

And so I was kind of chomping at the bit. And the minute that we met, you know, I knew that that, you know, that this would be one of the most important relationships in my life. And Tony became really one of my very closest friends.

And, you know, for that, I'm eternally grateful because those are the really honestly most meaningful things in life. Tony and I met frequently. So we we scheduled at least four in-person meetings.

And generally it was about a half a dozen each year. And we would sit down and work together for two or three days straight. And those were just some of the most fun times in my life.

So, you know, having having a and I think Alan, I think the way that you described it, I mean, you had these deep relationships. You had this relationship with Bob Rebar. I think that there's like something really good about having, you know, a partner in crime.

And, you know, I remember in the very beginning of Tony and my editorial time, Bob really sort of like missed that that conversation with you. And so I think that that, you know, that we're natural collaborators in reproductive medicine. And for me personally, having Tony as a teammate was one of the best things that ever happened in my life.

I have to admit, I'm most jealous about the relationship that you and Tony had, Craig. It was a wonderful relationship to bounce that off. So it seems to be the only way I can have a relationship.

I still get a lot of articles that are addressed to Alan's journey. So it must be that Alan is my partner. Given that, you know, what Alan has done for the journey and have, I don't reject them outright.

They don't know who the editor in chief is. But Alan certainly does cast a big shadow. And I thank him and both of you for putting this journal in such great shape.

It really is a nice, wonderful, relevant position to be in. So, yeah, Tony, what was it like to be on a team? I mean, first of all is the friendship that has been created working together. That has been the most for me has been of paramount importance.

And I think the most relevant point to highlight here. And second, I mean, I have the same feeling that you have. And to have somebody close to you when you have a difficult decision to take is important.

And probably you reduce the number of mistakes that you make if one decision is taken by two people. Great, Kurt, that flows right into you. And when you took over as editor in chief, what did you see? The same question, sort of the landscape of the journal and publishing.

And what's your vision that you're in year four of enacting? Yeah, I'm thrilled to be at the helm of Fertility and Sterility because the ship has been built so wonderfully by the previous editors. This is a really relevant journal and a wonderful job. I do agree having someone else to help with decisions would be terrific.

But I really want to thank you guys for putting this in such great shape. I mean, you guys did the hard lifting. This is now an electronic version of the journal.

I got the tail end of that. There's a lot of griping that people wanted their journal and some people still want it in their desk. But we have ushered into that modern era a lot better than others.

And I also want to thank Tony and Craig for the international nature that the journal really is. And, you know, my biggest pleasure of the journal is how much has expanded in these 75 years. And I think I don't remember I looked at this before.

There were only like two or three categories of journals, you know, like endocrinology and stuff like that when we started. And now we have probably more than 15. We have male reproduction.

Neurology has been prominent in it. And it's like, of course, it's been in the journal forever when it really hasn't been in the journal forever, as well as embryology. Genetics is a field that no one had heard of before.

We even have a lot more epidemiology and mental health. I'm really pleased that the journal has expanded to these things while still handling surgery and fibroids and endometriosis and endocrinology. So the scope and the relevance of the journal is because of you guys.

And I want to thank that. And the journal is part of ASRM in a good way that it's visible. It's a benefit.

It's what everybody wants. But I don't feel any pressure at all from ASRM in terms of the divisions and the contents. And again, thank you guys for putting that together.

So I'm pleased with where the journal is going. And there's always challenges. And I'm curious on your guys' favorite pet peeves about what the behind the scenes are, you know, the biggest challenge of an editor.

For me, I think it's all of the communication that you don't see in the journal with authors. Questions, complaints, changes, all those kind of things. Why do you think that the ASRM fraternity and society is so popular with those in our field? I really love the fact that everybody wants to get their paper in F&S and the volume is so high and people's voices seem to be resonated by F&S.

Why do you think our field is so wonderful in that way? It's an icon. It's our journal. I mean, that's who the people in America relate to as far as that's their journal.

