On the advancement side, I see more and more people who, in addition to saying I’ve written so many papers that were cited by so many other people, or supported by so many dollars, are also talking about some form of measurement. And the Kardashian index is just one. There’s Altametric measures. It’s becoming more and more important, people are trying to quantify either the impact of a piece of information or their skill at delivering on that promise. I suspect it will be one measure, whether [the Kardashian Index] becomes the measure or not, I can’t really tell yet.

In your tenure thus far with the Annals, what do you feel is the most important paper that has been published, let’s say in the past 16 years?

Dr. Yealy: Oh, boy, that’s a tough question. I wasn’t prepared to answer that right now. I can think of many that were helpful, but I’d honestly have to sit down and put a little bit more thought into that.

What do you think’s been the most memorable thing that comes to your mind?

Dr. Yealy: A piece about the practice of emergency medicine allowed us to not only develop dialogue back and forth on that particular topic, but to re-examine the role between the sponsoring organization and the editorial board and the content of the journal. And I’m proud of that, because a lot of other high-profile journals went through that process because of much more conflict, and perhaps even a need to terminate individuals involved. We were able to do it in a healthy way that reinforced and raised the level of, not only respect, but discourse between the two bodies that each had a task to do. I thought that was really, really healthy, although it was a little bit bumpy at times.

Any final thoughts?

Dr. Yealy: [I want to point out] that not only did Dr. Callaham raise the stature, the content, and the recognition of the Annals of Emergency Medicine, he changed publishing around the globe. He saw that when humans evaluate humans, and that’s what happens during a peer review, one person looks at another person’s work and makes comments about it. No matter how hard you try, there will be opportunities to do better. In other words, either failures to accept something that’s important, or having accepted something that shouldn’t have been… But [Dr. Callaham] created science and observations around that and shared them across all journals. Annals of Emergency Medicine is not only the leading journal in emergency medicine for creating content specific to acute illness and injury, but it’s a leader in changing the insights and the practices behind peer review. I can’t think of another journal that has that type of impact on broader publications.