The evolution of the British Journal of Anaesthesia: the first 100 years.

At this centenary of the British Journal of Anaesthesia (BJA) in 2023, six of its 12 editors/editors-in-chief detail developments over the decades that have led to the BJA becoming a high-impact international scientific journal. As a charity, the BJA supports academic research and training in anaesthesia, critical care, and pain medicine including funding of research grants and postgraduate education. Building on this foundation, the BJA continues to innovate as it aims to become fully electronic, expand into open access publishing, and increase the diversity of its editorial board.

Celebrating 20 Years of Open Access and Innovation at JMIR Publications.

In this 20th anniversary theme issue, we are celebrating how JMIR Publications, an innovative publisher deeply rooted in academia and created by scientists for scientists, pioneered the open access model, is advancing digital health research, is disrupting the scholarly publishing world, and is helping to empower patients. All this has been made possible by the disintermediating power of the internet. And we are not done innovating: Our new series of "superjournals," called JMIRx, will provide a glimpse into what we see as the future and end goal in scholarly publishing: open science. In this model, the vast majority of papers will be published on preprint servers first, with "overlay" journals then competing to peer review and publish peer-reviewed "versions of record" of the best papers.

An Introduction to RA21: Taking Authentication Beyond IP Addresses.

Providing access to electronic resources is a core service for most libraries, and for more than two decades librarians have used Internet Protocol (IP) addresses as a way to authenticate users and prove they should have access to their institution's licensed materials. But in recent years, IP addresses have become a less accurate method of determining whether a user is affiliated with a particular library. Key players in the publishing industry and academia are working together on a new set of protocols to replace IP authentication called Resource Access for the 21st Century, or RA21. This column will briefly explore what RA21 is, what problems it purports to solve, and what problems it may create. A list of resources for further reading on RA21 is provided.

Are the Editors faced with e-problems performing their duties and responsibilities satisfactorily?

Astonishing revolution in information technology, developments in electronic publishing and availability of manuscript management software's has provided lot of facilities to authors, reviewers as well as editors but it has also given birth to lot of e-problems. This communication highlights some of these e-problems besides discussing the manuscript management system practiced by Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences through modified Open Journal System. It also cautions the editors of small journals faced with financial and human resource constraints to keep themselves abreast of all these developments, go for automation in e publishing gradually as all the stake holders i.e. authors, reviewers and office management staff learns these and become used to it.

Three-Dimensional Portable Document Format (3D PDF) in Clinical Communication and Biomedical Sciences: Systematic Review of Applications, Tools, and Protocols.

BACKGROUND: The Portable Document Format (PDF) is the standard file format for the communication of biomedical information via the internet and for electronic scholarly publishing. Although PDF allows for the embedding of three-dimensional (3D) objects and although this technology has great potential for the communication of such data, it is not broadly used by the scientific community or by clinicians. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this review was to provide an overview of existing publications that apply 3D PDF technology and the protocols and tools for the creation of model files and 3D PDFs for scholarly purposes to demonstrate the possibilities and the ways to use this technology. METHODS: A systematic literature review was performed using PubMed and Google Scholar. Articles searched for were in English, peer-reviewed with biomedical reference, published since 2005 in a journal or presented at a conference or scientific meeting. Ineligible articles were removed after screening. The found literature was categorized into articles that (1) applied 3D PDF for visualization, (2) showed ways to use 3D PDF, and (3) provided tools or protocols for the creation of 3D PDFs or necessary models. Finally, the latter category was analyzed in detail to provide an overview of the state of the art. RESULTS: The search retrieved a total of 902 items. Screening identified 200 in-scope publications, 13 covering the use of 3D PDF for medical purposes. Only one article described a clinical routine use case; all others were pure research articles. The disciplines that were covered beside medicine were many. In most cases, either animal or human anatomies were visualized. A method, protocol, software, library, or other tool for the creation of 3D PDFs or model files was described in 19 articles. Most of these tools required advanced programming skills and/or the installation of further software packages. Only one software application presented an all-in-one solution with a graphical user interface. CONCLUSIONS: The use of 3D PDF for visualization purposes in clinical communication and in biomedical publications is still not in common use, although both the necessary technique and suitable tools are available, and there are many arguments in favor of this technique. The potential of 3D PDF usage should be disseminated in the clinical and biomedical community. Furthermore, easy-to-use, standalone, and free-of-charge software tools for the creation of 3D PDFs should be developed.

The magnificent seven.

Seven seems to be the number of choice for ChemSusChem in 2014: we're starting our seventh year of publication, with a journal impact factor of 7.475, and in addition the ChemPubSoc Europe/Wiley-VCH publishing programme welcomes the seventh journal in the highly successful ChemXChem series: ChemElectroChem. This Editorial discusses what's in store for the coming year: apps, open access, Anywhere Article, and many other developments within and around the journal.

Defining the next generation journal: The NLM-Elsevier interactive publications experiment.

