Recognition

Today, during our annual meeting we want to take this opportunity to acknowledge Dr. Gio Gori for his long and distinguished service to the Inter Soc for Regulatory Tox and Pharmacology.

Gio has been a member of ISRTP for more than 30 years (almost a founding member). He has been President of ISRTP from 1992 – 1996 and recipient of the International Achievement Award in 2010. He has probably made his greatest contribution to the visibility and respectability of ISRTP through his work as Editor of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology. In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say we are predominantly known for our journal and our symposia (and the proceedings).

Under Gio’s leadership, we have maintained an international reputation entirely due to the high quality and impact of our journal.

During his tenure as editor ISRTP we estimate that he has received and considered about 10,000-15,000 manuscripts ultimately managing more than 3,000 papers which appeared in our journal! For those of you who are not aware, it takes 8-12 hours of work by the editor to get a paper through the process. That means he has invested 15-20 FTE in is efforts to lead our journal.

Through Gio’s leadership, the journal did not shy away from controversial topics or papers. It remained one of the few journals which does NOT focus on the source of funding but rather the quality of the scientific work.

As such, Gio often published papers questioning such topics as the “relevance of endocrine disruptors given their low potency”, “the accuracy of low dose extrapolation models for carcinogens”, “government policies that argued that lower doses are always safer” and other controversial topics.

With the journal and Gio embracing topics that were often not consistent with what some environmental groups or plaintiff lawyers were promoting, we have been the focus of attention of some special interest groups. Unlike the many editors who have resigned over the past 10 years due to pressure they received from the press and numerous subpoenas, he stood up to them and never changed direction.

His service has been truly remarkable.

A testament to his contributions is the fact that in 2018, the last year that he was editor of Reg Tox and Pharm, there were 800,000 papers downloaded from our journal!

Let me close by thanking Gio profusely for his contributions.

We cannot thank Gio enough for his work and we are delighted that he will serve as Editor Emeritus for the new journal we plan to launch in 2020.