I don't think that Americans think of HR as their journal. They look upon it as a journal. So I think that the fact that the society is strong, ASRM is strong, the relationship is strong, and the journal is just part of that.

Yeah. And also, it's older than HR. And I remember that when we look at the metrics, Fertility and Sterility had always far more citations than Human Reproduction.

Always. So I think that there's another dimension. And I think that the dimension is in addition to ownership.

An ASRM member would think, I am part of this thing, which is so foundational to the field. I want to contribute to it. Definitely.

But there's this other piece, too. And I think that Alan really ushered this in. And that's the really relational piece.

And Alan does this, I think, without thinking about it. It's just part of his personality. He's just approachable.

You can just go to Alan. He's funny. He's engaging.

And pretty much anyone, even the youngest among us, can go to Alan and engage. So I think that Tony and I really recognize the importance of that. And we, too, are not scary people, generally.

So the people who are our authors feel like—and global engagement, I think, was a smart thing for the society to want us to do—feel like they have friends in F&S. And so they automatically kind of sympathize with F&S's goals. And at the same time, of course, they feel proud that they're publishing in this historic landmark of a journal.

We are the oldest journal. Yeah, so I think that there's that relational piece, too, which is really important. Yeah, I agree with you, Craig, because I think I grew up with ASRM and F&S.

And if you wanted to make a contribution in your field—and the field was exploding in our generation. I mean, the growth of our field was just fabulous. You did it, and you got your word out in F&S.

And that was what was visible. But I'm not really sure how we can translate that to the Europeans because they didn't have the same growth with ASRM. So I'm curious how we break down the divide of Americans publish in F&S and Europeans publish in HR.

Tony, is there a way that we can break that down? I mean, Europeans try to publish always in Fertility and Sterility, and Americans try to publish in HR. So, no, I don't think there's a difference here. It's true that looking at the societies, and especially to the annual meeting, which is a marker of how the society is going, but it's not everything, in my opinion.

The annual meeting of the European Society of HR has grown more than ASRM. But for me, this has another explanation, mainly how people visit Europe easily than the United States. And also because in Europe, there are many beautiful cities.

I'm not saying that there are not in the United States, but the old cities in Europe are really very attractive. And I think this is part of the reason why ESHRE grew the annual meeting so much. But the scientific influence of ASRM, and especially today that we also have four journals, I think is in Fertility and Sterility.

In particular, I think it's still much greater than the influence of Human Reproduction and ESHRE. A quick anecdote that I used to try to get my work early in my career into HR, and it got rejected summarily all the time. And I finally went to a meeting over in Europe, and I met some of the people that were working in the field of early pregnancy.

And they said, oh, yeah, I would just reject all your papers until they met me. And then all of a sudden, we had a personal relationship, and now my papers would get published. So there is a little bit of a divide across the oceans, but it can be broken down, is my point.

So what I was thinking, actually, was going back to like, you know, why publish in Journal X? And one of my great frustrations was bibliometrics. So authors would say, you know, I don't publish in X because its impact factor is Y. And that was tremendously frustrating. Because, you know, as someone with like a mathematical kind of way of looking at the world, you know, there are better bibliometrics than the impact factor.

The impact factor is easily gamed. And, you know, we just didn't want to play those games. And there was this other metric that, you know, we were provided by our publisher with a bunch of bibliometrics.

There was this other metric, the eigenfactor score, which eliminated by its, you know, mathematical derivation, it eliminated things like self-citation and all of the stuff that you can use to game the impact factor. And, you know, nobody looked at it. You know, if a dean was looking at somebody for P&T and was looking at their papers, they didn't care what the eigenfactor was.

It's, you know, nobody was familiar with it, and the numbers were low. So, we had to pay attention to the impact factor, even though we knew that our eigenfactor score, the real score, was really high. You know, we had to, like, play the game of looking at the impact factor, not sacrificing integrity.

