Editorial: The Bernard Wheatley Award

In 2013, when Bernard Wheatley celebrated his 90th birthday, his son Nicholas Wheatley proposed to the Society for Radiological Protection that a Society Award should be created and associated with his name. This suggestion was welcomed, since, as well as being a Founder Member of SRP, Bernard was Secretary (1971–73) and President (1978–79). Bernard was made aware of the proposal to have an award in his name and, whilst he was initially reluctant to agree to it, being a modest and self-effacing person, eventually he was persuaded that it was a good idea.

As Bernard was the Founding Editor of the Journal of Radiological Protection, it seemed most appropriate that the award should be associated with the Journal in some way. Discussions within the Society eventually led to the proposal that the Bernard Wheatley Award should be for the best Paper, Review, Note or Practical Matter article published in the Journal of Radiological Protection during a calendar year. As the award was proposed in 2013, 2014 was the first full calendar year for which it could be made. Thus, in January 2015, the Editorial Board reviewed all qualifying articles published in 2014 and determined the winning paper, with the award being presented to one of the authors of the paper at the Eastbourne annual SRP meeting in May 2015.

Sadly, Bernard died before this adjudication procedure had been completed (for an obituary see 2014 J. Radiol. Prot. 34 713–5). However, I think that he would have been delighted by the number, scope and variety of excellent articles that the Editorial Board had to consider in making the award. For comparison, the first volume of the JRP, published in 1981 consisted of four issues, each of about 40 pages that comprised 16 scientific articles plus various letters to the editor and items of news and information. In January 2015, when we sat down to review the articles from 2014, we were again faced with only four issues, but each now had a length of about 260 pages, and, rather than 16 articles to evaluate, we had 68. Furthermore, those articles comprised only the best of the substantially larger number received. This arises from application of a rigorous review procedure, involving both peer-review referees and Board Members, that means that we can ensure that the JRP focuses on innovative and significant developments in radiological protection.

As well as the number of articles that had to be considered, the Editorial Board was faced with the difficulty of comparing articles addressing very different areas of expertise and enquiry. The JRP maintains a policy of accepting articles relating to all aspects of radiological protection, covering both ionising and non-ionising radiations. Thus, occupational, environmental and medical issues are addressed, with articles describing, for example, regulatory requirements, practical issues of implementation, microwave radiation, developments in instrumentation, fundamental epidemiology and radiobiology, and experimental and modelling studies relating to the behaviour of radionuclides in the environment. One of our aims is to ensure that our readers are kept abreast of developments across the whole field of radiological protection, whilst ensuring that the published articles contain enough detail to satisfy specialists in the particular topic being discussed.

However, our task was eased because it has become the normal practice for Editorial Board members to read through all the articles in each published issue of the JRP and comment upon them at the following Board meeting. This helps us to identify any errata that have slipped through the editorial process and provides a basis for discussing how the presentation, content and balance of published material can be continually improved. Thus, we were all already familiar with the content of the papers between which we had to judge.

Turning to the 2014 award, although there were a number of serious contenders, there was general agreement amongst Board members that a paper describing an international collaborative initiative between Norway and Russia [1] was a worthy winner. Not only did this address a significant issue in optimising the radiological protection of workers involved in a major programme of remediation, it did so by integrating the skills and software tools available in the various institutes involved in the collaboration.

The winning paper also provides a reminder that the JRP is now truly international in scope. Over the last four decades, it has slowly grown in stature in this respect and now receives high quality papers from all around the world. However, this does not mean that only major international collaborative studies are in the running for the Bernard Wheatley Award. Examination of the Highlights of 2014 on the JRP webpage shows that other papers that were considered of particular interest included a single author study from the UK on the reliability of internal dose coefficients and a three author study from Italy on a fuzzy logic approach for incorporating human reliability information into a safety analysis of brachytherapy.

In summary, the JRP is delighted to be able to contribute to an award that honours the memory of its first editor and that should further encourage readers to submit papers to the Journal. If you are involved in innovative studies in radiological protection, whether in practical applications or in academic research, we would be delighted to receive an article giving an account of your work. You can be assured that it will be subject to a careful and detailed review aimed at enhancing its quality and readability, and that, if accepted, it will appear in a journal with a secure international reputation. Who knows, it might even win the Bernard Wheatley Award.