The processes of peer-reviewed medical science have been around a very long time with the New England Journal of Medicine even passing its 200th anniversary last year. It, like many other old journals, has become venerated for the important science reported over the centuries, and in conjunction, there has evolved the aura of scholarly respect and status. In fact the prestige of a journal, perpetuated by medical school tenure processes, and as quantified by Impact Factor, is roughly proportional to the age of the journal. Roughly speaking, old journals are prestigious, while new journals tend not to be; academic medicine tends to be a very tradition-leaning and status-conscientious community! Despite its relative youth, Cureus’ leadership team also includes a number of senior academics, some of whom have five decades of medical publishing under their belts. Our advisor and former editor at JAMA, George Lundberg, is a perfect example; experience always has a lot to teach us all.

Despite medicine’s veneration of history, it cannot be denied that the future belongs to the young, and just possibly, they might choose to evolve peer-reviewed journalism in new directions. In the past decade, youthful exploits have truly transformed human culture and commerce, with Facebook, Google, Uber and AirBnB being only a few cases in point. In many ways the pace of social change seems to be accelerating on the backs of the young. To date, youthful exuberance has not been part of science, however, Cureus is hoping to change that. As we aspire to be a new concept in peer-reviewed medicine, we would like to introduce Cureus’ first medical student ambassador, Paul Windisch, from the University of Munich. Paul’s role at Cureus will be to help introduce our tools for publishing peer-reviewed science to a new generation of physicians and simultaneously provide our team with a deeper insight to the needs and aspirations of younger doctors.

When stepping into this new role, Paul was quick to encounter a little bit of skepticism among fellow students. Their concern was whether or not publishing an article in a newer journal like Cureus, and thereby not publishing in a more conventional journal, might negatively impact the career of an aspiring young academic; many professors have stressed the importance of publishing in the most highly-regarded journals. My counterargument is that by all means it’s good to publish in prestigious journals, but do not let that dissuade one from publishing in Cureus as well. To publish in Lancet or Nature or NEJM is a very time-consuming process with much of the effort being expended throughout the rationing process of responding to multiple rejections, each one eating up precious time that might have gone into publishing yet additional papers. The most successful scholarly careers in medicine tend to combine important papers in highly-regarded journals AND much more numerous peer reviewed articles in lesser-known journals. Quality (or at least the perception of such) is important, but so is the QUANTITY of one’s scholarly work as one seeks to become known and rise through the academic ranks. As the maxim “publish or perish” clearly implies, it is important to publish frequently as one seeks to build an academic reputation. Need I remind you, Cureus makes that process easier than ever. Just maybe when Cureus has enough of its own storied history in the future, the aura of our articles will bring the cachet of academic tradition as well!