This year, the British Institute of Radiology’s flagship research journal, BJR (British Journal of Radiology), celebrates 125 years of publishing radiological research. To celebrate this significant milestone, the BIR has announced a special anniversary article series that will feature invited articles from leading international experts published throughout the year.
BJR Editor-in-Chief (medical) Dr Simon Jackson said, “This is an exciting time for our prestigious journal – BJR has reached a significant landmark and is going from strength to strength. We are delighted to be able to celebrate this important milestone with such an outstanding collection of articles from some of the world’s foremost experts on medical imaging and the related sciences.”
BJR is the oldest radiology journal in the world, with roots dating back to 1896. Founding editor Sidney Rowland, a medical student at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London, launched the new journal, the Archives of Clinical Skiagraphy, in April 1896, just months after Wilhelm Roentgen discovered the X-ray in 1895. The primary objective of the new publication was, “to put on record in permanent form some of the most striking applications of the New Photography to the needs of Medicine and Surgery” as Rowland noted in his preface to the first issue. In 1928, following several name changes and an initial period of evolution, the publication re-launched as the British Journal of Radiology. The figures show a timeline of BJR’s history and some examples of the journal’s front cover from launch to present day. BJR’s history is radiology’s history, and the journal has gone on to publish landmark papers such as the 1953 seminal paper from L.H. Gray and Sir Oliver Scott, defining the importance of oxygen in radiotherapy, and the first description of CT “Computerized transverse axial tomography” by Sir Godfrey Hounsfield in 1973.
The specially commissioned and forward-facing commemorative collection of articles spans the breadth of BJR’s scope, from diagnostic radiology to radiotherapy and the underpinning sciences. The series will focus on developments and future directions across different areas and imaging modalities as well as revisiting some key seminal papers from BJR’s extensive and prestigious archive.
BJR Editor-in-Chief (scientific) Professor Kevin Prise said, “The themes and topics being tackled in this superb collection highlight the state-of-the-art underpinning the work undertaken by clinicians and researchers who specialise in medical imaging, medical physics and radiation research. We expect these articles to have a broad and significant impact on the community we serve and its future development.”
This important collection of Review articles will be essential reading for the whole of the imaging community. The articles will be published in BJR issues throughout 2020 and as a curated collection towards the end of the year.
The January issue of BJR, containing two introductory Editorials to mark the start of the anniversary year, can be accessed via: www.birpublications.org/toc/bjr/93/1105. The first Review article of the series, “Artificial Intelligence: reshaping the practice of radiological sciences in the 21st century”, by Professor Issam El Naqa and colleagues, published in BJR’s February issue, can be read here: https://doi.org/10.1259/bjr.20190855.
The collection itself, which will be added to as the year goes on, can be found on the BIR publications website:
https://www.birpublications.org/BJR125.
