Journal of Biomedical Science (JBS), which is published by BioMed Central in partnership with the National Science Council, Taiwan (NSC). This volume marks the transition of the journal from a subscription journal to an "open access" journal. Starting from January 2009, volume 16, the journal will be published only in the electronic format and freely accessible online at [Welcome to the new With the development of the internet, the way to conduct and share scientific research has been changing dramatically. Though still challenged by commercial journal publishers, open access publishing has become a growing trend for the possibility of expanding the circulation of scientific work and maximizing the research. Accumulating evidence has shown that open access articles are cited more quickly and more frequently than non-open access article published in the same journal -4. That Sponsored by the NSC, JBS aims to serve as an international forum for encouraging interdisciplinary discussions and contributing to the advancement of biomedical science, rather than as a periodical for commercial gain. During the past years, the NSC had partnered with established publishers to publish the journal under the traditional subscription model. The visibility and impact of the journal has risen steadily but still has considerable room for improvement. We are well aware that access to an article, by itself, is not sufficient for citation. But access to it, by any path, is still a necessary pre-condition for citation . More anBy taking advantage of the new open access model, we will be able to publish the journal in a more timely and readable fashion. All the accepted articles starting from volume 16 will be published immediately upon acceptance with the attractive features of unlimited space for figures, extensive datasets and video footage. Open access articles are accessible online in full text to all interested readers or libraries without financial or permission barriers. Previous articles published before 2009 are also freely available online  to readers in the journal's local repository .We realize that the quality of a journal depends mainly on the quality of the articles it publishes. We welcome manuscripts reporting results from original research on fundamental and molecular aspects of basic medical sciences. Review articles of current interests are highly desired. Undeniably, open access also raises the issue of increasing financial burdens on authors because the publication cost is traditionally borne by the authors. Thanks to support from the NSC, authors will not be required to pay any article processing charges to publish their scientific works in JBS.Following some initial difficulties during the transition from the old to the new system, the online submission and review process are now running smoothly. I anticipate that we will have a very smooth publication in the new format from now on. I would like to attribute the credit for this achievement to our members of the international Editorial Board, the staffs at the NSC and BioMed Central.Growing in quality and recognition, JBS is indexed in more than 10 prominent scientific databases, including the Science Citation Index (SCI), MEDLINE, EMBASE, BIOSIS, CA SEARCH, AIDSLINE, TOXLINE, Life Sciences Collection, etc. With the continuous support of scientists from more than 30 countries, it has been able to attract quality articles from authors spanning all the continents. We believe that this new format and innovative approach to publishing will facilitate JBS as an indispensible source of biomedical science knowledge everywhere.We sincerely hope that you continue to access this new-look journal, to enjoy the selection of articles and features, to submit manuscripts for publication, and to share your valuable thoughts regarding the contents of the journal.


The field of DNA damage response and the associated cellular processes behind genome stability maintenance constitute one of the hottest research areas in modern biomedical sciences. A quick search on PubMed using the key word "DNA damage" results in approximately 400 articles which were published in January 2010 [Genome Integrity, the first open access journal dedicated to the field of DNA damage response and associated processes, we aim to provide interested scientists with the journal that enables (i) immediate online access to articles as soon as they are accepted for publication and (ii) free and universal online access resulting in dissemination to the widest possible audience. We believe that the current lack of opportunities for immediate and free dissemination of articles focusing on the above area of research will make Genome Integrity a viable and competitive journal. We would like to note that Genome Integrity articles will be archived in PubMed [By launching n PubMed  and all n PubMed -5.Genome Integrity is wide and ambitious. We aim to attract articles focusing on all aspects of DNA damage response mechanisms, including mechanisms of DNA damage induction, sensing, signalling and repair, cell cycle check-point control, telomere maintenance and control of apoptosis. The journal also welcomes submissions which focus on mechanisms of chromosome stability maintenance and the effects of genotoxic stress on this stability. A growing area of research within the field is understanding DNA damage processing in the context of interphase nucleus chromatin and the journal certainly aims to attract authors interested in the mechanisms underlying these processes. Genome Integrity also intends to encourage publications from authors interested in exploring the effects of normal and pathological DNA damage responses on tissue homeostasis, cellular and organismal ageing and tumorigenesis in humans and in animal models. In brief, Genome Integrity will publish articles exploring fundamental, as well as translational, aspects of all processes behind DNA damage response, genome and chromosome stability maintenance.The scope of Genome Integrity. In order to make Genome Integrity even more competitive we will aim to make editorial decisions within the shortest possible period which, when all practicalities are taken into account, should be 6 weeks from the date the article was submitted through the journal submission system. We will select reviewers, based on their expertise, either from the Genome Integrity Editorial Board currently consisting of ~50 leading scientists in the field [To ensure the scientific quality of the journal we will use a rigorous and transparent peer-review process. All articles will be reviewed by at least two experts who are expected to provide an independent assessment of suitability of articles for publication in We would also like to highlight some advantages of the open access publishing model in this Editorial. First, open access journals have the potential to reach a much larger set of readers than any subscription-based journal, in print and online . Second,Genome Integrity. We strongly believe that this new journal will significantly contribute to understanding of DNA damage response processes and look forward to receiving manuscripts from many colleagues.We are very excited about the launch of


Peer review is assumed to improve the quality of research reports as tools for scientific communication, yet strong evidence that this outcome is obtained consistently has been elusive. Failure to distinguish between aspects of discipline-specific content and aspects of the writing or use of language may account for some deficiencies in current peer review processes.The process and outcomes of peer review may be analyzed along two dimensions: 1) identifying scientific or technical content that is useful to other researchers , and 2) improving research articles as tools for communication . However, editors and reviewers do not always distinguish clearly between content criteria and writing criteria. When peer reviewers confuse content and writing, their feedback can be misunderstood by authors, who may modify texts in ways that do not make the readers' job easier. When researchers in peer review confuse the two dimensions, this can lead to content validity problems that foil attempts to define informative variables and outcome measures, and thus prevent clear trends from emerging. Research on writing, revising and editing suggests some reasons why peer review is not always as effective as it might be in improving what is written.Peer review could be improved if stakeholders were more aware of variations in gatekeepers' (reviewers' and editors') ability to provide feedback about the content or the writing. Gatekeepers, academic literacy researchers, and wordface professionals  could work together to discover the types of feedback authors find most useful. I offer suggestions to help editologists design better studies of peer review which could make the process an even stronger tool for manuscript improvement than it is now. Editorial interventions by gatekeepers (reviewers and editors) of scientific, technical and medical (STM) communication can be classified into two types: those meant to help make the discipline-specific content meet the journal's or publisher's editorial requirements (their "screening" function), and those aimed at making the text more convincing as a written communication (their "improving" function). This article examines elements of the peer review process to see whether the features reviewers are asked to evaluate can be distinguished as relevant to either the scientific content or the writing. A provisional classification of editorial policies and guidelines for reviewers suggests that although these two types of feedback are often requested, gatekeepers may fail to fully appreciate the difference between the two. Research on peer review has also tended to confuse the two dimensions–a methodological shortcoming that may explain why much peer review research in biomedicine has yielded so little unequivocal evidence that the process improves the quality of what is published.To document the evidence that peer review feedback about language and writing may be less useful than gatekeepers assume, I report observations by author's editors   regardinI propose a simple classification system intended to help gatekeepers distinguish which of the two quality dimensions–specialized content vs. the use of language and writing–evaluation criteria and comments provided by reviewers pertain to. To conclude, I suggest that pooling knowledge from three specialist communities–journal editors, researchers in language and communication, and wordface professionals such as author's editors, medical writers and translators–would lead to improvements in peer review practice and better research on this complex process.Peer review is considered 1) a screening instrument which lets some material through the gates but refuses entry to other submittals, and 2) an editing instrument that turns articles allowed through the gates into better-written or better-edited texts. Experts in peer review have suggested that "the two principal functions of peer review" are "filtering out incorrect or inadequate work and improving the accuracy and clarity of published reports."  