OBJECTIVE: A unique collaborative project to identify interactive enhancements to conventional-print journal articles, and to evaluate their contribution to readers' learning and satisfaction. HYPOTHESIS: It was hypothesized that (a) the enhanced article would yield more knowledge acquisition than the original article; (b) the interactivity aspects of the enhanced article would measurably contribute to the acquisition of knowledge; and (c) the enhancements to the original article would increase reader acceptance. METHODS: Fifteen SNMA medical students, assumed to have a greater generational familiarity and comfort level with interactive electronic media, reviewed 12 articles published in three Elsevier clinical and basic science journals. They used the Student National Medical Association's asynchronous online discussion forum over a four month period to suggest desired enhancements to improve learning. "Prognostic Factors in Stage T1 Bladder Cancer", published in the journal Urology was selected by the investigators as presenting the best opportunity to incorporate many of the students' suggested interactive and presentational enhancements in the limited timeframe available prior to the established test date. Educational, statistical, and medical consultants assisted in designing a test protocol in which 51 second to fourth year medical students were randomly assigned to experimental and control conditions, and were administered either the original or enhanced interactive version of the article on individual computer workstations. Test subjects consisted of 23 participants in the control group (8 males, 15 females) and 28 participants in the experimental group (9 males, 19 females). All subjects completed pre- and post-test instruments which measured their knowledge gain on 30 true-false and multiple-choice questions, along with 7 Likert-type questions measuring acceptance of the articles' format. Time to completion was recorded with the experimental group taking 22 min on average compared to 18 min for the controls; pre- and post-test times were 6 and 7 min, respectively. Statistical comparisons were based on change scores using either the Student t-test or the Two Way Analysis of Variance or Covariance. Significance was set at α = 0.05 or better. RESULTS: on the dependent measure of knowledge acquisition showed no difference overall on the 30 questions, but learning gain was statistically significant for the subset of 10 questions that measured gain on content that was accessible by the user-invoked interactive features of the enhanced article. Further analyses revealed significant interactions by student year and gender. Second year students (11 in the control group, 8 in the experimental group) were the best performers in terms of knowledge acquisition from both articles. The female medical students received a larger learning gain from journal enhancements and interactivity components than their male counterparts. Acceptance overall was greater for the experimental group who rated the experience more favorably than the controls. CONCLUSIONS: Failure to consider human factors such as gender and learning style may obscure underlying differences and their impact on the interactive aspects of scientific publications. Preliminary findings suggest the need for further study to include a heavier focus on interactivity apart from presentational enhancements; a more rigorous treatment of time as a specific variable; and an expanded experimental design that evaluates acquisition, understanding, integration and acceptance as dependent measures.

Publicaciones electrónicas. Experiencias de una entidad del sector de la salud

La revolución que representa el proceso de publicación electrónica ha despertado una polémica en torno a las ventajas y desventajas de éstas con respecto a las publicaciones en papel. Aspectos tales como la posible ausencia de arbitraje de los trabajos científicos, la paternidad incierta de algunos de ellos, las tergiversaciones o malinterpretaciones posibles de la información electrónica, la comodidad y facilidad real de los lectores para consultar la información, entre muchos otros, se contraponen a ventajas que radican en las potencialidades de las publicaciones electrónicas para compartir y expandir rápidamente información actualizada a amplios mercados y las amplias posibilidades de hipermedia que muchas de ellas ofrecen. Estas cuestiones también se analizan brevemente desde la óptica de la Unidad de Análisis y Tendencias en Salud, entidad del Ministerio de Salud Pública de Cuba, que ha comenzado ha insertarse en el entorno de la publicación electrónica.

The revolution that represents the process of electronic publishing has arose a controversy regarding its advantages and disadvantages compared to printed publications. Issues such as the possible absence of scientific paper screening, the uncertain paternity of some of them, the likely misinterpretations or distortion of the electronic information, the actual convinience and easiness of readers to consult the information, among others, are opposed to the advantages that reside on the potentialities of electronic publishing to quickly share and spread updated information towards wide markets and the broad possiblities of hypermedia that offer a lot of them. These ideas are briefly analized from the point of view of the Analysis and Trends Unit in Health, entity belonging to the Ministry of Public Health which has begun to insert itself in the environment of electronic publishing.

Desarrollo de indicadores estratégicos en ciencia y tecnología: principales problemas

En este artículo propone que los indicadores estratégicos para los países menos desarrollados deben considerar las especificidades de estos países de ahí que no se trata tan sólo de reproducir los indicadores utilizados por la Organización para la Cooperación y el Desarrollo Económico. Con este objetivo, en el presente trabajo se utiliza un nuevo marco conceptual que demuestra la importancia de un equilibrio entre la eficiencia económica y el bienestar social. Se enumeran varios motivos razonables para desarrollar indicadores estratégicos, se demuestran cómo cada uno de ellos se basan en suposiciones no necesariamente válidas para todos los países y fundamenta la necesidad de adoptar un nuevo enfoque conceptual. Después de discutirse las características principales del modelo propuesto, se demuestra de qué manera este nuevo marco puede ayudar a identificar los tipos de indicadores necesarios. Finalmente se sugiere cómo el enfoque pudiera también ser útil para un proyecto orientado a evaluar publicaciones científicas.

