It is with deep emotion, enormous joy and proud satisfaction that I write this editorial in the launch of Global Rheumatology by PANLAR, a platform for the distribution of scientific knowledge from PANLAR.
As the editor in chief, Prof. Carlo Vinicio Caballero, stated in his editorial, PANLARs history with instruments of scientific distribution has been long and prolific. This new one, far from being a culmination of the previous ones, is only a starting point for a new way to share knowledge and scientific production.
Long discussions have taken place for a number of years among PANLARs different circles (Executive Committee, Board of Directors, Study Groups, Scientific Committees, Education Committee, etc.) regarding the need and relevance of PANLAR having its own journal. PANLARs association with the Journal of Clinical Rheumatology (JCR), which is, and will continue to be, PANLARs official medium is widely known (a short parenthesis goes here to direct special words to Ralph Schumacher, long-standing JCR director, and Graciela S. Alarcón, current director, who always supported PANLAR and research in Latin America). We have discussed at length, as stated above, about the need to launch a new journal on the specialty, knowing that we have JCR and that there is a huge number of journals available. I believe the debate would have continued for many more years had it not been for the ideas of Dr. Caballero, an outspoken advocate of other forms of digital communication and scientific outreach, which drove us to finally understand what we should do.
This is not a new scientific journal, it is a platform for the dissemination of knowledge! The dictionary defines a platform as “a flat, open and elevated horizontal surface that serves as a support or base for something.” We envisage Global Rheumatology by PANLAR as a transversal space, without hierarchies (horizontal surface), without stumbling blocks (flat), transparent (uncovered) but with (high) quality and ethical demands that serves scientific research and knowledge in Latin America (and in the future, of all America), as a base structure (serves as a support or base) to grow and launch into the world.
This is why Global Rheumatology will not only have a classic journal section with scientific research articles, in the most traditional peer-reviewed formats, according to the highest quality standards of medical publications, but will also have a high level scientific journalism section that we trust will aid the important work of scientific propagation through special sections that highlight and make visible the science produced from our region through different narrative and multimedia formats.
Coupled with its continuous publishing model, an innovative responsive platform design, publication in the PANLAR languages (Spanish, English and Portuguese) and open access, we trust that many of you will embrace this idea with immediate enthusiasm, a few will wait for results with hopeful illusion, and some others will look at it with careful suspicion. We trust that, in the end, everyone will finally support it!
In recent years, PANLAR has intensely promoted its slogan “WE ARE ALL PANLAR”. Today, we would like to say: “GLOBAL RHEUMATOLOGY BY PANLAR is by EVERYONE and for EVERYONE”. I invite you to get to know it, enjoy it, and live it!
