2008 Publications Committee Report
Scientific Impact/Attractiveness to Authors
Impact factor: The 2007 Journal Impact Factors,
published by ISI in 2008, made a strong showing once again with most of the
journals showing increases.
Manuscripts received: Manuscript submissions were up
7% across the AJP journals, and 4% across all the journals, in 2007.
Time to first decision: Time to first decision averaged
25 days in 2007 across all the monthly original research journals.
New peer review system: New software for online peer
review (eJournalPress) was chosen in 2007. This change also allowed the
Publications Committee, with the input of the Editors, to streamline the
review forms and make article types more consistent across the journals.
Neuroscience Peer Review Consortium: The JN is
participating in the one-year trial of this consortium, which started in
January 2008. This will allow reviews to be transmitted from a journal that
rejects an article to another neuroscience journal upon the author’s
request. The goal is to reduce the load on reviewers and editors and speed
the publication of research results.
Time to Publication: The average time to publication
for all the May 2008 issues of the research journals was 2.1 months.
Supplemental Material: A total of 396 data supplements
were published in 2007; 50 of them were video clips. Approximately 27% of
the non-video data supplements were published in Physiological Genomics.
Access to supplemental data is free—a reader can view supplemental data
without a subscription to the journal, even if they cannot view the entire
article.
Member benefits: APS members started receiving free
online access to all journals, including the Legacy Content, in 2002.
Members also receive a print subscription to Physiology, The Physiologist,
and Advances in Physiology Education. Color charges are waived for all
members who are first or last authors of a paper containing color figures.
Classic Articles: As an outgrowth of the Legacy Content
project, the Classic Articles Collection was rolled out on the APS web site
in August 2004. Each commissioned essay is linked to its classic article,
which is made free online in the Legacy Content. Advances continued to
publish a series of articles that describe ways in which the Classic
Articles can be used for teaching.
Preprints policy (Nature “Precedings”): Nature
Precedings is a new publication that posts citable preprints of non-peer
reviewed articles, but claims these do not preclude publication in a
peer-reviewed journal. However, APS does consider this kind of posting
pre-publication.
Signed reviews policy: APS has never had a policy
regarding signed reviews. While it is not encouraged, if reviewers sign
their reviews, they will allow the signatures to go to the author at the
Editor’s discretion.
Dissertations in free online sites: Students can allow
their dissertations to be sold and distributed by Proquest, but they do not
have permission to allow Proquest to make them free online. The following
will be added to the response to such permission requests: “Proquest may
produce and sell copies of your dissertation on demand, but may not make
your dissertation available for free internet download.”
2009 Subscription Prices: Based on the cost plus 10%
model we have used since setting 2002 prices, staff recommended to the
Committee that prices be increased 2% in 2009, with the intention of
announcing this smaller than usual price increase, which was made possible
partly by the collection of Open Access fees through APS’s AuthorChoice
program. Members of the Committee and the Finance Committee questioned the
need to decrease the increase in prices that much (the increase was 4.6% in
2008), so a compromise of 2.5% was recommended by the Publications Committee
and accepted by the Finance Committee and the Council.
AuthorChoice: The APS AuthorChoice program was
developed to allow authors the ability to provide immediate free access to
their work. For a growing number of our authors, providing open access is a
condition of funding. The APS AuthorChoice program was opened to all APS
research journals in July 2007. For a fee of $2,000 on top of other author
fees, ($3,000 for review articles in research journals, which have no other
author fees), an article will be made free immediately and can be uploaded
to PMC to meet funding requirements. Twenty-one authors request this option
in 2007, which is 1% of all accepted articles during that period, and 10
articles during January-May 2008.
Consortia: APS continues to respond to requests from
consortia of libraries or multi-site institutions, giving them a 5-15%
graduated discount for 6-31+ online subscriptions, if we are not losing
subscription dollars by doing so. Sales were made to 41 consortia and
multi-sites in 2007, up from 34 in 2006. APS also signed an agreement with
SPCNet, which will “package” the journals from FASEB and other publishers
and present them to consortia and library networks.
Increase in color charge fee: The color
charge to nonmembers was increased to $350 as of July 1, 2006, and to $400
as of July 1, 2007.
Open Access
Patient Access: Since November 2005, the public can
request articles through the Patient Access link on the journal home pages.
About five requests per week are received.
NIH policy: At the end of 2007, the Congress passed an
Appropriations Bill that included language making the NIH Public Access
Policy mandatory. This means that all NIH-funded articles must be uploaded
to PMC and released to the public within 12-months of publication. The
Committee approved the concept of the APS uploading articles for authors,
50% of which are NIH-funded. NIH has also recently distributed a new policy
to its intramural researchers, forcing them to sign an NIH Publishing
Agreement, and telling them not to sign any publisher’s agreement. APS has
sent a query to the NIH, indicating that the APS Mandatory Submission Form
does more than transfer copyright, and does not transfer copyright from
government employees.
Wellcome Trust policy: Wellcome and other UK funding
agencies now require their funded researchers deposit their articles in PMC
with a mandatory OA date six months after publication. Because that is
earlier than APS’ free access policy, APS allows authors to use its
AuthorChoice program to meet this obligation.
Harvard policy: The Committee reviewed the recent
decision by Harvard’s college of arts and sciences encouraging authors to
add language to the copyright transfer agreements that allows them to post
articles in an institutional repository open to the world. The Committee
reiterated its decision not to allow author-provided addendums to our
copyright policy, the Wellcome Trust addendum being one exception.
Book Committee
The Book Advisory Committee, chaired by Ron Terjung, is
making progress on having parts of the Handbook series updated, namely the
Respiratory and Exercise Handbooks.
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