About CTSNet

Mission

CTSNet's mission is

1. To be the leading source of educational and scientific research information for cardiothoracic surgeons, allowing them to advance their skills and stay current with new innovations in the field.
2. To provide a technical infrastructure that can be shared by cardiothoracic surgical organizations to support information exchange, collaboration, and administration.
3. To provide an optimal and richly interlinked platform for the major online journals.
4. To provide a resource through which companies can inform and gain feedback from surgeons regarding products and services.
5. To be the global leader in providing online education in cardiothoracic surgery and in promoting competence of cardiothoracic surgeons to enable the highest possible levels of safety and quality of care.

Audiences

CTSNet provides value to a number of audiences:

1. For the web reader, CTSNet is a portal that facilitates easy access to a wide range of informational and educational resources.
2. For professional organizations, it is a mechanism for sharing costs for a common information technology infrastructure that supports individual organizational activities, member communications, and website development. Each organization website is on the same technology platform and is integrated with the central CTSNet.org website (http://www.ctsnet.org).
3. For journal editors and publishers, it is a unified view of the cardiothoracic surgery literature with rich interlinking and seamless access to entitled resources.
4. For industry, it is an efficient mechanism for communicating new product information and gathering feedback from surgeons.
5. And finally, for surgeons, it is an online community that provides easy access to colleagues, personalized applications (available through a single login), and potentially a number of new educational and professional development resources.

Structure and Governance

CTSNet was founded as an independent non-profit organization in 1999 by The Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS), The European Association for Cardio-thoracic Surgery (EACTS), and The American Association for Thoracic Surgery (AATS). It has grown to include over 40 participating professional organizations and has established a partnership with The World Heart Foundation to support humanitarian programs in cardiothoracic surgery. CTSNet is governed by a Board of Directors that is comprised of representative from the three founding organizations, and is overseen by an Editorial Board with representation from each of the participating organizations.

Management

CTSNet is managed through Editorial and Publishing Offices. The Editorial Office spearheads content development for the central CTSNet.org website, author recruitment, online journal and member management, and society communications. The Publishing Office manages the technology infrastructure, software development and licensing, content production, and business development.

Community Traffic

CTSNet serves over 24,000 members, of which 90% are cardiothoracic surgeons from 146 countries. On average, the CTSNet Community as a whole supports over 500,000 sessions and 3.2 million page views per month.