2009 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 nearly all journals increasing
their ranking.
Manuscripts received: Manuscript submissions were flat across AJP
journals and across all the journals in 2008. Submissions for the first
one-third of 2009 are down 9% overall and down 12% for research articles;
this downturn in submissions has been seen in other FASEB societies and is
thought in part to reflect the impact of the writing and reviewing of
stimulus grants. If the trend continues throughout the year, we will explore
further the possible causes.
Time to first decision: Time to first decision averaged 28 days in
2008 across all the monthly original research journals.
New peer review system: The transition to the new software for online
peer review—eJournalPress—initiated in 2007 was completed in March 2009. The
new vendor continues to be responsive. This change has allowed the
Publications Committee, with the input of the Editors, to edit and
streamline the review forms and make article types more consistent across
the journals.
Neuroscience Peer Review Consortium: The Committee decided to have JN
participate in the one-year trial of this consortium, starting January 2008,
which enables 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. Since the start of the trial, JN has received 19
submissions, which comprise approximately 2% of total submissions to the
journal, 18 of which were received from Journal of Neuroscience and one from
NeuroImage. Submissions to JN have not been high and some authors have not
complied with submission guidelines. Although the trial has not yet met its
goals in that time to decision is nearly identical to the conventional
route, it was agreed to continue the trial through 2009 based on the
considerations that authors will learn how to use the system better,
participate more and that it is does not take much effort for JN to comply.
Time to Publication: For 2008, the average time from acceptance to
publication for the original research journals was an impressive 2.26
months.
Supplemental Material: A total of 399 data supplements were published
in 2008, 51 of which were video clips. Approximately 22% of the non-video
data supplements were published in Physiological Genomics and 17% in Journal
of Neurophysiology. Access to supplemental data is free.
APS consumer website and podcasts: A study published in the June 2008
online edition of the Journal of Applied Physiology examining the illegal
use of recombinant human erythropoietin led to a page 1 story in the New
York Times and a segment on the CBS Evening News. Seven of the APS podcasts
aired in 2008 related specifically to journal articles, and the August
episode included an interview with David Linden. Seventeen press releases
related to journal articles and were promoted to the public/press. Due in
large measure to the content of the journals and the repurposing of the
content by the communications department via press releases and podcasting,
web traffic on the Society’s consumer site grew 27.6% between 2006 and 2008.
Author Rights Policy questions: The Committee reconsidered some of
its traditional policies regarding authors’ rights to their papers. Changes
made to the policies are: APS will allow authors to send PDFs to their
colleagues via email attachments; APS will allow educational use of authors’
articles without having to ask permission; and APS will allow posting to
institutional and other repositories if the AuthorChoice fee is paid.
Publications Committee Editorial Decisions
Editor Requests
Support for additional color figures (AJP-Renal) for three years: The
Committee voted not to grant this request to have an artist redraw nine
color figures for review series as it would be too costly in a time of high
economic uncertainty. It was not felt that the benefit of nine color article
warranted the cost.
Duplicate publication policy/unpublished data in review articles (AJP-Renal):
The Committee agreed to maintain the current policy regarding duplicate
publication. The APS does allow summaries of unpublished data in review
articles.
Does filming of techniques and methods constitute duplication or
supplemental publication? Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE) is an
organization that films investigator techniques and publishes them on their
website. The Committee agreed to allow filmed methodologies published in
JoVE, provided that video is published no earlier than concurrent with final
publication of article; authors disclose the publication of their video; and
the paper is not a “methods” paper. The APS will prepare guidelines for
submission to/publication by JoVE of methods and techniques associated with
APS research articles. The APS is holding further discussions with JoVE.
Finances
2010 Subscription Prices: Based on the cost plus 10% model used by
the APS since setting 2002 prices, the Committee recommended that
subscription prices be increased by 5% in 2010, with the Legacy content
increasing 12.5% to $2,250. The Finance Committee also recommended the rate
for Physiology institutional prices be increased by 10%.
Consortia: APS continues to respond to requests from consortia of
libraries or multi-site institutions, giving them a 5-15% graduated discount
for 5-150+ online subscriptions. Sales were made to 43 consortia and
multi-sites in 2008, up from 41 in 2007. APS’ agreement with SPCNet, which
packages the journals from FASEB and other publishers and presents them to
consortia and library networks, commenced in 2007 but has not produced sales
to date.
Legacy Content: In 2002, the APS started scanning its back content
and putting it online. The Legacy Content, as it is called, is sold as a
product with a one-time price of $2,000. Unit sales were 61 in 2008, with
lifetime unit sales at 551. The Committee considered making the Legacy
Content free from 2009 after ceasing to market it from 2008, but decided not
to do this, and to allow the Circulations Department and SPCNet to continue
to sell this product. The Committee did not want to take a product away as
long as sales were growing, especially in this era of financial uncertainty.
