Publications

APS/IUPS Relaunch NIPS as Physiology with New Features,
Outlook and Integrated Design

Art Borne of (Neuro)Physiology Inspires Physiology

2003 Impact Factors Are Published by Thomson/ISI

Keeping Track of All Those Searches in the Online Journals 

APS/IUPS Relaunch NIPS as Physiology with New Features,
Outlook and Integrated Design

     APS and the International Union of Physiological Sciences (IUPS) are relaunching the journal News in Physiological Sciences (NIPS) in August as Physiology.

Walter Boron

     Walter Boron, who has been editor of NIPS for a year and will continue to lead Physiology, is a former APS President and is professor in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Physiology at the Yale University School of Medicine.
      “The ‘inaugural’ August issue of Physiology is going live with all-new features, and a totally new look—a new cover concept, and new, integrated artwork,” Boron said. “As part of the interview process that led to my becoming editor, it quickly became clear we all felt strongly that this most exciting science we call ‘physiology’ lacked the kind of focal publication that many other leading-edge scientific disciplines enjoy,” he added.
     Boron noted that this lack of a driving publication became increasingly noticeable over the past 10 years, “which is about the same period during which physiology itself has been undergoing a transformation, as it exploited advances in molecular biology and genetics. The Human Genome Project—and genome projects for other organisms—have been a major boost to the discipline.

Physiology: ‘The Place to Be’
     It became clear that physiology could play a major role in understanding how newly discovered molecules function, and that powerful molecular approaches could help answer some longstanding questions in physiology.
“Many younger scientists realized that physiology was the place to be,” Boron said.
     So the next steps were relatively obvious. Since 1986, the role of NIPS had been to provide educators and enthusiasts with short reviews describing recent advances in physiology. Physiology will continue to focus on publishing invited, incisive reviews on cutting-edge topics in physiology.
     Next Boron recruited “an editorial board of eminent physiologists, including two dynamic colleagues to serve as associate editors—Michael Caplan and Ulrich Pohl—and Gerhard Giebisch to serve as special advisor.”

This diagram is from an article by Rupert Abele and Robert Tampé of Goethe University entitled “The ABCs of Immunology: Structure and Function of TAP, the Transporter Associated with Antigen Processing” in the inaugural issue of Physiology. It’s a colorful model of the ATP-bound dimer of NBD1 and NBD2, viewed toward the cytosol.


Physiology designed to appeal to broader audience
     Dale Benos, chair of the APS Publications Committee agreed, saying, “Walter Boron has assembled an outstanding and enthusiastic and committed editorial board, ensuring the success of this new endeavor. The transformation of NIPS into Physiology is another exciting innovation of the APS publications program of the American Physiological Society. It’s more than a name change. Physiology will showcase the most up-to-date, cross-cutting physiological research in a manner that will appeal to scientists of all disciplines.”
     With the help of Margaret Reich, APS Director of Publications and Executive Editor, the design firm of J/B Woolsey Associates of Philadelphia was chosen to develop a completely avante garde design for the publication, and also to produce complete original, innovative artwork for all future articles in Physiology. 
     According to Reich, “NIPS has had a loyal following, especially internationally, but we are very excited about the redesigned journal drawing even a broader audience, especially with the new title, Physiology, ‘claiming’ the field.
     “Hopefully, a whole new audience will discover this beautiful, readable journal, and in doing so, rediscover physiology itself,” Reich said.
     Boron noted that APS, IUPS and the editors started out “with high, but realistic, hopes for the development of Physiology. But we’re already far ahead of our targets and milestones: Our success rate for recruiting our first-choice authors has been extremely high, and the submissions have been coming in quickly.
     “It’s really a reflection of the growth of physiology and its role in integrating function from the molecule to the whole organism,” he added. “Now that we know the identities of the molecular players, physiologists are working to understand how these molecules work, the roles they play, and how changes in these molecules affect the function of everything from individual cells to the whole organism,” Boron said.

Among the new features in Physiology are:

  • Highlights from the Literature, a summary of a dozen or so current papers nominated by the editorial board and editors of physiology journals around the world;

  • Emerging Tools and Emerging Technologies, discussions of new methodologies of interest to physiologists;

  • Emerging Topics, brief discussions of new concepts in physiology.

And planned for upcoming issues:

  • Point/Counterpoint, collegial discussions of opposing viewpoints;

  • Timelines, brief historical articles describing how a particular field developed to where it is today, sometimes linked to current reviews in Physiology.

Thanks to Former Editors
     Emerging Topics, brief discussions of new concepts in physiology.
Boron noted that for more than 18 years, under the leadership, first, of Knut Schmidt-Nielsen, then John Shepherd, and, most recently, Stanley Schultz, NIPS achieved its mission admirably.
     Emerging Topics, brief discussions of new concepts in physiology.
He also thanked the APS Publications Committee, chaired by Dale Benos, and the APS Council, under the leadership of former president Barbara Horwitz, Past-President John Williams, and President D. Neil Granger, and the enthusiastic support of Martin Frank, APS Executive Director. The IUPS Council (Allen Cowley, President) approved the journal’s transformation to Physiology, as did the APS/IUPS Joint Managing Board-Dale Benos (Chair), Ewa Szczepanska-Sadowska, Aki-michi Kaneko, and Jimmy Neill.

     “At the APS Publications office, Margaret Reich, Jessica Darago (Journal Copy Editor who also does all the layout and production), and Eric Pesanelli (Art Director) carefully nurtured Physiology through the 18-month incubation period,” Boron said. “And, finally, Charleen Bertolini, who joined Physiology as editorial coordinator, deftly pulled it all together.”

