Virology Journal will publish background sections of approved dissertations or theses as Review Articles. May is graduation time. Over the years I have observed that a large amount of graduate student labor is spent on producing a comprehensive background section for dissertations or theses. Often, only the student and their committee  are the only ones who ever read or benefit from this effort. Virology Journal will provide a mechanism for timely dissemination of this valuable information to the broader scientific community by publishing these background sections as Review Articles. Peer review will be expedited based on the notion that this background section will have already been stringently reviewed by a university committee. There are a few stipulations:1. The review should relate principally to viruses, prions or similar infectious agents.2. The dissertation/thesis has been approved by a Master's or Doctoral university committee, and all requirements for the degree have been met.3. The background section was written not more than two years ago. This requirement is in part to accommodate recent graduates, especially those of Katrina-affected institutions. In the future this requirement will be changed to not more than one year out-of-date.4. This review is a single-author publication. The author's mentor and dissertation/thesis advising committee must be listed by name in the acknowledgement section. Virology Journal considers multi-authored reviews, but these are subject to the normal course of external peer review.5. The penultimate section should be a brief summary of the experimental results obtained in the dissertation/thesis appropriately referenced.6. The final section should be a brief biographical summary of the author.7. Journal formatting must be followed, including references.8. As in all reviews, all permissions for figures published elsewhere must be obtained.9. Article fees will follow standard BMC policy. Fee waivers will be considered on a case-by-case basis.Please feel free to contact me directly, if you require any additional information about this new Virology Journal feature.I am the Editor-in-Chief of Virology Journal.I wrote this article. Several graduate students and colleagues have suggested similar mechanisms over the years.


It is our pleasure to welcome you to the new website of Allergy, Asthma & Clinical Immunology (AACI). Allergy, Asthma & Clinical Immunology (AACI), as an open access journal published by BioMed Central, the pioneering open access publisher.I would like to welcome you to AACI is the official Journal of the Canadian Society of Allergy & Clinical Immunology (CSACI), one of the oldest medical specialty societies in Canada and dedicated to the advancement of the knowledge and practice of allergy, clinical immunology, and asthma, and the provision of optimal patient care. AACI will publish both basic science manuscripts in allergy & immunology, as well as clinical research and review articles in these areas. We welcome manuscripts from anywhere in the World, for peer review.Canadian Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, and in 2004 became Allergy, Asthma & Clinical Immunology. We, the Editors-in Chief of AACI and the Board of Directors of CSACI, have decided that our journal should become an open-access journal because we believe that medical knowledge should be freely available to all, not just those with access to libraries or the financial ability to subscribe to medical journals. We accept that "Only presidents, editors and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial we."- Mark TwainOur journal was founded in 1996, as the We would ask all authors to remember the words of Francis Crick, that "There is no form of prose more difficult to understand and more tedious to read, than the average scientific paper." We appreciate your efforts not to make this true of your manuscripts, since "No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft."- H.G. WellsIn reviewing the available journals for publication in this field, most still require subscription, and so we hope that our open-access format will be attractive to those authors who wish to have their work available to the greatest number of researchers, clinicians, and others, wherever they are, if they have access to the Internet. We are excited about the future success of AACI, given the many benefits the open access format will afford our journal.


It is an honour and pleasure to write an editorial for the Middle East African Journal of Ophthalmology (MEAJO).The editorial board of MEAJO met during the MEACO meeting in Bahrain and expressed their commitment to ensure the journal publishes high quality manuscripts that fulfil the scope of the journal. This is indeed a big challenge and a joint responsibility of the ophthalmologists in the region to conduct high quality scientific research and share their work through publications. The editorial board will extend limited assistance in English editing. However, the submitted manuscripts will henceforth undergo strict scientific peer review paying close attention to methods to abide international guidelines for scientific publications.Many ophthalmic institutions now include evidence based medicine as part of the undergraduate and postgraduate curricula. Even during the process of accreditation and promotion of ophthalmologists in these institutions, considerable importance is given to research and publications. We encourage all budding scientists and ophthalmologists therefore to properly plan research studies and publish the results of their research in MEAJO. This journal has a wide readership in Asian and African continents. Recently the journal has been made available online. Thus articles can be easily accessible to a wider audience without cost.During the MEACO meeting, societies for subspecialties in ophthalmology were formed. A theme issue for each subspecialty will be published in MEAJO. This will give a platform for the experts in the region and internationally to share their scientific work and express expert views.Clinical ophthalmology keeps the ophthalmic practioner busy. However, to improve their own skills, they should also introspect, raise scientific queries and get evidence based answers.Obtaining clinically relevant information from attending international meetings is widely popular among ophthalmologists. This is an important activity for an ophthalmogist to improve their skills. However, the presentations are often influenced by observer bias. In addition, presentations do not undergo critical peer review and hence their content should be carefully interpreted and adopted only after the data appears in peer reviewed journals.Those keen on publishing their research in good journals must pay attention to ethical, epidemiological and statistical aspects of their studies especially during the planning stage. One should understand that randomized clinical trials and longitudinal studies provide evidence that are superior in quality when compared to case reports and case series.The articles in this edition cover a variety of subjects. In the VISION 2020 initiative uncorrected refractive error and low vision is a priority within the disease control strategy.et al. in their review article compared refractive error and other eye problems in 13 to 15 years old urban and rural students in a state of India. The prevalence of myopia was higher in students of urban schools. They also suggested that the strategies for screening and intervention should differ in rural compared to urban schools.Padhye et al. It is interesting to note that all fifty children had impaired contrast sensitivity. This observation needs further studies and if found consistent, intervention by environmental changes as well as providing non-optical aids could benefit them.4The baseline and one year follow up information on children with low vision disability that were given low vision optical aids was authored by Sabra et al. confirmed this observation. If poor and good visual outcomes are grouped and odds of having diabetes or non diabetes in these two outcomes were studied, it would fit the description of a case control study. Here patients with cataract were grouped as those with diabetes and those without diabetes. They were followed after cataract surgeries and visual outcomes were evaluated. Hence this seems more like a cohort study.Diabetes is a known risk factor that affects visual outcome and recovery following cataract surgery.et al. reviewed hospital based data of five years and analysed the present pattern of eye diseases seen in a hospital of Nigeria. Although visual acuity and causes of impairment are presented, they may not represent a catchment area and hence formulation of public health approach on its basis will be difficult.Waziri-Erameh It is evident that all authors have sincerely undertaken research to the best of their capacity and published the outcomes. However, I encourage the authors to use the pilot data published in this issue to conduct additional focused studies with input from epidemiologists and statisticians that would create studies that would have a significant impact on eye care in the region.


As the open access movement begins revolutionizing the publication of publicly funded biomedical research, it is time to ensure access to important scientific discoveries and opinions within and across the disciplines which have direct bearing on health and quality of life in resource poor settings and in countries of the world where library budgets are seriously shrinking. In this concern, the area of enteric infectious diseases and gut health has been of paramount significance. For example, the enteric infections that cause diarrhoeal diseases already constitute one of the top 10 causes of death and kill approximately 1.81 million people in the developing world , a figure which is more dramatic and alarming than the number of deaths associated with tuberculosis and malaria put together (Source: The WHO) [Gut Pathogens with the aim of providing a high-quality forum for research on enteric infections of humans and animals. The journal led by three Editors-in-Chief and supported by a highly qualified and organized international Editorial Board [To this end, the International Society for Genomic and Evolutionary Microbiology (ISOGEM) in collaboration with BioMed Central Ltd. has launched al Board  publisheGut Pathogens is also mandated to publish scholarly reviews and other opinionated articles related to microbial etiology of gut ailments; microbial invasion mechanisms; bacterial toxins and virulence factors of the pathogens of gut and associated glands ; bacterial adaptation and evolution of pathogenicity; molecular and serological diagnoses; treatment, vaccines and antimicrobial resistance mechanisms; molecular epidemiology, transmission dynamics and evolutionary genetics and comparative and veterinary infectious diseases of the gut.Besides publication of peer-reviewed research articles and case reports, Gut Pathogens to be seen also as a timely initiative to serve communities associated with a) biology and ecology of gut pathogens, the commensals and the probiotic species [The field of medical microbiology has expanded tremendously in the aftermath of genomic revolution , and mic species ,8 in hea species ,10 and o species ,12.Gut Pathogens shall be committed to the open access publication policy – the concept that has revolutionized research access to communities and that was recently endorsed by major funding agencies including the NIH and the Wellcome Trust. In addition to its embracement of open access, Gut Pathogens shall also aim to support the concept of Science 2.0 [As like all BioMed Central journals, ence 2.0  by proviGut Pathogens will always strive to assist scientists and clinicians in this endeavor by translating the most recent advances for the benefit of patients.In the near future, medical and biosciences communities will need to possibly consider novel findings and paradigms that are emerging in the aftermath of genome sequencing and metagenomics of the gut microorganisms. Also, those who diagnose and treat patients with enteric disorders will need to understand the nature and complexities of the interactions of the so called 'invaders'  with our


