Dear Friends,
Welcome to the first World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) International Conference for Medical Journal Editors (WAME Conference 2015), October 1-4, 2015, New Delhi. This is a special conference for WAME: we are celebrating our 20th anniversary (1995 to 2015). Our Association has grown and matured enough for us to organize a stand-alone meeting for medical editors from all over the world. WAME has more than 1686 members representing about 1000 journals from around 90 countries.

Our first meeting to promote international cooperation among medical journal editors was held in March 1995 at Bellagio. It was supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and that meeting led to the formation of WAME. The pictures of this meeting (on this Web site) show those who participated and played a major role in forming WAME. Among them were the late Bruce Squires, Robert and Suzanne Fletcher, Richard Horton, Drummond Rennie, Richard Smith, and many others. The founders envisioned WAME as a virtual organization so that editors from all around the globe could participate in and learn from discussions on the WAME listserve, which has been, and continues to be, the heart and soul of WAME activities. This also allowed the creation of a ‘dues free’ professional organization (for those interested in the early history, please read The World Association of Medical Editors (WAME): Thriving in Its First Decade by Bruce P. Squires and Suzanne W. Fletcher (www.councilscienceeditors.org).

In 2013, a meeting to discuss the future strategy for WAME proposed the holding of a WAME Conference in 2015. The theme of this meeting is “Professionalism” with keynote talks, panel discussions, guest lectures as well as an opportunity to share experiences, and presentation of original research in the areas of editing and publishing journals. WAME Conference 2015 will also have some pre-conference workshops. Predatory journals, manipulation of peer review, handling scientific misconduct, indexing, and global health are some of the topics that will be discussed and debated.

As this is the first opportunity for WAME members to meet at a WAME Conference, we will have Journal Poster Presentations. The purpose is to introduce WAME members to the journals represented in the Association. By sharing the history, development, concerns, and hopes for our journals, we hope that we can support more personal relationships among members that will strengthen the network of peer support that is WAME.

This will be a unique opportunity for all of us to gather in large numbers at New Delhi in October 2015, and to strengthen WAME and its endeavors to reach out to an even larger number of medical editors, especially those who work in resource-limited environments. I look forward to meeting all of you there.

Dr. Lorraine Ferris
President, WAME