Indian Journal of Radiology and Imaging (IJRI) for us, emailed me saying that the IJRI was finally in PubMed. We had been preparing for this for the last three years and it had finally happened. The IJRI would like to sincerely thank Dr. Sahu and his team for the efforts that they have put in for this.A month or so ago, I received a heartening news. Dr. D K Sahu, who runs Medknow Publications, which publishes the Now that this promise has been kept, we need to move on. The journal needs to scale greater heights and for this to happen, original articles from India that are currently being published in foreign journals, need to be submitted to the IJRI. From our side, we will ensure timely processing of all articles.The impact of the PubMed inclusion is already evident—the average submission rate had suddenly increased in the last month; unfortunately, the majority of these are still only case reports. It should be understood that more than 80% of all case reports will be rejected immediately on submission.www.ijri.org, up till 1999. You can go to Google and type your search word, for example, “lipoma arborescens” followed by “site:ijri.org,” that is, type in the Google search bar, “lipoma arborescens site:ijri.org,” without the inverted commas, and you will get a list of articles with those search words. You can also do this directly using the Search option on the homepage of www.ijri.org. This should be done especially for case reports; if a case report on a particular topic has already been published in the IJRI in the last 10 years, it is almost certain that the submitted case report will be rejected.It would also help if prospective authors could check whether previous, similar articles have been published earlier in the IJRI. This is easy to do. We have backdated pdf files on We are also planning to focus more on tuberculosis and other tropical infections. The majority of articles on tuberculosis come from either the Western world or South Korea, which is quite sad, considering the amount of data that exist in India, which perhaps far exceed that in other countries. Even our earlier review article on musculoskeletal tuberculosis was written by authors from Belgium. We plan to fast-track original articles, pictorial essays and even unusual case reports on this subject.It is necessary that students and residents learn to write articles. Apart from the fact that they need to follow the “Guidelines for Authors” strictly, it is important that prospective authors learn how to collate their thoughts and write them out coherently and logically. There is after all a method to the writing madness. Most of the articles submitted to us have extremely poor spelling and grammar. Though this is never a factor that affects the acceptance or rejection of an article, it significantly increases the effort that we have to put in, for reading, reviewing and copyediting. By and large, whenever we find an article significantly language-challenged, we will insist on it being rewritten in conjunction with an English teacher or professor.Eventually though, more original research needs to be conducted in our various teaching hospitals and institutions. This requires an overhauling of our infrastructure as well as committed and motivated teachers and researchers. We hope that this will happen in the years to come, with some impetus and push from the Central Government as wel-l.


A redundant publication is a manuscript which fundamentally presents results from the same study in more than one original paper. This term is synonymous with a "dual" or "duplicate" publication of identical data  and with the disaggregated presentation of identical data in multiple publications derived from the same study , published by the same author or group. Hereby, the content of redundant papers may overlap in part or completely, such that the main findings of an original study are published in multiple papers in different electronic or print journals.Redundant publications in biomedical journals are considered unethical for the following reasons -3:• "Inflation" of the available peer-reviewed literature.• Skewing of evidence-based medicine when readers erroneously assume to be confronted with reports from independent studies.• Distortion of available scientific data by unjustified overestimation of a therapeutic effect in systematic meta-analyses.• Increased, unnecessary workload for editors and peer reviewers, leading to a backlog of "true" original articles in the publication process.• Cost-ineffective use of resources, waste of journal space, and waste of readers' time by reading republished material considered to be original work.• Distortion of the purpose of biomedical journals as being the source of new information.• Potential infringement of international copyright law.The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (British and American volumes), which is considered the most prestigious journal in the field of orthopedics, revealed that one in 13 original articles were either duplicate or fragmented publications . Permission for such secondary publication should be free of charge".5. "The footnote on the title page of the secondary version informs readers, peers, and documenting agencies that the paper has been published in whole or in part and states the primary reference. A suitable footnote might read: 6. "The title of the secondary publication should indicate that it is a secondary publication  of a primary publication".Surgical Journals Editors Group [According to the official consensus statement by the rs Group , the fol• Prior publication in meeting program abstract booklets and proceedings from scientific meetings. These must be acknowledged and referenced in the final manuscript.• Expansion of the original database, published in the primary source, by 50% or more. Previous manuscripts reporting the original database must be referenced in the secondary publication.Ethical standards in publishing place a high level of self responsibility upon publishers, editors, authors and readers. The scientific/medical community at every level should safeguard the medical literature upon which so many of our therapeutic concepts are based and so many of our patients are treated. The "slippery slope" of self rationalization that leads a physician or scientist to justify unauthorized duplicate publication is the same deceptive impulse that results in false data and unjustified conclusions. Ultimately, what we publish and read may end up impacting the care and outcome of individuals who present to us for relief of disease and suffering. There is no line on any academic curriculum vitae worth a human life. On behalf of our patients, we must remain vigilant and educate ourselves, our colleagues, and our students on the high ethical standards of scientific publishing.The author(s) declare that they have no competing interests.All authors contributed equally to the design and writing of this editorial. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.