As you have perhaps just noted, Acta Orthopaedica has changed format to the one used by most journals today. The decision to abandon the smaller format, used since the start of Acta in 1930, was not easy; it was, in fact a rather emotional one. The editorial board and most readers really liked the small, handy format—designed to fit into the pocket of a white coat. In a way, it symbolized Acta's ethos. The main reason for changing was, alas, economic.www.actaorthop.orgWe need to lower our production costs because of Open Access, which we started in 2005. This means that all our articles are accessible as full text—for everyone, at no cost—via PubMed immediately after the printed version has been published. We do not use the common system of delayed Open Access with articles that first become freely available 6–12 months after publication or are free to subscribers only. This, in turn, means that one important source of income, library subscriptions, will diminish. Furthermore, all articles published since the start in 1930 are free to everyone on Acta's website at Open Access, by definition free of charge to users, has to be paid for by someone: “there ain't no such thing as a free lunch”. Many journals have introduced page charges for authors to cover the costs. Acta Orthopaedica has decided that Open Access should also be without costs for authors, which means that we have to cut production costs. At present we are breaking even, but in a couple of years, unless we find other sources of income, Acta will perhaps also have to introduce page charges, to compensate for increasing general costs, unchanged subscription fees for members, and the reduced number of library subscriptions that will come in the foreseeable future. A drastic way of cutting costs would be to stop printing Acta on paper. However, we believe that most readers  still love the smell and feel of paper and papers.The time between submission and acceptance has been reduced. Four-fifths of all submitting authors get an answer within 6 weeks. For the circa 20% manuscripts accepted after peer review, most are ready for publishing within 3–4 months . The mean time between acceptance and publication on paper is around 6 months. We try to reduce it, but since we have a rather lean production line, we do not foresee a major reduction—and this is perhaps not even desirable. One reason is that we try to publish articles on the same subject together in the same issue, often accompanied by an Editorial. This means that some of the articles have to wait until the latest one to be submitted is ready for publication. To reduce the time between acceptance and publication, like many other journals Acta will now start online pre-publication. This means that the article will be available through Open Access on PubMed (“Epub ahead of print”) almost immediately after the author proofs have been corrected. Thus, the time between acceptance/electronic publishing and print publication will be of less importance.acta.ort@med.lu.se! After all, we are a non-profit organization, owned by the NOF members: our purpose is to spread knowledge—not wealth.If you have any opinions on the future development of Acta Orthopaedica, or on other issues for that matter, please e-mail us at


Cases Journal and the Journal of Medical Case Reports were part of BioMed Central, which, as many readers have noticed, has been sold to Springer Science+Business Media. Cases Journal and the Journal of Medical Case Reports have not, however, been sold. Instead they will join together with Cases Database to form Cases Network. Both of these developments are good news for science and medicine.Until recently The sale of BioMed Central to Springer Science+Business Media is good news because it both demonstrates how the open access model can work in business terms and brings open access into mainstream science publishing. It's still my belief, as it has been for more than a decade, that all science will be open access eventually, and the sale was an important step. I've been talking recently to an academic colleague who has moved from a university in London to a position in pubic health research in India. Suddenly he struggles to access information. He is denied one of the fundamental tools of his trade, and it's immoral that practitioners and hence their patients and populations should be so denied when almost all of the information he needs has been funded with public money. Traditional publishers are denying access to life saving information.The sale is also good news for Cases Network because it brings resources for investment and means that the senior managers can concentrate on developing the network. We can move faster with implementing a vision of achieving the best available collection of case reports.Journal of Medical Case Reports has already established itself as a high quality journal publishing case reports that are both important and original. Each case published there carries an important message.The Cases Journal is also important - but in a different way. Cases Journal aims to celebrate the extraordinary in the ordinary. When we look closely every case is special and different just as every person is special and every face is different. We want to publish tens of thousands of cases, and we still have to achieve "lift off." We have published over 550 cases since we launched in May, but we need to increase that at least ten fold. Our challenge, which I relish, is to change a medical mindset that says that writing and publishing are for "pointy heads" not for ordinary practitioners.Every case published in Better: "For all its complexity…Because medicine is a retail enterprise, because doctors provide their services to one person after another, it can be a grind. You can lose your larger sense of purpose, but writing lets you step back and think through a problem. Even the angriest rant forces the writer to achieve a degree of thoughtfulness."["Ordinary" practitioners (and soon we may ban the word ordinary because closely examined nothing is ordinary) should write and publish for two interlocked reasons. Firstly, they benefit themselves. Writing opens up thoughts you never knew you had and pushes you towards precision. As the surgeon Atul Gawande writes in his marvelous book fulness."But more importantly what you may think of as ordinary or even boring can be contributed to the database and become part of something very valuable. Gawande quotes Lewis Thomas, the great biologist, quoting John Ziman, the great physicist,  as saying: "The invention of a mechanism for the systematic publication of 'fragments' of scientific work may well have been the key event in the history of modern science." The development of Web 2.0 allows the publication of fragments, case histories, in a way that was never possible before. You could argue that as a practitioner you have a duty not just to treat your individual patients but also to contribute to the broader whole.Because the third part of the Cases Network will be a database of cases with a highly sophisticated search engine that will allow practitioners to find cases very similar to those that they are treating and to discover what happened to them. Guidelines, as we know, are poor at giving guidance on patients with comorbidities, which is the everyday stuff of medicine, and accessing the database will give invaluable information.  What migCases Journal, [If "ordinary" doctors will submit "ordinary" cases then we can develop the raw material for a hugely useful database. As Enzo Grossi has explained in an editorial in Journal,  it is no


Parasites & Vectors – a new open access journal published by BioMed Central. The scope of Parasites & Vectors is wide, and encompasses all aspects of the biology of parasites, parasitic disease, intermediate hosts and vectors. Broader issues, such as economics, the social sciences and global climate change in relation to disease and disease control, will also be included. Two previous BioMed Central journals, Filaria Journal and Kinetoplastid Biology and Disease, are now incorporated into Parasites & Vectors, and I hope that the communities that supported these journals will also support this new venture.I am pleased to announce the launch of Parasites & Vectors will be competing head-on with a number of existing subscription-based journals. However, I firmly believe that there is a niche for the new journal. The reason for this belief can be summarised in three words: 'online' and 'open access', both areas in which BioMed Central has great experience and an excellent track record.Parasites & Vectors is published exclusively online. Articles will follow a consistent format so that the visual impact will be high and equal to that of the best hard-copy publications. In contrast to paper-based journals, however, the electronic format allows the full use of digital technologies and permits the inclusion of large data sets, from field and laboratory studies, links to other web pages, animations, slide shows, video clips and unlimited colour, all at no additional charge. Articles are published online on the day of acceptance and, soon after, listed in PubMed. To ensure permanency they are also archived in PubMed Central [ Central  and in d Central , France  Central  and The  Central . Open acParasites & Vectors, as in other open access journals, these costs are borne by the author in the form of article processing charges (APCs). Many grant-awarding bodies recognise the value of open access publishing by allowing their funds to be used for APCs [In hard-copy journals, the costs of publication are met by subscriptions, paid by the reader. In for APCs . Institufor APCs , whilst for APCs  and otheInstitute for Scientific Information to ensure that citation analysis of articles published in Parasites & Vectors will be available as soon as possible.I do not foresee that open access, online journals will totally replace the traditional print format in the immediate future, although this may be an increasing trend with time. I am certain, however, that the benefits of online publication, and the extra opportunities that digital technologies give to authors, will be increasingly recognised. Open access will transform the lives of scientists working in parts of the world where library facilities are restricted. BioMed Central is working closely with the Parasites & Vectors will rapidly attract high quality manuscripts. Articles in Parasites & Vectors are peer-reviewed by at least two experts, drawn from the Editorial Board and the wider parasitological community. With the assistance of the Advisory and Editorial Boards [I believe that l Boards  I shall Parasites & Vectors, its scope, refereeing policy and types of articles considered, please click on the link 'About Parasites & Vectors' at the top of this page. I look forward to receiving your manuscripts.For more information on


