Editor’s Corner
Time
For a Change
This
issue completes Volume 2 of JoGG and also its second year of publication. It also completes my second year as editor,
and now it is time for a change.
Starting with the next issue,
These two
years have seen explosive growth in participation in genetic genealogy and in
the tests that are commercially available.
If I had set up a wish-list two years ago, I don’t believe I would have
been imaginative enough to come close to the collection of products that we now
actually have. It has been a very
exciting time.
But,
important as the new products may be, if I had to point to the one most
important development in the field over the last few years, it would have to be
the development of the “expert amateur geneticist.” Our community has produced an amazing variety
of people who are making important contributions to the field. Probably, much of this work remains
undiscovered and unappreciated by the professional community, but that too is
changing. There are now a few major
collaborations between amateurs and professionals. The potential for amateurs and professionals
to help each other has always been clear, and now that is starting to happen.
One
disappointment has been the difficulty in getting members of our community to
slow down enough to write up what they have done and submit it for
publication. Time is at a premium for
many of us and it is much easier to just create a web site. JoGG, for example, remains a somewhat
underutilized resource for our community.
Hopefully, this will change because it is through publication that our
work will become recognized by the broader community. A web site can be a valuable resource, especially
for a rapidly changing field, but through peer-review, the work can be
validated and become more widely accepted.
It is not a matter of choosing one path or the other—both have their
place. While I hope that everyone keeps
his/her web sites up-to-date, we should also see an occasional summary of the
work in print.
Another
small disappointment to me has been the complete absence over the last two
years of letters to the editor of JoGG.
A few of our articles have been somewhat provocative, yet no one has
been provoked enough to write a letter for publication. Possibly, since there have been no letters
published, no one realizes that this is possible. I would hope that in the future we can see a
lively dialogue going on in these pages.
Despite
the few disappointments, it has still been a very exciting endeavor for me and
I’m happy to have been involved. I look
forward to working with Dennis and remaining involved with JoGG.