DistinguNature also recognized the problem with peer review quality:Some editors  have fouWhat right has [an author] to expect a high quality of peer review? What training is being given in his or her own lab to ensure that the next generation understands how to do a good job of critically appraising others' work? And as the pressures on researchers grow–bureaucracy from institutions and funding agencies, incentives to apply the outcomes of research–the very motivation to do a conscientious job of peer review is itself under pressure .Many editors seem to be unaware that the ability to provide helpful feedback on different quality dimensions requires skills which cannot be assumed to be "standard equipment" in all potential reviewers. A hypothesis worth considering is that discipline-specific content is more likely to be judged objectively because this is where gatekeepers' expertise is greatest. In contrast, language and writing features are more likely to be judged subjectively because gatekeepers' expertise in this dimension varies widely. The latter is probably influenced by individual characteristics such as the reader's native language and culture, and personal preference for language and writing style . As a reAuthor's editors and translators who help authors interpret reviewers' feedback frequently observe that reviewers are quick to complain about "the English." Although reviewers sometimes correctly identify problems with technical language or first-language interference, they often claim that a manuscript requires "substantial review and editing by a native English speaker" when in fact they may be reacting to usage or argumentation that is appropriate but different from their preferred style. Below I list some of the changes made or requested by gatekeepers that can make the text harder instead of easier to understand.1. Edits to improve "good scientific English style": the corrections can introduce unfortunate word choices, jargon, undefined or unneeded abbreviations, and other technical editing errors.2. Changes in terminology and nomenclature: the reviewer's knowledge may not be up-to-date.3. Corrections in grammar and syntax: reviewers may overestimate their proficiency in written English.4. Changes in organization: reviewers may request changes that disrupt the logical flow of ideas.5. Changes in argumentation and rhetoric: sometimes "non-standard" rhetorical strategies used by authors are more appropriate than the type of writing the reviewer prefers.Wordface professionals often agree with researchers who feel reviewers have provided contradictory feedback about the writing or complained about "the English" even when native speakers of English wrote, translated or revised the material. Table Although consensus between reviewers is not necessarily one of the aims of peer review, contradictory feedback about the writing is unhelpful if not accompanied by guidance from the editor. The unhelpful comments made by some reviewers may reflect their tendency to consider their role as "one of policing rather than identification of work that is interesting and worth publishing."  As gatekAlthough many additions reviewers suggest do improve research articles, an undesirable outcome of peer review is the introduction of changes that the authors know to be wrong but which are added "to conform to the referee's comments."  ReviewerMany authors do not have ready access to professional editorial help – a problem with the potential to worsen the North-South and West-East information imbalance ,12. MoreMeanwhile, journals in some disciplines seem to be abandoning manuscript editing, a trend which seems to parallel a similar decline in editorial tolerance for imperfect English. To study the trend among STM journals to dispense with editing, I compared policies at four large commercial publishers: Springer, Elsevier, Wiley and Blackwell. (The latter two publishers merged in February 2007). Current policies, discussed here,  deep intellectual and informational need behind every recommendation within the ICMJE recommendations could substantially contribute to the quality of the manuscript by correcting or pointing out drawbacks  of the manuscript to authors before they submit it for publication" (p. 130). This type of editorial input is in fact exactly within the remit of author's editors and "translators as editors" who work with researchers -38. WordAnnals of Emergency Medicine have defined the two main functions of peer review in these words, " [w]e perform peer review not merely to select the best science but to improve it before publication."  reviewer performance may be based on qualities for which we have not as yet determined good methods of identification and measurement, such as skepticism, thoroughness, motivation, inherent talent in detecting design weaknesses, etc. Skill in scientific peer review may be as ill defined and hard to impart as is "common sense," particularly if reviewers' decision-making is based on intuitive recognition of complex patterns of "quality" in the manuscript and not on rational analysis of simple components."Researchers can turn to three potential sources of information to help make peer review a more reliable, constructive process. Gatekeepers can provide advice on models of peer review and reviewer evaluation strategies that have been found effective. Wordface professionals such as authors' editors and translators can provide insights into the types of feedback authors find most useful. Academic literacy researchers can identify features of good writing that are likely to make published articles more successful with readers. All three groups share the goal of helping "international" authors on the periphery of their discourse communities  to partiThe greatest understatement regarding journal quality control is probably, "the methodological problems in studying peer review are many and complex."  Sharing 1. For editors who wish to improve peer review processes, it may be useful to examine the research and methods used in disciplines outside the gatekeeper's own specialty for ideas on how to refocus their own research.2. It may be useful to examine findings reported by nonacademic communication professionals for insights into what authors and readers would like peer review to accomplish.3. For editors who expect peer review to provide effective feedback about language and writing, it would be useful to learn about research in academic writing for an international readership.4. Nothing about the effectiveness of a text as a written communication can be known for certain unless real target readers are asked to judge the quality of the texts. Editorial interventions that have been "tested in real readers" should be considered a marker of editorial quality.5. Gatekeepers, academic literacy researchers and wordface professionals such as author's editors, medical writers and translators could work together to identify the types of feedback authors find most useful in helping them bring their manuscripts up to publication standards.AMA, American Medical Association; STM, scientific, technical and medicalThe author is a freelance translator, author's editor and editorial consultant. Publication of this article might attract clients to her business.KS conceived the study, carried out the literature review and analysis, collected and analyzed the data, drafted the manuscript, and was responsible for all subsequent drafts and the final version.The pre-publication history for this paper can be accessed here:Publishers' language policies. Additional text and referencesClick here for fileAmerical Psychological Association and American Chemical Society language policies. Additional text and referencesClick here for fileTest of the 2-category coding system. Additional text, references, and tablesClick here for fileAcademic research. Additional text and referencesClick here for fileWordface research. Additional text and referencesClick here for file


The Plant Journal for 18 yr. Her career tells us that she is a professional managing editor. I discovered this book when I was preparing The Editor's Academy, a three-day intensive training course for medical editors in Korea held in February 2008. The content of the book was a great source for the workshop. Furthermore, peer review, online submission, and misconduct in scientific research and publishing are interesting topics that recently has been of concerned to editors. The simple, lucid organization of this book includes the description of golden rules in the text and a summary in the appendix. This book consists of nine chapters: Introduction; Peer Review Process-How to Get Going; Manuscript Submission and Initial Check on Completeness and Suitability; Full Review Process; Decision Making Process for Reviewed Manuscripts; Moving to Online Submission and Review; Reviewers-A Precious Resource; Obligations and Responsibilities of the People Involved in Peer Review; and Misconduct in Scientific and Publishing-What it is and How to Deal with it.Ms. Irene Hames had served as managing editor of "Critical assessment of manuscripts submitted to journals by experts who are not part of the editorial staff." On the third page, the first golden rule appears: "Editors are responsible for ensuring the quality of their journals and that what is reported is ethical, accurate, and relevant to their readership." Throughout the book, boxes, bewares, and golden rules are frequently given to reinforce the messages of the text. The writing is fluent and warm, like a conversation with the reader, and is another reason why this book is strongly recommended to novice editors or editorial board members.In the introductory chapter, the author explained two factors that led to the spread of peer review. First, submissions to scientific journals are burgeoning. Second, editors are no longer experts in all areas of their specialties. The increase in submissions likely originated from increases in research funds and the use of publications to evaluate members of research institutes worldwide. The first page of the book includes a box highlighting the definition of peer review by the International Committee of Medical Editors: The content of chapters two to five concerns the review process and decision making, and the remaining chapters deal with online submission, routine work required of authors, and the reviewers' work. Chapter two presents a well-drawn flow chart of the submission and review process on page 10. In addition, the organization of the editorial office and the title and role of each member of the office are described (pages 12-13). Although not all editors/publishers can recruit an extensive office staff, especially when the journal is published by a non-profit scientific society, these titles and roles should be kept. If sufficient finances are available, full- or part-time editorial assistants should be considered to improve the editorial quality. In Korea, medical editors are usually very active clinicians or researchers who would quickly become exhausted without help from editorial assistants. Chapter four includes a checklist of the full review process (page 62). Ten items are explained to help the novice reviewer deal with a manuscript, such as scope, study objective, study design, and soundness of the results. Editors sometimes evaluate the quality of their reviewers, as is the case with the 'Review Quality Instruments' used by the British Medical Journal. Pages 80-81 Box 4.3 presents advice to the reviewer on how to prepare an ideal report for the authors and provides lucid guidelines for reviewers. In Chapter 5, Table 5.2 summarizes decision making after a review, including reviewer recommendations such as acceptable as stands, acceptable with minor revision, acceptable