The Journal of Investigative Dermatology

Abstract

A JOURNAL is a unique educational modality, a classic medium for communication without sound and without moving pictures, bringing ideas and information to those desirous of learning. This instrument of conveying ideas and information is a sort of teacher, a quiet, silent, and provocative teacher. It is a precise teacher, bringing new tools and new insights to the reader. And it makes of that reader, desirous of learning, a student, disciplined, attentive, and inquiring. A journal is a demanding taskmaster, insistent on thinking and on deliberative contemplation of premises (sometimes expansive), and of findings (sometimes miniscule). The confrontation between the "teacher-journal" and the "student-reader," either in quick encounters between chores or more formally and leisurely by assignment, is likely to provide the most stimulating and productive kind of learning, and may indeed provide the opportunity for transition of student to scholar. If a journal does not offer easy exchange between