Nicotine & Tobacco Research aims to publish original research, conceptual articles, and reviews on the broad range of topics related to the title subject. The journal's multidisciplinary approach is exemplified by its inclusion of research that ranges fro

The journal is published for the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco, whose international membership includes many luminaries in tobacco research. The editorial staff includes nationally and internationally prominent researchers with proven expertise in the area of tobacco and nicotine research. The editor-in-chief and the six associate editors are located at US universities; however, the international mission of the journal is evident in an International Advisory Board representing eight different nations, including Poland, Japan, and Australia. The advisory group's task is to encourage researchers from the international community to submit their work to the journal. However, to date, most of the published articles feature research conducted in North America. Each issue begins with "What's New in Nicotine & Tobacco Research?", a commentary written by a science writer in an easy-to-digest nontechnical style, which can be readily understood by a general audience. The commentary provides a brief overview of the articles, giving readers a good sense of the contents of the issue just by reading its first few pages. The topics featured live up to the broad description of the journal's aims. Articles include methodologically sound human and animal studies, epidemiological studies of large human populations, studies with an applied emphasis, and research or review articles designed to illuminate particular topics. Many of the articles have implications for tobacco and nicotine prevention, treatment, and policy. Thus, the journal appeals to a broad audience of researchers and clinicians and may also have relevance to policy makers. Special issues are devoted to timely topics and to publication of papers and abstracts from the society's conferences. The high quality of many articles reflects the journal's ties to a research society. Empirical studies provide useful background information and employ sound research design and methodologies as well as state-of-the-art data analysis techniques. Review articles, written by leading researchers on the topics, are comprehensive in their coverage of the relevant literature and, when appropriate, point to future research directions. A comparable journal, Tobacco Control, launched in 1992, covers some of the same topics as Nicotine & Tobacco Research, but without a Society affiliation and with a stronger international focus on tobacco use policy and prevention and control advocacy. Tobacco Control articles cover a wide range of topics related to the prevalence and the health, economic, and social consequences of tobacco use, which should appeal to policy makers. Employing a mix of news magazine and traditional journal formats, Tobacco Control also highlights political, legislative, and health-related efforts to lessen tobacco use and examines the tobacco industry's efforts to promote tobacco use. By contrast, Nicotine & Tobacco Research has a more traditional research journal format and focuses on treatment, psychosocial factors, and prevention. As such it may have greater appeal to clinicians and researchers. The "Notes for Contributors" in each issue of Nicotine & Tobacco Research provide brief but useful basic guidelines for citations and references, illustrations, and unstructured abstracts. However, these guidelines do encourage brief report papers written as "elaborated abstracts" with structured section subheadings (aims, design, findings, etc). The journal is available in print as well as on the Web, with identical content. The full-text Web version of Nicotine & Tobacco Research is available at no extra cost to individual and institutional subscribers. It is hosted by CatchWord (http://www.catchword.com), a publishers' Web site hosting some 800 journals from 55 publishers. CatchWord provides term cross references, citation and abstract/index service links to and from the full text of Nicotine &Tobacco Research articles, and articles or abstracts from other CatchWord journals. Nonsubscribers can view tables of contents and abstracts, but without an institutional site license, the full-text for each article costs $26 to download. (A Web version of Tobacco Control is available from the BMJ Publishing Group via Stanford University's HighWire Press at a similar individual, but substantially higher institutional, price.)

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