Finding the right balance

Editors of society and association journals are often aware of the fact that there is a balance required in choosing papers that members of the society want to read and authors (often also members) want to publish, especially with regard to scientific and research papers. This paper is a description of my experiences as editor of the British Dental Journal (BDJ) over the last seven years, and how I have decided to tackle finding the right balance between these two usually opposing requirements. I will first describe my view of my marketing approach to the problem, then consider the question of what the BDJ is actually selling and who its customers are, then describe the readership surveys I conducted and finally how I responded to the findings of those surveys.