Rheumatology Advance Access originally published online on October 14, 2008
Rheumatology 2008 47(12):1737; doi:10.1093/rheumatology/ken392
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EDITORIALS |
For the teams they are a-changin'
1Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust, Ipswich, 2School of Medicine, Health Policy and Practice, University of East Anglia, Norwich and 3British Society for Rheumatology, London, UK
Correspondence to: R. Watts, British Society for Rheumatology, Bride House, 18-20 Bride Lane, London EC4Y 8EE, UK. E-mail: editorial{at}rheumatology.org.uk
We are writing this valedictory editorial at the time of a major athletic championship—when the present Watts/Cubie duo took to running Rheumatology in 2002 it was at the time of the Commonwealth games, now it is the Olympics in Beijing, and it is time again to pass the baton on. The new editorial team of Prof. Robert Moots of Liverpool University and Shehnaz Ahmed have excellent qualifications to edit and manage the journal. Indeed, by the time this is published, Serena Cubie will have arrived in Australia and Shehnaz will be well established in her chair.
The environment within which the journal operates has changed out of all recognition over the past 6–7 years. Back then, electronic submission systems were relatively new and we were in the process of introducing ours. Now they are universally used by all major journals and are widely accepted as having speeded up the manuscript submission and peer review process. Despite more than doubling the number of submissions from around 600–1350/annum, our handling times have dramatically improved, averaging 24 days, and we aim to make a first decision within 6 weeks for 90% of the papers. Improvements have also been made to our publication process, which has moved to include an electronic tracking system and the introduction of ‘publish online ahead of print’ for all articles. We have improved the time from acceptance to publication online to 6 weeks with most articles appearing in an issue 4–6 weeks after they appear online. The increased speed of peer review and publication means that research is in the public domain, influencing future research and clinical practice, and thus benefitting the public much sooner.
The other major change has been the open access movement, which has completely changed the business model for many journals, including our own. Although we were originally very concerned about how this would impact on the journal and its finances, so far our worst fears have not been confirmed. In part, this has been due to the support we have had from our publishers, Oxford University Press (OUP), in developing a hybrid model (Oxford Open) that enables authors to have the choice of publishing under the open access model for a fee or publishing under the traditional model with no charge. All our papers are available free of charge 12 months after publication.
The ethical environment has also become much tighter—with Editors and their teams coming under ever greater scrutiny, to the extent that like ‘Caesar's wife should be above suspicion.’ (Plutarch—Life of Julius Caesar).
There must not only be no conflicts of interest between the editorial team and any commercial interest, but also the requirements for authors have been become progressively stricter. Editorial processes must be sufficiently robust to ensure that all necessary consents, such as from ethics committees/institutional review boards and from the patients themselves have been obtained. The former have become tighter and the boundary between research and audit is often blurred. Researchers often try to present research as audit as a means of avoiding the bureaucratic form-filling that is associated with an application to an ethics committee or institutional review board. Editors are often in the position of policing this and, as a consequence, one of the most frequent questions from the editorial team to the Editor is whether the authors have obtained the relevant consents. However, our advice to potential researchers is, if in doubt consult with your local ethics or review committee prior to beginning a project.
Rheumatology has asked authors to complete disclosure forms for a number of years; however, now perhaps more than ever it is important that there is transparency between researchers and industry. Consequently, the journal now asks authors to include within their manuscript at submission a disclosure statement outlining any relationships with industry that could be seen as a potential conflict of interest. We also ask authors to disclose and acknowledge any writing assistance that they have received. As a general rule, if in doubt, err on the side of full disclosure.
There are other areas of publication ethics, such as plagiarism, image manipulation and duplicate publication, which have become more common and more easily detected with the advances in electronic communication and the internet. Increasingly, more time is spent by the editorial team dealing with publication ethics issues. For editors, advice on publication ethics is readily available from the committee on publication ethics (COPE), of which Rheumatology is a member (http://www.publicationethics.org.uk).
Other areas that have seen a lot of change over this time are in the conducting and reporting of healthcare research and the registration of clinical trials. Rheumatology is in favour of ensuring that all clinical trials are registered prior to their commencement and has recently published a policy in line with other rheumatology and general medical journals [1]. The journal believes that it is important for the benefit of the public that healthcare research is not only well reported but also conducted to the highest possible standards, and as a consequence is currently developing guidelines to authors on this topic.
‘It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.’— Ursula Le Guin.
There have been many challenges and will continue to be so as publishing continues to grow and develop alongside the electronic developments of web2.0 and its successors. Overall, the work of the editorial team has been enormous fun over the past 6 years or so. We both owe a huge debt to our editorial colleagues, our associate editors and our in-house editorial staff, and especially to Kate Wilson, who have all valiantly helped keep the whole show on the road. OUP has also played a key role in our successful growth, and Mandy Hill provided much sage advice and wisdom over the years and she has been ably succeeded by Julia Jeans.
We wish Rob and Shehnaz well and look forward to watching the continued growth and success of Rheumatology.
Disclosure statement: The authors have declared no conflicts of interest.
Reference
- Watts R, Cubie S. Registration of clinical trials. Rheumatology (2008) 47. doi: 10.1093/rheumatology/ken393, in press.
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