Why read journals, anyway?

Here is the conundrum: if you are reading this editorial, then I am preaching to the choir. You already are someone who presumably finds value in picking up a journal—spe-cifically this journal—to read at least some of its content. Intentionally, or perhaps inadvertently, you have wandered over to the Editorial page. Depending on how well I do with my first paragraph, you may continue reading, skip to another article, or give up completely. I fully recognize that if you and others like you don't read this, then no one will! In that case, this editorial is nothing more than a waste of time and paper. So let me pose a couple of questions that might encourage you to spend a few more minutes with me. Have you thought about what you hope to gain from reading this journal—or, for that matter, any journal? Are there opportunities you might be missing, depending on how you select the articles that you will skip versus those you will skim versus those you will actually read? During most of my plastic surgery career, I read our professional journals without ever stopping to analyze the how and why. Had I thought about it, I might have chosen articles more selectively , or made a greater effort to expand the scope of articles I read to include additional topics outside the mainstay procedures of my practice. I might have tried harder to review data with a careful and critical eye. When I undertook my role as Founding Editor of this journal, in 1996, I naturally began to reorient my thinking about what a journal should offer readers. I tried, to some extent, to think " out of the box, " because I remembered that sometimes information that seems only peripherally relevant can actually come in very handy. For example, a number of years earlier, a woman had brought her young child to see me for a consultation. She wanted me to somehow " fill in a scar " on the child's forehead. It happens that I had recently stumbled across an article that I had casually read, for no particular reason other than curiosity. Based on that article, I felt certain that the child exhibited linear scle-roderma with a " coup de sabre " deformity. I was able to suggest another physician who could properly confirm the diagnosis and follow up with appropriate care. The knowledge …