with major revision, reject with resubmission invited, and reject with no encouragement of resubmission (page 95). Another editorial task is to deal with authors' appeals. An editor should not be surprised when an author appeals, and automatic dismissal of appeals is not recommended. The editor should listen to the author and examine whether the reviewer made a mistake. Perhaps another reviewer can review the manuscript, or the editor can conclude that the manuscript is sound but explain how it falls outside the journal's scope.Chapter 6 addresses online submission in detail. Box 6.1 contains a useful checklist for selecting an online submission system (page 121). After implementing an online submission system, the number of submissions usually increases by around 25%, including an increased number of low-quality manuscripts, so it is important that the consistency of the review process is ensured."No conflict of interest or prejudice must be allowed to influence the submission of a manuscript, its review, or the decision on whether it should be published" (page 164). The existence of a conflict of interest does not mean that the manuscript is wrong or biased. The key is the disclosure of conflict of interest, so that the information can be used in the review process. This process increases the transparency of the peer-review process.The obligations and responsibilities of reviewers and editors are discussed in Chapter 8. One of the most important issues is conflicts of interest. Golden Rule 12 describes the principle lucidly: Science, to have cloned human embryos and harvested stem cells from them were found to be fraudulent. Plagiarism, duplicate publication, multiple submissions, digital image manipulation, authorship irregularities, and other issues are discussed. In addition, reviewer misconduct is addressed, such as failure to disclose a conflict of interest, disclosing confidential information, usurping authors' ideas, delaying reviews, or damaging the reputation of authors.The last chapter deals with misconduct in research and publication. This is still an ongoing issue, not only in Korea, but in scholarly society worldwide. Some examples of fabrication and falsification are presented, such as the cases of Jan Hendrik Schon, who fabricated or falsified data in at least 16 papers on the physical sciences, and Hwang Woo Suk, whose claims, published in Four appendices help to recall the full text: Golden Rules and the Peer Review Good-practice Checklist; Examples of Checklists, Guidance for Reviewers and Editorial Letters; Useful Websites; and Alternative Methods of Peer Review. All of this well-arranged information provides useful guidelines for practical editorial work. Many forms used by several famous journals are presented as a reference for editors.The text of this book includes material that editors deal with every day, and it helps to remind me of the editorial process. Editors should also be trained as researchers. Unfortunately, there is no well-organized training course in Korea. Only the Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors provides courses for editors. This wonderful work by Ms. Hames can be used as a textbook in courses for both experienced and novice editors, and I trust that it is what Ms. Hames intended when she prepared this beautiful book. Every scientific editor should read it.


Moore’s law is long-term trend in the history of computing hardware. It basically says that the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit roughly doubles every 2 years.[Surgical Neurology International (SNI), we wanted a web application that offers you quick access to the pillars of our website: the articles, the posts and the forum. It is also important that you are able to qucikly and easily access our multimedia and social network updates.To have users benefit from all features on mobile devices, content needs to be optimized for smaller screens and limited keyboard input. This is also important for scientific and clinical applications. Mobile applications are used differently from desktop applications. They should allow users to perform some common tasks in a quick and efficient manner. Of course, the nature of these tasks depends on the nature of the application. For www.surgicalneurologyinternational.com/mobileOur web application, “SNI Mobile,” does just that: it offers you quick access to the latest articles, posts, forum items, Twitter updates and podcasts . By seleAlternatively, go to our website and select “Neurosurgery 2.0” > “Mobile” in the menu for further instructions.You are probably familiar with downloading articles in Portable Document Format (PDF). The main advantage of PDF files is that they look the same on all computers, regardless of what text editor is used, which fonts are installed, or which printer settings are chosen. There are many good free PDF viewers available, and for desktop computers this format became the standard for downloading scientific articles. The main disadvantage for using them on mobile devices is that the original page size is maintained. Therefore, reading PDF files on a small screen can be a cumbersome task. This problem can be solved by using the EPUB format, which is a free and open e-book standard for electronic publication (hence the name). There arAs SNI is an open-access journal, all full-text articles can be downloaded for free, without any form of registration required. This is especially useful when it comes to downloading articles on mobile devices. There is no need to be connected to your hospital or university network; you can download EPUB versions from all our articles. This can be done from our website, or directly from the web application .The foundation of every scientific journal is formed by (peer-reviewed) articles. This editorial explains how mobile devices can be used to access SNI’s content, and how the EPUB format facilitates reading articles on small screens. SNI Mobile is a web application that allows quick access to the journal’s main categories, with a layout that is optimized for iPhone and related devices. We intend to use this web application as a starting point for further mobile development. Based on our experience and your feedback we will continue working on separate applications for iPhone, iPad, Android, and maybe Blackberry in the future. We would like you to read not only our articles, but also our (blog) posts and forum items. Also, we would like to offer you our multimedia on mobile devices, starting with some podcasts on basic and clinical neurosurgery.What sorts of applications and content would you be particularly interested in?


The Signal Transduction Society (STS)  is deligWe are convinced that unduly limiting the flow of scientific knowledge has a negative impact on the development of benefits for mankind and believe that BioMed Central is a highly valuable platform that is vital not only to scientists but to society in general and hence deserves our strong support.The need for free information flow within the academic community is especially true for rapidly evolving fields such as cell signaling, which is now entering a new and exciting era of development. The foundations in our molecular understanding, laid by numerous colleagues over the last decades, are now beginning to bear fruit in the form of an increasing number of targeted, signal transduction-modulating drugs entering clinical use. Over a dozen examples can be found in current cancer therapies alone, with more than a hundred further anti-cancer drug candidates currently undergoing clinical evaluation. Nevertheless, much still needs to be done to improve the outcomes for countless severely suffering patients.Cell Communication and Signaling (CCS) and the STS are committed to playing an active part in the signal transduction research community by providing a stimulating and collegial forum for the speedy publication of state-of-the art research and discussions.CCS intends to cover all aspects of cell signaling in health and disease, from ultrastructural and molecular studies with atomic resolution to signaling pathways, molecular machines and signaling networks and further on to various forms of inter-organismal signaling as, for example, exerted by bacterial and viral pathogens. We will accept timely reviews and commentaries as well as original articles with high-quality data in several formats (further details below). Supported by the journal's editorial board members and solicited expert reviewers, the editors will make it a priority to ensure that publications are not unduly delayed. It has become an aggravating fact of life for many scientists that even well-prepared manuscripts are rarely accepted without requests to perform multiple additional experiments. Some manuscripts undergo four or five rounds of resubmission, often resulting in publication delays for several years. This does not go down well with many funding bodies and puts especially young investigators at a disadvantage. The friendly reviewers' comment "This is a great paper well worth publishing as soon as possible provided the authors can submit further supporting data from a mouse knock-in and a genome-wide gene expression array analysis of no less than 500 patient samples" has become a standing joke at many scientific gatherings. In far too many cases, delaying manuscripts has less to do with improving manuscript quality and more with conflicting interests of various kinds.CCS will not be a part of this. We recognise that science is a continuous process that is never finished and that real proof comes primarily from independent confirmations by other researchers. This is often not possible unless a study, albeit incomplete, is publicly accessible.If an original manuscript's data are novel, important and technically sound, if the conclusions drawn are not severely flawed, the quality of results and presentation are state-of-the-art and the ethics acceptable, the work will be published. The editors do, however, reserve the right to add an editorial comment if they feel that this is important for the scientific community. Authors may be invited to comment on these. Reviewers will be requested to provide fair and constructive criticism that helps the authors to improve their manuscripts.Cell Communication and Signaling about page [We intend to publish the following types of contributions: original research, reviews, commentaries, debate articles, hypotheses, methodology articles and short reports. Further details regarding these types of article is available via the out page .Cell Communication and Signaling levies an article-processing charge (APC) for each accepted manuscript. There are currently over 300 institutions with BioMed Central membership [As many readers will already know, it is not possible to make high-quality open access publishing a reality without a cost contribution of the authors. As such, mbership . AuthorsCCS will achieve its goal, which is to become an appreciated place to quickly disseminate exciting findings from and to the signaling community and beyond. We are looking forward to working with you all.With the support of the STS, of our editorial board members and of our valued colleagues around the globe, we believe that With warm regards,Stephan M. Feller, EditorRalf Hass, President STS & Associate EditorOttmar Janssen, Presidial Council STS & Associate EditorKarlheinz Friedrich, Presidial Council STSThe authors declare that they have no competing interests.


