New Section Editors, One-Year Experience of Open Access and Now Also Apps for iPad and iPhone
New Section Editors, One-Year Experience of Open Access and Now Also Apps for iPad and iPhone
The Editorial Board of Acta Dermato-Venereologica is very pleased to welcome two new Section Editors, Dr Lars Iversen from Denmark and Dr Arthur Schmidtchen from Sweden. Dr Iversen, who has already served several months as editor of Case Reports related to skin inflammation, is Professor and Consultant in Dermatology and Venereology at Aarhus University Hospital. His special research interests are in psoriasis and cellular mechanisms of inflammation and immunology. Dr Schmidtchen is Professor of Dermatology and Venereology at the University of Lund and Senior Consultant at Skåne University Hospital. His main research areas are in wound healing, innate immunity and tissue repair. He will primarily take on full papers submitted to Acta in this area. No doubt both of these distinguished scientists and experienced clinicians will further enhance the quality of our peer review process.
Since January 2011 Acta Dermato-Venereologica has been a total open access (OA) journal and this has had a major impact on the visibility of the publications. For example, the number of visits to our website has increased markedly (Fig. 1) and the number of downloads of full papers has skyrocketed (during 2011 a total of 1,084,500 papers have been downloaded). In a few years time this will almost certainly result in a markedly increased impact factor (it is presently 2.780).
Fig 1. The frequency of visitors at our website has increased from 2,600 to more than 6,000 per week from January to December after almost one year with Open Access.
The number of submissions to Acta Dermato-Venereologica has remained high during 2011 (it currently stands at approximately 400 papers per year) and the quality of the submitted papers appears to be increasing. As Acta Dermato-Venereologica is an international journal the manuscripts come from all of the world (Fig. 2). The acceptance rate remains at approximately 50%. Because we maintain a printed version of the journal in parallel with OA, the number of published pages per volume cannot be allowed to expand too much. We encourage authors to write in a concise manner and to avoid duplication of information between text and figures/tables. Lengthy tables, supplemental figures and extensive reference lists are presented as e-supplements in order to keep the number of printed pages low (usually 3–5 pages for full papers and a maximum of 2 pages for Letters, including most Case Reports). For how long a printed version of an OA journal can continue usually depends on the continued interest among the readers and libraries that pay subscriptions. Today, although the number of subscriptions is falling, the printing costs of Acta Dermato-Venereologica are adequately balanced by the subscription fees and do not impinge on the level of page charges. Sooner or later, however, it is likely that the journal will have to be converted into a purely online product. Hence, because we are a non-profit organization, the page charges and submission fees will be determined directly by the level of income from advertisements and how successful we are in keeping the publication costs low.
Fig. 2. Country distribution of submitted papers during 2010 and 2011 showing the wideworld submission.
This is a new situation resulting from our launching of Acta Dermato-Venereologica as an OA journal.
Another new approach we recently launched is an application for iPad (Fig. 3). Very soon such an application will be available for iPhone too. These apps enable you to save all your favourite articles published into your iPad or iPhone.
Fig. 3. The appearance of the iPad app for Acta Dermato-Venereologica.
Our aim is for Acta Dermato-Venereologica to be easily accessible whenever you want to read it.
