APS Journal Impact
Impact Factors. Almost all the journals saw an increase in their 2000 Impact Factors. The Editors continue to invite content that will improve the journals' impact.
Reports
"Reports," which are meant to be short articles of high impact, replaced the previous article type, "Rapid Communications," in October 2001. Papers submitted to this category are designed to present the best original scientific research having broad significance. The primary criteria for judging the acceptability of a manuscript are originality, scientific importance, and broad interest. Manuscripts judged lacking in these aspects will be declined even if the experimental work is technically sound. These articles will be limited to no more than three printed journal pages (~2,500 words). As of March 15, 2002, eight were in peer review, four accepted for publication, and one published.
Publication Efficiency
-
Articles in PresS. Immediate publication of accepted research articles in manuscript form began in July 2001 with American Journal of Physiology-Renal Physiology, with the rest of the journals that are peer reviewed through APS Central following shortly thereafter. A total of 604 Articles in PresS were published in 2001.
-
S-Proof. S-proof has been very well-received by authors and has helped us with our continuing efforts to decrease time to publication.
-
Financial Stability and Increased Accessibility
-
Subscription Prices. Subscription prices for 2003 were set for the second year using the "new" pricing model that was approved by the Council in March 2001, which unbundles prices so that subscribers can choose print only, print plus online, or online only. The 2003 prices were set taking into consideration increases in cost and a budgeted decrease in the number of subscriptions of 6%. The Committee and Council approved a price increase for all journals of 7.3%.
-
Legacy Data. Work has begun on scanning the content back to 1985 for the first stage of putting all journal content online by the end of 2004. Council approved selling the legacy content as a package for a one-time fee of $1,500. It is available free to APS members in good standing.
Reducing Member Costs
APS members are given free online access to all the journals and will be given free access to the APS Legacy Content when it is online. As was reported at the last meeting, APS members continue to take increased advantage of the free color policy. In 2001, $225,750 of free color was given to members, up from $182,000, in 2000.
Electronic Handbook of Physiology
-
Book Advisory Committee. Marshall (Chip) Montrose of Indiana University has agreed to Chair the Book Advisory Committee. The Committee will be charged with writing its charter to be presented to the Publications Committee, and with developing a plan to create an electronic Handbook of Physiology. The Committee is looking into the value of including older Handbooks online as Legacy Content, and is developing Calls for Editors of previous Handbooks that need new editions.
Electronic Supplemental Material
-
Supplemental Material. Five video clips were published in 2001. Four more are in production to be published in 2002. Approximately 20 long data tables have been published as supplemental material to articles in Physiological Genomics.
-
Bundling Review Articles. It is now possible to go to the journal home page and link to a table of contents of all review articles in each individual journal or all the APS journals (except NIPS and PRV) across time.
-
Physiology Taxonomy. HighWire has redesigned their home page to be a portal to all the journal content on their site. Volunteers from APS helped create the physiology taxonomy that makes the physiology portion of the search engine a rich search tool.
-
STKE and SAGE. APS continues to participate in AAAS's Knowledge Environments, allowing APS journal content to be part of the Signal Transduction Knowledge Environment (STKE) and giving our members the same AAAS membership discount to its subscriptions, and allowing our journal content to be linked to the new Science of Aging Knowledge Environment (SAGE) at a pay per view price for non-subscribers.
Translational Research
-
Call for Papers. A Call for Papers on Translational Physiology has been running in all the Journals since June 2001. As of March 15, 2002, 29 have been submitted, 12 accepted, and 12 published. Editors have been encouraged to label any paper that can be considered a translational research paper as such, even if it is not submitted in response to the call, and APS staff will add the banner to that paper. This will allow for online searching across all the APS journals for translational research papers.
-
Physiology in Medicine (PIM). An agreement was made in 2001 to publish the Physiology in Medicine series in Annals of Internal Medicine, with Dennis Ausiello, Harvard Medical School, as the Editor of the series; Dale Benos will serve as Deputy Editor. Frank Abboud of University of Iowa, Mark Fishman of Harvard Medical School, and Bill Koopman of University of Alabama at Birmingham are serving as Associate Editors. The first article in the series will be published this summer.
Editor Appointments and APS Central Implementation
Dennis Brown became Editor of American Journal of Physiology-Cell in July 2002. Eve Marder became Editor of Journal of Neurophysiology in July 2002, and that journal will start using APS Central for peer review at that time. Gary Sieck began his second term as Editor of Journal of Applied Physiology in July 2002. Ole Petersen has been chosen to be the Chair of PRV's European Committee, starting January 2003. The Editors of AJP-Lung and PRV will be evaluated at the Fall 2002 meeting.
Dale Benos, Chair
Council Actions