Disclosure of authors' financial interests has been proposed as a strategy for protecting the integrity of the biomedical literature. We examined whether authors' financial interests were disclosed consistently in articles on coronary stents published in 2006.We searched PubMed for English-language articles published in 2006 that provided evidence or guidance regarding the use of coronary artery stents. We recorded article characteristics, including information about authors' financial disclosures. The main outcome measures were the prevalence, nature, and consistency of financial disclosures. There were 746 articles, 2985 authors, and 135 journals in the database. Eighty-three percent of the articles did not contain disclosure statements for any author (including declarations of no interests). Only 6% of authors had an article with a disclosure statement. In comparisons between articles by the same author, the types of disagreement were as follows: no disclosure statements vs declarations of no interests (64%); specific disclosures vs no disclosure statements (34%); and specific disclosures vs declarations of no interests (2%). Among the 75 authors who disclosed at least 1 relationship with an organization, there were 2 cases (3%) in which the organization was disclosed in every article the author wrote.In the rare instances when financial interests were disclosed, they were not disclosed consistently, suggesting that there are problems with transparency in an area of the literature that has important implications for patient care. Our findings suggest that the inconsistencies we observed are due to both the policies of journals and the behavior of some authors. The influence of commercial interests on medical science is an area of ongoing concern. Recent work has examined the extent of this influence Despite repeated calls for financial disclosures and the growing number of journals with conflict-of-interest policies A coronary stent is a flexible metal tube inserted into a coronary artery to hold the artery open. Stents are widely used in patients with coronary disease to restore or maintain blood flow to the heart muscle, which is critically dependent on high rates of blood flow. Coronary stents have come under intense scrutiny, including disagreements about their effectiveness In March 2007, we searched PubMed for English-language articles published in 2006 and indexed with the Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) terms “stents,” “heart diseases,” and “humans.” We limited the search to articles published in 2006 because this was the most recent year for which data were available; and we limited the search to a single year on the assumption that financial interests change over time and would be more or less stable within a year. Two of us independently reviewed the articles and selected those that provided evidence or guidance regarding the use of coronary artery stents. The reviewers reconciled their determinations by consensus, and a third reviewer resolved disagreements and uncertainties. We excluded 2 articles for which no authors were listed.Because many author names were associated with multiple articles, we sought to ensure that each author in the database was represented by a single term. First, we combined authors who were indexed in Medline under different names for different articles. For example, if we determined that author “Smith J” in one article and author “Smith JA” in another article were the same person, we marked both instances as “Smith JA” in the database. Next, we separated different authors who were indexed in Medline under the same name. For example, if we determined that author “Jones A” in one article was not the same person as author “Jones A” in another article, we marked one author as “Jones AA” and the other as “Jones AB.”We constructed a Microsoft Access database for the analysis that contained the complete Medline citation for each article, including author names, publication types, and MeSH terms. We recorded whether each article contained a statement regarding financial or material support for the work; sources and types of support; and whether the article described authors' contributions to the work. If the article described authors' contributions, we recorded each author's contributions. If the article contained a statement regarding authors' financial interests, we recorded the types of interests and the organizations with which each author had the specified relationships. If the article directed readers to supplemental disclosure information located elsewhere , we included the supplemental information in our coding.We consulted ISI Journal Citation Reports to determine journal impact factors as an indicator of the influence of each journal 2 tests to examine relationships between reporting a source of funding and endorsement of the ICMJE guidelines. We used a Wilcoxon rank sum test to examine the relationship between reporting a source of funding and the impact factor of the journal in which the article was published.We categorized articles as “research” if they reported original research or a case study. We categorized the remaining articles as “other,” which included mostly commentaries and letters. We report simple frequencies and percentages for whether sources of funding were disclosed for research articles, excluding case reports.  We used χ2 tests to examine the relationships between the presence of disclosure statements for authors  and type of article and endorsement of the ICMJE guidelines. We used a Wilcoxon rank sum test to examine the relationship between the presence of a disclosure statement for authors  and the impact factor of the journal in which the article was published.If an article contained a statement describing an author's financial interests (including a declaration of no interests), we considered a disclosure statement to be present. We coded each article as having disclosure statements for all, some, or none of the authors. We used χauthor instances). The number of author instances is the sum of the number of authors from all articles in the database. For example, if someone authored 6 articles, that person contributed 6 author instances to the data set. Across author instances, we examined the presence or absence of a disclosure statement. We used χ2 tests to compare the frequencies of disclosure statements between research articles and other articles. We conducted the same analysis after removing case reports from the research category.We examined the prevalence and nature of authors' financial disclosures by analyzing every instance in which a disclosure might have appeared  For example, consider an author of 4 articles with the following disclosures: article 1 (relationship with a company), article 2 (relationship with a company), article 3 (declaration of no interests), article 4 (no disclosure statement). In this case, there are 6 unique pairwise comparisons, and 1 pair is in agreement (articles 1 and 2). Therefore, the proportion agreement for the author is 1/6 (0.17). We report the frequencies of authors with proportion agreement equal to 0 (no articles agree), 1 , and between 0 and 1 (some articles agree).We also examined the frequency of types of agreement  and disagreement . Due to the small average number of articles per author, we collapsed these types of agreement across all comparisons for all authors. To examine how disagreements might be a function of journal policies, we report whether the disagreements occurred within the same journal and whether they occurred within the same article type (research–research vs research–other). Because some readers might consider listing an author's affiliation with a company as a disclosure (in lieu of a specific disclosure statement), we determined the number of industry-affiliated authors contributing to each type of agreement and disagreement.To determine the consistency of authors' disclosure statements, we examined authors who had multiple articles and disclosed at least 1 financial interest. For each of these authors, we first counted the number of unique organizations with which the author disclosed a relationship in any of the author's articles.  Consider a hypothetical example in which an author has 4 articles with the following disclosures: article 1 (relationship with company A), article 2 (relationships with company A and company B), article 3 (no disclosure statement), and article 4 (relationship with company A). This author has 4 articles in which 2 unique organizations—companies A and B—appear in disclosure statements. Next, for each of the unique organizations associated with an author, we counted the number of organizations that were disclosed in all of the author's articles. In the hypothetical example, company A is disclosed in 3 of the 4 articles and company B is disclosed in 1 of the 4 articles. Thus, none of this author's organizations are disclosed in all 4 of the articles. For each author, we calculated the proportion of unique organizations with which the author disclosed a relationship that were disclosed in each of the author's articles, and we summarized the distribution of these proportions across authors.We retrieved 746 articles, of which 623 were research articles  and 123 were commentaries, letters, and other communications that did not present original research. There were 2985 authors and 135 journals. The number of articles per author ranged from 1 to 25.2 = 9.3; p = 0.002) and in journals with higher impact factors . A total of 125 organizations were listed as sources of support. The top 5 sources  accounted for 28% of the articles in which a source of support was declared.Of the 441 research articles (excluding case reports), 316 (71.7%) did not include a statement identifying the source of support for the study (including declarations of no support). These statements were more likely to appear in journals that endorsed the ICMJE guidelines  contained statements describing the contributions made by each author.p<0.001).A total of 168 authors (5.6%) had a disclosure statement in at least 1 article. The combination of authors and articles resulted in 4664 author instances . Of these author instances, 220 (4.7%) had a disclosure, 577 (12.4%) had a declaration of no interests, and 3867 (82.9%) had no disclosure statement . Author The maximum number of financial interests disclosed for a single author in a single article was 4. The disclosed relationships referred to 78 organizations. The 5 most frequent organizations  accounted for 59% of the relationships. In 4 cases, instead of a specific organization, the disclosure statement described relationships with multiple unnamed organizations . Of the 468 relationships disclosed, the most frequent relationship types included receipt of research support (25%), speaker fees (17%), and consultancies (15%).Of the 2985 authors in the database, 683 (22.9%) authored more than 1 article and 307 (10.3%) authored 3 or more articles. For 454 of the authors with multiple articles (66.5%), each author's articles always agreed in terms of whether the articles disclosed a financial relationship, declared no relationships, or had no disclosure statement. For 86 of the authors with multiple articles (12.6%), there was no agreement among articles.2 = 420.0; p<0.001). In other words, almost all of the inconsistencies (1270/1317 [96.4%]) were between articles by the same author in different journals. Comparisons between research articles and other articles were more likely to result in disagreement than were comparisons between two research articles .As also shown in Among the 75 authors who disclosed a relationship with a specific organization, there were 2 cases (2.7%) in which the organization was disclosed in every article the author wrote about coronary stents in the same year.Disclosure of authors' financial interests is thought to help preserve trust in the peer-review process and the credibility of research The inconsistency we observed may be due in part to journal practices. We found that 72% of research articles (excluding case reports) did not identify a funding source and that 83% of all articles did not have a financial disclosure statement for any author. Inconsistencies in financial disclosures for the same authors were due almost entirely to cases in which there was a disclosure statement in one journal and no disclosure statement in another journal. Together, these findings suggest that there are important variations among journals in the handling of information about research support and financial interests.Some journals may simply not solicit or report information about authors' financial interests. Indeed, some journals in this study never published disclosure statements. Even among journals that sometimes published disclosure statements, we found inconsistencies. This finding is consistent with a recent study in which editors of journals with conflict-of-interest policies reported that they do not publish disclosure statements in every article Journal policies might vary in several ways. One issue concerns what journals report when authors declare that they have no financial interests to disclose. If every author who did not have a conflict of interest submitted a statement to a journal declaring no interests, our data suggest that variations in journal policies on this point could account for up to 64% (840/1317) of the inconsistencies we observed see . Other dSome of the inconsistency we observed is likely also due to the behavior of authors. Only 6% of the 2985 authors in this study had an article that contained a statement about their financial interests, which suggests that many authors did not disclose their interests. Indeed, in recent cases, authors did not disclose financial interests that were later discovered by others We also found 26 cases (involving 16 authors) in which authors disclosed a financial interest in one article but declared they had no financial interests in another article.  Almost all of the 26 cases occurred between two research articles, making it unlikely that these apparent contradictions were due to authors or editors believing that a financial interest was relevant for one type of article but not for another. These cases occurred infrequently, but the inconsistency is curious. Our data do not allow us to determine whether the authors intended to mislead.Just as it is unclear how editors decide whether to publish disclosures, little is known about how authors judge the relevance of their financial interests and decide whether to disclose them. Many journal policies rely on authors to determine the relevance of their financial interests. There are at least two perspectives from which an author could judge the relevance of a financial interest. First, the author might try to judge the strength of influence they themselves perceive a financial interest to have. Although authors might have a unique vantage point, this type of introspection is limited, because people are often unaware of all of the determinants of their actions* Guidelines assume that a reader's discovery of previously undisclosed financial interests has detrimental effects on trust It is unclear how readers' attitudes and behaviors would be affected if there were consistent and appropriate disclosures in the medical literature. Disclosures of commercial interests in research have elicited strong negative responses We necessarily restricted the study to articles in a single therapeutic area, so the results may not be generalizable to other areas. We do not have data that allowed us to trace for each article what information was solicited by the journal, what was reported by the author, and how disclosed information was processed by the editors. Moreover, we do not have knowledge of the financial interests that might have been relevant for authors at the time they submitted their manuscripts. Instead, the data we collected were from the perspective of the reader of the medical literature. More data are needed to elucidate the roles played by both journals and authors in producing the inconsistencies we observed.Our study is the first to examine the consistency of authors' financial disclosures in the biomedical literature. We have documented evidence of a systemwide problem with transparency in an area of the literature that has important implications for patient care. It could be argued that an inconsistent system of disclosure is more harmful than no disclosure at all. The current approach creates the impression rather than the reality of transparency and may encourage underestimation of the impact of conflicts of interest on the integrity of medical science.


