The BJA Concise was not conceived without prolonged discussions at the Board of the British Journal of Anaesthesia. The arguments in favour of moving from conception to delivery depended on simultaneous availability of the full BJA on the Internet. The advantages of the BJA Concise were believed to be: economy in usage and distribution of paper; financial savings to the journal by a reduction in printing and postage charges (which became available for funding the production of The Royal College of Anaesthetists Bulletin and BJA:CEPD Reviews); and indeed encouragement to our readers to use and augment their familiarity with the electronic mode of communication. Unfortunately, however, this view has not been shared by a large number of our readers and it is evident that the BJA Concise has proved to be deeply unpopular. Many of the reasons put forward by our readers are that it is not possible to access full articles in the BJA on a journey or at odd times during the day, that the Internet is not convenient for a quick transient check of some contents, that it discourages readers from accessing full articles, and that it allows satisfaction with summaries only (which is particularly detrimental to trainees). What is abundantly clear, to our surprise, is that Internet access is not available readily to a large number of our readers and the view of the BJA Board was obviously coloured initially by the fact that being predominantly academic in constitution, members have easy and readily available Internet access in university institutions.
We do not believe that we have made an error in principle. However, in pushing RCA subscribers towards a situation in which access to the full journal was available only via the Internet, we have clearly progressed too rapidly. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that at some stage in the future there will be a progressive move away from full paper copy of medical journals to Internet version only. It was our belief that the BJA Concise would act as a transitional stage in this process. It is clear from our readers response, however, that this step has been taken too soon. We must therefore admit this error and as our remit is to provide not only the best possible service to potential authors but also to satisfy the demands of our readers, we have taken the decision to discontinue the BJA Concise for the foreseeable future and revert back to the full paper copy of the journal. Thus from July 2001 onwards, RCA subscribers will receive the full version of the BJA together with the RCA Bulletin and BJA:CEPD Reviews, and all subscribers will continue to obtain free Internet access to the full BJA. We apologize to our readers who have found the BJA unsatisfactory for volume 86, but I have no doubt that at some indefinable stage in the future the arguments in favour of a concise version of the BJA will be resurrected.
Graham Smith
Chairman of the Board
British Journal of Anaesthesia