British Medical Journal for 25 years, has argued that the drug industry has become reliant on the publication of industry-funded studies that are published in major journals to give the research a “stamp of approval,” distribute the conclusions globally, and even attract media coverage  hosted a day-long workshop to discuss disclosure policies for health science journals. Participants included journal editors, other journal staff, academic scientists, scientific consultants, ethics experts, and publishing-house representatives. The product of the workshop is an NRDC report  in whichJournal staff should clearly identify how far back they wish their journal policy on competing interests to extend, considering what is appropriate for the journal. Under no circumstances should policies be limited only to current conflicts. The public statement should be no more than a few sentences and should include relevant patents, employment, collaborations, consulting, and so on, that could be seen as a possible competing interests. If no competing interests are disclosed, then this should be stated in the public statement.The disclosure policy should address both financial and nonmonetary relevant competing interests. If authors declare competing interests to the journal, they should also declare approximate monetary value.A strong competing interest policy requires that all authors declare that the manuscript is free from the sponsor’s influence. Many journals already incorporate some kind of statement regarding the role of the funding source. If there was no such involvement, then a statement to that effect could be provided.Disclosure policies should apply to all authors and should also be extended to peer reviewers and journal editors, where “editors” include all of the people who are involved in the peer-review and decision-making processes about articles; this would exclude others involved in the editing process, such as copy editors, managing editors, and proofreaders. For editors and for authors of review articles and editorials, a greater level of scrutiny and public disclosure to the reader is warranted because these circumstances may influence the selection of the science that will be reviewed or published.As a rule of thumb, disclosures must include any financial interests that could constitute a potential source of bias—or of perceived bias—in the eyes of the general public, the media, the scientific community, peer reviewers, or editors. The NRDC  recommenAll financial interests must be disclosed. This includes but is not limited to employment, clients, honoraria, travel expenses, grants, and litigation support. The approximate monetary value of any financial interests must be declared and should distinguish between funding for research and monies paid to the author. Disclosures should include anticipated future competing interests, and past competing interests going back a minimum of three years. Any other competing interests or potentially competing interests, financial or other that, when known to the public could compromise the standing or integrity of the journal, peer reviewers or author should be disclosed. The journal editors will then decide how best to manage these.The public statement (as well as the detailed listing of competing interests) should be written in language such that the average person would be able to identify a potential competing interest. A mere listing of funding sources for a study or the author’s salary or honoraria is not adequate if most readers are not able to establish the link to a potential source of bias.EHP strengthened its policy in 2004 to allow a 3-year ban for authors found to “have willfully failed to disclose a competing interest” (All participants of the NRDC workshop agreed that enforcing a policy is critical to making it effective. All workshop participants agreed that disclosure policies boil down to a mechanism in which disclosure enables peer reviewers and other professionals in the same field to alert journal staff if authors fail to disclose appropriately. If an author is found to have failed to disclose competing interests appropriately and further refuses to disclose in response to a request by the journal staff, punitive methods could include retraction of the article or banning the author from publishing in that journal for a specified length of time. nterest” . The jouBecause the critical issue underlying disclosure is the reliability of the information being reported in a manuscript, NRDC workshop participants also suggested that journals could conduct random audits in which authors of a randomly selected article are asked by the journal for a more detailed data report, potentially including submission of raw data.Many of the most respected scientific and medical journals have instituted effective, practical disclosure policies. Although these policies may differ from journal to journal, they share certain elements that can be adapted to the specific needs of any journal. Given the importance of the scientific literature in guiding consumer and industrial health policy, it should be the goal of all journals to ensure integrity in the articles they publish. Strong disclosure policies are a critical tool for achieving this goal.


The Chief Editor of AoB PLANTS highlights some of the key features of this new online, open access journal for plant biologist and sets out some of the reasons for starting. AoB PLANTS it is a pleasure to introduce this new internationally peer-reviewed, Open Access (OA) journal, owned and run by plant biologists and publishing on all aspects of plant biology. AoB PLANTS is being published by Oxford University Press for the Annals of Botany Company, a long-standing not-for-profit organization exclusively concerned with supporting plant biology internationally. AoB PLANTS complements the AoB Company's flagship journal Annals of Botany. The initial motivation for AoB PLANTS was a sustained and sizeable increase in submissions to Annals of Botany over a number of years, resulting in the rejection of many valuable and important papers which the journal simply could not accommodate. To cater for the general increase in high-quality manuscripts, AoB PLANTS was designed as an online-only journal, not restricted by page extent limitations, and which could use the potential of OA publishing to make its articles available quickly to the widest possible readership. Responses to our recent wide-ranging online questionnaire indicated strong demand for a journal such as AoB PLANTS.As the first Chief Editor of AoB PLANTS to adopt OA. Open Access helps sidestep library budgets which are struggling to cope with the increasing numbers of journals available, and it makes research freely available to the academic community and beyond. By replacing library subscriptions with modest fees from authors or their supporting institutions, OA is more sustainable than the subscription-based model in an environment where research and paper publication are increasing. This antidote to mounting subscription costs for libraries carries the enormous bonus of giving readers both within and outside the university/research institution system unrestricted access to the most up-to-date information that is available on the internet.Several difficulties in conventional publishing of peer-reviewed science encouraged AoB PLANTS recognizes that research funds are often hard-won. Accordingly, it will make every effort to minimize the costs to authors. This policy is in keeping with the Journal's not-for-profit ethos. For an initial period, authors will pay no fees, all costs being paid in full by the Journal's owners. In order to remain sustainable, authors will start to be charged at a later stage. However, the cost will increase slowly in several stages but remain highly competitive.The instant accessibility afforded by OA has been shown to increase PDF downloads in the first 6 months after publication. Thus, readers are more likely to make use of an article if it is published in OA—surely the desired outcome for both authors and their sponsors. In the longer term, citation levels may also benefit from OA. Not surprisingly therefore, OA publishing enjoys the support of numerous large national and international funding organizations. These include: US National Institutes of Health; The Wellcome Trust; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); UK research councils such as the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. These endorsements by major funders of research indicate a move towards OA as the preferred publishing option. They rest on the principle that OA is a way of upholding the public's right to access publicly-funded research without payment and at the earliest opportunity.Publishing online-only also eliminates the need to reject good manuscripts simply to control the size of the printed journal. Finally, the journal chose to go OA to ensure the widest possible international readership for the growing amount of high-quality plant science being carried out worldwide in response to problems such as climate change and food shortages.There is a plethora of open access journals, including one or two for plant scientists. However, what has been missing until now is a genuinely broad spectrum OA journal managed by plant scientists for plant scientists and one not driven primarily by commercial ambition.AoB PLANTS intend the new Journal to be a long-term success. The journal's management will take a flexible and adaptive approach to publishing AoB PLANTS ensuring that it will evolve to satisfy new needs as they arise, exploit new opportunities and deliver content as effectively as possible to the widest virtual community. Many OA journals are highly specialized and cater for narrow subject areas. AoB PLANTS will deliver research from all specialties to the entire plant science community.All involved with AoB PLANTS. Publishing authors' manuscripts immediately after acceptance ensures that research is available as soon as possible to readers, before the final version is produced to a very high standard with the help of a sizeable Editorial Board drawn from many countries. I believe these features, coupled to the long-term commitment of an internationally renowned first-division publisher (Oxford University Press), and absence of author fees for an introductory period are a winning combination that will attract the confidence of plant biologists worldwide.Short summaries of each paper, the use of structured abstracts of generous length, and the insistence that Introductions to each paper are aimed at non-specialists will appeal to the widest possible range of readers and give maximum exposure to every paper published in


Perhaps it is a sad commentary that both in medicine and dentistry, most of the information today is conveyed through the spoken media, in particular, the continuing education circuit. Nonetheless, this is understandable because the life of an average professional has become both busy and too good to take undivided time to read, learn, and critically think.To do a job well requires skills and knowledge. Dental education followed by postgraduate training provides the clinician with a set of very useful skills. With the improvements in endodontic instruments, however, clinicians' manual skills might have become less critical. But how about knowledge? Is it possible for any clinician to rigorously test the new materials in the market and reach a conclusion on whether to adopt the latest innovation or not? A good clinician is the one who betters himself/herself continually by testing his/her skills constantly, increases his/her knowledge of the tissues he/she is affecting, assesses the outcomes of his/her treatment, and is keen to deliver the form of treatment that meets the patient's desires best. Said differently, a true clinician seeks wisdom and truth in himself/herself and in what is around. This is exactly where a journal helps and supplements a clinician's quest for perfection.Journals separate truth from a collection of facts, as do the academic establishments with their curricula. In the world around, oftentimes, what one sees is not what it is – such is the case in a magic show. For the most part, as it is entertainment and is harmless, one chooses to be amazed rather than to go to the backstage and discover how it is really done. In matters of our profession, however, we seek the truth, and more significantly, we want to seek it ourselves. Instinctively, we do not believe everything we hear, certainly not before we had a chance to test it against our standards of truth. This is a form of peer-review process. Talking is cheap; anyone can say anything he/she wants in a society where free speech is guaranteed by the constitution. But a speech (lecture) is meaningless if the proof is lacking. Newspapers too, in the absence of supporting data in their columns, become tabloids. Proof, accreditation standards (for academic institutions), substance, truth, and the like, are the building blocks of better knowledge.In contrast, journals print only what is judged to be truthful. Journal articles are reports of scientific studies conducted with rigorous standards as judged through the peer-review process. Unlike a textbook, journals present the truth while review papers or textbooks express the opinions of their authors. In contrast, journals that publish the breakthrough information originating from experimental research data are the instruments of advancement.The growth of any profession is based not only on the amount of research and publications on materials and techniques but also, more importantly, on the proportion of fellow professionals who READ these publications and put them into practice! Knowledge can be researched, published, and shared but knowledge which is not read and imbibed is useless. Hence, the philosophy of “publish or perish” has to go hand in hand with the philosophy of “read or become redundant.”The endeavor of the Journal of Conservative Dentistry is not only to provide a platform for the dissemination of knowledge being generated in our field across the country but also to be the harbinger of change and betterment in clinical practice amongst professionals.Keep reading….