Science is ever changing. For the growth of science, one needs to have a problem-based solution. The path to solve a problem starts with identification of the cause. Once the cause is identified strategies can be planned to solve the problem. The process of finding the cause and the solution forms the basis of a research design and scientific study. Scientific evaluation of outcome with a longitudinal collection of data which stands the test of valid statistical analysis becomes definite evidence. The study design, if reproducible in the hands of other clinicians and researchers, could influence the practice of medicine. Such clinically relevant evidence once generated should be available beyond the geographic boundaries and human lifespan. Such widely accessible and retrievable evidence contributes to the growth of science and that is how the clinical practice is changed. Results of good research which are available globally and beyond human lifespan have allowed modern medicine to advance. Peer reviewed scientific journals play a big role in dissemination of results from research. Such journals not only allow documentary evidences for the present and future generations but also provide a forum for scientific scrutiny of the research papers by the peers.The Indian Journal of Orthopaedics (IJO) was started well before Orthopaedics was a well established specialty in India. The Indian Orthopaedics Association (IOA) was then a section of the Association of Surgeons of India. IJO was started in 1967 with two issues per year.A visionary step to document the research in the country, it was also a herculean task to attract quality manuscripts, perform the peer review and take care of the publishing process in an era when computers and internet were non-existent. In spite of these difficulties, the quality of IJO was consistently maintained. In the year 1994, the frequency of the IJO was increased to four issues per year. Although we were consistent with the publication schedule, the circulation of the journal was only to the members of Indian Orthopedic Association and hence the readership was limited to the members. The articles published in the journal were not cited very often. The journal was not indexed with any major Abstracting and Indexing (A& I) database. Hence, manuscripts submitted to and published by IJO were very low in numbers.The current editorial team, which took the charge in the year 2007, was given one year to pen the issues related with IJO and formulate a plan to overcome the shortcomings and difficulties. During the planning phase, a lot of thought process went into increasing the visibility, maintaining the consistency of quality, objective documentation of the peer review process, requirement for indexing with international A& I databases, need for a professional publisher and the finances involved.www.ijooneline.com during the IOACON 2006 at New Delhi. The website offers immediate unrestricted free access to all the content of the journal. In fact, the journal now publishes most of the articles within a few weeks of acceptance as ‘Ahead of Print’ after completing the entire pre-publishing process of technical and language editing. The back issues up to the year 2002 have also been made available online with free access. The website of the journal provides a number of user friendly features such as reference linking, article and issue level metrics such as downloads and citations, citation alerts for the authors, author institution mapping, etc. The open access policy of the journal, has led to increase in the visibility of its content globally which is reflected by number of visitors and article downloads from its website. The increased visibility of the journal led to increase in the manuscripts submitted and citations received for the published articles [Figures Good work published should be easily retrievable by other researchers so that more work can be built on that and the results can be utilized in clinical practice. With the aim to increase visibility and ‘research impact,’ we launched a separate website for the IJO with the domain  Figures –4.www.journalonweb.com/ortho). The system efficiently manages the double blind peer review of manuscripts and has led to decrease in submission to decision timeline. After the initial review of the manuscript by one of the editorial board members, it is sent to three to five subject experts, who are either selected from the existing database of the journal or after a search from other A and I databases. The final decision on the manuscript is taken by the editor based on the available comments from the peers. The system allows authors to verify the style and accuracy of references after cross-checking the bibliographic elements from PubMed. The editorial team can check for possibility of plagiarism or duplicate system. The authors are notified by a mobile message when the manuscript is sent for revision or proofs. Better management of the process had led to increased confidence of the authors and increase in submission of manuscripts from India as well as from other countries. The journal is now able to ‘choose’ better quality articles as can be seen from the increasing rejection rate from less than 60% in 2007 to over 75% in 2009 [Figures The entire review process of the journal is managed through a web-based manuscript processing system (Apart from review of the manuscripts, the most tedious and time consuming aspect in the entire publishing process of a journal is the pre-publication process of editing and proofing. Technical and scientific editing of accepted manuscripts takes time and requires expertise. Good technical editing does improve readability and quality of manuscripts. IJO now does all editing and proofing before formally accepting a manuscript. When a manuscript is ready for acceptance, all the references cited by the authors are cross-checked and corrected, the manuscript is looked for uniformity of style and the language is corrected. The editorial team then looks into the scientific aspect of the manuscript before it is paginated and shown to the authors. After this it is published online as ‘Ahead of Print’. The editorial team along with publisher worked on the overall design and layout of the journal to make it appealing and easy to read.The editorial team decided to bring two to three issues every year on specific topic. We included a symposium in each issue on a topic of clinical relevance and involved renowned experts on the subjects. Each such issue has two to three state-of-art reviews, 8-10 research papers and an editorial highlighting the consensus achieved on the subject of symposium and enumerating directions for the future research. In the last three years we have published theme-based issues on research methodology and evidence based medicine, giant cell tumor, spinal trauma, fracture neck of femur, total hip arthroplasty, open fracture, avascular necrosis of hip and bone stimulation.Till now the IJO had an elected editorial board. Recently the IOA has brought a constitutional amendment to select the editors and editorial board members based on fixed criteria including academic merit and publications. The so called ‘thank-less’ job of editors, which creates more ‘enemies’ than friends, requires skills which can be learnt by those who have love for the job and academics. Acquiring editorial skills takes time and hence it is necessary to groom new editorial board members and future editors. This step of having merit-based selection of editorial board members would definitely help in maintaining and improving the quality of the journal. Similarly, to give international fervor to the editorial board, a number of distinguished personalities were invited to be part of it and to its credit majority willingly joined IJO's board.This ‘all out’ approach towards overhauling the journal has paid rich dividends. A good journal needs good quality manuscripts, support of dedicated reviewers and readers. IJO now has this base of good articles, both in quantity and quality, reviewers and readers, as can be seen from increasing number of new submissions and downloads and citations of published articles. The journal is now indexed with PubMed and archived with PubMed Central. IJO has also been included in Science Citation Index Expanded from January 2008 and we shall have our first Impact Factor in June 2011. The inclusion in PubMed and Science Citation Index will further increase the journal's visibility. This should encourage all the authors in this subcontinent and outside to submit their research work to IJO.We still have a long journey towards making IJO a journal which can make impact on clinical practice and academics. IJO has to first become one of the most sought after journal, both by readers and authors. Though we understand the limitations of Impact Factor and its use in judging quality of research and a journal, we need to improve on our citations and Impact Factor so that authors from universities and institutions requiring publication in high IF journals as criterion for promotion can consider IJO as an alternative to other closed access but high-IF journals. We would give high importance to studies focusing on the problems of the developing world. To ensure that, we have planned to digitize all our back issues from the inception of IJO and upload these on the journal's website. These digitized issues would also be archived at other repositories such as Portico and through CLOCKSS.We are thankful to our authors, reviewers, editorial board members, all the staff at Medknow Publications and media Pvt. Ltd. and members and office bearers of IOA and hope to continue working together in this journey. We believe, together we can and together we shall attain new heights!


A publicet al.Why do duplicate publications occur? Various justifications are given by authors facing the charge of duplicate publication. It has been nicely enumerated by Tobin in his editorial. They incWhat are the drawbacks of duplicate publication? Peer-reviewed journals are perceived to provide new and authentic information. Duplicate publication hurts the prestige of the journal as the assurance of giving novel ideas to the readers is not fulfilled. It also violates the copyright of the previous journal, since the authors have already signed agreement of copyright transfer of contents to them and are not in a position to transfer this right again to the new journal, without the previous journal's consent. Duplicate publications are also declared unethical since they utilize the journal's limited resources, waste time of editors and reviewers, increase the work of the indexing system, artificially inflate the author's bio-data, and above all skew the medical evidence which in turn affects the meta- analysis.Authors can avoid duplicate publication if they follow the two fundamental policies of “awareness” and “openness”. Firstly,Many journals are concerned about this unethical practice of authors.–17 If itThe foundation of scientific publication is based on trust, honesty and credibility. Originality is the key factor in scientific progress and if the authors cannot assure this then one develops mistrust towards the contents of the article. The ultimate responsibility for the integrity of the publication rests on the shoulders of the authors. In the l


