A myriad of thoughts and ideas were running through my head when I was invited to make an inaugural statement for the launch of the Journal of Laboratory and Precision Medicine (JLPM) during the 67th National Day of China.
Five years ago, Mr. Daoyuan Wang, founder and CEO of AME Publishing Company, took along an issue of Journal of Thoracic Disease (JTD) to visit me at Jiangsu Province Hospital. During our one-hour meeting, I was impressed by his courage and persistence after listening to his views on publications and his entrepreneurial experience and ambitions. Later, I learned that it was Tiantian Li and Shuzhong Zhou who introduced him to me. The two and Jin Zhang co-founded DXY.cn. At the time, AME had only five employees and two journals. Today, it hires more than 70 staff, publishes 25 English journals, and runs offices in cities from Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Shanghai to Nanjing and Changsha. With its rapid development, the company enjoys a growing influence at home and abroad. Mr. Wang’s entrepreneurial story echoes the proverb that where there is a will, there is a way.
Mr. Wang and I became good friends following the one-hour meeting, and we often exchanged views on academic issues and ideals after that, and that led to our further exchange and cooperation.
In February 2013, Mr. Wang told me excitedly on the phone that JTD was indexed by the Science Citation Index (SCI). That was only three years and three months after the first issue of the journal was printed. Nothing is impossible!
On 27 July 2013, we organized the first AME Academic Salon at Jiangsu Province Hospital, gathering young talents to have academic discussions. After the salon, Mr. Wang decided to establish the Committee on the AME Academic Salon. The first committee comprised nine members. Following the second edition of the salon held in Nantong in December 2013, Mr. Wang wrote an open letter to all the committee members, saying that the committee has been sticking to its choice and kept heading towards its goals; the committee will strive to create an equal and open platform for academic cooperation among its members. More than 20 AME Academic Salons have been staged in a dozen cities in the past two years, and the number of committee members has exceeded 300. The salon developed rather faster than expected.
As the proverb goes, “Like attracts like”. During the discussions at the academic salon, participants came to realize that many of China’s excellent medical achievements and clinical experience were little known to the rest of the world due to communication obstacles. They then proposed academic journals should be published to bridge domestic scholars and their foreign counterparts to promote academic exchanges and medical development.
On 24 March 2015, a group of ambitious young members of the AME Academic Salon, bought together by the same academic dream, convened a preparatory meeting for the launch of the JLPM in Nanjing. Under the guidance of the AME’s academic spirit of “happy academic studies for higher achievements” and its slogan “Deadline is productivity, brainstorming is productivity”, the preparatory work was pushed ahead in an orderly way.
JLPM is not the first journal of the committee. In May 2016, Public Health and Emergency and Annals of Joint printed their first issues at the same time. AME Medical Journal was launched as well. There will be more journals to be published following JLPM, which will help us step closer towards our dream.
One AME, One Dream. We are on the way to pursue our dream.
JLPM is one of the stars that guide our way.