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1 Berquist.Thomas{at}mayo.edu
We addressed critical interactions among authors, reviewers, and section editors in the November Editor's Notebook [1]. Specifically, we discussed communication and the steps required to accomplish manuscript publication. Hidden in "the circle to publication" was a critically important factor, the role of mentoring. We must improve our approach to mentoring to fulfill the mission of the American Journal of Roentgenology.
The term "mentor" dates back to the days of Greek mythology. In book II of Homer's The Odyssey, Mentor was the son of Alcumus. In his later years, Mentor became a close friend of Odysseus. Odysseus entrusted Mentor to counsel and tutor his son Telemachus [2]. The word "mentor" has transferred into the English language as a term for a wise, entrusted teacher. The Merriam-Webster dictionary [3] defines mentor as "a trusted counselor or guide." The student of the mentor is the mentee.
In his presidential address to the ARRS in 1998 [4], John E. Madewell began by thanking his mentors and fellow colleagues for what they contributed to his career. Looking back over my own career, I can think of multiple mentors who played a significant role in my development as a physician. Mind you, at the time, some of those interactions were not pleasant. For example, during my first week as a college freshman, I was informed by my literature professor that I didn't have a clue about the proper approach to writing a paper. Dr. Prausnitz could have allowed me to sink or learn to swim. Instead, he proceeded to counsel me each week. We met at 5:00 in the morning on the day before each paper was due. The meetings lasted an entire semester, but I finally figured it out. That was above and beyond mentorship. I have always remembered his efforts and the impact he had on my career. Years later, I honored my mentor by providing an endowed Prausnitz Scholarship to Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota. What I learned through my experiences with Dr. Prausnitz and other coaches and counselors (Robert R. Hattery, Emeritus Executive Director of the American Board of Radiology; the late Glenn Hartman and C. Allen Good; and my long-time colleague John E. Madewell) is that they did not want or expect my continued praise for their assistance. Rather, their payback was my applying what they taught me to mentoring other mentees.
Mentoring has been a popular buzz word for corporations and medical education programs in recent years [5–8]. Medicine is faced with ongoing challenges resulting in the need to use new methods for educating physicians and providing them with guidance for adapting to our changing world. Mentoring programs play a significant role in dealing with these challenges [4, 6–8]. Informal mentoring has been in place for years. In my experience, mentors rarely consider themselves as actively filling that role. Mentees have informally or formally selected mentors on the basis of their interests and potential career goals. Today, more formal approaches are often advocated. These mentoring programs are formal, highly organized, often intense, and time-consuming [8]. This more structured approach usually requires ongoing active participation by mentors and mentees. In this setting, the mentee may not be able to choose the mentor.
The American Journal of Roentgenology faces many challenges [1, 4]. How can we use mentoring to constantly improve the quality of the journal? We already have multiple programs designed to assist aspiring residents, academicians, and physicians interested in participating in scientific projects and journal activities. Current programs and awards include the ARRS Scholarship (designed to assist recipients with selected studies in their field), the Leonard Berlin Scholarship (for study in ethics and medical–legal issues), the Figley Fellowships (for radiology journalism), the Lee F. Rogers Fellowship (for international journalism), and the Residents in Radiology Awards (for outstanding manuscript development). In fact, this issue contains an article by Michael L. Richardson, a Figley Fellow, titled "Alphabetic Bias in the Selection of Reviewers for the American Journal of Roentgenology" [9]. This project was initiated during his fellowship year. For more information on these programs, you can visit www.arrs.org.
These are excellent programs, but we have much work to do in other areas in which mentoring is essential. We must move to a more formal and structured mentoring system. For example, we have a vast number of reviewers (more than 1,600). We need to provide training for new reviewers and templates for review of each article category so that our authors can rely on consistent constructive feedback on their manuscripts. Ongoing training sessions for new and current reviewers can be provided at the annual meeting of the ARRS and online. James M. Provenzale and Editor Emeritus Robert J. Stanley published an article providing a simple workable manual with outlines of key points that should be included in each review [10]. This article was referenced in last month's Editor's Notebook and should be on every AJR reviewer's shelf, or better yet, in their computer database.
Our structure, which includes new subspecialty section editors, provides more expertise and focus for each section of the journal. The addition of assistant editors provides more focus to sections. This structure provides a mechanism for improved communication with the reviewers in each section. These changes will assist as we develop reviewer templates and improve mentoring mechanisms.
Finally, as they say, "the buck stops here." As editor in chief, I need to seek the advice of our editors emeriti, fantastic office staff, and colleagues to become the ultimate example of a mentor for the journal as a whole. I must serve as the mentor at the top of the pyramid who maintains constant effort in working with the section editors and assistant editors to ensure that we all serve as mentors to our reviewers and authors.
One of my favorite motion pictures is Mr. Holland's Opus. As you may recall, this was the story of a musician who wanted to write a symphony but to support his family taught high school music instead of becoming a famous composer. Through his struggles with teaching he touched many lives without realizing the impact he had on his students. In the end, they all honored him and played his symphony.
M. B. Mainiero [6] said it well: "Mentoring is typically devalued and time-consuming." We don't get paid for mentoring...or do we? Our reward is the success of the mentee or, in the case of the journal, the satisfaction of a superior product that we all worked together to produce. Mentoring our authors, reviewers, and editors will result in a product that we can pass on to the next group of mentors.
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  T. H. Berquist The Year in Review: My How Time Flies! Am. J. Roentgenol., July 1, 2009; 193(1): 1 - 2. [Full Text] [PDF]
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