A couple of months ago, I was asked to speak on ‘How to Write a Scientific Paper,’ at a local state meeting. I made a list of points to be covered, but the focus in the end was on what not to do, rather than on what to do.Essentially,Please do not write case reports – more than 80% of the case reports will be rejected.Please do not plagiarize. Write in your own language.Please get the article checked by someone well-versed in English writing, especially if English is not your first language.Please follow the ‘Guidelines for Authors’ strictly.I am not even starting with the scientific content, statistical analysis, and other issues that are required to create a good article. What I am talking about here is very basic stuff that applies to anything composed in ink on paper or nowadays on a computer.And yet, more than 80% of all articles submitted do not even adhere to these basic rules. Earlier we used to spend a lot of time and effort correcting these articles, getting the spelling, grammar, and language checked, and hand-holding the authors. However, this has led to our inability to focus on the bigger issues and is bogging us down. The two-fold increase in submissions, after the journal has become indexed, is also not helping. As a result, the IJRI, over the last quarter, has decided that if an article is badly written, irrespective of its merit, it will be rejected, with one chance given to the author to get the article rewritten by someone who knows how to write.The current issue carries an article by Shantanu Ghosh, from the Behavioral and Cognitive Science Laboratory of the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi. Ordinarily, this article would be considered too technical for a general purpose journal such as the IJRI, but the reason for including this article titled, ‘Functional Mapping of Language Networks in the Normal Brain using a Word-Association Task,’ is simply to showcase what good research is all about. I wanted to bring out the fact that it is possible to do good work and write it, while sticking to the guidelines. Although the subject matter is not a core clinical topic, it serves as a guide to what is possible.The issue also carries case reports on MRI of the brain in cerebral malaria, acute reversible toxic encephalopathy, and metronidazole toxicity, all essentially showing how the brain reacts to acute and subacute insults.We continue our focus on local interventional radiology, with an article on MRI-guided breast biopsy from a center that has done the first few ones in our country.As the journal continues to grow in stature, it is now necessary to expand the number of active editors working with the journal. Over the next two-to-three months, we will have speciality-based internal editors, who will also become more hands-on in the actual evaluation of the articles and the creation of quarterly issues. If you believe you have the qualifications for this or know someone who does, please let me know. Hopefully, in the years to come, this will create a talent pool of radiologists who are well-versed in editing journals and who will be able to carry the torch forward.


Chiropractic & Osteopathy was first published in 1992.Chiropractic & Osteopathy, the official journal of the Chiropractic & Osteopathic College of Australasia (COCA), was known then as the COMSIG Review . This changed to the Australasian Chiropractic and Osteopathy journal in 1996 and in 2005 became Chiropractic & Osteopathy.The first edition of what was to become the journal, Chiropractic & Osteopathy provides a scientific forum for the publication of such research." The intent of the journal is stated as "Chiropractic & Osteopathy will encompass all aspects of evidenced-based information that is relevant to chiropractors, osteopaths and related health care professionals. [The rationale for the journal was stated clearly in 2005:  "There isionals.  The JourIt is therefore an appropriate time to look back over the last three years and assess the extent to which the journal has achieved these goals. Ultimately you are what you do not what you say, however, in journals it might be more correct to say you are what you are allowed to be. That is, the content of a journal is driven by what is submitted, by feedback from peer-reviewers, what the readership will read and purchase, and by what the editors would like to see the journal publish. In this article we will examine the data presented by what has been published to draw some conclusions about the likely impact of the journal and perhaps the future. While the latter are speculative, they are based on the data of the journal itself. So we might claim it is grounded speculation.From the above we can infer some objectives the journal hoped to accomplish. The journal was to be:1. a journal for both chiropractic and osteopathy2. an international journal3. a journal that publishes evidence regarding the claims of chiropractic and osteopathy4. a journal that publishes evidence collected across a wide range of sources from primary research to reviews to case studies5. a journal that that encourages commentaries on important issuesWe reviewed all abstracts for articles published from 2005 to 2008.a priori classification scheme, two reviewers categorized each article published from the inception of the journal in April 2005 to September 12, 2008. We categorized the domain of knowledge, methods, topical content, year of publication, country of origin, whether articles represented core values of chiropractic or osteopathic health care. These were then categorized in numerous ways to generate data tables used in this paper. We then reviewed articles as exemplars of the content for categories. We reconciled differences by discussion and consensus.Using an Eighty-three (83) full length articles were published in the journal from April 2005 to September 12, 2008. The results are organized in terms of the five objectives of the journal as originally stated and we examine the evidence to see if the objective has been achieved or not.Chiropractic & Osteopathy the predominance of articles are focused on chiropractic. Of the 83 articles published since 2005, only 4 were either on osteopathy or written by an osteopath as the lead author. . Of the 83 articles about 3 articles involved the collaboration of the USA, Australia, Canada and Europe. . Of the 9 clinical research studies, the conditions/problems focused mainly on are: 1) low back pain, 2) chronic back pain, 3) neck pain (including chronic neck pain), 4) thoracic pain, 5) cervical pillar hyperplasia and 6) degenerative joint disease, and 7) idiopathic scoliosis.  on clinical conditions for their part, focused on cancer, post-traumatic upper cervical subluxation, bilateral synovial chondromatosis of the ankle, aberrant shoulder movement, gout in the wrist, xiphodynia, upper extremity radicular and referred pain, right hamate hook fracture, low back pain, malignant spine pain, hearing, scoliosis, shoulder, cervical stenosis, hamstring injury.Two conclusions can be made about these results. The first is that when primary clinical studies are submitted to the journal the focus is very much neuromusculoskeletal. Case studies on the other hand evidence a much broader range of problems. In one sense the case studies seem to be more likely used to highlight the more unusual cases that can be encountered in a chiropractic/osteopathic clinic rather than the "run-of-mill" cases. To this extent they red flag things a chiropractor or osteopath might encounter in practice. It might also reflect the instructions for authors that actually emphasis on the unusual rather than typical cases.Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics (JMPT) over a three year period had about 15% of its publications in the category of clinical trials. [Again if we assume that the most powerful evidence is from the most rigorous studies then another way of looking at objective 3 is to analyze the study designs used in the original research articles. The designs included: surveys 10, trials 9, cohort studies 2, descriptive studies 2, basic science studies 2, program evaluation 2, methods research 1, and focus groups 1. With the exception of the trials, these design types cannot establish rigorous evidence of efficacy. Surveys establish at best correlative evidence for effectiveness. Cohort studies and descriptive studies tend to be suggestive studies in terms of establishing outcomes. Basic science projects address biological mechanisms and are more important in providing explanatory information than efficacy but are unlikely to be published in this journal. Only the trials could provide definitive evidence for efficacy. The percent of clinical trials published over three years was 12% of the studies published. In comparison Examining the published articles in terms of the categories the journal will accept for publication, the breakdown is as follows: primary research (31), reviews (both systematic and narrative) (20), case reports (18), commentaries (12). In this review, we were unable to find a definite distinction between most commentaries and debate articles. For the other categories: hypotheses, short reports and study protocols no articles have been published. So if the aim was to publish "evidence" the emphasis on primary studies would be expected. To this extent therefore the journal is meeting its fourth objective.Since commentaries might also be a major way that journals can express issues they feel are of concern to their readers or which fall within the objectives of the journal we also looked at them. In the period we reviewed there were a total of 12 commentaries. Only one pertained to osteopathy alone and dealt with cranial osteopathy. Two were critiques or reinterpretation of previously published literature reviews, one on SMT and another on kinesiology. We found a commentary on the role and emergence of the biopsychosocial model in modern medical literature and health care settings with respect to the management of hypothyroidism and a commentary on the establishment of the Chiropractic & Osteopathic College of Australasia in Queensland. The other 7 focused on chiropractic. Four of the latter focused on broader aspects of the chiropractic profession; professionalism; chiropractic education and wellness standards; chiropractic sports medicine in Australia; and a "chiropracticness" test. It would seem therefore that the chiropractors are much more likely to express themselves in commentaries in the journal than are osteopaths.Chiropractic & Osteopathy is an open access, peer-reviewed online journal. It is indexed in PubMed, PubMed Central, Scopus, the Manual Alternative and Natural Therapy Index System (MANTIS), Index to Chiropractic Literature (ICL), and Google Scholar. Internationally the journal is also in repositories at the University of Potsdam in Germany, at INIST in France and in e-Depot, the National Library of the Netherlands' digital archive of all electronic publications. Currently, the journal is also participating in the British Library's e-journals pilot project, and plans to deposit copies of all articles with the British Library.Chiropractic & Osteopathy is part of the BioMed Central, an independent open access publisher. The Chiropractic & Osteopathic College of Australasia has agreed to cover the cost of article-processing charges for all manuscripts submitted before March 2009. This will enable Chiropractic & Osteopathy to remain an international open access journal without charge to authors during this time. Articles published with BioMed Central are immediately and permanently available online. Unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium is permitted, provided the article is properly cited.Currently Another way of looking at the impact of the journal is to review what articles readers are accessing online. Looking at the 10 most accessed single articles of all time in the journal they are as follows: case report ; case report ; review ; review ; debate ; case report ; debate ; review ; research ; case report . Clearly case reports are by far the most accessed. These case reports are on scoliosis, shoulder, cervical stenosis, hamstring injuries respectively. The other important results are that in the top ten most accessed articles only one is original research. Three out of the ten most accessed articles are on: 1) a review article on non-surgical decompression injury; 2) a debate article/commentary on theoretical definition of subluxation; and 3) a commentary on chiropractic as spine care. Other most accessed article include reviews, one on reliability and validity of muscle testing and one on the biopsychosocial model and hypothyroidism.Looked at in terms of their objectives, the journal has had some successes and some mixed successes. Clearly the journal provides a much stronger focus on chiropractic than it does on osteopathy. In fact the small number of articles specifically about osteopathy would seem to imply that a rethinking of the title of the journal may be in order. Although much of the content of this journal may be relevant to osteopathic practice, anyone accessing this journal with the expectation of finding many articles by osteopaths or specifically about osteopathy is likely to be disappointed. The focus of the articles is overwhelmingly chiropractic.Similarly, with the objective to be an international journal. We do not have data to determine what percentage of those who publish in Australasia on chiropractic publish in this journal. Perhaps this number of articles from Australian authors is a significant achievement. What we can say is that a journal that is dominated by articles whose origin is the US has some challenges if it wants to be an international journal for chiropractic. The lack of any papers we could find as having an Australasia source is also a challenge for the journal.The objective to publish evidence about osteopathy and chiropractic has not been achieved for the former but has had some success for chiropractic. Around 37% of the articles published fall into the category primary research studies. There were 20 reviews (both systematic and narrative) which can also be interpreted as providing evidence of efficacy and/or effectiveness. So the verdict here might be mixed success.The one area where the journal has met its objective very well is to publish a wide range of research. It has published trials, cohort studies, case studies, reviews, basic science reports, surveys, descriptive studies, program evaluations.The number of commentaries (12) is not a huge number. They are almost entirely focused on chiropractic issues. They are also on a very diverse set of topics which reflects that the journal is being used to express commentaries over a wide range of concerns. This can be viewed as a positive feature of the journal.The data from the hits on line are interesting in that they reflect that those accessing the journal seem to have a different objective in mind than perhaps the editors do. Overwhelmingly they are accessing either a case report or a review or a debate. None of the original research articles has as many hits as these. It would seem the readership is accessing clinical cases more than anything else. At the very least their priorities are different. The journal published 31 articles on primary research and only 18 case reports.The results therefore pose some challenges to the editorial staff. If the journal is to continue to title itself Chiropractic & Osteopathy it must find some new method of attracting osteopaths to publish in the journal on osteopathic subjects. The other option might be to change the title.Similarly if it is to be a truly international journal it should reflect this more in its contents. A journal that is dominated by articles originating from the US might not be very successful in portraying itself as truly international or as the Australasian journal for chiropractic. If this is the objective again some means have to be found to address this issue.Last but not least, given what the readers are accessing online some thought might be given to expanding the number of case studies that are published. The journal is not the only journal publishing original research articles in chiropractic so publishing original research articles does not distinguish it too well in the market place.


