• Medical Education
• Medical Journalism

I’m wondering where an August edition of Education & Practice might be read. I’m writing this shortly after we’ve just received the most recent update of our impact factors—and for Education & Practice it is gratifyingly stable, especially since impact factor is something we’ve never chased. Editors of journals have a number of metrics which hint to them that their journal is achieving some sort relevance in the world. Among other things, we look at impact factor, subscriptions, downloads and web page visits. But I’m not so sure that this tells me what I’d like to know, really. If you’ve heard me speak about writing for the journal, you might have heard me describe ‘wrapper to recycling time’. What I mean here is the time that elapses between you—perhaps reluctantly—removing the journal from the cellophane wrapper and eventually placing it in the recycling. Of course, this might be very rapid indeed—it can be measured in minutes for some journals I am sent—and might be falsely elevated by being placed in a pile for reading later. …