This has proven to be a good decision.
PG trial subscriptions: At the PG Editors request, a marketing
experiment in 2006 gave online institutional subscribers to AJP-Consolidated
a free online subscription to PG. This experiment was extended through
2007, during which time our Circulations Department did some targeted
emails/calls, which turned some complimentary subscriptions into sales.
Further print marketing campaigns were implemented throughout 2008. PG
subscriptions have increased from 275 in 2005 to 356, with a gain of 53
subscribers in 2008.
Color Charges: In 2008, the number of color figures decreased by 16%
which correlates with a reduction in the number of articles and pages
published.
Market Outlook
Subscription counts were down 3% in 2008 (versus 4% in 2007) due to
continued attrition and migration of print to electronic versions. The vast
majority of APS subscriptions are institutional subscriptions sold
individually through agents such as EBSCO. APS subscriptions include
consortia sales, which we are looking to develop worldwide. In 2009 the APS
will carry out some targeted marketing campaigns in addition to renewal
efforts. These campaigns will include identifying institutions that do not
subscribe to APS journals with faculty who are APS members.
According to discussions held with academic librarians, the full impact of
the economic downturn has not yet hit the institutions. Therefore, it is
anticipated that there will be escalated subscription attrition in 2010.
Given that librarians base their subscription purchase and cancellation
decisions increasingly on usage, to help drive usage of APS journals, a
campaign was created and rolled out at EB (and followed up via email) which
focuses on sign-ups to eTOCS and other content alerts.
Open Access
Author Choice: 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 in addition to other author fees,
an article is made free immediately and is uploaded by the APS on behalf of
the author to PMC to meet funding requirements. In 2008, 48 authors request
this option, which represents 1% of all accepted articles during that
period, slightly higher than in 2007.
Patient Access: Since November 2005, the public can request articles
through the Patient Access link on the journal home pages. About three
requests per week are received compared to approximately five requests per
week in 2007.
NIH policy: The NIH began complying with our requests to remove APS
articles that are prematurely released on their PubMed Central (PMC) site
under their voluntary, author-posting policy, which has had a very low
compliance rate. In 2006, a group of non-profit publishers, including APS,
met with NIH to persuade them to work with publishers to help improve this
compliance in an effort to head-off the push toward a mandatory policy with
a six-month release date that was working its way through Congress all that
year. These negotiations with NIH fell apart when the NIH insisted that PMC
be cloned internationally, creating multiple PMCi sites around the world.
However, at the end of 2007, Congress passed an Appropriations Bill that
included language making the NIH policy mandatory with a 12-month release.
At the beginning of 2008, the APS signed an Agreement with the National
Library of Medicine (NLM) whereby the APS will deposit articles into PMC on
behalf of authors, thus complying with policies of other funding
organizations such as the Wellcome Trust. PMC will make the full text of
articles freely available 12 months after publication. The deposits commence
with materials published in July, 2008. The Agreement with the NLM includes
deposit into the UK PMCi archive only. Deposit into any other PMCi archive
developed requires the publisher to grant permission.
Wellcome Trust policy: Wellcome Trust and other UK funding agencies
now require their funded researchers to deposit their articles in PMC with a
mandatory OA date six months after publication. Because that is earlier than
APS’s free access policy, APS allows authors to use its AuthorChoice program
to meet this obligation.
Harvard policy: The Committee reviewed the decision by the Harvard
Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) 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.
Books
Book Committee update: The Book Advisory Committee, chaired by Ron
Terjung, has been working on the development of the online publication of
the Handbook of Physiology entitled Comprehensive Physiology. The APS
retains copyright. The existing Handbook content will be fully digitized and
integrated within the new content and will be published in a quarterly
serial format that will enable Comprehensive Physiology to be eligible for
inclusion in abstracting and indexing services, such as PubMed and ISI (for
an Impact Factor). Ongoing updating and expansion of the coverage will
ensure that the content continues to grow and evolve along with the science
of physiology.
Publishing Industry Initiative Update
Chicago Collaborative: This group was originally organized to discuss
issues of mutual importance among the library, publisher, editor/author
scientific communities on topics such as access control, research funding,
plagiarism and preservation. The APS is a charter member.
CLOCKSS (www.clockss.org): The
APS is a founding member of CLOCKSS (Controlled Lots of Copies Keep Stuff
Safe), an international joint venture between the leading scholarly
publishers and research libraries. The mission of CLOCKSS is “to build a
sustainable, geographically distributed dark archive with which to ensure
the long-term survival of Web-based publications for the benefit of the
global research community.”
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