But we had to look at it and pay attention to it. It was a great frustration. And it was a balance.

You know, how do we keep the impact factor high? And at the same time, you know, not play the game and continue to publish quality stuff. So, that was, I think, a real frustration. But, you know, Kurt, it's got to factor into the—and, you know, you've done a great job—it's got to factor into, you know, this equation that we have to, like, you know, get people to publish in Fertility and Sterility.

You think people care about the impact factor as much as they did in the past? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Promotion and tenure in many institutions, globally. I think it's the authors that care more than the readers. I don't think they pick up one journal and the other percent as eigenfactor.

Right. But I think when you decide where you're going to put your paper out, it's an easy metric to look up on the Internet and say, oh, this one's 0.5 higher. I'm going to go there.

Which is why I've tried to build on what you guys have done and use this cliché that the journal is now about impact, not just impact factor. The fact that we have these podcasts and journal clubs, which you guys have started, where we can get your name out, we can have a social media presence, you know, we can really amplify your work is what we want to do, not just put it in the highest impact factor. You bring up a really good point.

And now that there are all of these, quote unquote, alt metrics about engagement. And it's a moving target. You know, it's one of the most fun things about the 10 years that Tony and I were co-editors-in-chief was like, you know, well, how do we interact with social media? It's changing all the time.

In fact, social media might be on its way out, right, at this moment in time. And what is going to replace it? So, Kurt, you have a really fun moment in terms of scientific communication that you're in right now. So we're talking with four editors-in-chief, but I want to hear what Micah and Allison have to say, because they're the ones that should be giving us advice.

You know, it's a scientific journal, but we do cover alt metrics. What do you guys think? I think we definitely see people who publish in F&S because of the social media presence. When we go to meetings and we see a good abstract and we bring them on the podcast and let them talk about their science, they want to publish with us.

They want that exposure. And so, as Craig has mentioned, there are other ways that authors get exposure outside of just being cited. And a lot of these articles have been number one on Google searches because of how the media team works.

I definitely think that's an attraction to authors that are aware of that. I think any time you can increase your visibility on dynamic platforms, you're going to increase the ability for you to move to the front of somebody's brain when they're thinking about submitting. I don't know that people that are not looking for an academic career are really looking at impact factor.

But when they go to submit their article, if they've seen on social media F&S publish these articles, listen to a podcast, I think it's going to be the first thing that kind of pops in the front of their brain. Early in my career, I mean, I lectured all over and I spoke at all the meetings. And whenever people knew who I was, it was always on papers that I wrote.

That other stuff really didn't increase my exposure. Not that I did it for that reason. But when people came up at the meetings and wanted to talk to me, they knew me based on the fact that I was publishing papers.

And I think it's not publishing papers. It's the exposure that the journal provides for people that's very important in your career because being known is part of your career. I was at this meeting recently in Barcelona that Tony puts on every other year.

I was part of organizing a half day session. Reproductive endocrinologist from Honduras that I had never met came up to me and said, I've read all your papers. And it just it always when somebody says that to me, Alan, it just floors me because I don't really think of myself as a writer.

But in reality, you know, that's the best thing that, you know, that we can do as well as people who, you know, who really want to move the field forward. So that that feeling of being a read author is just so, so powerful. You hit the nail on the head, I think.

And that's part of the responsibility of the editor, because you're promoting those people. That's something I picked up on recently is why do the motivation to publish intrigues? Like, why do people write an article? Why do they send it to a journal? And it touches on a subject we don't really have to get into. You know, this idea of when people are cheating a little bit to get their articles published.

But it's it does fascinate me. I'm like, you know, I really think the article should be sound science. That's what a journal is.

But but the thing you get from publishing is a big deal for your career. So I agree with you, Alan. You have to choose carefully and make sure people are doing it for the right reasons.

You could jump on that, though, and you could. I think, you know, it is a hot topic right now to talk about that scientific misconduct. And you've you've all spoken to how important it is to be published.