Journal of Medical Case Reports was launched with the aim of increasing the publication of case reports in the medical literature, because accurate reports of clinical experience are an essential part of the continued development of modern medicine [medicine . All theThe practice of obtaining informed consent from people who participate in research has long been established; obtaining informed consent to publish information about individuals is a more recent, but increasingly accepted, concept, which has been embraced by our journal.An individual's right to privacy is ingrained in the laws of numerous countries, and protection of information obtained as part of the clinician-patient relationship is an essential part of many of the codes of ethics and professional conduct followed by clinicians, researchers, journal editors and publishers around the world -4.Journal of Medical Case Reports is published, is the Data Protection Act [The relevant privacy legislation in the United Kingdom, where tion Act . A key cIn research involving groups of individuals, the clinical data being analyzed are likely to be presented in summary or aggregated form, and so it may be possible to confidently remove risks to privacy. But this is not possible for medical case reports as these provide detailed descriptions of an individual's medical history.Journal of Medical Case Reports has always striven to protect privacy, and maintains its endorsement of the privacy policies of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors [ Editors  and the  Editors . TherefoJournal of Medical Case Reports go further than data protection legislation in that they require that consent be obtained and that only information scientifically relevant to the case being presented be published. So even in the presence of consent, authors and editors are required to ensure that non-essential, and possibly identifying, information about individuals is not included in case reports. Moreover, we have always required that privacy of deceased people is protected and that, wherever possible, consent of the person's next of kin be sought. We recognize that it is not always possible to obtain consent. Where people and their families are non-traceable, deceased, or both, we have provided criteria for publication without consent, which includes ensuring case reports are anonymous.But obtaining consent to publish does not circumvent the need to protect anonymity. The codes of ethics followed by Journal of Medical Case Reports must include at a minimum the age, gender and ethnicity of the individual described in the case report .However, it is clear that articles including three or more indirect identifiers relating to an individual could, theoretically, present risks to privacy ,7. To beTherefore, our policy on obtaining consent to publish is now mandatory for all cases that relate to a living individual. For case reports that relate to a deceased person, authors must ensure they have met all three criteria specified by the Committee on Publication Ethics' Code of Conduct. Our instructions for authors have been updated to this effect :In the absence of consent, to comply with UK Data Protection legislation, a case report about a living person must be anonymised so that neither the individual, nor anyone who knows them, can identify themselves from the published article. The nature of case reports means that this is almost always impossible to achieve with certainty. Therefore, cases without consent for publication will not be considered."If the person described in the case report has died, then consent for publication must be sought from their next of kin. If the next of kin are not traceable, and the authors have made every effort to trace the family, publication of the case may be possible if all three conditions specified by the Committee on Publication Ethics' (COPE) Code of Conduct are met.If the individual described in the case report is a minor, or unable to provide consent, then consent must be sought from their parents or legal guardians. In these cases, the statement in the 'Consent' section of the manuscript should be amended accordingly.Case reports without appropriate consent will be rejected prior to peer review."The most effective way to meet our policy continues to be via the consent form provided on our website, which is now available in nine languages . The lisIn a very small number of cases we recognize that this new policy might preclude articles from publication. The protection of individuals in an open access, online environment must take precedence. We will work with authors to assist them to meet our policies and encourage any authors of case reports where consent cannot be obtained to contact our editorial office in advance of their submission.IH wrote the first draft of the manuscript; MRK was involved in its review and critical revision before submission. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.


John Ioannidis and colleagues argue that the current system of publication in biomedical research provides a distorted view of the reality of scientific data. This essay makes the underlying assumption that scientific information is an economic commodity, and that scientific journals are a medium for its dissemination and exchange. While this exchange system differs from a conventional market in many senses, including the nature of payments, it shares the goal of transferring the commodity (knowledge) from its producers (scientists) to its consumers . The function of this system has major consequences. Idealists may be offended that research be compared to widgets, but realists will acknowledge that journals generate revenue; publications are critical in drug development and marketing and to attract venture capital; and publishing defines successful scientific careers. Economic modelling of science may yield important insights .In auction theory, under certain conditions, the bidder who wins tends to have overpaid. Consider oil firms bidding for drilling rights; companies estimate the size of the reserves, and estimates differ across firms. The average of all the firms' estimates would usually approximate the true reserve size. Since the firm with the highest estimate bids the most, the auction winner systematically overestimates, sometimes so substantially as to lose money in net terms . When biThe current system of publication in biomedical research provides a distorted view of the reality of scientific data that are generated in the laboratory and clinic. This system can be studied by applying principles from the field of economics. The “winner's curse,” a more general statement of publication bias, suggests that the small proportion of results chosen for publication are unrepresentative of scientists' repeated samplings of the real world. The self-correcting mechanism in science is retarded by the extreme imbalance between the abundance of supply  and the increasingly limited venues for publication . This system would be expected intrinsically to lead to the misallocation of resources. The scarcity of available outlets is artificial, based on the costs of printing in an electronic age and a belief that selectivity is equivalent to quality. Science is subject to great uncertainty: we cannot be confident now which efforts will ultimately yield worthwhile achievements. However, the current system abdicates to a small number of intermediates an authoritative prescience to anticipate a highly unpredictable future. In considering society's expectations and our own goals as scientists, we believe that there is a moral imperative to reconsider how scientific data are judged and disseminated.An analogy can be applied to scientific publications. As with individual bidders in an auction, the average result from multiple studies yields a reasonable estimate of a “true” relationship. However, the more extreme, spectacular results  may be preferentially published. Journals serve as intermediaries and may suffer minimal immediate consequences for errors of over- or mis-estimation, but it is the consumers of these laboratory and clinical results  who are “cursed” if these results are severely exaggerated—overvalued and unrepresentative of the true outcomes of many similar experiments. For example, initial clinical studies are often unrepresentative and misleading. An empirical evaluation of the 49 most-cited papers on the effectiveness of medical interventions, published in highly visible journals in 1990–2004, showed that a quarter of the randomised trials and five of six non-randomised studies had already been contradicted or found to have been exaggerated by 2005 ,11. An iMore alarming is the general paucity in the literature of negative data. In some fields, almost all published studies show formally significant results so that statistical significance no longer appears discriminating ,16. DiscIn the basic biological sciences, statistical considerations are secondary or nonexistent, results entirely unpredicted by hypotheses are celebrated, and there are few formal rules for reproducibility ,21. A siSuccessful publication may be more difficult at present than in the past. The supply and demand of scientific production have changed. Across the health and life sciences, the number of published articles in Scopus-indexed journals rose from 590,807 in 1997 to 883,853 in 2007, a modest 50% increase. In the same decade, data acquisition has accelerated by many orders of magnitude: as an example, the current Cancer Genome Atlas project requires 10,000 times more sequencing effort than the Human Genome Project, but is expected to take a tenth of the time to complete . In the Constriction on the demand side is further exaggerated by the disproportionate prominence of a very few journals. Moreover, these journals strive to attract specific papers, such as influential trials that generate publicity and