I am glad to say that the first year of our online submission, review and publication process completes with this issue. This issue contains all the pending articles that had been accepted for publication in the past. The remaining articles in the various stages of the reviewing process, which were received as hard copies, have been returned to the authors with the request for online submission.The online submission process has been fairly satisfactory for all of us. This has not only quickened the process but also helped in the improvement of the quality of the journal. We hope to improve it further with the addition of more articles and other features.I seek a greater involvement and interest of the members of the Indian Chest Society to make this journal as influential and important in the overall health scene in this country. All members, particularly those with academic pursuits need to provide more inputs for the success of Lung India. Sharing knowledge and ideas with others is always satisfying. I may quote from the age-old wisdom – “As one lamp lights the other – nor glows less!” I may therefore request everyone to devote a little time and knowledge for the benefit of the journal. This will greatly help in the general growth of pulmonary sciences.I also invite your greater participation in the reviewing process of the journal. Those interested in this process are requested to write to us for inclusion of their names.I am sure that with you all along, we shall continue to march forward.


Acta E Section Editors? Bill and David brought this journal from a concept to an extremely successful reality and more recently oversaw the change to the new short-format papers and steered Acta E through the potentially turbulent process of becoming open access, ensuring throughout that the papers published in the journal maintained a high degree of quality and consistency. It is our task now to keep up the extremely high standards that they achieved. Thank you both for all you have done for Acta E and enjoy your ‘retirement’, at least from the Section Editors’ jobs.In the editorial published this time last year, the founding Section Editors of the journal, Bill Clegg and David Watson, signalled their intention to retire in August at the IUCr Congress in Osaka, Japan. This has now taken place and the three of us, Bill Harrison from Scotland, Jim Simpson from New Zealand and Matthias Weil from Austria, have taken on the daunting task of replacing them. What better way to start this editorial than to acknowledge the fantastic contribution of the retiring Acta E has not only been successful, but has also allayed the fears of many sceptics who felt that the requirement to pay for publication would lead to the journal’s demise. The present funding model appears secure and there are no plans to increase the open-access charge for the journal in 2009. The continued growth of Acta E in the post open-access period was strongly welcomed by members of the Executive Committee and we, as Section Editors, will do all that we can to maintain and build on this successful outcome.At the recent Commission on Journals meeting, held in association with the Osaka Congress, it was obvious that the move to open access for Following a decline in submissions in the first three months after the journal became open access, the number of papers submitted each month has increased gradually to a level approaching that of 2006. Table 1The total number of papers published in 2008 was 3556, compared with 5181 in 2007, 3991 in 2006 and 2887 in 2005. Of these 63% described structures of organic, 34% structures of metal-organic and 3% structures of inorganic compounds. 51% of authors were from China, 6% from India, 5% from the USA, 4% from Germany, 4% from Malaysia, 3% from Iran and 2% from Pakistan with smaller percentages from other countries. The number of papers withdrawn or rejected for a variety of reasons remains similar at 16%, while the journal’s official impact factor is 0.508.checkCIF software continues to be developed thanks to the efforts of Ton Spek and Mike Hoyland. Recently, some new checks on submitted structure factor (.fcf) files have been incorporated into the submission process. Authors should check for any additional alerts once all of the files for their paper have been submitted. These additional checks effectively compare values reported in the CIF with the contents of the structure-factor file and other metrical information that can be calculated directly from the reflection data. Missing reflections out to θmax and reflections that may be affected by the beamstop are also indicated.The As new Section Editors we are delighted to have inherited a cohort of more than 50 Co-editors whose knowledge and expertise is of enormous benefit to us, the journal and the small molecule crystallographic community. Dr J. Low, Professor A. Roodt, Professor A. M. Z. Slawin and Professor B. M. Yamin retired as Co-editors during last year and we are very grateful to them for their work on behalf of the journal. We expect that there will be a small number of additions to the Co-editorial board in 2009 to accommodate the steady increase in submissions and to spread the load among the hard working Co-editors. These new appointments will be announced in a future editorial. Our task is also made so much easier by the excellent work of the IUCr editorial staff in Chester, to whom we express our heartfelt thanks. Without their input, the journal would simply not function.