In the past 50 years there has been a substantial increase in the volume of published research and in the number of authors per scientific publication. There is also significant pressure exerted on researchers to produce publications. Thus, the purpose of this study was to survey corresponding authors in published medical journals to determine their opinion on publication impact in relation to performance review and promotion.Cross-sectional survey of corresponding authors of original research articles published in June 2007 among 72 medical journals. Measurement outcomes included the number of publications, number of authors, authorship order and journal impact factor in relation to performance review and promotion.Of 687 surveys, 478 were analyzed (response rate 69.6%). Corresponding authors self-reported that number of publications (78.7%), journal impact factor (67.8%) and being the first author (75.9%) were most influential for their annual performance review and assessment. Only 17.6% of authors reported that the number of authors on a manuscript was important criteria for performance review and assessment. A higher percentage of Asian authors reported that the number of authors was key to performance review and promotion (41.4% versus 7.8 to 22.2%). compared to authors from other countries.The number of publications, authorship order and journal impact factor were important factors for performance reviews and promotion at academic and non-academic institutes. The number of authors was not identified as important criteria. These factors may be contributing to the increase in the number of authors per publication. In the past fifty years there has been a substantial increase in the volume of published research. The number of papers cited by Pub Med each year has also grown linearly, to a current total exceeding 18 million -5. In faResearchers have implicated the increased complexity of research  and the increase in multi-center and multidisciplinary research collaborations to the growth in the number of authors per manuscript. However, it can be argued that other factors have a stronger impact on this so-called "author inflation". These factors include professional and social advancement (promotion), tenure, prestige, funding, and honorary authorships. Promotion and tenure committees use different procedures, criterion, and weight to evaluate researchers within faculties and across institutions; both academic and non-academic. Some institutions may reward publications, particularly for publication in "high impact journals" . TherefoWe surveyed corresponding authors in published medical journals to determine their opinion on aspects of publication  in relation to performance review and promotion.We identified potential authors to survey through the following steps. A listing of medical journal names, classified by medical field, were initially extracted from the Journal Citation Report (JCR) of 2006 , which wThe following data was extracted from each article identified: research design  or non-RCT), research field , number of authors listed, position of corresponding author on manuscript , as well as corresponding author's name, country of residence and email address.Each corresponding author was sent a survey via email. After three weeks a reminder email was sent to non-respondents, with a final reminder email sent to non-respondents two months later. The survey included questions regarding authorship order, decision of authorship position on the manuscript  and author affiliation (position at institution). The survey also included questions regarding whether the number of publications, number of authors, authorship order and journal impact factor contributed towards their performance review and promotion at their institution.Surveys with missing responses were excluded from the analysis. Statistical analyses were performed using Stata Verson 10 . To address the purpose of this study the data analysis was primarily descriptive.The study was approved by the Conjoint Health Research Ethics Board, University of Calgary.We identified 687 original research articles published in June 2007 from 72 journals which met our eligibility criteria. Of 687 surveys, 494 71.9%) were returned. After excluding those with missing data (n = 16), 478 surveys were available for the analysis, for a final response rate of 69.6% , the journal impact factor (67.8%) and being the first author (75.9%) were most influential for their annual performance review and assessment Table . Only 17Corresponding authors were asked when the initial decision was made regarding the authorship order for the manuscript. Fifty eight percent reported it was decided prior to writing the manuscript, 28.9% during writing of the manuscript, and 12.0% after the manuscript was written. Only 12.0% of authors reported that the authorship order changed after the initial authorship order decision was made.Of the surveys, 26.4% of authors believed that the number of authors on a manuscript should be limited by a journal. Among those authors, the average limit they suggested was 6.We conducted a survey among corresponding authors to assess their opinions of publication impact in relation to performance review and promotion. Overall we found that most respondents considered the journal impact factor, number of publications, and authorship order important to their performance review and promotion. The number of authors on a paper did not seem to affect performance review and promotion except among Asian authors.In general, performance reviews are challenging. Promotion and tenure committees attempt to include objective criteria, yet most use varying procedures, criterion, and weighting schemes to evaluate researchers for promotion and tenure . The absThere is pressure on researchers to publish due to evaluation procedures, and the desire for prestige, employment and tenure . CoincidJournal editors have also discussed the possibility of limiting the number of authors on a manuscript to try and reduce authorship misconduct . GuideliThere are few organizations  with speSome universities only merit first or corresponding authors in annual performance review and promotion. Other universities recognized second or third authors; however being first or corresponding author has the most recognition and financial compensation . In factOur study has limitations. First, we only surveyed corresponding authors and not those responsible for implementing performance reviews and promotion (for example department heads). The authors surveyed however should be aware and able to accurately report the criteria used by their institutions for performance reviews and promotion. Second, we surveyed authors from medical-related journals that were published in English, thus our finding may not be generalizeable to other disciples such as mathematics and physics. In addition we only surveyed authors with published articles, thus we do not know the opinions of non-published authors. Finally, there was a 30.4% non-response rate; we have no way of assessing if the opinions of these authors are consistent with those of the respondents.In summary we found that corresponding authors published in English language medical journals considered the number of publications, authorship order and journal impact factor to be important factors for their performance reviews and promotion. The number of authors on a publication was not identified as important criteria. These factors may be contributing to the increase in the number of authors per publication, and the so-called author inflation.The authors declare that they have no competing interests.RW participated in the conception and design, analysis and interpretation of data, drafting the manuscript, and statistical analysis. LS participated in the conception and design, acquisition of data, drafting of the manuscript, and administrative and technical support. BH participated in the conception and design, analysis and interpretation of data, critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content, and supervision. HQ participated in the conception and design, analysis and interpretation of data, critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content, and supervision. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.Am Fam PhysicianAm J Chinese MedAm J Manag CareAm J MedAm J Med SciAm J Prev MedArch Intern MedAviat Space Envir MdBrit Med JCan Fam PhysicianCan Med Assoc JChinese Med J-PekingCroat Med JCurr Med Res OpinFam MedFam PractHosp MedIndian J Med ResIntern Med JInternal MedIrish J Med SciIsrael Med Assoc JJ Eval Clin PractJ Korean Med SciJ Lab Clin MedJ Natl Med AssocJ Pain Symptom ManagJ R Soc MedJ Travel MedJ Womens HealthJ Am Med AssocJournal of Cutaneous PathologyMayo Clin ProcMed J AustraliaMed KlinMed Prin PractMil MedNeth J MedNew Engl J MPain MedPlos MedPostgrad Med JQjm-Int J MedRev Med ChileRev Med InterneSaudi Med JSouth Med JSwiss Med WklyTohoku J Exp MedTransl ResUpsala J Med SciWien Klin WochenschrYonsei Med JAnn Acad Med SingapAnn Allerg Asthma ImAnn Bot-LondonAnn Emerg MedAnn Endocrinol ParisAnn EpidemiolAnn Fam MedAnn HematolAnn Intern MedAnn MedAnn NeurolAnn OncolAnn PatholAnn Plas SurgAnn Rheum DisAnn SurgAnn Surg OncolAnn Thorac SurgAnn Trop PaediatrThe pre-publication history for this paper can be accessed here:http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6920/10/21/prepub


Preventing Chronic Disease (PCD), the first issue of which was published in January 2004, is the product of Dr Lynne Wilcox's vision to create a journal that intersects research programs, practice, and policy. With the support of Dr James Marks, then the director of the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Dr Wilcox created a peer-reviewed publication dedicated to communicating multiple perspectives of public health professionals, from academics to advocacy groups to practitioners working in the field. The vision was, and is, for PCD to be published by but editorially independent of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).PCD is CDC's first Web-only journal, a format that is becoming more common among scientific and academic publishers. PCD is also an open-access journal; its content is available free of charge and free of copyright and licensing restrictions. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution is PCD's request that authors be properly acknowledged and cited.Dr Wilcox anticipated a future in which technology could be used innovatively in publishing. PCD. The journal includes both peer-reviewed and non–peer-reviewed articles. The peer-reviewed articles fit the traditional academic and research models. Articles with nontraditional criteria, such as Tools and Techniques, focus on professional development. Regardless of article type, the journal requires authors to write in plain language and avoid technical terms and jargon to promote understanding to the broadest possible audience. These editorial policies continue to support PCD's vision of inclusion and representation of traditional and nontraditional perspectives.The inclusion of multiple perspectives is central to PCD's editorial board; these 2 nations represent the 2 largest segments of readers outside of the United States. Dr Wilcox implemented the translation of abstracts and full-text articles in Spanish, French, and traditional and simplified Chinese.Dr Wilcox realized the value of the international community's contributions in understanding and addressing challenges in public health — to think globally for local action. Public health professionals from Canada and Mexico serve on PCD accepts submissions on any chronic disease-related topic at any time during the year, the journal has also collaborated with guest editors on special themed collections. Each collection has covered different aspects of public health, including prevention, health promotion, interventions, disparities, and stakeholder engagement. These collections helped establish PCD as a venue for discourse on a range of public health topics.Although PCD boasted approximately 15,000 subscribers, approximately 500 published articles, indexing in PubMed and PubMed Central, innovative technology, editorial decisions based on open and free communication of ideas, international recognition, and the exploration of new theories and concepts.By the end of its 5th year in 2008, the journal had a permanent staff of 13. PCD as acting editors in chief: Dr Marta Gwinn and Dr Susan Chu. Both had to hit the ground running, inheriting an existing production schedule, a backlog of manuscripts, a calendar of planned issues, and guest editors. Dr Gwinn and Dr Chu effectively navigated the editorial and leadership challenges. We thank them for their outstanding leadership to help PCD continue to grow and thrive.When Dr Wilcox retired from the United States Public Health Service in August 2008, 2 dedicated and capable scientists stepped up to serve PCD continues the same innovative spirit envisioned by Dr Wilcox and Dr Marks. PCD will not rest on its years of growth and accomplishments. Our tradition is to grow and meet challenges, and we are already planning several enhancements.In taking the helm of the journal as its permanent editor in chief, I want to ensure that PCD is increasing, and our acceptance rate is decreasing. Both forces have improved quality. Our new schedule will allow us to manage the increased volume of accepted articles and offer faster turnaround from date of acceptance to date of publication.The journal has long hoped to publish 6 times per year, and we are now able to realize that goal. The rate of submissions to PCD's mission.The journal will continue to promote technologic innovations. We have added RSS feeds and multimedia content — including video files, audio files, animations, and video interviews. This year, we plan to add a "Post a Comment" feature, which will allow readers to offer feedback and stimulate discussion in a public forum. We expect to publish comments within 24 hours of posting. Facilitating dialogue is central to PCD will continue its collaboration with counterparts at the Mexico Ministry of Health's General Directorate of Health Promotion, who published 2 articles in our January 2009 issue. We have also begun collaborating with the editors of Chronic Diseases in Canada, a peer-reviewed scientific journal published quarterly by the Public Health Agency of Canada. One topic of discussion has centered on copublishing opportunities.Our international outreach will also continue. We now publish abstracts in Spanish, plus 2 full-text articles in Spanish related to health topics of interest to the Hispanic community, and we hope to translate more full-text articles into Spanish through partnership opportunities. PCD's 15,000 subscribers to learn more about their interests, the topics in PCD that have been most helpful, and the kinds of features PCD should include. We also plan to examine different measures of impact, including subscriptions, submissions, downloads, highly accessed articles, and citations of PCD articles.We now want to know more about what our readers expect from us. We plan to survey http://www.cdc.gov/pcd/for_authors/types_of_articles.htm#Brief).Finally, we plan to make a few changes to our content and to our strategy of collaborating with guest editors. A new type of article is now available to authors. The Brief is a short , peer-reviewed research report that will benefit authors who wish to submit their report in a condensed form for quick review and publication. Criteria for the Brief are on our Web site (Our strategy of collaborating with guest editors on special themed collections not only helped the journal to gain more exposure with internal and external organizations and partners but also demonstrated that the journal is a venue for publishing on varied content areas. The strategy was critical to establishing the journal's presence in the field. Our priority now is to accommodate the increasing number of submissions, so we will no longer regularly collaborate with a guest editor on themed collections.PCD would not have happened without its experienced and dedicated staff, the authors, reviewers, and readers. The invaluable work of our peer reviewers helps set the highest quality standards for PCD. The editorial board has provided thoughtful guidance and support since PCD's inception. We will continue to work together to ensure that PCD continues to publish timely, high-quality, and relevant reports for the public health professionals we serve.The progress and success of PCD will continue to promote dialogue between public health researchers and practitioners, encourage interdisciplinary research, and offer a venue for the many voices and perspectives in public health. I look forward to receiving feedback from our readers as we implement these enhancements.In implementing these changes, I believe that we are rededicating ourselves to the mission of the journal as envisioned by its founding editor.