profitable reprint sales. This “winner-take-all” reward structure  leaves vImpact factors are widely adopted as criteria for success, despite whatever qualms have been expressed . They poDrosophila genetics has suggested the existence of such information cascades, with positive momentum, interdependence among published papers (most reporting positive data), and dominant themes leading to stagnating conformism [Some unfavourable consequences may be predicted and some are visible. Resource allocation has long been recognised by economists as problematic in science, especially in basic research where the risks are the greatest. Rival teams undertake unduly dubious and overly similar projects; and too many are attracted to one particular contest to the neglect of other areas, reducing the diversity of areas under exploration . Early dnformism .The authority of journals increasingly derives from their selectivity. The venue of publication provides a valuable status signal. A common excuse for rejection is selectivity based on a limitation ironically irrelevant in the modern age—printed page space. This is essentially an example of artificial scarcity. Artificial scarcity refers to any situation where, even though a commodity exists in abundance, restrictions of access, distribution, or availability make it seem rare, and thus overpriced. Low acceptance rates create an illusion of exclusivity based on merit and more frenzied competition among scientists “selling” manuscripts.rejected to promote the presumed selectivity of the journal. Journals closely track and advertise their low acceptance rates, equating these with rigorous review: “Nature has space to publish only 10% or so of the 170 papers submitted each week, hence its selection criteria are rigorous”—even though it admits that peer review has a secondary role: “the judgement about which papers will interest a broad readership is made by Nature's editors, not its referees” [Science also equates “high standards of peer review and editorial quality” with the fact that “of the more than 12,000 top-notch scientific manuscripts that the journal sees each year, less than 8% are accepted for publication” [Manuscripts are assessed with a fundamentally negative bias: how they may best be eferees” . Scienceication” .The publication system may operate differently in different fields. For example, for drug trials, journal operations may be dominated by the interests of larger markets: the high volume of transactions involved extends well beyond the small circle of scientific valuations and interests. In other fields where no additional markets are involved (the history of science is perhaps one extreme example), the situation of course may be different. The question to be examined is whether published data may be more representative (and more unbiased) depending on factors such as the ratio of journal outlets to amount of data generated, the relative valuation of specialty journals, career consequences of publication, and accessibility of primary data to the reader.One solution to artificial scarcity—digital publication—is obvious and already employed. Digital platforms can facilitate the publication of greater numbers of appropriately peer-reviewed manuscripts with reasonable hypotheses and sound methods. Digitally formatted publication need not be limited to few journals, or only to open-access journals. Ideally, all journals could publish in digital form manuscripts that they have received and reviewed and that they consider unsuitable for print publication based on subjective assessments of priority. The current privileging of print over digital publication by some authors and review committees may be reversed, if online-only papers can be demonstrated or perceived to represent equal or better scientific reality than conventional printed manuscripts.When scientific information itself is the commodity, there is uncertainty as to its value, both immediately and in the long term. Usually we do not know what information will be most useful  eventually. Economists have struggled with these peculiar attributes of scientific information as a commodity. Production of scientific information is largely paid for by public investment, but the product is offered free to commercial intermediaries, and is culled by them with minimal cost, for sale back to the producers and their underwriters! An explanation for such a strange arrangement is the need for branding—marking the product as valuable. Branding may be more important when a commodity cannot easily be assigned much intrinsic value and when we fear the exchange environment will be flooded with an overabundance of redundant, useless, and misleading product ,45. BranWe may consider several competing or complementary options about the future of scientific publication . When ecAccept the current system as having evolved to be the optimal solution to complex and competing problems.Promote rapid, digital publication of all articles that contain no flaws, irrespective of perceived “importance”.Adopt preferred publication of negative over positive results; require very demanding reproducibility criteria before publishing positive results.Select articles for publication in highly visible venues based on the quality of study methods, their rigorous implementation, and astute interpretation, irrespective of results.Adopt formal post-publication downward adjustment of claims of papers published in prestigious journals.Modify current practice to elevate and incorporate more expansive data to accompany print articles or to be accessible in attractive formats associated with high-quality journals: combine the “magazine” and “archive” roles of journals.Promote critical reviews, digests, and summaries of the large amounts of biomedical data now generated.Offer disincentives to herding and incentives for truly independent, novel, or heuristic scientific work.Recognise explicitly and respond to the branding role of journal publication in career development and funding decisions.Modulate publication practices based on empirical research, which might address correlates of long-term successful outcomes  of published papers.Some may accept the current publication system as the ideal culmination of an evolutionary process. However, this order is hardly divinely inspired; additionally, the larger environment has changed over time. Can digital publication alleviate wasteful efforts of repetitive submission, review, revision, and resubmission? Preferred publication of negative over positive results has been suggested, with print publication favoured for all negative data (as more likely to be true) and for only a minority of the positive results that have demonstrated consistency and reproducibility . To exorThere are limitations to our analysis. Compared with the importance of the problem, there is a relative paucity of empirical observations on the process of scientific publication. The winner's curse is fundamental to our thesis, but there is active debate among economists whether it inhibits real environments or is more of a theoretical phenomenon ,8. Do seEven though its goals may sometimes be usurped for other purposes, science is hard work with limited rewards and only occasional successes. Its interest and importance should speak for themselves, without hyperbole. Uncertainty is powerful and yet quite insufficiently acknowledged when we pretend prescience to guess at the ultimate value of today's endeavours. If “the striving for knowledge and the search for truth are still the strongest motives of scientific discovery”, and if “the advance of science depends upon the free competition of thought” , we mustText S1(115 KB PDF).Click here for additional data file.


Current Oncology transitions to hybrid-based publication. The “hybrid” format, a concept pioneered in recent years by the journal, allows for a significantly shorter delay to both online and hardcopy publication for authorship.This first issue of 2010 sees a gathering of momentum as www.current-oncology.com in Portable Document Format (PDF), with subsequent indexing in PubMed, Excerpta Medica, and so on. We therefore encourage submissions to the journal to be accompanied by abstracts that fully reflect the scholarly content of the work. Some manuscripts that are deemed to be of a wider interest may appear in full in print on the recommendation of the reviewers and the editors, but the main intent remains to see the wait time to publication shorten substantially for all submissions—and indeed, this is already happening.All manuscripts published as abstracts in print will be simultaneously published in full online at As I write this, approximately 40 additional manuscripts are in the publication “queue” at various stages of review and editing under the guidance of Dr. Martin Chasen. And notably, 14 original manuscripts appear in this issue, the largest number to date in nearly 17 years of publication of this journal.Publication online allows for the addition of audio and video files—or of other media—to enhance published articles, and the journal welcomes those who might seek to pioneer the use of such tools. Although these enhancements might more readily be used by an ornithology journal, we welcome innovation nonetheless!Current Oncology will continue to publish its very successful educational supplement series. Two more of these issues—on the subjects of colorectal cancer and management of chronic myelogenous leukemia—are already in the pipeline. I welcome correspondence with suggestions about subject matter for possible inclusion in this series, particularly from authors willing to take an active role in their planning or execution.In the coming year, Lastly, my thanks go to the authors who have allowed us to change the presentation of their submissions as we continue to “hybridize.” Your patience and understanding has been greatly appreciated.