The reasons that lie behind starting AoB PLANTS and the ambitions and principal features of the new journal are explained in detail by the Chief Editor. AoB PLANTS is a peer reviewed, Open Access (OA) journal owned and run by plant biologists and published by Oxford University Press. The journal publishes research papers, reviews and opinion papers on all aspects of land based plant biology. They are made available rapidly online and can be accessed without the need for subscriptions or payment.AoB PLANTS to adopt OA. Open Access helps sidestep library budgets which are struggling to purchase the increasing numbers of journals. Open Access makes research freely available both to the academic community and beyond while publishing online only eliminates the need to reject good manuscripts simply to control the size of the printed journal. Finally, the journal chose to go OA to ensure the widest possible international readership for the growing amount of high-quality plant science research being carried out worldwide in response to problems such as climate change and food shortages. Responses to a wide-ranging online questionnaire indicated strong international support for a journal such as AoB PLANTS.Several difficulties in conventional publishing of peer-reviewed manuscripts encouraged AoB PLANTS strives for fair and rapid peer review followed by fast publication of accepted papers. For an initial period, there will be no OA fees, and fees will remain modest once introduced. AoB PLANTS adopts double-blind peer review using published criteria for acceptability as a basis for decision-making. Accepted papers are published shortly after acceptance together with referees' analyses using Stanford University Libraries High Wire Press H2O platform. Authors retain ownership of the copyright in their papers. AoB PLANTS is a so-called ‘gold path’ Open Access (OA) journal .Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) (Website 4).UK research councils such as the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (Website 5).US National Institutes of Health (Website 6).The UK Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) (Website 7) has recently published an independent cost-benefit analysis of alternative means for scholarly publishing. It concludes that future expansion of OA publishing offers enhanced accessibility and efficiency and an overall economic benefit to the community compared with conventional subscription-based publishing.While the majority of authors are funded to carry out research, they are also under increasing pressure to publish their results in ways that make them widely accessible at the earliest opportunity in order to further scientific understanding and benefit society more directly. Open Access publishing facilitates these goals by making articles freely available without charge as soon as they are published. The instant accessibility afforded by OA has been shown to increase PDF downloads in the first 6 months after publication (The 2001 Budapest Open Access Initiative (Website 2).The 2003 Declaration by the UN-sponsored Geneva World Summit on the Information Society (Website 8).The 2003 Berlin Declaration on OA to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (Website 9).The 2003 Bethesda Statement on OA Publishing (Website 10).The 2003 International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions Statement (Website 11).Open Access at the Max Planck Society. Max Planck Society (Website 12).These endorsements by major funders of research and by national advisory organisations are indicative of a move towards OA as the preferred publishing option. They rest firmly on principled considerations of august national and international organisations such as the United Nations that see OA as upholding a right of everyone to access publicly-funded information. This is in line with the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Public declarations of support for the OA system and definitions of what constitutes OA include:AoB PLANTS board of management (Website 2) and of its international Advisory Board (Website 13) are highly distinguished plant scientists. Similarly, the Editorial Board (Website 13) comprises prominent plant scientists from many countries and each are invited personally by the Chief Editor. I believe these features, coupled to the long-term commitment of an internationally renowned first-division publisher (Oxford University Press), is a winning combination that will attract the confidence of plant biologists worldwide.One could argue over the need for new OA plant science journal since there are already one or two other such journals and also a plethora of more conventional titles. But what was missing until now is a genuinely broad spectrum OA journal owned and managed by plant scientists for plant scientists that is not driven primarily by commercial ambition. All members of the AoB PLANTS intend the new Journal to be a long-term success. The journal's management will take a flexible and adaptive approach, ensuring that the Journal will evolve to satisfy new needs as they arise, exploit new opportunities and deliver content as effectively as possible to the widest possible virtual community. Many other OA journals are highly specialized and cater for narrow subject areas. AoB PLANTS has no such content restrictions thereby widening its access and helping research to reach the entire plant science community. The incorporation of short summaries of each paper, the use of structured abstracts of generous length, and the insistence that Introductions to each paper are aimed at non-specialists will appeal to the widest possible range of readers and give maximum exposure to every paper published in AoB PLANTS. A summary of the Journal's main features is given in Table All involved with AoB PLANTS recognizes that funds are often hard-won. Accordingly, it will make every effort to minimise the costs. This policy is in keeping with the Journal's not-for-profit ethos. For an initial period, authors will pay no fees, all costs being paid in full by the Journal's owners. In order to remain sustainable, authors will start to be charged at a later stage. However, the cost will increase slowly in several stages but remain highly competitive.Although author fees will always be a very small proportion of the total cost of the research, AoB PLANTS is designed to support the growing number of authors and funding institutions wishing to publish their articles in an OA journal, arguably the most effective and accessible publishing medium. Readers will benefit from cost-free access to the latest peer-reviewed papers while authors will see their articles appearing quickly and attracting universal reader attention while the information is still fresh. This is vital as plant science expands to meet the challenges of climate change, pollution and pressures from human population growth. Authors and readers will also have opportunity to reuse, extract and display content for scholarly purposes without the troublesome need for permissions as long as the original source in AoB PLANTS is stated and the authors given full credit. The OA approach will also make it more straightforward for AoB PLANTS to accommodate growth of plant science research worldwide and the attendant increase in manuscript numbers. AoB PLANTS' not-for-profit constitution also means it can offer authors a no-cost or low-cost high quality alternative to commercial profit-driven competitors.


Paul Ehrlich prophesied "magic bullet" in early 1900 . Since tJournal of Hematology & Oncology aims to serve as an international platform for sharing laboratory and clinical findings in an open access format among laboratory scientists, physician scientists, hematologists and oncologists. A rapid turnaround time from submission to publication means that knowledge and new successes can be shared in real time.The growth of the internet has shrunk the world to a mouse click, yet the dissemination of new scientific findings is still very restricted. As a scientist and a clinician, I have to squeeze out time to publish new scientific findings and clinical observations. It almost always takes months to get a manuscript published. Frequently, the published articles are accessible only to those with subscriptions. Rapid advances in molecular biology and the completion of genome mapping from "worm to man" have led to an explosive increase in discoveries of new genes and targets, which result in development of new drugs and new technologies for diagnosis and therapy of medical disorders, especially for blood and cancer diseases. Studies of tyrosine kinase oncogenes and signal transductions paved the way to the discoveries of tyrosine kinase inhibitors . The "maWith all these rapid developments and findings, volume of information has grown enormously. However, many publications are in inaccessible places, and many more are not published until months later or not at all. A few top-rated journals in the field of hematology and oncology already exist. Many doctors and scientists from developing countries can not afford to pay for the access to these expensive journals. Meanwhile, journals become more focused and increasingly specialized.Journal of Hematology & Oncology aims not to specialize, rather to broaden and provide a platform for information exchange for all studies related to blood and cancer. It aims to include, not to exclude, all studies from basic research, translational research, case reports, and clinical trials. This journal allows the authors to keep the copyright so they can freely use and disseminate their articles as they please. All articles published in this journal are also archived in PubMed, PubMed Central, and other repositories. Therefore, this journal aims not to restrict, rather to make all published articles free and open to all.


Current Chemical Genomics. As an open access online journal, all the papers from this journal can be read free of charge by our readers without any restrictions to access of the full content. This peer-reviewed journal publishes research letters/articles, reviews, and technology notes on all aspects of the research and development focusing on integrative approaches at the interface of chemistry and genomics. The journal reports the newly identified small molecule probes and their applications in chemical genomic research. It also reports on the methods and technologies used to identify and optimize chemical probes that interact with proteins of unknown function and with proteins of cellular signaling pathways. Coverage also includes reports on the new chemo- informatics methods for chemical genomics. We hope that these approaches will facilitate the identification of new drug targets and the development of novel therapeutic strategies leading to a new generation of medicines.We are pleased to launch this inaugural issue of In the last decade, a number of academic screening centers have been established aimed in the discovery of small molecule probes for academic research. The small molecule probes can serve as an alternative tool to unlock the functions of unknown genes and play an important role in genome research. In 2005, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) of the United States launched a probe screening and development initiative named the Molecular Libraries Screening Center Network (MLSCN). These NIH-funded centers carry out high-throughput screenings to identify compounds active in target- and phenotype-based assays; optimize the identified hits into chemical probes, and deposit screening data to a freely accessible public database, PubChem. NIH also established an Imaging Probe Development Center (IPDC) to discover and produce new imaging probes as well as to improve probe detection sensitivity for biomedical researches and clinical applications. Therefore, through all of these efforts, chemical genomics research has moved to a new level. More probes will become available and easier to access for all researchers in the near future. We will publish the selected probes identified from these centers and others including both small molecule and imaging probes.Current Chemical Genomics.Open access to all scientific literature is an irresistible trend for the future of scientific publishing. A comparison between the open access and non-open access research papers revealed that the open access publications are more quickly recognized and cited than these non-open ones : e157; MacCallum and Parthasarathy, Plos Biol. 2006,4(5): e176). Free online access of scientific articles enables researchers to quickly and effectively search and obtain scientific information and thus efficiently facilitate their research work. To meet the challenge of the electronic era, Bentham Scientific Publishers has decided to launch a series of open access journals including Current Chemical Genomics will become an important resource for the information of new probes, methods and technologies on chemical genomics research as well as serve as an alternative journal for quickly publishing research related to chemical genomics. We welcome and encourage our readers to submit suggestions and feedbacks to support us on fulfilling the missions of this new journal.With this open access format, we believe that


Sir,Thank you very much indeed for your kind words and your interest in the Indian Journal of Orthopaedics. The objective of organization of the symposium is to give a few state-of-the-art reviews based on the articles published in the literature and include a few original articles covering the ongoing research on the subject. The editorial tries to balance it keeping an eye on the problems of a particular geographical region.There is unanimity in the literature about the role of conservative treatment for spinal column fracture and Spinal cord injury (SCI) patients and it is well documented in the textbooks. Including articles on rehabilitation program for SCI would have been a repetition of the information. The editorial not only stresses on the prevention of spinal trauma but also on the current scenario of the care of spinal trauma patients across the country. The problem of spinal trauma and SCI including initial evaluation and care of the patient, travel time to nearest hospital, infrastructure and quality of treatment at district hospital is covered. It also stresses on better organization of spinal trauma care services, achievable standard of spinal trauma services, and also on lack of treatment guidelines for neglected spinal trauma cases. I feel a journal has to be balanced in maintaining the minimum service quality while also continuing to educate the orthopedic community about future research in the field. The clinician needs to know which are the fractures best treated by the conservative approach and which would do better with surgical intervention, if intervention is indicated than what type of intervention. All dilemmas have been spelled out in the editorial and some of them are covered in original articles.We have a ‘letter to editor’ column in the Indian Journal of Orthopaedics and would be keen to have more interaction between readers and authors. However, your points are valid and will be given a serious consideration for future issues of the Indian Journal of Orthopaedics.