But I think as we move forward in time, you know, both with A.I. and then also just, you know, straight up falsifying data. How have you navigated that kind of as the journals evolved? Alison, I think that there's a really interesting thing going on that really sort of started. And one of the things that surprised me the most, actually, was how much scientific misconduct there was.

And it was never picked up mechanistically. You know, we had we had mechanisms cross check and things like that. And and they will become more and more sophisticated.

And I'm sure what Kurt has right now is far more sophisticated than what we had. But it was nearly never the mechanistic system that picked up scientific misconduct. It was a human who, like said, you know, in this reviewer, in this article, there is a figure that I remember from this other article.

And all they did was they changed the labels and, you know, and they put it in. And so I think that there's a place, continuing place for humans. I know A.I. I use it in a variety of ways every single day.

And I don't see A.I. as replacing that in the, you know, not too distant future. Well, now the issue is ChatGPT. People are writing articles with ChatGPT.

Is that OK? Is that going to be another form of misconduct? Or is it going to be accepted? Well, it depends. It depends, Alan. I mean, if you had an editor that you were working with, not, you know, a journal editor, but you had, you know, in your institution, you had somebody who was, you know, good at syntax and grammar and in language.

And they were going through it and like correcting it for you. Would that be a problem? You're right. We have or Kurt has decisions that he's going to need to make it.

Can ChatGPT act as a reviewer? Well, it's certainly it's more patient than we are. I think Tony, that's a great point. I think it can screen papers and tell you whether they're done right or there's something wrong or something doesn't make sense.

But I don't think you can ever take away peer review like a human looking at the paper and saying that's a really good idea. I'm convinced or I'm not convinced. I mean, that editorial decision is the most challenging.

I'm sure you guys face that, but also the most fun. Whereas ChatGPT can tell me if the data makes sense or there's errors or if they copied something. But I don't want to take the human nature out of publishing.

Of course, of course you don't. But I mean, it's tempting because one of the problems we had and you have for sure is the delay in the reviews. So you send a paper to someone, it takes a month.

You put it in in ChatGPT and you get the answer in two minutes. And if you use two or three different programs, you may have already a review. I'm not saying we should do that, but I don't know if I were you and I would be again in your position.

Maybe I would use three reviewers, two humans and one AI and see how it works. You know, a pilot study. It's hard because if you put a paper in the ChatGPT and you say review this article, it'll kind of come up with something relatively neutral.

But you can play with it a little bit and you can say, reject this article and give me all the reasons why. And it'll come up with a whole list of reasons why. And then you can say, accept this article and give me a whole list of reasons why.

And so I think that's the that's where the human comes in. Right. Is, you know, you can get chat to give you a reject or give you an accept and give you a whole list of reasons why.

And I think that's the benefit of it. Right. Find all the things that are good about this.

Find all the things that need help by that. The direction and the steering, I think, still needs to be from a human is what I would argue. Now, to me, that's scary because we so far, one of the main themes on this podcast is how important the human element in the journal is important.

Meeting people, knowing people, knowing personalities. ChatGPT takes that all away. You know, I would take the other tack, Alan.

I share the concerns, but I would say that actually what what it allows is for humans to have more time to, like, interact with with each other directly, kind of like in person, that sort of thing. That sounds good, but it's not working. I don't know.

I don't know. I don't have the ability yet because I'm so in it now to reflect on and say, how did my relationships change? But I do see I do see opportunity. It's just it's just kind of thrown it out there.

You know, there are two there are two possibilities and there is another possibility, and that is we have more freedom of time. I just want to say to those listening, we are not using to review your article at the moment, but this is a great theoretical argument. I have had a lot of talk with Elsevier about how I can be used in papers.

And right now, the system is or the instructions are that you can use ChatGPT to help you craft your discussion or your introduction. But ChatGPT cannot generate data, cannot generate figures, cannot generate references. I have seen ChatGPT cheat makeup references, which are which are false.

