TR: You will be wrapping up your tenure as editor in chief of A&R in summer 2025. What has been your journey in the field, and how did it lead to editing A&R?
Dr. Solomon: I got involved in rheumatology during medical school and residency because of some excellent mentors at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School who taught me about the excitement around clinical rheumatology, [as well as] the challenges and significance around clinical research in rheumatology.
On the clinical side, I have had the privilege of actually making people more comfortable and more functional, decreasing disability and improving their quality of life. It’s incredibly gratifying to be able to offer that to patients.
As a clinical researcher, I had the good fortune of getting very interested in drug safety epidemiology—pharmacoepidemiology—when I was in training and then focusing on drug epidemiology when I was pursuing my master’s in public health in 1998. The timing was excellent for that because it was when biologic [disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs] were being developed, along with selective COX-2 inhibitors, such as rofecoxib (Vioxx) and celecoxib (Celebrex). So I got to be right in the thick of it when we were trying to figure out if these new drugs were safe. That [experience] set me on a trajectory of doing what I like to think of as important clinical research in rheumatology.
It was about 2010 when I got involved with the ACR journals and became co-editor of A&R. That was during Joan Bathon’s tenure as editor in chief. [Author’s note: Joan Bathon, MD, is a professor of medicine in the Division of Rheumatology, Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York.] It was an opportunity for me to learn how the journal works, including the decisions editors need to make.
And then during Rick Bucala’s time as the editor in chief, between 2015 and 2020, I served as A&R’s deputy editor, which gave me a slightly enhanced role. It was interesting work, and I obviously enjoyed it because I decided to apply to become the journal’s editor in chief at the end of Rick’s term. I felt very fortunate to be appointed editor in chief in 2020.
TR: What is in store for A&R?
Dr. Solomon: A lot has been going on during my term as editor in chief. For instance, we have been working quite hard on shortening our time from acceptance to online publication and have already dropped from 60–70 days to 30–40 days. We hope to improve that even more. We’ve also developed a very nice method for authors to show their work in graphical abstract form, and our staff has done a very good job of generating an additional channel on social media so authors can let the world know about their important research.