Art Borne of (Neuro)Physiology Inspires Physiology
      Walter Boron first “met” the Woolsey family when Professor Woolsey, the brother of John, was his anatomy professor at Washington University in St. Louis. Many years later, Boron was collaborating with Emile Boulpaep on their comprehensive textbook for medical and graduate students, Medical Physiology. A Cellular and Molecular Approach, published by Saunders in 2003. Their editor suggested they meet a new artist with a unique approach: John Woolsey, president of J/B Woolsey.
       Woolsey has a rather unique approach to his work: “I’ve always used the question-and-answer, collaborative approach to medical illustration,” he said. Woolsey’s father was a professor of neurobiology and editor of the Journal of Neurophysiology, so John grew up in a scientific environment.
      What was unique about designing Physiology, Woolsey says, is that “Walter Boron wanted to make it a more widely read journal and he recognized the importance of graphic communication.” So collaboratively, of course, they agreed on a “fresh, new design approach” that not only utilized modern typefaces and elements, but one that brought an editorial view into a process we call ‘graphic development,’” Woolsey said.
       “Physiology is a pretty overarching field and includes specialists at different corners of the science,” Woolsey noted. “So one of the things we wanted to do, without diluting the artwork, is to bring more accessibility, even for novice readers. Part of it is to spell out acronyms, and not use concepts in the art that aren’t used in the text. Basic simple things that too many journals overlook.”
       Woolsey’s association with Physiology hasn’t ended with the August launch. His studio is responsible for every illustration, table, and photograph, as well as the overall presentation of every article in future issues. This will assure not only consistency within each article, but also for that issue and beyond.
For instance, Woolsey’s “rigorous in using a consistent palette” in terms of particles, organs and other physiological building blocks being the same color, and using like symbols and representations throughout.” Another thing that Woolsey’s tries to be consistent about is to “make sure the art is near the text it’s describing.”
      In some diagrams (for instance in the Pautler “emerging technologies” article on “Mouse MRI,” in the August issue) “text balloons” and figure legends are used right in the illustration so the reader doesn’t have to jump back and forth from the illustration to the caption. It’s all right there.
       And it’s not a one-way street in deciding illustrations, either. In the August article by Lundkvist et al, “Why trypanosomes cause sleeping sickness,” Woolsey suggested that a distribution map of Africa showing where the different types of sleeping sickness are prevalent would help readers understand the issue better. It’s that kind of attention to the article as a whole that makes Woolsey’s contribution so positive.
 
 2003 Impact Factors Are Published by Thomson/ISI
     Thomson/ISI has released its 2003 Science Edition of the Journal Citation Reports, which gives journal impact factors and rankings of 5,907 science journals. The 2003 impact factors of the journals of the APS, along with a comparison of the past two years, are given in the table below. The table also shows the rank of APS journals in the physiology category, and each journal’s rank in its related field, as well as each journal’s cited half-life. 
 
Journal 2001 2002 2003 2003 Cited Half-Life 2003 Rank, Physiology (out of 73)
 2003 Rank, Related Field Related Field
PRV
Phys Gen
AJP-Renal
AJP-Cell
JN
AJP-Endo
AJP-Lung
NIPS
AJP-Heart
AJP-Regu
AJP-GI
JAP
Advances		 30.061
3.352
4.523
3.896
3.517
3.324
3.658
1.817
3.232
2.437
3.66
2.581
0.186
 26.532
4.667
5.044
3.936
3.743
3.62
3.9
2.715
3.369
3.156
3.346
2.72
0.744
 36.831
4.368
4.344
4.103
3.876
3.828
3.735
3.682
3.658
3.627
3.421
3.027
0.755
 6.6
2.6
6.1
5.9
7.5
6.3
4.6
4.2
6.2
5.9
5.9
>10
 1
6
8
9
11
13
14
15
16
17
19
20
67
38/156
53/156

3/49
41/156
36/198
17/88
5/31

8/70

9/47
2/71
Cell Bio
Biochem & Mol Bio
Urol & Nephr
Cell Bio
Neuroscience
Endo & Met
Respiratory

Cardio

Gastro & Hep
Sport Sciences
 
 Keeping Track of All Those Searches in the Online Journals 
     In 2002, The Physiologist began a series of short articles highlighting tools and features available when you search through, or work with, the online content of the APS Journals. The online editions of the Society Journals are hosted by HighWire Press, and all of the features described here are accessible form the portal on the HighWire Library of the Sciences and Medicine. The site is at http://highwire.stanford.edu or you can access it from the APS Journals’ home pages.
     In this issue, we take a step back from all the search and discovery features we’ve covered in the previous articles in this series. In this article, we look at how you can keep track of the different searches you’ve tried as you are exploring a new topic, and how you can most easily review them and refine them. Because subject/topic searching is an exploration process, rather than a direct “go to the article with this citation” process, you will often have a large number of “trial and error” searches. Along the way, some will have been very productive and you might want to return to those and refine them. The HighWire portal supports this.
     There are two links on every search result page that you will find handy when you want to review and refine your searches: 
“Search History
“Rephrase My Search
Search History 
     The Search History tool shows you a list of all the searches you’ve done in the past two hours, from most recent to oldest. It lists the search criteria, and the search result size, as shown in the example below. You can click to bring a search result back (the “resubmit” button), or modify the search criteria (the “rephrase” button).
Rephrase My Search
     The Rephrase tool will take the criteria you used in a search and fill in the Advanced Search form with those criteria. You can then change the criteria—by adding or removing keywords, by changing date ranges, etc.—to refine your search after seeing what result you get. You might, for example, decide to change from the “all words” option to the “phrase” option, requiring that articles have a phrase exactly matching your criteria. Or you might see your result has a lot of ‘chaff’ in it and add a “NOT” on the search terms. 
Give these simple tools a try as you explore subject/topic searches. We hope that the results will be helpful and interesting. 

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