So I just that that's a distinction. As of today, tomorrow is going to be something different. But I just wanted to say that to those listening.

Strangely, I started my career, scientific career with a neural computation and then, you know, morphed into something. And but I it's I've you know, I've returned to it and I'm working a lot with it now. And I cannot emphasize how true your words ring.

It's it's kind of like, you know, it's kind of like a very patient worker helping you out. But you have to direct it. It's your ideas and you're careful holding its hand that gets anything out of it.

Well, I'm afraid of the bias that you're going to introduce into it. I mean, I don't want to get political here, but many people are finding information to support their opinions rather than using information to support their opinions. And I think you could use the ChatGPT for your article to write me a persuasive article that I really think this therapy is going to work.

Show me all the reasons why it might. That's not science, that that's persuasive writing. And that's what we have to make sure is not happening in a scientific journal like ours.

But if you reflect on reviewers, when you go over a reviewer, reviewers that go over the data and nitpick at the data, they're not that helpful. It's really, to me, the most important thing from the people that were good reviewers is what they wrote to the editor. And that's the personal that's that's the personal part that ChatGPT, I don't think, can replace.

So there still is that personal element that ChatGPT can't do now. But I think, you know, it's frightening, but it might be able to be better in the future. And you talk about having more time, more time to do what? To visit with you and have a coffee with you.

OK, Alan, what you just said is gold. And I want to make sure that that comes through in this in this podcast and discussion is that, again, it's the personal nature of the review and the paper that helps us as editors more than more than anything else. It's not just, you know, they grammatically the sentence could have been better or that this number doesn't work.

It's it's what you really think of the idea. And was I was it persuasive or are they overstating their their their conclusions or is this biased? And that I want everyone to hear that, because that's that's what I think a review of a paper is. In the kind of era of IVF and, you know, we are seeing some trend towards how easy it can be to follow clinical algorithms.

So on that note, do you feel like there's not enough of this fostering of a deep understanding of statistics and the pathophysiology of things? Or do you think that's playing a role in that in the difficulty getting reviewers to give kind of those human opinions? Well, you know, people are even I now when I review a paper, sometimes I'm I'm concerned that I didn't do a good. I didn't do a good enough job as far as expressing what I what I felt. But that's but that's wrong that I read this article.

I have a lot of experience. This is what I feel. What is important is to send the manuscript to the right person.

And it's important that the person who receives the the the manuscript, if he or she doesn't feel that has enough experience, just turn it down and send it back to the to the editor. Because they serve a good review. So I always had three reviewers, one, the editorial board, one, an expert in the field, and one just kind of I called it man on the street.

So a person on the street. So I had all three people looking at the three different views of that article as far as where it went. And that that seemed to work out well.

And many times the third reviewer, the man on the street or person on the street was was the most revealing. I also echo that not every reviewer I hope reviewers are listening to this have to give you all three opinions. And if someone is not comfortable with the statistics, they can still comment on the idea.

They can still comment on how this would change practice. Someone that someone that knows statistics can say they use the right or wrong methodology and statistics, but they might not have any idea on what the topic is. So all of that information is valuable and actually does get synthesized.

So, again, I'm encouraging reviewers to give their their opinion on what they can give their opinion on. And don't worry about the rest. You don't have to shy away from it because you didn't understand the statistical algorithm.

I think it's also important for listeners to understand that every paper is reviewed. The way that Alan described it, Tony and I were slightly different, but not all that different. The the editorial board reviews every single article.

Right. It's every single article has at least one pair of human eyes on it. So what's a bad article? I'm curious.

I have my opinions, but I want to hear from you guys. What what makes an article quote unquote bad? Well, I think, first of all, what what is rejected and Kurt, I'm relatively certain that you're experiencing the same thing. I mean, we publish between eight and 12 percent of what came in.