The Scandinavian Journal of Trauma, Resuscitation, and Emergency Medicine (SJTREM) was launched in 1994 as Akuttjournalen. From being a national, humble magazine directed to anaesthesiologists working in the Norwegian air ambulance service, the journal has developed to being a peer-reviewed, international journal directed at all health professionals involved in pre- and in-hospital emergency medicine, critical care and trauma management.SJTREM has gained valuable experience through both funding several international conferences , and publishing widely on topics in subspecialties covered by its scope [Over the years, ts scope .SJTREM is the official journal of The Scandinavian Networking Group on Trauma and Emergency Management (SCANTEM) [Today, SCANTEM) , and 9 mSJTREM is achieved. The journal is now published as an open access online journal in cooperation with BioMed Central. This means that articles will be published online immediately upon acceptance (after peer-review) and soon after listed in PubMed Central, the US National Library of Medicine's full-text repository of life science literature, and hence indexed in PubMed.When you read this, a new and significant step in the history of SJTREM has chosen open access publishing for several reasons. Articles are freely and universally accessible online, thus articles are highly visible and read by a wide audience. The authors hold copyright for their work and grant anyone the right to reproduce and disseminate the article provided that it is correctly cited, in accordance with BioMed Central's open access license agreement [greement . BesidesSJTREM will be available free of charge to the whole emergency medicine community, both authors and readers.Thanks to substantial funding from The Norwegian Air Ambulance Foundation and The Laerdal Foundation for Acute Medicine, all article-processing charges are covered by the journal. The results of scientific research, as well as clinical experience and commentaries published with SJTREM is based on two concepts; The Formula of Survival [The clinical ideology of Survival  and The Survival . The ForSJTREM emphasizes innovation. Although randomized controlled trials (RCT) are accepted as a gold standard, the method has significant limitations in emergency medical research. The interpretation of RCTs conducted in a multi-factorial, low incidence, "real time" emergency medical world requires caution. The characteristics and number of the study population, setting, connection between cause and effect, and the true implications of the study must be carefully considered. SJTREM believe that the best results in solving problems will be achieved by looking at them from different angles, using various approaches. In this, qualitative and quantitative methods complement each other. We encourage inventiveness and willingness to explore untraditional research methodology.The scientific ideology of SJTREM has a large and well qualified, international referee board. We operate a closed peer-review system and aim to reach a first decision to accept or reject a manuscript within six weeks of submission.SJTREM believe that to clarify this complex issue we require research aiming to separate the impact of organisational structure from patients' patho-physiology and need for emergency medical interventions. Further, the isolated effect of provider competence, and the most effective ways to gain and retain competence must be deeply explored.Pre-hospital and immediate in-hospital emergency care involves a broad spectrum of disciplines, specialties and skills, which may differ significantly in structure, resources and operation between different systems and nations. For years, an unsolved issue has been when advanced life support (ALS) should be seen as preferable to basic life support (BLS), especially in trauma patients ,7. The lScandinavian Journal of Trauma, Resuscitation, and Emergency Medicine look forward to linking science and everyday work helping us all to build the pre- and in-hospital emergency medical systems for the future.The The author declares that they have no competing interests.


Teaching the principles of scientific research in a comprehensive way is important at medical and dental schools. In many countries medical and dental training is not complete until the candidate has presented a diploma thesis. The objective of this study was to evaluate the nature, quality, publication pattern and visibility of Finnish medical diploma theses.A total of 256 diploma theses presented at the University of Oulu from 2001 to 2003 were analysed. Using a standardised questionnaire, we extracted several characteristics from each thesis. We used the name of the student to assess whether the thesis resulted in a scientific publication indexed in medical article databases. The number of citations received by each published thesis was also recorded.A high proportion of the theses (69.5%) were essentially statistical in character, often combined with an extensive literature review or the development of a laboratory method. Most of them were supervised by clinical departments (55.9%). Only 61 theses (23.8%) had been published in indexed scientific journals. Theses in the fields of biomedicine and diagnostics were published in more widely cited journals. The median number of citations received per year was 2.7 and the range from 0 to 14.7.The theses were seldom written according to the principles of scientific communication and the proportion of actually published was small. The visibility of these theses and their dissemination to the scientific community should be improved. The teaching of scientific communication is an important part of basic medical education. Producing a thesis is an essential step for a student graduating from medical school . It is aInterest in the literature on this subject has focused on the role of writing a thesis as a part of medical education ,4-6. TeaOne indicator of the scientific value of a thesis and of the acceptability of its content to the international scientific community is whether the work has been published in a peer-reviewed journal. The quality of the theses can be judged by the proportion of published papers . These pOur aim was to evaluate the graduate theses completed at a Finnish university and to examine their publication pattern and utility. Special attention was focused on supervision, the nature and quality of the theses and whether they were later published in the scientific literature.Our research material consisted of 256 consecutive medical and dental theses completed at the Medical Faculty of the University of Oulu in 2001–2003.We reviewed the printed copy of each thesis supplied by the student to the faculty and evaluated several characteristics including language, department, supervisors and examiners. The theses were classified as 1) extensive analyses of quantitative material, 2) brief quantitative analyses of the authors' own material linked with a literature review or the development of a laboratory method, 3) pure literature reviews or 4) others .Using a protocol for data collection, the following information was also obtained: does the report follow the structure of a scientific article , and what is its technical quality ? The shortcomings in technical quality were related to elementary word processing techniques and included the following: (i) disturbing variations in font, font style and font size, (ii) indefinite or inconsistent margins, (iii) inconsistent line spacing, (iv) unfinished tables and figures, (v) unfinished table of contents, or (vi) deficiencies in reference format, and (vii) others. The technical quality was evaluated as poor , good (no more than two shortcomings) or excellent (no shortcomings). The technical quality of the printed publications was not evaluated.et al.[The theses were categorized as using statistical methods if descriptive statistics  or the results of formal tests of statistical significance were reported. The usage of tables and figures was also assessed. The presence or absence of special advanced statistical procedures and techniques was reviewed in each thesis. The same classification was used as in the study by Miettunen et al.. Multivaet al.. Reliabiet al..The theses were reviewed by one out of four assessors . Where the interpretation of the paper was ambiguous, it was appraised by other assessors and the conclusions reconciled in a group discussion.The name of the student was then used to determine whether the thesis had resulted in a scientific publication indexed in the Medline, Scopus or Medic databases. The Medic database indexes were used to find scientific articles published in Finnish medical, dental and nursing journals. We searched for all articles that included the name of the student as an author and then browsed through these to find potential matches with the thesis. A thesis was considered to have been published if the title of one of these articles or the content of its abstract was consistent with the characteristics of the thesis. It was possible that some studies published in lower visibility journals not indexed in major databases were missed.The journal impact factor as reported by the Journal Citation Reports of the ISI Web of Knowledge for the publication year was obtained from the journal that published the article. Journals not included in the ISI Web of Science system were assigned the impact factor value zero. These included all theses published in Finnish journals.Citation counts for each published article were obtained from the Web of Science databases and the Scopus database in November 2006. The total number of citations received by each article counts the number of times other researchers have cited it in their subsequent publications during the period from the publication date to November 2006. Since the citation counts are affected by the follow-up time, which in this case ranged from 1 (published in 2005) to 6 (published in 2000) years, we used the average number of citations received per year to assess the utility of an article.The data were analysed using SPSS for Windows 14.0  software. Frequency distributions and cross-tabulations were used as the main tools for presentation and analysis. The distribution of the journal impact factor was visualised with box-plots.Of the 256 theses evaluated, 143 (55.9%) were clinical, 9 (3.5%) biomedical, 33 (12.9%) from a diagnostic department  or from the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, 22 (8.6%) from the Department of Public Health Science and General Practice, and 49 (19.1%) from the Institute of Dentistry.In most cases the supervisor was a professor or adjunct professor (60.6%). The language was English in 71 cases (27.7%), Swedish in one, and the rest of the theses were written in Finnish.A total of 119 theses (46.5%) reported quantitative research with samples mainly consisting of patient material, or in some cases experimental animals (n = 6). Quantitative research was linked with an extensive literature review or a report on the development of a laboratory procedure in 59 brief quantitative works (23.0%). Pure literature reviews accounted for 29 theses (11.3%). The number of reports of other type was 49 (19.1%), including five that were purely qualitative. Twenty reported extensive laboratory work, nine presented case reports or other descriptions and the rest were case reports accompanied by a literature review (n = 5), descriptions of laboratory procedure (n = 8) or analyses of qualitative material (n = 2).Altogether 204 theses (81%) followed the structure of a scientific article, including an introduction, a description of the methods, a presentation of the results and a discussion section. In 142 cases (55.5%) the literature review made up more than half of the thesis. The technical quality was only satisfactory in 55 cases (21.5%), good in 124 (48.4%) and excellent in 63 (24.6%). Common shortcomings were variations in font size and style (30.9%), indistinct and unfinished figures and tables (17.6%), inconsistent line spacing (15.6%), indefinite margins (14.5%), inadequate use of references or a deficient list of references (12.1%), an unfinished table of contents (5.1%) and other defects (24.2%) such as the lack of an abstract, information lacking from the title page, or an otherwise disorganized report. A total of 14 theses (5.5%) were already available as printed publications and a further 52 (20.3%) were written according to the instructions of a specific scientific journal.Statistical methods of at least some kind of were used in 178 (69.5%) theses that reported quantitative research. More than one fifth of those that had used statistical analyses included special methods such as survival analyses and multivariate models. Statistical figures and tests of statistical significance were presented in approximately half of the theses. Extensive description of the statistical methods used were presented in 69 theses (38.8%).A total of 61 theses (23.8%) resulted in a scientific publication, most of them were quantitative (62.3%). Those that were of excellent technical quality or originally written in English were more often published as scientific articles than those of poor technical quality or written in Finnish (Table The student was the first author in 30 articles (49.2%), the second author in 21 (34.4%) and the third or later-mentioned author in 10 (16.4%). The supervisor was a co-author in 60 out of the 61 papers.The distribution of impact factors by fields is shown in Figure The median number of citations received per paper per year was 2.7, ranging from 0 to 14.7. There were four papers that were cited very often (more than 10 citations per year), three of which were quantitative and one of another type.The present paper investigated the basic characteristics, publication pattern and utility of medical theses completed at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Oulu, Finland. The traditional format of reporting statistical analyses of medical data was most common, often combined with an extensive review of the literature or the development of a laboratory method. Most of these theses were supervised by university hospital clinicians. Shortcomings in the them were related to the technical quality and the description of the research methods. Most of the theses were not published, but the frequency of publishing the research findings in a scientific journal was higher for theses produced in more biomedical disciplines. The publications resulting from the theses received a moderate number of citations, which means that they were utilized quite well by other researchers.For most physicians and dentists the thesis included in their basic medical and dental basic education is the only contact they have with the producing of new scientific information. The present analysis showed that regrettably often the student did not command the basics of scientific communication. These results are in agreement with other reports concerning the level of basic medical scientific education ,14.In 2001–2003, when these theses projects were carried out, the regulations regarding theses for the MD and DMD degree at the University of Oulu were somewhat cursory. They simply stated that the preparation of the thesis should include participation in data collection, preliminary observations and their processing in a research project and writing of a report on the research project. They also included requirements for the extent of the thesis and general instructions for writing it. No instructions were available for supervisors. This insufficiency of instructions for students and supervisors could partly explain some of the weaknesses in the theses.Numerous books, articles and Internet sites offer recommendations and instructions for the students on how to write and organize a research paper or thesis. Medical and dental curricula often include introductions to the principles of scientific research, the retrieval of medical literature and data analysis, as in the University of Oulu . DespiteThe weaknesses reported concerning the preparation of the theses may be associated with the lack of time . StudentThe supervision of research is highly important, and the frequent lack of supervision is considered problematic ,9. The pThe strengthening of scientific education is a key component in developing competent physicians who will not only ask the right questions but also be able to apply current treatment methodologies . The incThe diploma theses written by medical and dental students in Finland are not currently available on the Internet. In order to maximize the visibility and usage of student's work, medical and dental schools should make their reviewed diploma theses accessible to any potential users on the Internet. The full digital text of all theses can be deposited in the university's self-archive.The percentage of diploma theses actually published (23.8%) is somewhat higher than the figures in two other European countries. A study in France showed that 17% of theses presented between 1993 and 1997 had resulted in publication by 1999 . FrkovicPublication in a peer-reviewed journal indicates that the content of the thesis is acceptable to the international scientific community. Our study showed that especially theses with a literature review were not published later in scientific journals. Writing a review of high scientific quality is a demanding process, and students may not have enough experience for this. The reasons for the thesis not resulting in publication may often lie elsewhere, however, and not in the quality or content of the project. The publication process is usually slow, and the student's most important goal at this stage may be graduation, the thesis being just a mandatory part of this. Also the publication process demands time and resources from the supervisor. On the other hand, publication is an additional merit for the supervisors, which should encourage them to aim at getting theses published.One limitation of this study should be noted. It was performed in a local setting in one medical faculty in Finland – and each educational setting is unique. Nevertheless, in spite of the limited scope, our findings might be helpful when considering possible educational and training interventions in medical and dental schools which require the writing of a mandatory thesis, especially in Europe.Students and supervisors should be encouraged to aim at publishing the degree theses. The production of the thesis could mimic the scientific publishing process more closely than is currently the case. Requiring students to write their theses according to the guidelines of a few selected journals, improving the supervisor's engagement in the reporting and improving students' understanding of the peer review process would add a new dimension to the thesis process and provide additional opportunities for publication. The full digital text of the completed and reviewed thesis should be made visible and accessible in the institution's self-archive.The author(s) declare that they have no competing interests.PN and KS had the idea for the article. PN initiated the project, contributed to the data collection and statistical analysis and wrote the paper. KS, MR and LR contributed to the study design, data collection and writing of the paper. H-MT performed the bibliometric data collection and statistical analyses and contributed to the and writing of the paper. All the authors have read and approved the final manuscript.The pre-publication history for this paper can be accessed here:


