HEPATOLOGY expects to publish approximately 5,400 pages represents a form of abuse inflicted by self-serving authors on a readership already taxed to the limits by the sheer vol-this year. This represents a nearly 10% increase in pages published compared with 1995, and an even greater increase ume of what it feels obliged to keep up with. Previous editorials on these pages 3,4 stating HEPATOLOGY's position in this in information content because of the introduction in this issue of a smaller type font. The serious student of the liver regard have largely had their desired effect. Far fewer redundant manuscripts are submitted here. Equally important, au-and its diseases will want to keep abreast not only of what appears in HEPATOLOGY, but also of the hepatologic literature thors have been sensitized to the issue, and now often call potential conflicts to the attention of the editors. As often as that will be published in the Journal of Hepatology, Liver, Gastroenterology, Gut, the American Journal of Gastroenter-not, these forthright authors are, in fact, oversensitized, and consideration and publication of their latest manuscript goes ology, Digestive Diseases and Sciences, The Journal of Viral Hepatitis, Seminars in Liver Disease, Progress in Liver Dis-forward unhindered. This is precisely the situation envisioned in the perceptive report of the Editorial Policy Com-eases, Hepatitis Reviews, and the myriad other national, regional, or discipline-based publications in which important mittee of the Council of Biology Editors. 1 Recognizing the difficulty of defining in advance all situations in which some new findings are reported or reviewed. To do the sums, and conclude that our field now generates well over 1,000 pages degree of overlapping publication might be acceptable, the report indicates that decisions in individual cases should be per month of substantial reading, highlights an inexorable trend that threatens to replace the glorious tradition of the considered matters of editorial policy ''as long as the authors are forthright about what they are doing. . . . The committee all-knowing general hepatologist with a series of superspecialists in such subdisciplines as viral hepatitis, portal hyper-believes that the scientific and policy issues become ethical issues when the authors are not forthright about their earlier tension, metabolic and immunologic liver diseases, alcohol, transplant, and transport. The annual meeting of the Ameri-publications.'' Right on! Unfortunately, a hard-core minority still refuses to play by can Association for the Study of Liver Diseases has increasingly recognized the inevitable by scheduling growing num-the rules. When caught in flagrante delicto, the prototypical excuse is, to this day, ignorance. However, given the repeated bers of highly focused parallel sessions. While the trend to greater specialization and narrower focus is inexorable, it is discussion of this issue on the editorial pages of many journals, such protestations are difficult to accept. not necessarily wholly desirable; breadth of knowledge enhances one's capability to focus on the narrower problem of
The article ''Polymorphisms in Alcohol Metabolizing Enzyme Genes and Alcoholic Cirrhosis in Japanese Patients: A the moment.
Biomedical journals exist to provide a conduit for new infor-Multivariate Analysis,'' by Yamauchi, Maezawa, Mizuhara, Ohata, Hirakawa, Nakajima, and Toda, which appeared in mation between those who generate that information, i.e., investigators, and those who can apply it, either in diagnosis the October 1995 issue of HEPATOLOGY, 5 is a case in point. A second paper, entitled ''Association of a Restriction Fragment or treatment at the bedside, or in taking the next scientific step by bench-top or clinical investigation. Virtually all seri-Length Polymorphism in the Alcohol Dehydrogenase 2 Gene with Japanese Alcoholic Liver Cirrhosis,'' by Yamauchi, Mae-ous journals apply some form of peer review to submitted manuscripts. The peer review process is designed to accom-zawa, and Toda, and two additional authors, Suzuki and Sakurai, appeared in the November 1995 issue of the Journal plish several goals. One, of course, is to ensure the accuracy and significance of what is published. At the same time, by of Hepatology. 6 It has been called to our attention by several readers that these two manuscripts appear to be very similar denying publication, at least in prime space, to articles that are ill-conceived, inaccurate, largely redundant, or merely and to represent an example of redundant publication. Both papers utilize groups of 60 healthy control subjects. The val-of marginal significance, peer review and the accompanying process of editorial decision-making serve the additional and ues for the gene frequency of ADH2*1 (0.217) and ALDH2*1 (0.733) in healthy subjects are identical in both of these pa-important function of reducing the sheer volume of published literature to something more manageable by the reader. pers, indicating that the same control group seems to have been used in both publications. Likewise, both papers studied Without these processes, HEPATOLOGY alone would require 12,000 pages annually to publish all the manuscripts submita group of 34 alcoholics with noncirrhotic alcoholic liver disted to it. The prospect of the willy-nilly publication of scienease. In these subjects, the gene frequency for ADH2*1 was tific articles on the Internet, unhindered by any standards 0.574 and that for ALDH2*1 was 0.926 in both reports. The of either quality or novelty, is something that should make paper in the Journal of Hepatology 6 also describes a group the compulsive ''keeper-upper'' tremble. While some form of of 42 patients with alcoholic cirrhosis. In these 42 cases, the electronic publication appears as inevitable as both death and frequency of ADH2*1 was 0.333 and that of ALDH2*1 was taxes, necessity will just as inevitably lead to some process for 0.857. The paper in HEPATOLOGY 5 described a slightly larger culling the wheat from the electronic chaff.
group of 46 cirrhotic patients in whom the ADH2*1 gene In the interim, the desirable goal of optimizing the content frequency was 0.304 and the ALDH2*1 frequency was 0.826. of new information that appears in these pages continues to The minor difference in the gene frequencies in these two underlie the long-stated position taken by most journals and papers is undoubtedly accounted for by the small difference their editors against redundant publication. 1,2 The reasoning in the number of subjects studied. Nevertheless, there apbehind this policy has been clearly spelled out 1-4 and need not pears to be a substantial overlap in these cirrhotic populabe repeated here in detail; suffice it to say that the practice tions as indicated by their ages, cumulative ethanol intake data, and values for aspartate transaminase, alanine transaminase, and g-glutamyl transpeptidase in Table 1 of each