The goals for the Publications Program as developed during the APS Strategic Planning retreat in November 1999 and approved by Council in the spring of 2000 continue to direct the department'�s activities.
APS Journals the Best in Their Field
Impact Factors. The Journal Impact Factors made a strong showing again in 2002. Although PRV fell from a 4th to 12th ranking among all journals, it remains the highest ranked journal in Physiology.
Letter to ISI from APS President. Last year, the APS Presidents communicated with the President of Thompson Scientific about creating and marketing measures of journal quality other than the Impact Factor, since it is by itself an imperfect measure of journal quality. Following this correspondence, ISI is allowing APS to review new reports they are developing for the web version of the Journal Citation Report.
Reports. Created in 2002 to replace Rapid Communications, this article type has continued to grow, particularly in the Journal of Neurophysiology, which started accepting Reports in 2003.
News in Physiological Sciences (NIPS). The completely overhauled version of NIPS, including a new design with professionally redrawn figures in every article, new front-section features, and a new title, Physiology, will appear starting with the August 2004 issue.
Physiological Genomics
The new editor, Allen Cowley, met with his associate editors in August 2003 and made plans for increasing the impact of Physiological Genomics. Submissions are up 80% from this time last year.
Publication Efficiency
Interior redesign. Subtle changes were made to the text and headings style of all original research journals, including Journal of Neurophysiology, in the January 2004 issues. The title pages of each article have a much more modern look, and each page will include information important for both the print and online versions.
SGML up-front workflow. An SGML up-front workflow was implemented in the composition of the journals with the Spring 2004 issues. This should afford some efficiencies in production and the ability to use publishable article files before the print issue is created.
Production module. Work continues on the production module, which will allow electronic tracking and trafficking of files to streamline journal production.
Financial Stability and Increased Accessibility
Subscription Sales. Journal prices for 2005 were once again set using a cost-based model. The price increase for 2005 was set at 5% for all the journals except for a higher increase of 10% for Physiology (formerly NIPS) and Physiological Genomics because of the higher costs in producing these journals and the relatively inexpensive starting subscription price.
Consortia. APS continues to respond to requests from consortia of libraries or institutions, giving them a 5-15% graduated discount for 6-31+ online subscriptions, if we are not losing subscription dollars by doing so. Sales of $368,857 were made to 14 consortia in 2003.
European Sales Agent. APS contracted with David Charles to sell institutional subscriptions in Europe, especially licensing agreements to consortia and corporate customers. David Charles was responsible for approximately $500,000 in new sales (this includes sales of Legacy Content) in 2003. Staff has begun negotiations with a similar sales agent, iGroup, in Asia.
Legacy Content. The second phase of Legacy Content, going back to 1966, was put online in 2003. The Legacy Content was sold as a product with a one-time price of $1,500 in 2003, with a price increase to $2,000 in 2004. To date, 280 copies have been sold.
Open Access. In an effort to respond to the needs of the market, APS began an experiment with Physiological Genomics (PG) in July 2003, giving authors the choice of paying no author fees to have their online articles published under traditional subscription access (free after 12 months), or pay $1,500 to have their articles published with open access from the time of publication. The open access experiment for PG began in July of 2003, with 16% (11 of 68) of accepted manuscripts published as open access in that year. Thirty-six percent (4 of 11) of these were authored by PG Editors. So far in 2004, 6 of 57 (10%) have chosen open access. There is not much difference in the number of hits per article for articles that are open or subscription access.
DC Principles. Martin Frank lead a group of not-for-profit publishers in a press conference at the National Press Club on March 16 to announce the DC Principles for Free Access to Science. The DC Principles were developed as a response to the open access movement, in which the good that society publishers do to disseminate research widely was getting lost in the rhetoric around open access and the pricing policies of some commercial publishers. This has proven very effective-since its release; APS has received many invitations to speak and to meet with other groups, such as the Medical Library Association, to represent the �middle ground� in this debate.
Reducing Member Costs
APS members started receiving free online access to all journals in 2002. APS members continue to take increased (approximately 25% increase a year) advantage of the free color policy.
Electronic Handbook of Physiology
Plans to create a new online physiology handbook were tabled, but negotiations between HighWire and Google lead to the ongoing testing of scanned images of the published Handbook content for online searching and, perhaps, viewing.
Innovative Use of Electronic Publications
Supplemental Material. To date, there have been 163 instances of supplemental material published, 82 of them in Physiological Genomics. Of the 163, 47 are video clips; 2 of the videos are in Physiological Genomics, the rest are large data sets.
HighWire Interface. The journal home pages on the HighWire site were completely redesigned in 2003 to be more attractive, useful, and to highlight new functionality. Classic Articles Collection. As an outgrowth of the Legacy Content project, a Task Force was formed to develop a list of classic physiology articles from the APS original research journals. Chaired by Hershel Raff of the Publications Committee, the Committee commissioned 23 essays for publication online and within the appropriate journals if the Editor agrees. Each essay will be linked to one of the 39 classic articles chosen, which will be made free online. The goal is to have the collection posted in August 2004, when all of the legacy content is online.
Translational Research
Call for Papers. A Call for Papers on Translational Physiology has run since the June 2001 issues of all the APS research journals. The papers are being published as they are accepted under a special heading in the journal it was submitted to. Across all the journals, 77 papers were submitted and 54 papers were published under the Translational Research heading in 2003.
Physiology in Medicine. An agreement was made in 2001 to publish the Physiology in Medicine (PIM) series in Annals of Internal Medicine, with D. Ausiello as the Editor of the series, and Benos serving as Deputy Editor. Five PIM articles were published in Annals in 2003.
Other Items of Significance
Ethical Issues
Conflict of Interest: All authors with financial ties to companies or products featured in their articles are now required to fill out and sign a Conflict of Interest form. This enforces our policy and allows our copy editors to ensure that a conflict is noted in the article. These potential conflicts are no longer included in the Acknowledgement section of the article, but have their own heading.
Human subject policy: In order for our policy to clearly reflect that human physiology experiments are not always done on patients, and that all study subjects need to have their rights protected, the phrase "including healthy volunteers" was added to the policy on the Use of Humans and Animals in Experiments.
Personal Communication: A policy was set that the use of Personal Communications is discouraged, and if used, the author must have a letter granting permission from the communicant in his or her files to send to APS upon request.
Bioterrorism Policy: It was decided that rather than adopt a formal policy such as that adopted by PNAS and other journals, the Committee would raise the awareness of the Editors to the danger of allowing potential bioterrorism information to be published.
Retraction Policy: If a published article is retracted due to fraud or other reason, a Retraction statement will be published as a corrigendum, and the article will be tagged online as Retracted.
Dale Benos, Chair
Council Actions