For the first time, we publish a special section of four related articles in the online, open-access journal Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health. This special issue is thematically focused on psychopharmacology, and offers readers the opportunity to examine recent developments in this area of research as described from different perspectives.rd and 4th, 2008. During this conference, which was focused on ethical, methodological, legal, regulatory, and implementation issues in designing and conducting research in vulnerable populations, speakers from academia, industry, and government agencies discussed the most recent developments in pediatric pharmacology research, with special attention to the conditions determining the necessity and feasibility of conducting clinical trials in child and adolescent psychiatry.This section was the result of a conference organized by the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Science, together with the European Academy, and held in Berlin, April 3Benedetto Vitiello  informed about changes in the legal and regulatory framework in the U.S. and implications for clinical trials in minors. Birka Lehmann form the German Regulatory Agency informed about the new European framework and the role of European Medicines Agency (EMEA) and its committees in implementing the new regulations and generating more information about the safety and efficacy of pharmacological treatments in childhood. Philippe Auby, from Lundbeck Pharmaceuticals, discussed the new European pediatric research regulations from an industry perspective. Finally, academic researchers Jacinta Tan and Michael Kölch discussed ethical preconditions and pitfalls in child psychiatric pharmacological research in children and adolescents.As a chair and discussant at that session I got the impression that these presentations altogether gave a very good overview of the current situation and both the advances and limitations in child psychopharmacotherapy research in the U.S. and Europe. The coordinated publication of these reports in CAPMH also offers an opportunity for readers from other parts of the world to comment on these issues by submitting letters and rapid communication articles.The editorial team is open to suggestions from our readership and potential authors for other special sections so that we can invite authors to submit contributions relevant to one general theme under the coordination of a guest editor. We hope that the addition of thematically focused special sections to CAPMH will further enhance the attractiveness of the journal.


A journal that wants to accept not reject and to include patients as authors as much as possibleCases Journal will publish any case report that is authentic, understandable, and ethical. The report doesn't have to be original or "important," and we hope eventually to publish tens of thousands of case reports a year. The accompanying editorial discusses what we hope to achieve with this new journal, and this editorial explains our editorial processes.Case reports can eventually be submitted by anybody  - patienJournal of Medical Case Reports, [BMJ [BMJ I became very concerned about patient consent when I realized that anonymity could not be guaranteed. [It will be essential to include signed consent from the patient. Indeed, our preference is that patients will be co-authors in as many case reports as possible. It will be possible for patients but not others to use pseudonyms. We are using the same consent form as our sister journal, the Reports,  which wats, [BMJ  (In my franteed. )There is no limit on the lengths of the reports, and if somebody can produce a report that has both the length and nuance of a Dostoevsky novel or a Freud case report then the world will be a richer place. We imagine, however, that many authors might be satisfied with 600 words. (For a rough guide you can access a report that I have written about my own case of "Beijing cough".)Cases will be sent for peer review, but our strong bias is to publish not to reject. Reviewers will be asked only five questions:1. Can you understand the case report?2. Do you think that it is authentic?3. Do you see any ethical problems?4. Is there any missing information that you think must be added before publication? (Remember that you can add a note asking for information to be included after publication.)5. Is it possible that this case is the first of its kind or may represent an important advance in general medical knowledge?We will ask reviewers to answer these simple questions within hours not weeks, and we will publish their names at the end of each report. Cases will be accepted unless reviewers give us convincing reasons why they cannot be. Reviewers questions and comments will be published with the case reports. We expect that authors will want to respond to these questions and comments - starting a debate on the cases.Journal of Medical Case Reports and published there if they pass its peer review. If they do not, they will be returned to Cases Journal. All case reports in both journals will be included in PubMed Central.Case reports for which the reviewer answers yes to question 5 above will be forwarded to Cases Journal will be open access - freely accessible immediately on publication. As there are no subscription fees to fund the journal, authors are asked to pay an article-processing charge if their manuscript is accepted for publication. Authors will not have to pay the charge themselves if their institution is a member of BioMed Central [Cases Journal.All case reports in  Central , which pAuthors will also be able eventually to submit a question - for example: "Has anybody heard of a patient going through brain radiotherapy smelling a disgusting smell? If so, how was the patient helped?"Having had a case report published, authors will be expected to provide follow up information. Authors will be sent a request for follow up information each year for five years. The value of the reports will be greatly increased by this follow up information, and we expect that authors will be keen to provide such information. If authors don t provide follow up then we will record that they haven't.Readers will be able to respond to case reports - adding comments and questions. Readers will have to give their names and positions, and all those commenting will have to register on the site. We expect that authors will respond to all questions and to many comments. All of the material will be open access, meaning not only that it can be accessed for free but also that it can be reproduced without consent but with attribution.All of the case reports will be entered into a database that readers will be able to search by things like age, sex, presentation, past medical history, comorbidity, and smoking history. We are still working on the final form of this database, but you may well be able to find a patient very like you or your patient. We will also be including in the database case reports from our sister journal and from many other sources.This database will, we expect, become a treasure house for patients, doctors, and others - so why not send us a case or a dozen cases today?


Environmental Health is an electronic Open Access journal, the numbers of downloads at the journal website can be retrieved. The top-20 list of articles most frequently accessed shows that all of them have been downloaded over 10,000 times. Back in 2002, the first article published was accessed only 49 times during the following month. A year later, the server had over 1,000 downloads per month, and now the total number of monthly downloads approaches 50,000. These statistics complement the Impact Factor and confirm the viability of Open Access in our field of research. The advent of digital media and its decentralized mode of distribution - the internet - have dramatically changed the control and financing of scientific information dissemination, while facilitating peer review, accelerating editorial handling, and supporting much needed transparency. Both the meaning and means of "having an impact" are therefore changing, as will the degree and way in which scientific journals remain "factors" in that impact.Environmental Health has just received its first Impact Factor by Thomson ISI. At a level of 2.48, this achievement is quite satisfactory and places Environmental Health in the top 25% of environmental science journals. When the journal was launched in 2002, it was still unclear whether the Open Access publishing model could be made into a viable commercial enterprise within the biomedical field. During the past eight years, Open Access journals have become widely available, although still covering only about 15% of journal titles. Major funding agencies and institutions, including prominent US universities, now require that researchers publish in Open Access journals. Because of the profound role of scientific journals for the sharing of results and communication between researchers, the advent of Open Access may be of as much significance as the transition from handwriting to printing via moveable type. As  Environmental Health, the bestowal of an official Impact Factor (IF) by Thomson ISI. The idea of a quantitative measure of a journal's "impact" was suggested in 1955 by Eugene Garfield in Science [Environmental Health in 2008 and 2009 they would count for this journal's 2010 Impact Factor, thus slightly inflating it.We have just passed another milestone in the history of  Science . GarfielThis is not the only quirk in the calculation of IFs , leadingEnvironmental Health ranks in the top 25% of journals (44 out of 180) listed in the 'Environmental Sciences' category. Of additional importance, an impact factor above 2 is important in some countries, where the productivity of researchers is rated annually from their publications in journals with an IF above that level. We made this mark on our first attempt.With an IF of 2.48, The IF we received is also more than respectable for a journal, such as ours, because the time gap between publication and citation is longer in highly specialized disciplines. Thus, the excellent performance by this metric testifies to the quality of the articles and the value of increased accessibility and timeliness afforded by open access and online publication.A milestone is a marker along a road that shows the distance one has come, and, if the destination is known, the distance yet to be traveled. Science is open ended so there is no ultimate destination, yet we can still make some observations about the landscape we are traveling through in this transitional period in scientific publishing. But we first take a brief look back as we approach the end of our first decade as an established journal.Environmental Health was launched in 2002, among the very first of the independent specialty journals on the roster of a new Open Access (OA) publisher, BioMed Central (BMC), which began in 2000 with its own in-house BMC journals. Its philosophical roots can be traced further back in time, but as a practical matter it was the almost free and limitless publishing and distribution technology of the internet in the 1990 s that made the modern OA movement possible. Suddenly, the major expense of publishing a scientific article online was in actually doing the science and the time and effort of authoring. All peer review and most executive editing was also done without cost to the publisher. The value added of printing and distribution provided by conventional print publishers suddenly disappeared, but in 2002 it was not yet demonstrated that the OA publishing model could be made into a viable commercial enterprise.The realization that the printed journals from the big publishers were no longer an essential ingredient didn't happen overnight. The technology developed much more quickly than established scholars and scientists were able to accommodate, and recognition of the new conditions was unevenly distributed across disciplines. Except for a few isolated examples in the humanities and the social sciences, it was in physics and computer science that the first change occurred. In these fields a submitted paper could take 1 to 2 years to see print and when the papers finally appeared, their complex notation was usually produced by a standard open source and free typesetting program developed by Donald Knuth called TeX . Because LaTeX was widely available for desktop computers and could