5 Questions with Pamela Kunz, MD
Healio spoke with oncologist and researcher Pamela Kunz, MD, who was recently named the inaugural editor-in-chief of JCO Oncology Advances, a new open-access and interdisciplinary journal.
Kunz is leading the Center for Gastrointestinal Cancers at Smilow Cancer Hospital and Yale Cancer Center, is an associate professor of internal medicine, serves as the division chief of GI Medical Oncology, specializing in gastrointestinal and neuroendocrine tumors at Yale School of Medicine, and is a member of the Women in Oncology Peer Perspective Board.
She began her 5-year term in January. The journal will be open for submissions in the spring.
“We are thrilled to welcome Dr. Kunz to lead JCO Oncology Advances,” Lynn M. Schuchter, MD, FASCO, ASCO president, said in a press release. “Her extensive expertise in medical oncology and vision for integrating scientific research with clinical care align perfectly with the mission of JCO Oncology Advances. This new journal is a testament to ASCO’s commitment to advancing cancer care.”
Healio: What is JCO Oncology Advances?
Kunz: This is a new journal that’s part of the JCO family of journals.
Many of the readers will know that ASCO and JCO teams are amazing organizations committed to advancing the science of oncology and high-level publishing.
We are still in the beginning stages of selecting associate editors and editorial board members, but we plan to launch and open our submissions portal this spring and hope to have our first publications in the summer of 2024. We are on a quick timeline to get things rolling, and we’ll be doing a big push at the ASCO Annual Meeting to raise awareness.
Healio: What will your role entail as editor-in-chief?
Kunz: As editor-in-chief, I will have a 5-year term that’s renewable. One of the exciting aspects of this role is that I am starting with a blank slate as the inaugural editor-in-chief and have been given an opportunity to craft the vision and mission for the journal.
There are four main goals for the new journal: The first goal is to develop a premier high-impact open-access oncology journal. Open-access publishing makes research information available to readers at no cost because the article processing fees are carried by the authors. The science and the work that’s being published will have a greater impact and reach a broader audience, including community oncologists, a global audience and even patients and patient advocates. Open access publishing is becoming more common, and JCO has the opportunity to be the premier high-impact open-access oncology journal.
There are a few other goals of this journal, including the fact that it will be online only, allowing it to be nimble and efficient in its publishing timeline. We also hope to serve as a home for publications that may not be considered for JCO but represent important science that we would like to keep in the JCO family.
To this end, we plan to make it easy for authors to transfer their publications to JCO Oncology Advances. Lastly, a final goal is to create new article types that address unmet needs, one of which is a brief report — a shorter publication that might not meet the requirements for an original research article in JCO. Another new article type is a plain language summary, which will be accessible to patients and patient advocacy groups, taking high-impact articles from other JCO family journals, and translating those into plain language.
Healio: How has your career prepared you for this role?
Kunz: My own personal and professional lived experiences are what I am bringing to this role. When I interviewed, I emphasized things that matter to me.
First, the importance of building collaborative and inclusive teams. In addition, because of the open-access nature of this journal, we have an even greater obligation to make our publications accessible to a broad audience. The science should be relevant to our entire community and the audience that we serve — patients, community oncologists, global oncologists, basic translational clinical scientists — and we have to think about that audience. In doing so, it also means that our associate editors and editorial board need to be representative of that audience. They need to be diverse, with diversity defined very broadly — gender, race, ethnicity, specialty, institution and geography. Diversity, equity and inclusion matters deeply to me and I try to look through that lens in everything that I do.
Healio: What advice can you offer other women in oncology on balancing multiple roles at once?
Kunz: In general, when taking on new roles, you will have to say no to other things.
As I was considering this new role, which will be a considerable time commitment, I was asked by the selection committee about my leadership at Yale Cancer Center and how I plan to adjust my commitments to make space for this new role. What was I going to take off my plate so that I could fully commit myself to serving as the JCO Oncology Advances editor-in-chief? As my career has evolved, I have prioritized saying “yes” to things where I believe I can make a difference and have impact.
This was one of those opportunities. In addition to stepping away from some old roles, my term as president of the North American Neuroendocrine Tumor Society has recently ended, so the timing was right.
JCO Oncology Advances represents the sixth journal in the JCO family and I am currently the only female editor-in-chief. There have been other female editor-in-chiefs in the past, but not all that many. This is certainly an opportunity to lead and I hope to bring the lens of inclusive collaborative leadership in what I do and to demonstrate that there are editorial opportunities for women, underrepresented minorities and others who are generally not represented in such leadership roles.
Healio: What impact do you hope to have on the journal?
Kunz: I hope that this journal is seen as a new opportunity for authors to efficiently publish high-level research that ranges from translational to clinical science, is efficient and nimble in publishing and reaches a broader audience through the open-access platform — there is a great need for this.
I am also excited about the new plain language summary that will add the voice of our patient community because that has become an increasingly important element in the oncology community. Patients are now routinely — and rightly — included as members of advisory boards for our institutions, professional societies like ASCO, and other organizations. Patients are more visible and this is just another way to make the patient voice accessible.
For more information:
Pamela Kunz, MD, can be reached at pamela.kunz@yale.edu.
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