2004 Publications Committee Report
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
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