Right. That means that, you know, 88 to 92 percent was rejected. And in that 88 to 92 percent were plenty of really excellent articles.

They just didn't fit within the, you know, the general parameters of the journal, which is why we really pushed. And Tony, you know, had had probably the most direct hand in this to have a platform of journals so that, you know, if it didn't go to F&S, whatever, then it would go to F&S something else. The basic principle is you're looking for something that moves the needle a little bit as far as knowledge is concerned.

I would add the other category that I look for that I a lot of papers don't get published in F&S is that is the depth and sophistication. But sometimes that literally just reporting one find and there and there's no real thought process. And scientific articles have a real thought process.

Why you think this is true, why it might not be true. How does it compare? And some articles are just not sophisticated or deep. And that that that would be another category.

So I want our readers to know or listeners to know that each of these editors has also written a companion piece that will be published in the journal and has some other thoughts from them. One thing that really stood out from your early answers and that each of you touched on in your writings was the importance of involving young people. And certainly the Interactive Associates is now, I think, in year 13 or 14.

There have been over 50 people that have graduated through that. Many went on to the editorial board. Many went on to be associate editors even now.

So it's opened a gateway into the journal. So I was just curious, as we have our first young fellow here, editorial fellow, if you guys have advice to our young people who want to be involved in journals and in editorship, what would your advice be to our young folks? I think it's part of the academic education is very important. And only for these reasons, I think they should go for it.

I encourage them. For me, I would say, don't let anything stand in your way. Anybody that's part of journal leadership, go up and chat with them, because we were looking, I'm sure Kurt is still looking, and Alan certainly was looking, for engaged young people.

So we're looking, or Kurt now is looking, so don't be afraid. He may look vicious, but actually he's really sweet on the inside. Well, I remember the first paper I wrote, I was a resident, was on heat-stable alkaline phosphatase in the placenta.

And I wrote it. It got accepted. It was up and back.

And I said, I'll never write another article. This was a hateful process. So I think the best thing you can do for young people is encourage them that it's not a hateful process.

It's a fair process. And it's actually, it's a fun process. The process is there to help you.

So, again, I would echo all of those things. I think that there's a real privilege to publish in a scientific journal. There's a way to perform science.

There's a way to write science. There's a peer review process. And to get your work through that process and publish is a real honor.

And I think everyone should strive for that and have that feather in their cap. But more than that, even if you only publish one or two papers during your fellowship, you need to be part of this process, because that's what keeps this whole science and art field strong. You've got to be able to read the literature, interpret the literature, pay it forward and pay it backwards.

You know, your paper got in, review somebody else's. This is a process that we can't lose. We can't have AI do it.

We can't have somebody else do it. So I think the process is very, very rewarding. And I would encourage people to get involved in it.

And yeah, you have to have thick skin and you have to take rejection. But that's why the rewards are so great when you're ultimately successful in putting your name in print, because it's there forever. It's truly a scientific discovery and finding.

And your name deserves to be on it because it's good quality. And that's why there's a thesis as part of the fellowship process. It's not that you're going to be a great writer of papers and make great scientific discoveries.

That's not that purpose. The purpose is to learn what it takes to write an article in a journal. So the rest of your career, you can evaluate these things from a personal experience level, not just from just reading something.

Yeah, I know we're short on time here, but again, I want to say that Fertility and Serility is looking for young readers, young writers, because it is the future and the continued future of our subspecialty. And it's a privilege to be part of it. And I encourage people to be part of it in many, many ways.

And you can hear it in all of the expertise, the 50 years of expertise of the people talking on this, that this journal needs to stay relevant and will stay relevant because of the next generation. Well, I certainly appreciate this group involving young people. As Craig alluded to, that's been my gateway into this journal and this amazing experience.

I definitely appreciate that. We're coming up to the end of our time. So I just want to go around the room and give you each a chance to say your last minute or two of thoughts.