Genetics Selection Evolution (GSE).It is our pleasure to welcome you to the new website of GSE is the first "Open Access" (OA) journal dedicated to original research on genetics and selection in farm and experimental animals. Converting GSE to OA provides an online journal freely accessible to all readers without charge, and is an opportunity we did not want to miss. This has already been largely explained in our previous editorial [From January 2009, ditorial .GSE from January 2009. BMC is the largest publisher of peer-reviewed open access journals in biology and medicine. BMC's journals fall into two main groups i.e. (1) the BMC series journals and (2) the independent journals with their own editorial control, which now includes GSE. Thus, GSE remains the full property of INRA and keeps its name, scope and editorial policy.In addition, we are really pleased to announce that BioMed Central (BMC) will publish GSE articles will be deposited in PubMed Central as well as in other freely accessible archives and repositories .BMC offers high-quality technology for editorial tools and functionalities that enable effective communication of the scientific work. All articles in BMC journals are published in HTML and PDF (searchable and offering colour) versions and are also made available in machine-readable XML format. GSE and of its parent journal  from 1969 till 2008 will soon be relocated to the new site but remain available online at EDP Sciences  and free of charge. We take this opportunity to thank EDP Sciences, the publisher of GSE from 2000 to 2008, for the excellent service they have provided.Back issues of We are also grateful to the people at the Business Development Department of INRA for their continued support during this important time of change.GSE.Now we invite you to discover the first articles released in this new format, with many more to come, that we believe reflect well the range of topics covered by


My term as Chief Editor ends with this issue. I had a great experience as Editor of the Indian Journal of Pharmacology (IJP) for 3 years. I cherish these memorable moments. I am also feeling good about my contribution to the Society.The new incumbent, Dr. RK Dikshit, is an able and suitable candidate to be the Chief Editor, and has served IJP as Executive Editor for 3 years. He has contributed immensely during this period and he is the right person to continue the good work. Any takeover has to be smooth and complete; we cannot and should not be starting from scratch. Starting from scratch leads to a loss of valuable data and expertise and the credits gained by the journal take a dip. A communication gap does most damage to authors, who lose out on the articles they submitted in the previous regime. Hence, I assure that the changeover is smooth and complete.The journal needs committed reviewers. With increasing specialization and researchers getting more focused, reviewers with generic interest may not be able to do justice to certain areas of research. We have been inviting researchers, monitoring the reviewers and trying to build up the database of reviewers with varied research interests. The online system also has a facility to search and invite reviewers through PubMed from distant places. Distance, therefore, is not a deterrent if the valuable manuscripts get their due justice.th Annual Conference of Indian Pharmacological Society, Gujarat Chapter, at Karamsad.Young researchers and academicians should be motivated to publish and also review. A formal training in scientific writing and reviewing should be made mandatory in all postgraduate courses in pharmacology. Senior reviewers can train their protégés and students and initiate them into this difficult task from an early stage. The members of the current editorial team conducted three workshops on scientific writing so far, the latest one being the 28As this journal caters to basic and clinical researchers in pharmacology, a balance needs to be maintained between the articles published. The present editorial board has tried to bridge this gap and bring in a balance by encouraging articles on drug utilisation studies, pharmacovigilance, pharmacoepidemiology and clinical research in a journal without compromising on good quality and relevant articles on basic research in pharmacology.As the stature of the journal increases, a reverse trend of offshore researchers submitting their research work to an “Indian” journal may occur. IJP has been receiving articles from Malaysia, China, Turkey, Nigeria and Nepal. We must strive to take it farther.The most important development for the Journal is the listing in PubMed and Science Citation Index. This has increased the global accessibility of scientific articles from IJP and credibility to the authors. This was possible only by the constant striving of our publisher, Medknow Publications, and the editorial team. I sincerely thank Dr. DK Sahu for his personal efforts in this direction. I am sure he will continue to lend the support to our Journal.I also feel, as outgoing Chief Editor, that the quality of pharmacology research is diminishing in India. The reasons may be political or inadequate facilities in the educational institutes, or may be animal right issues. It is time that the Society steps in and does some soul-searching to discover the reasons for the decrease in good-quality pharmacology research. Pharmacology as a science has an immense role to play in the discovery of new drugs in future within India. We need liberal laws to encourage research that will eventually help in finding new drugs for many neglected diseases.Thank you for providing me an opportunity to work with this Journal. I have learnt a lot academically and also on human and professional fronts, some the hard way and some the nice way. I thank all Executive members of the Society for giving me an opportunity to serve this great Journal. I wish the Journal a great success under the leadership of the now Chief Editor.Good Bye


Sports Medicine, Arthroscopy, Rehabilitation, Therapy & Technology (SMARTT) is an open access, peer-reviewed, online journal published by BioMed Central. This new journal encourages and facilitates academic exchanges from different cultural, social, economical and ethnic perspectives, allowing unique research in fields related to the journal to be shared around the world.With an expert Editorial team , we shalSMARTT is the official journal of the Asia Pacific Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine (APOSSM) and is affiliated with the Japanese Orthopaedic Society for Knee Surgery Arthroscopy And Sports Medicine (JOSKAS) and five other societies. We hope that these strong links and support from authors will help to inspire clinicians, practitioners, scientists and engineers to work towards a common goal to improve the quality of life in the international community.SMARTT will consider manuscripts on sports science, exercise physiology, sports nutrition, sports psychology, sports medicine, arthroscopic surgery, sports, orthopaedic and computational biomechanics, manual therapy, physical therapy, musculoskeletal rehabilitation, biomedical devices and technology and sports equipment technology. The SMARTT 'About' page [In order to cover all of the essential topics in disciplines related to the journal, ut' page  containsTimely publication and high visibility are two important features of this journal that makes it different from other traditional journals. Being an open access journal ensures rapid and efficient communication of research findings for the benefits of science, medicine and the general public. Authors can be assured their work is disseminated to the widest possible audience. The copyright belongs to the authors and they grant anyone the right to reproduce and disseminate the article on condition that the article has been correctly cited and no errors have been introduced .SMARTT will be published quickly and continuously online once accepted after the peer-review process, avoiding the delays commonly found in traditional journals in which submitted and accepted papers may have to wait for publication until enough articles have been collected for a particular issue. Three reviewers will be assigned for each submission, and reviewers will have up to three weeks to review the submitted article. After the receipt of the recommendation from the reviewers, the decision on whether to accept, reject or request major/minor revisions will be made by Co-Editors-in-Chief. The review time will be monitored by the Editorial Board to make it reasonably short for this journal.Articles submitted to We hope that you will join us in supporting this new journal, making it the home for high-quality research in the fields of sports medicine, arthroscopy, rehabilitation, therapy and technology.


