Photonics & Lasers in Medicine – Dissolved in diversity

It has been more than 50 years since Theodore Maiman first presented the pulsed laser beam in public. Since then this unique energy source – namely, light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation (LASER) – has initiated a new age in surgery and medicine.

In the early years after its invention only a relatively small group of international clinicians and researchers were engaged in the development of improved surgical procedures and clinical therapies that were advantageous for those patients who either could not be treated successfully in a conventional way, or could be treated better than before by using LASER. Driven by these developments, national laser societies were formed, such as the American Society for Laser Medicine and Surgery (ASLMS) and the German Society for Laser Medicine (DGLM), followed by the first international society, the International Society for Laser Surgery and Medicine (ISLSM). As a result, within 10 years the number of medical LASER users increased to several thousand worldwide.

In the following decades laser surgery and medicine developed into remarkable stage with an ever-increasing number of applications. It is a technique that is used to transport energy to ablate, coagulate or alter tissue photomechanically or photochemically, as well as to change function or elucidate specific information from the tissue; all these methods allow its multidisciplinary use – with steady growth. The LASER is now well established in many medical disciplines and it has found general acceptance by national and private health plans.

Currently diagnostic and therapeutic applications are being developed with different speed. While laser diagnostics research is leading the field, only a few therapeutic techniques have made the leap from bench to bedside lately. It is interesting to note here that a considerable number of LASER and biophotonic techniques have already been integrated into the medical guidelines and that they are being discussed within the medical disciplines rather than within the biophotonics community. However, the amount of research regarding LASER and biophotonics in medicine is steadily increasing, in that the users and their aims are as diverse as they ever were.

Within this process, laser medicine and biophotonics are not only related to clinical application. There are many research fields but only a few key applications, with other competitive technologies also on the increase. Reimbursement of costs by social welfare schemes still remains a critical point and industrial investment and research funding are not enough to bridge the gap between the bench and the bedside.

In spite of this, there have been many optical innovations in laboratory medicine, histology and pathology, LASER and light applications, and diagnostic procedures. Moreover, the International Year of Light 2015 boosted the worldwide recognition of biophotonics and LASER. Today the diversity of the applications is striking and we are faced with so many topics, even within this subspecialty, that one journal alone cannot capture every aspect of the subject any longer.

When the DGLM was founded it was necessary to make the very latest research information available for members of the society through a journal. Today it is much easier to get specific information by accessing information on the web. But visibility, measured by citations, remains crucial. This might be one reason for the steady increase in open access journals even though these journals charge authors for publication, which is a questionable way to spread information. However, these changes in the scholarly publishing of journals are a challenge to publishers, and have affected our journal too.

Formats of DGLM’s journals (from left to right): Laser in Medicine and Surgery (1985–1990, Erdmann-Brenger Verlag), Lasermedizin (1990–2000, Urban & Fischer Verlag), Medical Laser Application (2001–2011, Urban & Fischer Verlag/Elsevier) and Photonics & Lasers in Medicine (2012–2016, De Gruyter Verlag).

Over the years the DGLM has published four different formats of journals with different publishers, always with the aim of highlighting as many aspects of biophotonics and laser medicine as possible. In our journal Photonics & Lasers in Medicine preference was given to topical issues in order to catch the particular interest of the scientific community. However, its visibility stayed below expectations despite the fact that Photonics & Lasers in Medicine was the first of DGLM’s journals that could place single top-class NIH-funded research articles in PubMed/Medline.

Sadly, none of our journals have succeeded in their bid to attract enough readers outside the DGLM or be noticed by the relevant scientific citation indexes, such as the Thomson Reuters impact factor.

The role of the publishers is not a point of discussion here, although it must be said that the publishers were not always cooperative and helpful with promotion of the journal. As a consequence, the Editors-in-Chief and the DGLM recently took the decision in a unanimous vote to discontinue Photonics & Lasers in Medicine, published by De Gruyter for the last 5 years, at the end of 2016.

In the name of the Editors-in-Chief and DGLM, we would like to express our sincere thanks to all our readers, all the members of DGLM, all the many contributors of articles over the years, reviewers and members of the editorial and advisory boards who have helped to make this journal known in a very specific niche of the scientific community. Our very special thanks go to our assistant editors who have kept track of and helped the journal to thrive all these years.

Currently the Editors-in-Chief are concentrating their efforts on the search for a publishing format that will meet the requirements of the future. Your suggestions and statements are very welcome! No idea will be discarded and something that might seem to be impossible is often the first step to something new. We will go on – challenging developments are waiting for us.

On behalf of all Editors-in-Chief of Photonics & Lasers in Medicine