Celebrating twenty years of Schizophrenia Research

As the Founding Editors, we look back with pride and nostalgia as this issue marks the 20th anniversary of the first volume of the journal, Schizophrenia Research.

During the decade prior to January 1, 1988, the field of schizophrenia research grew substantially. As young researchers having launched our scientific careers in the NIMH laboratory of our mentor, Richard Wyatt, in the late 1970's, we became quite aware of the need for data dissemination and communication about schizophrenia among researchers who were entering what was then a relatively small field. Most work on schizophrenia at the time was related to phenomenology. Biological marker studies were just beginning, having been encouraged by the publication of a series of landmark adoption studies pointing to the importance of nature over nurture (e.g. Kety et al., 1978). However, reports on findings related to schizophrenia were scattered in the literature as isolated publications in several journals of several different disciplines (i.e. biochemistry, pathology, pharmacology, epidemiology and neuropsychology). We met on several occasions during that time talking of our joint vision to bring these findings together in the hope of facilitating advances in the field about the underlying cause of schizophrenia and its treatments. If findings could be compiled in a single journal dedicated to schizophrenia, the opportunity would exist for unifying them and uncovering concepts about the illness that had not yet been recognized and could not be found with reports fragmented over different journals. This, we believed, would be a way we could contribute to accelerating the pace of progress in the field. There was no journal at that time that focused on rapid publication of original research on schizophrenia.

Thus, a considerable amount of planning took place with Elsevier who had published the 5-volume “Handbook of Schizophrenia” book series edited by one of us (HAN; Nasrallah and Weinberger, 1986, Henn and DeLisi, 1987, Tsuang and Simpson, 1988, Herz et al., 1990, Steinhauer et al., 1991) and one volume of which was co-edited by the other (LED; Henn and DeLisi, 1987). While these volumes were certainly useful to the field, they contained reviews on the state of the accumulated information and hypotheses about schizophrenia in general. A new journal would focus on rapid publication of new research findings. As we prepared to launch the first issue, to be published in January 1988, we decided that it would be appropriate to invite Richard Wyatt, who was not only our mentor, but a pioneer at that time in research on the biology of schizophrenia, to write a “big picture” view of what he thought the accepted facts were about schizophrenia at that point in time. That article (Wyatt et al., 1988), a veritable scientific time-capsule about schizophrenia, has now become a classic among researchers in the field. That initial issue also included papers with major new findings on sensory gating by Dr. Robert Freedman's research group (Waldo et al., 1988), depression in schizophrenia (Leff et al., 1988, Siris et al., 1988), the correlation of brain imaging findings with neuropsychological deterioration (Bilder et al., 1988), a PET study of brain regional interactions by Volkow et al. (1988), a study of abnormal neurotensin levels from Nemeroff's group (Lindstrom et al., 1988), one of the first examinations of semantic priming in schizophrenia (Manschreck and colleagues), an early study of weight gain in schizophrenia pre-atypical neuroleptic use (Viewig et al., 1988), an analysis of the viral hypothesis by Torrey et al. (1988), and finally ending with a landmark review by Janice Stevens (1988) of the relationship of epilepsy, psychosis and schizophrenia. Each of these papers have opened new areas of research and each of the junior and senior authors have gone on in their careers over the subsequent years to become, or continue to be, eminent scholars in this field and to a wider extent in psychiatry and its related disciplines.

We now reflect back on our modest beginnings, a small enterprise, managed in our respective academic offices (HAN handling manuscripts from the Americas and LED handling manuscripts from the rest of the world) to where we are today. It was 1989 when one of us received hand-written copies of abstracts at the European Biennial Winter Workshop on Schizophrenia collected by having them slipped under her hotel room door and then later hand-typed so they could be published in the next issue. Our journal was one of the first to regularly publish the abstracts of international schizophrenia meetings, in Europe and the U.S., including the ICOSR (International Congress on schizophrenia Research). We are now amused by our lack of knowledge then of how rapidly technology would change and move us into an electronic age that would have been close to science-fiction in 1988. We rapidly transitioned from filing cabinets filled with paper journal correspondence to an online website able to manipulate and send submissions to reviewers, receive manuscripts and their revisions, and correspond to authors from anywhere [not just in our editorial offices] with a simple click onto a screen with a keyboard. In tandem with this remarkable technological transformation, there has been enormous scientific growth and conceptual evolution in the thinking about schizophrenia over the past 20 years that prompted us to consider publishing a 20-year update to Dr. Wyatt's “Facts” article that we hope will appear as a series of six consecutive articles (Tandon et al., 2008). It is truly both sobering and exciting how almost everything we upheld as “facts” about schizophrenia has changed over the past two decades including aspects of the genetics, epidemiology, neurobiology, diagnostic boundaries, as well as paradigms of pharmacologic treatments.

In 1999 we took another major initiative, not only as editors of what has become major journal in our field, but as members of the schizophrenia research community. This time we strived to bring the field together into an organization dedicated to schizophrenia, which would have numerous benefits for investigators, teachers, clinicians and families. We aspired to go beyond our journal and to establish the first scientific society for the field with a goal of drawing together researchers on an international basis, not only to communicate through their writing, but through networking and meeting publicly to discuss the relevance of current research and new advances, and to support and advocate for persons suffering from schizophrenia. After much planning and consulting with colleagues around the world, we finally succeeded in 2005 to found such a non-profit entity. The Schizophrenia International Research Society (SIRS) was born and soon transcended us as individuals, into an active organization of researchers with elected officers and a Board with a vision for scientific progress and a transparent and democratic governance. The Society is about to reach a milestone this year by holding its first International Scientific Conference in Venice Italy, June 21–25th, 2008. Our journal, Schizophrenia Research is proud to be officially associated with the society.

We are hopeful that the next decade will witness even more momentous breakthroughs in schizophrenia research so that the “Facts” article in 2018 will include even more advances in understanding the biology and treatment of schizophrenia. We pride ourselves in being able to take part and play an active role to facilitate progress in the field of schizophrenia research in meaningful ways.

We encourage all our readers to send us feedback or suggestions and novel ideas for the journal on an ongoing basis, so that we may progress with the times as the next 20 years unfold and so that Schizophrenia Research may continue to serve you, the readers, and our colleagues.

The Editors.

Lynn E. DeLisi and Henry A. Nasrallah