This issue marks the start of the twentieth year of publication of the Indian Journal of Nephrology (IJN). Since its inception, members of our society have often wondered whether it would be possible to get the journal indexed with the United States National Library of Medicine so that the journal would be available on PubMed, the best known biomedical database. My team and I have been working towards this goal since January 2006, when I took over as Editor of the Journal.http://www.journalonweb.com/ijn. The process of submission, evaluation as well as production is practically paperless. Not only has this change been environment-friendly, but it has also been appreciated by most contributors. This almost immediately broadened the geographic area from where contributions came to the journal. The journal now regularly publishes articles from all continents. A locator map indicates the location of the author institute in each issue. The increase in number of contributions allowed us to focus more on quality. An indicator is the acceptance rate, which was only 40% in 2009.We made several changes, which included entrusting the task to professional publishers: Medknow Publications. Getting a professional organization on board brought several advantages that included accurate verification of references and having the services of experienced copy editors. Another major change was to bring the process of manuscript submission and review in the digital age by making the whole process web-based, through the portal http://www.indianjnephrol.org) also underwent significant changes. It now provides both hypertext markup language (html) and portable document format (pdf) versions of all papers. You can now receive a table-of-content alert when a new issue comes online. The issues are now published well in advance of the print publication. Society members and subscribers can suggest changes to their mailing addresses from the journal's website.The journal website (It gives me great pleasure to inform all members that the national Library of Medicine, USA, has agreed to include the Indian Journal of Nephrology in PubMed and PubMed Central. One can now search on PubMed for the full text of all articles published in the Journal from 2008 onwards. These articles are also linked from PubMed to the journal's website. Older issues would also be made available from PubMed.This is an important milestone for all of us since this broadens the visibility of all published articles. Also, we will now be able to attract original articles of even better quality, which were earlier being sent elsewhere. We hope to continue to improve the quality of papers by ensuring rigorous peer-review and on-time publication. In case a sufficient number of accepted manuscripts are available we may, in the near future, increase the number of articles published in each issue and thus shorten the time gap between acceptance and publication.Your suggestions for further improvement of IJN are always welcome.


Hereditary Cancer in Clinical Practice (HCCP). Moving from a classical printed journal, first published in 2003, to the open access, online format of BioMed Central will allow for a quicker and much wider distribution of published articles. Further improving exposure of articles, the journal has also been accepted for indexing by PubMed, and is now on track to receive it's first Impact Factor in 2010 after being accepted for inclusion in Thomson Reuters' Science Citation Index Expanded and the Journal Citation Reports. In addition, the Editorial Board of the journal has been expanded in acknowledgement of the continuing growth of the field of clinical cancer genetics.We are proud to announce the re-launch of HCCP was published. New genes and syndromes have been identified, more molecular pathways have been unraveled, and new knowledge on therapeutic and preventive options has been gained. However, the reasons for publishing HCCP remain unchanged: to contribute to the improvement of care for individuals and families who are genetically predisposed to develop cancer. As before, this journal will try to cover relevant topics from multiple perspectives, including those of researchers and medical practitioners from different parts of the world who may have different scientific interests and medical priorities. We also remain dedicated to support the international discussion on important topics by sending out questionnaires to the field and publishing their results.Much has changed since December 2003 when the first paper issue of HCCP, ranging from small but illustrative case reports to larger scientific studies. In addition to these types of articles, the reader may expect to see meeting reports, reviews and commentaries to highlight new developments and existing controversies in the field.We invite you and your colleagues to submit your manuscripts to Hereditary Cancer in Clinical Practice.We hope you will enjoy reading the new