Tobacco Induced Diseases to BioMed Central's publishing platform.This Editorial marks the transfer of  Tobacco Induced Diseases are published on BioMed Central's open access publishing platform. Until now, the journal has been hosted at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. The journal and its host society, the International Society for the Prevention of Tobacco Induced Diseases (ISPTID), have an interesting history [Alongside this article, the first articles accepted by  history . OriginaTobacco Induced Diseases have reached a constant flow. Furthermore, with the move to BioMed Central, the material we accept for publication will be widely visible and fully indexed [Tobacco Induced Diseases to BioMed Central, thus providing enhanced public access to this scientific information.New submissions to  indexed . Past auTobacco Induced Diseases reflect the broad scope of the journal and emphasize the diversity of publication interests of the society and the Editorial Board. The highly original article by Georg Matt et al. on the impact of tobacco smoking on the asking price for used cars presents a psychological analysis of how buyers view the value of cars which have been exposed to tobacco smoke [et al. present evidence that nicotine alters mitogenic potential in AR42J cells, a rat pancreatic tumor cell line which has implications for smoke-induced pancreatic cell damage [Forthcoming articles to be published in co smoke . It findco smoke  – this ico smoke . On a moco smoke . Similarl damage . ClearlyTobacco Induced Diseases to a new publishing platform. We hope readers, researchers and policy analysts will view Tobacco Induced Diseases as a channel for publications of their future findings.Finally we would like to express our thanks to all authors involved for their patience and understanding as a number of issues and delays have occurred with the move of


PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases has been open to submissions since February 2007, and we have been impressed by the number, quality, and range of the research articles we have received to date—from laboratory studies and assessments of new diagnostic tests to observational epidemiology, clinical trials, and qualitative research. But we have also noted that some authors have omitted crucial information about the ethical conduct of their study, or have been unaware of international guidance on how to report specific types of research. We would therefore like to remind authors of our reporting requirements (more detailed guidance is available at http://www.plosntds.org/guidelines.php).Patients with neglected tropical diseases are among the most economically and socially disadvantaged people on the planet. So when it comes to conducting clinical research among this vulnerable population, investigators must take particular precautions to protect the welfare of research participants.One crucial precaution that all researchers must take is to seek prior approval for their study from a relevant institutional review board (IRB), which must be named in the paper. We reserve the right to ask authors to send a copy of the board's formal approval. During the study, if the authors deviated from their protocol—and particularly if the deviation exposed participants to any additional risks—we expect the researchers to have immediately informed the board about the deviation and we require documentation of the board's response.Some authors have argued that their study was exempt from IRB approval since the data were collected as part of the routine diagnosis or treatment of patients. But because of the potential risks involved in recording data about patients for research purposes, such as breaches of patient confidentiality, an IRB should be asked to assess these risks ahead of the study. The IRB may indeed decide that no specific approval is required, in which case we ask authors to send a copy of the IRB exemption letter.http://www.wma.net/e/policy/b3.htm) and to have familiarized themselves with accepted international norms and standards, such as those set out by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors  and the Committee on Publication Ethics (http://www.publicationethics.org.uk/).We are aware that in some research settings there may not be a local IRB. Under these circumstances, authors should have made every attempt to find an ethics committee outside the immediate region to approve the study. In the very rare event that it was impossible to find such a committee, we expect authors to have conducted their study according to the principles expressed in the Declaration of Helsinki .A second crucial precaution is that investigators must obtain fully informed, ideally written, consent from all participants in their study. We reserve the right to ask authors to send a copy of the consent form that the participants signed. If details about a specific patient are included in a paper , authors must send a copy of the patient's written informed consent to have these clinical details published in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases explores in more detail the issue of obtaining meaningful and valid consent from vulnerable populations Oral consent is acceptable provided three specific conditions are met: (1) authors must explain in their paper why written consent was impossible ; (2) authors must have documentary proof that every individual gave consent ; and (3) the IRB specifically approved the oral informed consent process For animal studies, we ask authors to name the committee that approved the study and oversaw animal welfare.http://www.consort-statement.org/) and ensure that they include a flow diagram to illustrate participant flow through the trial. In addition, we strongly encourage authors to write their paper using a template that adopts the CONSORT section headings, and we have prepared such a template for you to use .One of the most important advances in medical research reporting has been the development of international standards for reporting specific study types. PLoS has adopted these standards for all of its journals. The best known is the CONSORT  statement. Authors should supply a completed CONSORT checklist  should send the original trial protocol as a supporting information file to allow editors and reviewers to assess the study fully. Any deviation from the trial protocol must be explained. We fully support the position of the ICMJE on trial registration http://www.who.int/ictrp/network/list_registers/en/index.html). Further details on trial registration are available on the ICMJE's Web site (http://www.icmje.org/).Authors of http://www.consort-statement.org/index.aspx?o). Studies of observational epidemiology  should follow the STROBE  statement (http://www.strobe-statement.org/). Finally, reports of microarray experiments should conform to the MIAME (Minimum Information About a Microarray Experiment) guidelines (http://www.mged.org/Workgroups/MIAME/miame.html) and the data from the experiments must be deposited in a publicly accessible database such as GEO (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/) or Array Express (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/arrayexpress/). Indeed, for all studies submitted to PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, all appropriate datasets, images, and information should be deposited in a relevant public database and the accession numbers should be given in the paper.There are four other reporting standards that we ask authors to adopt. Systematic reviews should follow the QUOROM  statement PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases is committed to publishing research that not only advances scientific knowledge on these diseases of poverty, but that is ethically sound and reported to the very highest standards. Please help us in our mission by following our guidance on ethics and reporting standards.


It was about one year ago, in June 2007, that the first 4 manuscripts were published in CAPMH, thus marking the birth of a new, open-access, international journal in the field of child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health. Now, at the first birthday, seems the right time for both looking back at the accomplishments of the last year and considering further development of CAPMH.Since June 2007, we have published 29 peer reviewed articles from all over the world. The average time from initial submission to first editorial decision was 7 weeks, and from initial submission to publication was 5 months. Considering that all submissions undergo rigorous peer-review and that those that are ultimately accepted often had to be revised multiple times, theses figures indicate that CAPMH has been successful in providing researchers with an opportunity to share their work in a timely manner. On a 5-point Likert scale, where 5 indicates maximum satisfaction, the authors' rated the submission process an average of 4.1, the peer review process 4.2, and the production process 4.1. The author overall satisfaction with CAPMH was 4.4. Of the respondents, 86% indicated that they would recommend the journal to a colleague and 100% would publish again in CAPMH.All manuscripts published in CAPMH are immediately accessible for free in PubMed. In summer 2008 the American Psychological Association has accepted CAPMH in their indexing service PsycINFO. Since the beginning of 2008, CAPMH registered approximately 5,000 accesses per month. Among the highly accessed articles, there were the papers by Basker et al. from India , more thAfter this successful start, we would like to thank the authors, the reviewers, the entire production team, and all those who have supported CAPMH during its first year of life. The road ahead looks both promising and challenging. The two main aims for the next two years are to achieve registration in Medline and at Thompson Reuters (in order to receive an impact factor as early as possible). In addition to regular submissions, there will be special sections with invited authors devoted to specific themes of high relevance to child and adolescent mental health. A series of articles on regulatory and ethical issues of child and adolescent psychopharmacological research in the U.S. and Europe is being prepared, and another focused on psychotherapy of posttraumatic stress disorders is under consideration. We welcome suggestions and nominations of high interest topics from the editorial board and all readers. We also have a special interest in case reports with reference to cultural backgrounds and respective mental health systems and would like to encourage relevant submissions from all countries of the world.We remain aware that one of the challenges for authors is the publication cost which is required in order preserve the open-access nature of the Journal and its complete independence from commercial entities. Still, this "cost of freedom" may be a barrier and discourage submissions. We are examining possible ways of reducing this burden as much as it can be possibly achieved while preserving the open-access, independent characteristics of CAPMH.We would like to invite all clinicians and researchers in the field, of mental health to contribute to the further development of CAPMH!


