Sir.—I, too, am a "ripper!" Schmitt,1 in his editorial in the April 1987 issue of AJDC, described an effective filing system for the practicing pediatrician.
But, unlike Schmitt, I do not dissect my major pediatric journals; I save them intact. In the future, I may need information about an unusual topic that today strikes me as unimportant. I may be given a journal reference, but the journal has been "circular-filed" long ago.
My solution? I make photocopies of the journal cover—one photocopy for each article I deem worthy of filing. I highlight or underline the title of one article on each photocopy, then file each as if I were filing the article. When retrieved at a later date, the journal name, date, page, and title of the article allow me to find the publication with ease. The effort is minimal, and articles of lesser importance are not lost