Page 59 - IFSO-History-Book-Digital-File

The Editors-in-Chief

Since its founding in 1991, OBSU has had only five Editors-in-Chief, two of them Co-Editorships:
Mervyn Deitel, MD and George S. M. Cowan, Jr., MD: 1991-2008 – Founding Editors and
Co-Editors-in-Chief; and Henry Buchwald, MD, PhD and Nicola Scopinaro, MD: 2008-2011 –
Co-Editors-in-Chief, then Editors Emeritus; and Scott A. Shikora, MD: 2011- present – Editor-in-Chief.
Springer Nature, who owned OBSU, decided to take the Editorial Board in another direction, and,
following their service as Co-Editors-in-Chief, Drs. Buchwald and Scopinaro stepped down. In
August 2011, after a thorough search, Dr. Scott A. Shikora, a prominent MBS surgeon and Professor
of Surgery was named as the journal’s fifth Editor-in-Chief, a position he continues to hold today.

Accomplishments and Accolades
Shortly after taking over ownership of the journal, Dr. Deitel was successful in obtaining indexing in
in the Journal Citations Report (JCR). The journal in now also indexed in PubMed, and the Web of
Science. It has consistently maintained an IF of above 3, which placed OBSU in the top quartile of
English-speaking surgery journals. In the past year, the journal had over 2 million articles
downloaded from the internet. This placed OBSU 10th for downloads from English-speaking
surgical journals.
Authors have also shown satisfaction with the journal. On a recent author survey, 97% of authors who
published papers in OBSU rated their OBSU experience as positive. Every year, writing teams
consisting of qualified IFSO members are chosen and tasked by the IFSO Executive Board to
research a specific topic important to IFSO and write a scholarly peer-reviewed position statement.
These statements function as IFSO’s official position on those topics. Approximately 3-6 statements
are written and published yearly. Examples of these position statements include the 2020 IFSO
Position Statement on Barrett’s Esophagus [6], and the 2022 Position Statement on Innovation and
Ethics [7]. These papers were instrumental in improving and unifying MBS care worldwide.

In 2020, a very significant and consequential paper on indications for MBS was co-written by ASMBS
and IFSO and co-published in Obesity Surgery and Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases [8]. The
previous guidelines were created in 1991 by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). These
guidelines were based heavily on body mass index (BMI) and clinician experience. The NIH criteria
were scientifically weak and significantly outdated. In addition, data of sufficient rigor (randomized
trials and meta-analyses) had been published in order to develop evidence-based criteria for MBS.
A writing team was assembled comprised of members of both ASMBS and IFSO. The new
evidence-based criteria that they developed are slowly replacing the NIH criteria in practice, guiding
treatment of millions of lives worldwide.

Conclusions

The Obesity Surgery journal has had an interesting trajectory from its inception in 1991 to its current
status in 2026 as a premier journal for all issues pertaining to MBS. The journal is currently healthy
and strong. The future is bright.

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