This editor profile is the fifth in a series which will introduce you to a selection of our editors.
This week we have an interview with Dr. Jan Talmon, Editor-in-Chief of International Journal of Medical Informatics.

What aspect of being an editor do you find most rewarding?
Trying to improve the quality of the reporting of the research in our field. Our domain of medical informatics is relatively new. It emerged in the 1960s. There’s been a transition from developing systems and methods to the assessment of the role and impact of IT in health care. I am keen that proper methods are applied and that results of studies are written down clearly. Over time you can see that our impact factor has been steadily increasing, which we see as a sign of increasing quality of our journal.

What advice would you give to a new editor?
That’s a difficult one. Often you see that young people have to write and publish their research in order to get a PhD and to record their work. You can play an important role in the design of their work and how it is reported. Also you should have some long-term goals for your journal that you would like to achieve over time.

How do you balance your role as editor with your other roles?
If you’re serious about the job it takes time. It’s not something you can do over the weekend. I am in charge of the submissions from outside of the Americas. I deal with a lot of authors whose first language is not English. That places a challenge to get papers on an acceptable level. I believe that the research from those regions is not necessarily of poor quality. It’s all okay from a methodological point of view and they’re doing some interesting work outside the traditional countries from Europe and North America. It’s more the way things are phrased that makes it difficult to understand. It doesn’t have to be perfect prose but it has to be understandable for our community.

Why did you choose medical informatics as your field of study?
After I graduated from the Technical University in Eindhoven in 1971 I was interested in doing engineering work for the benefit of people. There happened to be an opportunity to work on computerized analysis of the electrocardiogram (ECG) at the former Institute of Medical Physics in Utrecht.

Tell me about collaboration. What is the secret to success?
Perhaps luck to get in touch with the right people and have the right ideas at the right time. I think it was in 1987 I was invited to a meeting in Denmark and I had the initial feeling I was in the wrong place. I was the only applied person there, but after my presentation I met people who approached me about collaboration and we have been working on European projects together since.

What gets you up in the morning?
I am now project manager of a rather large project to set up an infrastructure for bio-banks and translational research – bringing what is done in genetics into clinical practice. It’s quite hot at the moment and eight academic centers in the Netherlands are cooperating on this and that is very exciting.

What is the biggest lesson you've learned in your career?
That you should be honest to others and trust your own abilities and judgments. You should consider criticism as an opportunity to improve ideas. True progress can only be made when there is mutual trust between collaborating partners despite the criticisms.

What is your biggest achievement?
Well there are a few things such as collaborative work with others in the field of ECG analysis. Also the things I have been doing in European projects dealing with evaluation of IT in health care is an area where I feel that I have been able to contribute in a meaningful way. We hope to publish the results of that work in several publications in 2008 and 2009.

What is your favorite quote?
That is from Einstein. “Don’t try to be a man of success but be a man of value.” Success is often seen as a measure of output. It isn’t only the measurable things that count but it’s also whether or not you’ve helped people. That’s also a part of what you’re doing as an editor.

Who or what is your biggest inspiration?
I owe a lot to Jan van Bemmel. I worked with him for about 12 years. First at TNO and later at the Free University where I did my PhD. He was a very good teacher on how to do things methodologically. He was also very inspiring and enthusiastic. He was always interested in the things you did and challenged you to get the best out of it.

What would you like your legacy to be?
To be of value. I would be pleased if the guidelines for reporting of evaluation studies in health informatics, which we hope to publish later this year, are picked up and followed. It would be nice if those guidelines would become instrumental in the improvement of the quality of the evidence base of Medical Informatics.

What do you like to do for fun?
I am into running and I play bridge. They’re two completely different things. Bridge is training for the mind. Running is to keep me fit. I always try to run in places where I have conferences. I also like to run races. That is a kind of commitment, at home there are always too many excuses not to run.