Journal of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance which will be published exclusively on-line from January 2008 and available on [[This is the first article in the open access lable on . We haveable on [.The traditional publication method has the disadvantage of research not being available to many without charge. This limits its visibility and impact. There is evidence that open access journal articles are more frequently accessed, which results in a greater impact and a higher citation rate . Other aFor researchers, the new manuscript submission system can be accessed on-line  and is nThe system of paying for the journal is very different from the conventional subscription model. In order that the costs of producing, publishing and maintaining the papers online can be met, each article accepted for publication is charged an article processing charge (APC). This charge is agreed between SCMR and BMC by contract and is £650 (approximately $1300) for 2008. Authors must indicate during the manuscript submission how the APC will be charged (see below) should their paper be accepted. There are several routes of APC payment:• Many institutions have "full" BMC membership so that the full APC is covered on behalf of authors at the time of submission  and later claimed by BMC direct from the institution. Examples of full institutional membership include the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK, and the Cleveland Clinic in the USA. A list of full and supporter institutional members of BMC is available on-line . There i• Some institutions have "supporter" memberships, meaning that they cover a proportion of the APC cost. The research team is then responsible for the remainder.• Researchers are now being encouraged to add the expected APC costs for anticipated articles to grant applications, and increasingly therefore, the APC might be paid direct from dedicated lines on research grants.• For SCMR members, SCMR has offered to cover the APC cost for the current time. This period will be regularly assessed by the board.• Researchers without the financial means to pay the APC can apply direct to BMC for an "APC waiver", which is granted at the publisher's sole discretion.• Failing all the above, the research team is responsible for paying the APC.The journal editorial team is based in London UK, at Royal Brompton Hospital. We are fortunate to have a highly experienced and critical mass of Assistant Editors in David Firmin, Raad Mohiaddin, Philip Kilner and Sanjay Prasad who take primary responsibility for guiding the manuscripts through the peer-review process. Warren Manning  and Stefan Neubauer  take responsibility for articles requiring special expertise or additional opinions, and where conflicts of interest arise for the Royal Brompton editorial team. All final decisions regarding publication are made by the Editor in Chief at weekly hanging committee meetings.JCMR@ic.ac.uk.This administrative position is crucial to the operating efficiency of the journal. We are fortunate to have Ms Fei Wang in this post, and all enquiries regarding the journal should be made in the first instance to her on I have undertaken a thorough review of the editorial board in 2007, and after consultation, I have refreshed the board, and it now has approximately 50% new members. I would like to thank the editorial board members who I have asked to stand down for their long and helpful service to the journal. I am grateful for the many kind and understanding comments from those standing down and for their gracious acceptance that renewal is important, and I am certain that I will still be able to call upon them in special circumstances for their advice. The role of the editorial board is to advise the Editor on policy, and also to commit to review of manuscripts. We will now adopt the principle of review of the editorial board every 2 years for rather more frequent but less radical change. The new editorial board is available for review on-line .JCMR articles published in the first 9 volumes are available on-line .Taking JCMR into the open access arena is a challenge, but presents many opportunities. We believe that the move has many advantages, and is well suited to an imaging journal which routinely uses high quality pictures, cines and colour. We hope you will support us in this endeavour. In return, we remain committed to providing the CMR community with a high-quality portal for new research findings which is fast to publication, impactful, and available to the widest possible audience.


