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Prof. Dr. Michael (Mike) Ross is Emeritus Professor of Family Medicine at the University of Minnesota Medical School, USA, and Extraordinary Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. He was appointed Inaugural Joycelyn Elders Professor of Sexual Health in the Department of Family Medicine and Program in Human Sexuality in 2014 (the endowed Chair named after former US Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders). He fully “retired” at the beginning of 2026.

Prof. Dr. Mike Ross was born and raised in New Zealand and studied at Massey University there. In 1980, he completed his PhD at the University of Melbourne, Australia, with a thesis on health (including STIs) in gay men in Australia and Sweden. His experience has included several years of study and sabbaticals in Sweden and completion of his MedDr. He also graduated from the University of Cambridge with a master’s degree and diploma.

During his first academic appointment at the Flinders University Medical School in Adelaide, South Australia, HIV had been identified, and Dr. Ross became the first Director of the AIDS Program in the South Australian Health Commission STD Clinic. His unique research experience in the area saw him named as a member of the Australian government’s AIDS Task Force and of the Australian National Committee on AIDS.

Following several years at the Albion Street AIDS Clinic in Sydney, in 1993 Prof. Dr. Ross was appointed Professor of Public Health at the University of Texas (in the Texas Medical Center in Houston). During that time, he was one of four authors (including US Surgeon General David Satcher) of the landmark US Surgeon General’s Report on Sexuality and Healthy Sexual Behavior.

In his academic career, Prof. Dr. Ross has published over 600 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals, over 40 chapters (including two in Holmes et al.’s Sexually Transmitted Diseases), and a number of academic books. He has been funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), with his most recent NIH grant on screening for HPV-related oropharyngeal cancer in gay and bisexual men. He has also worked in Tanzania, East Africa, with NIH funding for nearly 3 decades researching HIV and STIs in key populations, and teaching locally developed sexual health curricula to nurses, midwives and medical students.

Prof. Dr. Ross’s hobby was aerobatic flying until a cardiac issue restricted that a few years ago, but he maintains his interest in aviation archaeology. He continues to supervise graduate students and is President of the Clan Ross Association of America.

The following is an interview with Prof. Dr. Michael Ross:

1. What appealed to you about the journal that made you want to take the role as its Editor-in-Chief?
I was already an Associate Editor of Venereology, and was impressed both by its promise and the vision, hard work, and inspiration of Prof. Dr. Jacek C Szepietowski of the University of Wroclaw. Prof. Dr. Szepietowski had already done the bulk of the hard work and “heavy lifting” to set the journal well on track in its first four years. I had also had contact with the staff of MDPI as an Associate Editor and knew that they were extremely professional and well-organized, with an experienced and impressive organization behind them.

2. What is your vision for the journal?

What are the central principles of scientific publishing? The motto of my alma mater in New Zealand was “Floreat scientia” – let learning flourish. Publishing (literally “making public”) is the practical step of making science communicable. As Carl Popper argued, science stems from the process of “conjecture and refutation”. But “if it hasn’t been published, it hasn’t happened”, was the way one of my professors put it. In turn, publication allows other scientists to debate, critically assess, and replicate.

It must also be equitable. Commercial models are based on making a financial profit. However, when such models are based on countries and systems with research funding of millions of dollars and on the resources of large and well-known universities, only an academic elite benefits. Most journals, commendably, have sliding scales, which reduce publication fees for authors from the least developed nations. Nevertheless, a $US 500 reduced fee may still amount to more than a month’s salary for an academic from a developing country. A PhD graduate with an interesting thesis has little hope of publishing. MDPI’s encouragement of individual journal teams to provide discounted or free publication to make scientific communication more equitable for less developed regions was a key factor in my accepting this position.

Beneficence (one of the key principles of the Declaration of Helsinki for patients in research studies) occurs also in scientific review. Not all scientists in less developed countries can access outstanding mentors. Thus, having good reviewers who can be clear about what is missing and encouraging about good science is essential. They may be among the few sources of good advice and encouragement available to young scientists outside of major institutions. As thorough reviewers, we can be good teachers. Timeliness of response is sufficiently obvious as to require no explanation.

I was working at a major hospital in a wealthy country and criticizing the patient costs—the $10 band-aids and the $20 boxes of tissues. An older and wiser colleague pointed out to me that those markups allowed the hospital to treat the uninsured who came into their emergency rooms, who they were required to treat. Commercial publishing in and of itself is not the issue in equitable access to scientific publishing, but we need to be mindful of the gulf in scientific publishing between “The West and the Rest”. A large proportion of the burden of STIs occurs in tropical and less-developed areas of the world (including tropical STIs such as Lymphogranuloma venereum, Granuloma inguinale (Donovanosis), chancroid, and the recently newsworthy Mpox, to name some of them).

Venereology with a vision of increasing the access to publication of good science from less developed regions, is in my opinion a part of the administrative and editorial vision. We can make a small start in Venereology.

3. What does the future of this area of research look like?

Classically, specialties in medical sciences were defined by organs or organ systems. Sometimes, as in venereology, these were placed in “silos” of expertise, for example, as a venereologist. With rapid advances in medicine, many areas of specialization can refer to technical or methodological expertise, for example, laboratory science, pharmacology, public health, communications, or infectious diseases. So, people may be primarily in a disciplinary area, and secondarily have a special interest in venereology. As an analogy, venereology may have changed from being a silo to being a shopping mall, with people with interests in venereology also defining themselves by another specialty label. I want to be sure that we cater to research publication in venereology broadly, rather than narrowly.