Western Journal of Emergency Medicine

The Western Journal of Emergency Medicine: Integrating Emergency Care with Population Health (WestJEM) originated from the California Journal of Emergency Medicine (CalJEM). CalJEM was founded in July 2000 by Dr. Robert W. Derlet. In January 2001, CAL/AAEM President, Dr. Antoine Kazzi, assumed the role of managing editor and in July 2002, Dr. Robert Rodriguez became the editor-in-chief. CalJEM started as a print journal but over the years expanded in content and scope to become an online journal. The online journal was created and managed by Dr. Warren Wiechmann.  With the support from CAL/AAEM and the Emergency Department at the UC Irvine Health School of Medicine, CalJEM distributed to over 2,500 individuals in California.

In January 2006, Dr. Shahram Lotfipour from UC Irvine accepted the managing editor position. The additional involvement of Dr. Steve Gabaeff, CAL/AAEM President that year, brought about a unique collaborative effort among California academic departments, divisions, and sections of emergency medicine. The joint partnership called the Academic Task Force elevated the academic content of the journal. CalJEM proceeded to initiate an online placement of the journal at eScholarship by the University of California (westjem.org), an open-access, full-text repository that provided publishing services and journal management system for an efficient platform for the editorial review process. In February 2007, Dr. Rodriguez passed the torch to Dr. Mark Langdorf.

Dr. Langdorf, with the help of Senior Associate Editor Dr. Sean Henderson, transformed CalJEM into WestJEM in August 2007. This started the journal’s new journey to become a full-fledged international academic journal. WestJEM aimed to expand its scope and content beyond emergency physicians in California and to become a premier open-access emergency medicine journal in the Western Hemisphere. In a short amount of time, the journal grew exponentially in submissions, quality and number of accepted manuscripts.

Since its inception, WestJEM and its partnerships have grown immensely. WestJEM has been sponsored by California ACEP since 2009, the American College of Osteopathic Emergency Physicians since 2010, with an ever-expanding base of state chapter and department sponsorships. WestJEM now receives submissions from throughout the world. WestJEM is indexed in the National Library of Medicine’s MEDLINE database, PubMed, PubMed Central, Scopus, CINAHL, the Directory of Open Access Journals, Medscape, and Google Scholar. WestJEM remains committed to the free exchange of ideas and the belief that scholarly work should be available to all without impediment, and its future direction is dedicated to expanding this effort continually.