The advent of the Internet has been the impetus for the Open Access movement, a movement focused on expanding access to information principally by reducing the costs of journals. I argue here that the Open Access movement has had little impact on the chemistry community and has taken our attention away from the real opportunity to revolutionize scientific communication. I propose a plan that both reduces the total cost of publishing chemistry and enriches the literature through incorporation of Open Data. By publishing lots of data, available for ready re-use by all scientists, we can radically change the way science is communicated and ultimately performed. How are journals failing us? It seems reasonable that before we as a chemistry community attempt to reconstruct the journal, we should assess what is wrong with the current incarnation and then design a corrective solution. I will limit the scope of this polemic to the chemistry community, the community in which I am an active member.Perhaps the most commonly stated failing of scientific journals is their astounding cost. Journals are very expensive, often prohibitively so. As a measure of this, consider the rate of inflation across all journals provided by the Association of Research Libraries . From198How have libraries responded to these fantastic increases in costs? Generally, the effect has been that each institution subscribes to ever fewer journals and purchases ever fewer monographs. The net result is that we scientists have direct access to a smaller portion of the overall scientific output. And this is what is meant by the "journals crisis" – a limiting of the ability to read the scientific literature due solely to lack of funds. In effect, the sole purpose of the journal – a means for disseminating scientific knowledge to all – is disrupted. Instead of reaching all chemists, our literature reaches only those that can afford to pay for access.This problem is acute in our discipline. Table Perhaps more disturbing than the fact that our journals are the most expensive of all science and technology disciplines is that the rate of inflation of chemistry journals subscription fees is staggering . The annThe motivation behind the Open Access  (OA) movThe downward trend in journal unit cost seen in the ARL data  in the eDirectory of Open Access Journals [Chemistry Central Journal [Beilstein Journal of Chemistry [Chemistry Central Journal has published about 50 articles, and in its four year history, Beilstein Journal of Chemistry has published about 125 articles. The American Chemical Society introduced in 2006 Author Choice [But what has been the impact of Open Access within chemistry? Well, the rate of inflation of chemistry titles Table  appears Journals  lists 75 Journal  and Beilhemistry . In the r Choice , its OA Nonetheless, Open Access had garnered a great deal of attention and many devoted followers. OA proponents strongly believe that the interest of science is best served by the widest distribution of scientific information, and that no barriers should be placed on any reader gaining access to any paper. This philosophy is best embodied by Stewart Brand's mantra: "Information wants to be free" . Also emany publication means requires funds for operation. Journals will require editors, copy-editors, a mechanism for peer review, internet connectivity and servers, and printing and shipping if hardcopy is produced. It is unclear how any OA model leads to a reduction in net costs relative to the traditional journal subscription model, other than perhaps an altruistic notion that removes or reduces the profit margin. Most OA journals operate on an author-pays model, and so it appears that the cost of publication simply is shifted from the reader to the author. Where are the cost savings?It should be recognized that A further concern I have is whether the author-pays model is truly "fair". Under the current subscription-based system, all readers pay to gain access. Many publishers have a tiered pricing system whereby individuals pay less than a library, and, often, corporate libraries pay more than academic libraries.In the author-pays model, who are the winners and who are the losers? Small universities and colleges are likely to do well by the author-pays model; their faculties tend to publish at low rates. For example, my own department averages about 15 publications per year, and with a publication fee of $2000 per article, our total cost would be $30,000 – much less than the approximately $100,000 we currently pay for chemical information.On the other hand, large research universities will face the lion's share of the publication cost. Perhaps some of this burden could be alleviated by changes in funding agency policies, which may allocate additional funds to cover these costs. How will the corporate-world fare under the author-pays model? Under the current subscription model, Michael Mabe (Elsevier) estimated that corporate subscription fees account for about 17% of revenue . He estiI have carried out a SciFinder  search tJournal of the American Chemical Society, Angewandte Chemie) and for most subdisciplines. The exception is in the area of drug design, as might be expected. One has to wonder, however, if companies will continue to publish in the open literature if they are required to pay for each publication. Might not corporate science become solely published in the patent literature, if not just secreted away within their own walls forever? Industry might just be the major beneficiary of an author-pays model!The data in Table Chemical Abstracts for the past century [I have argued previously that the real cause of the journals crisis lies with the scientists themselves . We simp century . It is nNo one can keep up with a literature like this. It is time for the scientific community to rethink the role of publication. Should every little idea, every minor work receive the same treatment as the great discovery? By this I mean, regardless of the quality of the science, the process of publication is identical: an author writes the article in the appropriate fashion, sends if off to a journal for external peer review, once revised the manuscript is copy-edited, typeset and then put onto paper and onto a computer and disseminated around the world. Most articles barely get cited – many never get cited; they are simply maintained within this ever-growing collective of scientific work, with the chaff growing at a rate exceeding the production of the wheat.What is it about journals that we hold so dear? We want accurate scientific information to be available to anyone who needs it at any time or place. Appendix 1 presents the needs of the science authors in terms of the publication mechanism. I have broken these down into the groups of persons responsible for carrying out these aims.I'll argue that most of these aims are being met under the current publication model. Publishers have reduced the average time from acceptance to publication of the average paper and have accepted the mantle of archiving journals, often in collaboration with librarians . As arguNature Chemistry [My main arguments rising from this list are two-fold. First, I do not think that editors and editorial boards have done a good job in managing the burgeoning literature. Individuals have been too quick to join editorials boards of new journals without stopping to think whether the market need is not already being fulfilled. For example, just what community is being denied access to their science that requires the introduction in 2009 of hemistry ? When neFurthermore, extant journals are growing fatter and fatter. Is this healthy? Are there really a million articles worth publishing? Are we placing our limited resources in appropriate places? Is the time spent on peer-reviewing all of those articles really worth it, when many published articles are destined to never be cited? Is subscribing to all these journals really necessary?One could imagine removing some of the strain of peer-review by adopting some Web 2.0 technologies . Peer reUnfortunately, the scientific publishers have been slow to adopt Web 2.0 tools. According to the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers Survey  "Just 20Journals can be information-rich, containing raw data and data preformatted for direct re-use by the reader. Since disk space is cheap, there should be no limits on article size. All data that the authors had at hand for reaching their conclusions should be made available to the reader.My primary concern with scientific publishing, one that I and others have been highlighting for a decade -32, is tLet me provide two simple examples of how the current system corrupts and stymies information dissemination.1H spectra). Even viewing the actual drawn spectra would be preferable, allowing one to see minor signals and impurities that might have been overlooked. Preferable still would be to have the spectral data file available for direct import into one's favorite spectral viewing program, allowing the reader to manipulate the spectrum, overlay it with one's own sample, and work fully with all the data.• NMR spectra are not typically reported as spectra, but rather as a list of chemical shifts  will dominate.I offer this small anecdote to support this notion of a real hierarchy of importance within the journals. I recently authored the monograph hemistry , which sThis is not to say that we can completely do without all of the rest of the literature. Clearly, the other quarter of the citations in the book are important too! This brings me to the second tier.The remaining say 80% of the scientific literature should be "published" within institutional repositories (IR) ,38. I plEach institution will establish their own IR or combine with a number of institutions to create a consortial IR. Each institution will supply the funds to maintain the IR: a server, internet connection, software, and maintenance. IR will operate with a standard protocol that allows interlinking and cross-searching through meta-tags. Initiatives in this effort are underway, notably the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) .Cost savings comes about in this model because only about 20% of the literature will end up in the full-featured journals, the ones that will continue to require a staff and a significant operating budget. These journals can be subscription-based or author-pays or even some third method – the important point is that there will be far fewer journals. The operation of the institutional repositories will require some funds, but since these repositories will offer only a very limited set of publication functions, they can be operated at a far lower cost than currently appropriated, leading to the ultimate cost savings.But my main advocacy within this piece is for the development of tools that will lead to an enriched publication that offers new avenues for real scientific discourse and development, the revolution that the Internet enables. The key is to publish Open Data ,40 – pubAuthors should include more data within the supporting materials of journals. While most journals provide supporting (or supplementary) materials, they do so in only limited formats like pdf. Authors should include data – coordinate files, spectra, kinetics output, etc – in whatever format is most suitable that the journal allows, but each author should advocate for the ability to deposit more appropriate formats. Authors should ask for more tools for preparing supplementary materials in appropriate formats for deposition.• Reviewers should flag those manuscripts that lack supporting data and insist that authors include it as part of the publication.• Editors hold a great deal of power in this battle. We see this in the area of x-ray crystallography, where editors many years ago required that structures be deposited in the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) [• se (CSD)  as part se (CSD)  how thesPublishers should welcome the additional supporting materials and make then available under the Open Data principle. Furthermore, publishers should encourage the mining of these supporting materials, like the CrystalEye [• ystalEye  and ChemystalEye  projectsSoftware Developers must play a key role in this system. While the editors and publishers are pivotal to its success – authors won't likely submit all of their data unless forced to do so – the submission of data (and lots of it) will only occur if the submission process is painless. Making this process painless requires development of software tools. These tools should create formatted data files with as little user-input as possible; the ideal situation is one where the user doesn't even know that a formatted file has been produced! In addition, software developers, working with the publishers and database manufacturers should create and establish appropriate data formats for widespread use. Examples of data formats of this type include the IUPAC International Chemical Identifier (InChI) [•  (InChI) , Joint C (InChI) , and Che (InChI) -50.Let me describe some examples of "necessary tools". These tools need to operate transparently in the sense that they produce the properly formatted and meta-tagged files without any author intervention.• An author draws a two-dimensional chemical structure and embeds this picture into her document. Along with the "dead" image comes a connection table and an InChI, all formatted and ready for indexing and reuse.• An author uses his favorite program for spectral manipulation, creating an image of the spectrum suitable for publication. This image is pasted into the document. Along with the "dead' image comes the JCAMP data, an InChI, and meta-tags describing, for example, the type of spectrometer and experimental conditions.• An author uses her favorite program to visualize the three-dimensional structure of a molecule. She selects an orientation that suits her needs and embeds this image into her document. Along with this "dead" image comes the 3-D coordinates, the InChI, and meta-tags indicating how the structure was obtained – for example, as a result of a computation at a certain level.The last piece of the puzzle is the creation of a utility within a word-processing program to extract out these data files and meta-tags and automatically generate the supporting materials. Within a model like this, authors would continue to work and draft articles essentially as they have been for years. The only change would be hitting the "publish" button that would generate the appropriate supporting materials, and then the authors would submit both the article and this supporting material. By creating a system of intercommunicating tools, a publishing work-flow utility can be put into place that imposes few requirements or behavioral changes on scientists. In this manner, I believe we can revolutionize how we publish our science.There are two fledgling experiments that attempt to put into place some of these enhanced-publication/datument ideas: Project Prospect  from theWe need to encourage these projects and the development of more tools. We need to encourage our colleagues to adopt a new model for publication. We can revolutionize how we perform our science. This is the real hope of the internet for scientists.Internet Journal of Chemistry) that advocated many of the ideas expressed in this paper. That journal is now defunct. The author is on the Advisory Board of the Chemistry Central Journal. The author's wife is employed by Symyx Technologies.The author was the editor of a for-profit journal (Wide distributionRapid communicationArchived for future accessPublisherContent is meaningfulPeer reviewContent is managed and cohesiveEditors and editorial boardsContent is written in grammatical correct styleContent is presented in a consistent fashionCopy-editor


Experimental & Translational Stroke Medicine published by BioMed Central. As its title suggests, the journal is intended principally to gather and disseminate new knowledge in the field of experimental stroke in order to facilitate future translation and development of new clinical stroke treatments. There are many examples in modern medicine of translational research opening new perspectives for the improved diagnosis or treatment of human diseases and enabling findings from basic bench top discoveries to be transferred into clinical applications. A good example for this approach in the field of cerebrovascular disease is diffusion weighted magnetic resonance imaging. Introduced in the last decade of the 20th century in experimental stroke studies, this novel diagnostic tool was rapidly and successfully translated to humans, revolutionized early diagnosis of stroke and represents now the gold standard of modern stroke imaging worldwide. Contrary to this success in stroke diagnosis, the translation of novel experimental therapies into an effective treatment for stroke patients has so far not been successful for a number of reasons, with one central problem certainly rooted in insufficient stringency of the translational process from bench to bedside. A clear goal of the journal is therefore to improve the quality of experimental stroke research and reduce translational failures from bench to bedside.It is with great pleasure and enthusiasm that we take the opportunity to introduce the new open access, peer-reviewed journal The new journal particularly focuses on translational aspects of pathophysiological, diagnostic and therapeutic issues of cerebrovascular diseases. We encourage authors to submit full-length original articles, short reports or reviews related to the topics of emerging therapies, diagnostics, models, animal behaviour testing, pathophysiology, and clinical trial data. Moreover, guest articles summarizing translational aspects of other neurological diseases apart from stroke may occasionally be featured. Following evaluation by the Editorial Board  and peerFittingly, the launch articles provide detailed reviews on promising stroke drug candidates which are currently in late clinical development, such as the hematopoietic factors G-CSF  and EPO We strongly believe that the open access format of the new journal - a true novelty in the field of cerebrovascular research - has clear benefits for science, medicine and the general public: First, all articles are freely and universally accessible online, and so an author's work can be read by anyone at no cost. The easy and widespread availability of articles significantly enhances reading and citation of the results. Second, all accepted articles are immediately published with no delay and therefore allow particularly rapid dissemination of new results. Third, the BioMed Central format allows interactive discussion and anotation of articles providing an online tool for open discussion of data. Fourth, in contrast to other stroke journals, there is no size restriction for articles, and the type of data that can be attached to an article . Authors hold copyright for their work and grant anyone the right to reproduce and disseminate the article, provided that it is correctly cited. Finally, the journal's articles are archived in PubMed Central, the US National Library of Medicine's full-text repository of life science literature, and 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. This complies with the policies of a number of funding bodies including the Wellcome Trust, NIH and Howard Hughes Medical Institute.Experimental & Translational Stroke Medicine will create new ideas and opportunities to improve the understanding of stroke and to find new treatment opportunities. We encourage the stroke research community to make full use of this very welcome resource.We hope that unlimited access to the latest information on stroke research published in The authors declare that they have no competing interests.