Dr. Luke Funk, Professor in the Division of Minimally Invasive Surgery, was recently selected as the new Editor-in-Chief of Annals of Surgery Open. Annals of Surgery Open: Perspectives on Surgical History, Education, and Clinical Approaches is an open access, peer-reviewed, international journal focusing on topics pertinent to surgical care.
Dr. Funk has served as an Associate Editor for Annals of Surgery Open since 2020. He was initially invited to serve in the role of Associate Editor by Dr. Keith Lillemoe, the previous Editor-in-Chief.
“[I] felt like I was contributing to the dissemination of science and I really enjoy that, so when the opportunity presented itself to apply for the Editor-in-Chief position I thought it was something that would be a very fun and interesting new challenge, so that’s why I decided to apply,” Dr. Funk said.
As he transitions into this role, one of Dr. Funk’s top priorities for the Annals of Surgery Open is focusing on areas that are emerging in surgery, such as artificial intelligence and qualitative research. Additionally, he wants to maintain diversity in perspectives from both the research teams and the editorial board.
“We have a highly diverse editorial board, and I think that brings tremendous value and makes it a better product,” Dr. Funk said. “Diversity in terms of demographics, gender, institution, clinic specialty, type of research, we want to continue to focus on that. And then finally, we want to increase the impact of our journal. We were indexed on PubMed recently, and we would like to get an impact factor which hopefully will be coming within the next year. I think all of these things are important to increase the visibility and the impact of the journal and ultimately, we want it to be the top open access journal in surgery.”