be obtained without cost, physicists and computer scientists could produce and share their own "camera ready" manuscripts, circulate them for comment and establish priority before publication, even before peer review. Moreover the TeX typesetting language was not only standard but used only plain text that was "marked up" with tags, much like HTML, so collaboration and sharing of work could be done easily by email. From there it was a short step to depositing the manuscript drafts essentially in publishable form in a central source, often called a preprint server. It was just such a server for physics papers that was established at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the early 1990 s. The arXiv.org server still exists and self-archiving among physicists has not only become the norm, but in some subfields like high energy-physics, it is said to be 100%. From physics the pre-print culture spread to related fields like mathematics. Computer scientists had already been doing this and today their preprint server is almost twice as big as arXiv.org, automatically harvesting preprints  from specialized websites and institutional repositories, Google-style.By comparison, open and free access to electronic versions of scientific papers has come late to biomedicine and still faces opposition from large publishers and a lack of understanding from many biomedical scientists. Paradoxically, biomedicine was an early adopter of digital referencing and searching. As long ago as 1879, when John Shaw Billings made a catalog of the US Surgeon General's Library which he had been developing as a repository of medical literature, the US Government had been supporting a monthly publication listing the medical periodical literature called Index Medicus. In 1964 the Library, now called the National Library of Medicine, produced the first computerized version of Index Medicus, the Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System (MEDLARS), rechristened Medline in 1971 when it went "online" (at the time this meant remote access from other authorized computer systems). Medline was accessible to libraries but not to the general public until 1997, when it was made freely available in a web-based version called PubMed . SuddenlBut "fingertips" didn't mean "in hand". Medline/PubMed addressed finding what was happening in the exploding world of biomedicine in the form of journal citations, but did not provide the articles themselves. That still required either a personal subscription or access to a medical library. The rapid development of biomedicine also produced a proliferation of scientific journals, many catering to highly specialized branches of basic biology or clinical subspecialty. In 1999, the NIH Director Harold Varmus suggested a combined pre-print/post-print server, but it did not find immediate acceptance, although a beginning was made in early 2000 with the establishment of a post-print  archive called PubMed Central. Starting with articles from only two journals, PNAS: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Molecular Biology of the Cell, it now includes the full text of articles from thousands of journals, including this one . All BMThe importance of OA in our field is illustrated by some recent statistics collected by a project supported by the European Commission . The resst century's first decade, the biomedical science community was still hesitant about whether OA publishers would be viewed as "second tier" venues and there was a faint suggestion that paying a processing charge automatically made it into a form of vanity publishing. But the technology and OA publishing movement, which had social and ideological roots, came together with the changing economics of commercial publishing to provide a powerful ally: librarians. This common interest was produced by what has come to be known as "the serials crisis," a chronic escalation of institutional subscription fees far in excess of inflation. A research article is unique and cannot be exchanged for a less expensive version in another journal, making price competition ineffective. The publishing industry was undergoing consolidation, so that by the early years of the millennium, a few publishers were producing a large proportion of all scholarly output.In the early years of the 21Libraries were bearing the brunt of this cost escalation, as serials are their major expense. Any failure of budgets to keep up with rising subscription prices resulted in dropping journal subscriptions. The parent universities were also unhappy, complaining that they were paying twice for the research conducted under their auspices, once for the salaries and resources of their scientists and then again to buy back what they produced. Librarians, with either the full or tacit support of their university administrations, began to push back through active promotion of free access .These economic incentives reinforced a social movement among scientists and other scholars, loosely called the Open Access movement. In 2001, 34,000 international scientists signed an Open Letter to Scientific Publishers calling for "the establishment of an online public library that would provide the full contents of the published record of research and scholarly discourse in medicine and the life sciences in a freely accessible, fully searchable, interlinked form" , began operations in 2000 as one of the first for-profit open access publishers. It now publishes over 200 journals, including this one. Most, but not all, are 100% open access journals where the author retains copyright but a form of public licensing allows free and permissionless access to anyone, providing there is attribution of credit. BMC demonstrated the commercial viability of a publishing model for peer reviewed science where the cost burden was shifted from those seeking access to those producing the science. In essence, the processing charge now covered the much smaller cost of producing the article electronically, much like the "page charge" commonly incurred in publishing in many subscription journals. Whether processing or page charges, publication charges have became just another cost of doing and disseminating research, like making slides or maintaining a service contract for instruments. It is now being routinely included (as a minor item) in grant budgets and represents a much smaller amount than standard subscription costs. A concrete symbol of the established viability of the business model came in 2008 when Springer, the world's second largest commercial publisher of science, technical and medical literature, bought BMC. BMC/Springer is continuing a policy of waiving the processing charge in cases of financial hardship or for scientists in developing countries; this decision is completely divorced from the editorial decision to publish based on peer review for scientific interest and soundness and journal scope.With a range of OA journals available, academic institutions began to support OA publishing, and by June, 2010, 87 institutions, including prominent US universities, now require that researchers publish in OA journals. Funding institutions have a similar interest in having results from the projects they sponsor freely available to the public. Internationally, a total of 44 funding agencies require that results of their sponsored research be published in OA journals. US legislation currently allows a grace period of 12 months for the journals to charge for access, but a proposal to shorten this period has recently been put forward in the US Congress.Environmental Health are mentioned in the news , but even when our papers make news it is not science news, because in an important sense there is no such thing as science news.This rapid historical review brings us to the present and the current milestone: the Impact Factor. The arcane bookkeeping and algorithmic details aside, it is surely a goal of this and every other scientific journal for its research papers to have an impact on science. Frequently papers published in Research results have an impact only by taking their place in a vast body of mutually consistent and reinforcing results. As scientists we produce pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that must be assembled into a coherent picture. Often we don't know where a piece fits, mistake a peripheral piece of the puzzle for a central one, wrongly use the fragment of a pattern as a clue to the whole, miss the meaning of a pattern because we don't see its relation to other pieces, or mistake a piece of one picture for that of another. When we are lucky or inspired we identify adjacent pieces and make them fit together or if we are exceptionally lucky we find a piece that connects whole regions of the puzzle, thus allowing us to see some of the bigger picture. The main point, however, is that it takes time for results to have an impact, the time necessary for them to be carefully put in relation to other results. Scientific research can't be "news" any more than a puzzle piece is news. It must take its place among the other puzzle pieces and be used and appreciated by the other puzzle players. For a result to be science, it has not just to be understood by a scientist -- understanding is something an individual does -- but it has to be intersubjective, something that can be shared. Publication in scientific journals is the principal means by which this sharing takes place. At least it does at this moment in time.We have added this last qualification because this seems to be a particularly labile and uncertain period in the history of sharing and communication between people, indeed a period of profound transition, likely to be of as much historical significance as the transition from handwriting to printing via moveable type. Even before the internet, in 1962, Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase "global village" for the effect of the uniform perspective produced by printing, a format which produced multiple and identical copies of the same text that imposed the fixed view of an "author" upon a local ("village") mindset . While oEnvironmental Health, has an added advantage: We can follow the numbers of downloads occurring at our website. As articles can also be downloaded from the PubMed Central server at the US National Library of Medicine, we count only the approximately 50% that occur directly from our own website. This information is available with the top-20 list of most frequently accessed articles at our website, and authors can track the numbers of downloads their own articles have received. The all-time top-20 list shows highly popular articles, all of them downloaded over 10,000 times from our journal server.An electronic OA journal, such as From a modest start in 2002, the first article published was only accessed 49 times during the following month. Less than a year later, we had over 1,000 downloads per month, and the total number of downloads in May, 2010 was 48,988. However, there are now 289 published articles available OA. As most downloads usually occur within the first year after publication, we therefore generated a graph that shows the total number of downloads month by month divided by the total number of articles published during the previous year , both the control and financing of scientific and other information dissemination has shifted dramatically, leaving conventional print publishers of periodicals and newspapers floundering as they try to adapt to a new and difficult economic landscape.In this new land it is likely that both the meaning and means of "having an impact" will change and the degree and way in which scientific journals will be "factors" in that impact will change with them, perhaps in dramatic and unforeseen ways. While we have reached one kind of milestone in the life of what is now a mature and established scientific periodical that uses an emerging and increasingly dominant form, the journey is only begun. No one knows what the road ahead looks like, where it leads and what will be considered "milestones" as we move forward from here.So far, it's been an adventure.BMC: BioMed Central; IF: Impact Factor; ISI: Institute for Scientific Information; MEDLARS: Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System; OA: Open Access.DO and PG are founding editors-in-chief of Environmental Health.DO drafted the first version of the manuscript, and both authors contributed to and approved the final version.


