%0 Journal Article
%T Head & Face Medicine ¨C a new journal for 'intra-interdisciplinary' science. Why? When? Where?
%A Thomas Stamm
%J Head & Face Medicine
%D 2005
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1746-160x-1-1
%X To be one of these instruments is the vision of Head & Face Medicine. To induce 'intra-interdisciplinary' thinking of scientists by bringing together the findings achieved by different researchers from various specialties, all exploring the same target structure ¨C the human head and face. Head & Face Medicine's objective is to support scientists in gaining new insights from different views, to recognize patterns, to extract new thoughts, to recombine them and bring new visions to life.Evolving tools like the internet, e-publishing, Open Access and open peer review make Head & Face Medicine a cross between a traditional journal and a data stream which can be queried, analyzed and processed with the aim of increasing medical knowledge in the area of head and face medicine. These tools represent several advantages: fast publication, increase of a paper's scientific impact and ethical superiority.Head & Face Medicine looks forward to receiving your contributions.Hardly any region of the human body depends upon the synergism of a variety of medical disciplines to the same extent as the human head. To understand the complexity of the whole system 'head' it is necessary to reduce the system to its most discriminable elements and to explore their nature, because the elements realize certain functions in the whole. This philosophical tradition, the reduction principle, continues to be adhered to and developed in medical science. Attributable to this development is the ongoing fragmentation of medical disciplines into more and more sub-(sub-)specialties; or to put it more positively, one would argue: the opening of new fields.However, an adverse side effect of this progress is the separation of scientists working in different sub-specialties, resulting in a breakdown in communication. Intensive scientific debate is common within the fields but not across them. Specialization is necessary, but where in this process are the individuals who are able to recombine the pieces of kn
%U http://www.head-face-med.com/content/1/1/1