It’s always so satisfying to establish a good working relationship with my authors. After working through 2 revisions of a manuscript for a research report on a procedure for repairing spinal cord problems, I told the corresponding author that I like to have photos of my authors so that I can picture them helping patients in doing the procedures and techniques that they research.
This made my author happy. He said, “I am very glad to do it like this.”
So this an operating-room photo of 4 of the 15 authors of the manuscript. Left to right, they are Dr. Jing-Chuan Sun, Dr. Chen Yan (the corresponding author), Dr. Hao-Yuan Tan, and Dr. Huai-Cheng Jia, all from China. The patients on whom they and their coauthors operated and whose cases they studied to determine best practices for a particular surgical technique came through any of 7 different hospitals: Changzheng Hospital, Changhai Hospital, Shanghai First People’s Hospital, Linzhou Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Fifth Hospital of Southern Medical University, Shenzhen Hospital of Beijing University, and General Hospital of Nanjing Military Command.
I’m so glad to know that these surgeons—and all of my other surgeon-authors—are out there working to make life better for so many patients. And it is an honor to be entrusted with editing for them so that they can share their research findings with English speakers around the world.