About Cover Art

About Cover Art (podcast)

Images for the cover of Emerging Infectious Diseases are selected for artistic quality, technical reproducibility, stylistic continuity, communication effectiveness, and audience appeal. The images, which are published with permission of the artists or other copyright holders, are drawn from many periods (ancient to contemporary) and are used to "humanize" and enhance the scientific content by illustrating ideas, raising consciousness, revealing truth, stimulating the intellect, and firing the emotions.

The cover story has evolved by popular demand, literally out of the journal readers' wish to know the art and how it relates to them and to what they do. A sketch of the artist, period, and work, provides contextual knowledge, and a brief interpretation offers a link between the art and the human elements and goals of public health. The reader becomes familiar with the work, and in the end is surprised and, we hope, enlightened.