Journal of Foot and Ankle Research was launched one year ago, and a number of its key achievements are highlighted in this editorial. Although the journal is underpinned by professional bodies associated with the podiatry professions in the UK and Australasia, its content is aimed at the wider foot and ankle research community. Nevertheless, the journal's achievements over the past year reflect the development of research in the profession of podiatry. From this perspective, the journal may be viewed as contributing to the overall attainment of some of the profession's key goals and strategic aims over the last decade, across the UK and Australasia. The journal has also witnessed policy changes in the last year, and these are discussed - notably, the decision not to accept case reports for publication. We also report on a few of the key metrics, providing readers with a summary of the journal's performance over the last year. Journal of the Foot and Ankle Research (JFAR) was launched, and the editors are able to report positively on its progress. In that time, the journal has received, as demonstrated by the statistics below, a considerable range of research papers illustrating a wide diversity of relevant topics. The papers accepted for publication demonstrate the scope and range of research being conducted within the foot and ankle arena. It is certainly true that, to date, the majority of papers have been authored by researchers from within the podiatry profession. As the journal is funded by the Australasian Podiatry Council and the UK Society of Chiropodists and Podiatrists, this is perhaps hardly surprising. Nevertheless, it is far from exclusively podiatric research that features in its pages, a fact that reflects the wider aims of the journal. Yet, to pause for a moment on the state of research within podiatry, it is probably relevant to reflect on the upward trajectory of research in the profession, in terms of its profile, range and rigour.It is now one year since Podiatric research has been a significant factor in ensuring that this journal is able to pursue one of its aims in becoming a truly international outlet. Credit for this trend is, perhaps, more difficult to attribute, although educational changes in the profession have almost certainly influenced the increase in the practice and profile of research. It is probably fair to say that research has assumed a greater priority across the allied health professions in Australasia and the UK over the last 20 years, illustrated by the volume and breadth of its published research, and it may not be coincidental that both nations have witnessed a significant change in their professional educational status over that time, both at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Education in Australasian and British podiatry has not always been at graduate level, and it is, perhaps, easy to forget that graduate status in UK and Australian podiatry was introduced in the 1980s, and only fully replacing a vocational, clinically orientated, professional award by the early 1990s. A similar picture has characterised developments in New Zealand [In the UK, the development of a degree programme at the Polytechnic of Central London in the mid 1980s signalled the start of the progression towards a fully graduate profession, and merits comment as a major landmark in the overall process . In CanaJFAR is potentially one of the key outlets for the publication of podiatric research, and is one of only seven foot and ankle journals listed in the PubMed database.Let us take the UK as an exemplar. What is clear is that none of these changes happened by chance - they were part of a clear strategic intention . The NatJFAR would only publish case reports if they "provide unique or important additional insights into the causes or treatment of foot and ankle disorders" [Cases Journal [Journal of Medical Case Reports [Cases Journal, edited by the former editor of the British Medical Journal, Dr Richard Smith, will publish "any case that is ethical and understandable", and the eventual goal of the Cases Network is to develop a large, searchable database of thousands of cases from all fields of healthcare practice.In our first editorial, we stated that sorders" . Howeversorders" , an inte Journal  and Jour Reports  - both oCases Journal. In order to facilitate JFAR readers' access to relevant case reports, we have established a JFAR blog [Cases Journal or Journal of Medical Case Reports are now linked to the main JFAR webpage. At the time of writing this editorial, 40 foot and ankle case reports had been linked to the website, covering topics as diverse as foot and ankle trauma, congenital lower limb deformities and infectious diseases. Please note that because Cases Journal is published independently of JFAR, all submissions are subject to an article processing charge, which is currently £199/US$330/€230/AUD$350.To support this worthwhile initiative, we urge our readers to submit their case report papers to FAR blog , and allpost-hoc changes were made to the study design, and whether any unplanned statistical analysis (sometimes referred to as "data-dredging") was undertaken. The overall goal of publishing study protocols is therefore to improve transparency in the conduct of research and to minimise bias. In keeping with the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, all clinical trials submitted to JFAR must be registered.Readers unaccustomed to study protocols may have been somewhat perplexed by two papers published in the journal that described the rationale and methods for two randomised controlled trials in detail, but provided no results ,23. BioMth of July, 2008 and when this editorial was written , JFAR had received 71 manuscripts. Of these, 36 were accepted for publication, 20 were rejected, 3 were withdrawn, and 11 are currently undergoing peer review. The acceptance rate during the first year of the journal was therefore 51%. Of the published manuscripts, there were 25 original research papers, 5 reviews, two study protocols, two commentaries, one methodology article and one editorial. In September 2008, we also published a supplement containing abstracts of papers presented at the 1st Congress of the International Foot and Ankle Biomechanics Community [Between the launch of the journal on the 28ommunity .Published manuscripts represented the full spectrum of topic areas we originally envisaged in our first editorial , namely JFAR website automatically tracks the number of accesses to each paper. For our first year of publication, the top ten most frequently accessed papers [JFAR papers are also accessible as full-text through PubMed Central [The d papers -36 are l Central .JFAR, it is initially reviewed by the editors, and if considered worthy of consideration, then undergoes the following processes:When a manuscript is submitted to (i) the manuscript is assigned to one of the editors, who is responsible for managing the peer review process;(ii) two or three peer reviewers are contacted and invited to review the manuscript;(iii) once the reviewers have accepted the invitation, they are sent the manuscript as a PDF file and are asked to complete the review;(iv) completed reviews are sent to the authors;(v) if the paper is considered to be worthy of consideration, the authors are asked to resubmit a revised version of the manuscript;(vi) depending on the initial recommendation of the peer reviewers and the adequacy of the authors' responses, the manuscript is either editorially accepted, or sent for a second review (repeating steps iii to iv);(vii) once accepted, the manuscript is forwarded to the editorial production team;(viii) the editorial production team liaises with the authors to correct any formatting issues;(ix) the manuscript is published as a provisional PDF file;(x) the editorial production team liaises with the authors regarding the final html proof version of the manuscript;(xi) the final PDF version of the paper is published.JFAR editorial team strives for rapid manuscript handling and peer review, and our goal is to have the peer review process completed within three months. For our first year of publication, the median time taken from the initial submission of the paper to the final editorial decision was 97 days, which indicates that we are on target to meet this goal.Although the timing of many of these processes is under our control , many are not . Nevertheless, the JFAR website have been tracked using Google Analytics [The magnitude and characteristics of traffic on the nalytics  since NoAll journals rely on the unpaid efforts of peer reviewers to assess the quality of submitted manuscripts. A list of peer reviewers who assisted the journal in its first year is provided in Table All authors assisted with drafting the manuscript, and all authors read and approved the final manuscript.