It's an open ended platform for you. So no question, Alan, we'll start with you and then Tony and then Craig and then Kurt, you can close. Well, for me, the chance to be the editor in F&S was one of the highlights of my career.

I thought that was great. It opened up many, many vistas for me. It introduced me to hundreds of great people.

And if I look back on things that I've done, that would be very high on the list. And the message that I'm giving out is get involved in the literature, writing, reading it, critiquing it. I think that makes your career much, it embellishes your career tremendously.

Yeah. For me, as I said at the beginning, to become co-editor in chief of Fertility and Sterility was a great honor, especially not being a U.S. citizen. And in my career, together with becoming for six years dean of the medical school, I think these two points have been fundamental in my career because I learned many things that I didn't expect from these two positions.

So because, you know, coming to Fertility and Sterility, you know Fertility and Sterility as a reader, you know Fertility and Sterility as an author. But inside Fertility and Sterility, you learn other people, other characters. And this is of paramount importance in your personal development.

For me, absolutely. Being co-editor in chief of Fertility and Sterility with Tony was a highlight of my career, a pinnacle. And so I can echo that as well.

And on a personal level, working with Tony was just an extraordinary blessing. It was a remarkable thing that I didn't expect beforehand. And once in it, it was just one of the best things that ever happened to me.

I would say that the counsel that I would advise young people starting to do this is just do it. One of the reasons that you're in this field and when you got here, you had a lot of history, right? You had to go through medical school and, you know, kind of like a general residency. And then finally, you know, you're in your subspecialty and it's an amazing thing.

I mean, we're all impassioned by it, the ability to like help couples have children. It's like this amazing thing. And as a group of people, you know, we I think just celebrate that part of humanity.

But there's this other point, which is we have fun. We have fun in our careers. And there is just nothing more fun than getting published.

You know, it's just like this, this, you know, this endorphin high. So there's a reason for that. And that is, is that the world comes together at that moment in time.

All of the things that you've planned, all of the things that you've worked so hard for, you can actually say, you know, I've come up with something new, novel and impactful. And that's just such a wonderful thing. So to those who are listening, I would say, you know, have fun with your career.

Start by having super fun by publishing. Get involved. The editorial process is part of that fun.

So so that would be my counsel. So those are say that sage advice you just got. My advice would be, I think it's a real privilege to be able to maintain Fertility and Sterility in the journey that it's come through for 75 years.

And I want to make it relevant for as long as I can. The journal is not about me. The journal is about the integrity of science in our field.

And that's the goal as an editor is to make sure what's in F&S is quality. It's relevant. It's making the field move forward.

And you should all be a part of that because we can rally around science in the right way. That's what tells us what's right and wrong, what can improve our patient. And that should be part of medicine and especially part of reproductive medicine.

And I would encourage you all to be part of it, not afraid of it. And it's a very fulfilling career to, again, even if you just publish once or just read it with an eye towards what's correct and not. So please be involved in publishing.

And I hope you will look for Fertility and Sterility to help you with that career. This was fantastic. Thank you so much.

When Kurt asked me to be media editor, he said, if we're going to do this, let's have fun. And I had a lot of fun today. This was really enlightening listening to you, gentlemen.

Allison, thank you for putting this together and being our editorial fellow. This, I think, was great. To our listeners, like and subscribe the F&S On Air podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

And we'll see you on our next episode. This concludes our episode of Fertility and Sterility On Air, brought to you by Fertility and Sterility in conjunction with the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. This podcast is produced by Dr. Molly Kornfield and Dr. Adriana Wong.

This podcast was developed by Fertility and Sterility and the American Society for Reproductive Medicine as an educational resource in service to its members and other practicing clinicians. While the podcast reflects the views of the authors and the hosts, it is not intended to be the only approved standard of practice or to direct an exclusive course of treatment. The opinions expressed are those of the discussants and do not reflect Fertility and Sterility or the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

Thank you.