This paper propounds that strategic indicators for less developed countries should take into consideration the specificities of these countries, hence should not just replicate the indicators used by the OECD. With this purpose, it uses a new conceptual framework stressing the importance of a balance between economic efficiency and social welfare. It lists several sensible reasons to develop strategic indicators, shows how each of them is based on assumptions that are not necessarily valid to all countries, and shows why a new conceptual approach is needed. Then, after discussing the main features of the proposed model, it shows how the new framework can help identifying the kinds of new indicators needed. Finally, the paper suggests how the approach could also be useful to a project trying to evaluate scientific publications.

La evaluación de la producción científica y el Proyecto SciELO

Partiendo del análisis de la producción científica brasileña y de la carencia de bases de datos en información científica, se aborda el Proyecto SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library Online) como instrumento para lograr una producción nacional más visible y accesible por medios electrónicos y, al mismo tiempo, para crear una base de datos, con la cual se pueda evaluar la producción científica del país y aumentar su visibilidad internacional.

Beginning with the anlysis of the state of the Brazilian scientific literature and the lack of bibliographical databases in the field of scientific information, this lecture examines the SciELO Project (Scientific Electronic Library Online) as a tool to make the scientific literature more accesible by way of electronic means, as well a create a database that enables the evaluation of this literature in the country, and the increase of its international visibility.

SciELO: una metodología para la publicación electrónica

Se describe la Metodología SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library Online) para la difusión por la vía electrónica de publicaciones periódicas científicas. Se abordan temas como la transición de la publicación impresa en papel hacia la publicación electrónica, el proceso de comunicación científica, los principios que orientaron el desarrollo de la metodología, su aplicación en el sitio SciELO, sus módulos y componentes, los instrumentos en los cuales se basa, etcétera. Se discuten asimismo las potencialidades y tendencias disponibles en esta esfera en Brasil y en América Latina, y se indican cuestiones y propuestas que la metodología deberá abordar y solucionar. Se concluye que la Metodología SciELO es una solución eficiente, flexible y amplia para la publicación científica electrónica.

It describes the SciELO Methodology Scientific Electronic Library Online for electronic publishing of scientific periodicals, examining issues such as the transition from traditional printed publication to electronic publishing, the scientific communication process, the principles which founded the methodology development, its application in the building of the SciELO site, its modules and components, the tools use for its construction etc. The article also discusses the potentialities and trends for the area in Brazil and Latin America, pointing out questions and proposals which should be investigated and solved by the methodology. It concludes that the SciELO Methodology is an efficient, flexible and wide solution for the scientific electronic publishing.

Publicación de revistas electrónicas: economía de su producción, distribución y uso

Se analizan aspectos económicos de la actividad de publicación de revistas académicas y científicas, a partir de los costos de producción y de la revisión de los datos disponibles al respecto. Se establece una comparación entre la producción de revistas impresas en papel y en formato electrónico. Se discuten las políticas de precios de suscripción y se ofrece una guía para establecer un punto de equilibrio que ayude a las bibliotecas a optar entre suscribirse a las revistas y obtener copias de artículos mediante los servicios de préstamo interbibliotecario y de envío de documentos.

This paper analyses economic aspects of the scientific scholarly journal publishing, based on production costs and use data. It compares the production of traditional journals with electronic journals, discussing price policies for subscriptions and providing a guide to assess breakeven points, helping libraries to face the option of subscribing to journals or obtaining separate copies through intelibrary borrowing or document delivery.

Indicadores bibliométricos y econométricos en la evaluación de instituciones científicas

Este artículo consta de 2 partes. La primera describe la evaluación de una pequeña universidad a partir de datos cienciométricos, con el objetivo principal de analizar la investigación con visibilidad internacional. La segunda parte muestra cómo un método econométrico (DEA: data enveloping analysis) puede aplicarse entre otros aspectos como medio de evaluación para determinar los recursos disponibles. Asimismo se demuestra cómo un cuerpo teórico que combina la bibliometría, la cienciometría y la econometría puede aplicarse a problemas concretos.

This article consists of two parts: the first part describes the evaluation of a small university it is based on scientometric data and aims mainly at the evaluation of internationally visible research. The second part shows how an econometric method (DEA: data enveloping analysis) can be used to include teaching and other aspects, e.g. fund raising, into the evaluation. Both approaches show how a body of bibliometric, scientometric and econometric theory can be applied to real world problems.

Biblioteca electrónica de revistas científicas internacionales: proyecto de consorcio

Con énfasis en la disponibilidad de información para la adquisición y transmisión del conocimiento humano, se describe un proyecto para la creación de un consorcio de bibliotecas de universidades y de institutos de investigación en el Estado de São Paulo. Se propone facilitar el acceso a la información, aumentar el grado de satisfacción de los usuarios y minimizar los costos de adquisición de revistas científicas electrónicas internacionales, mediante acciones cooperativas entre estas instituciones. Se demuestran las ventajas de este procedimiento y se detallan aspectos relacionados con los objetivos, la gerencia y las etapas de implantación del proyecto, presentados a la Fundación de Amparo a la Investigación del Estado de São Paulo (Fapesp).

Focusing on the information availability for the acquisition and transmission of human knowledge, it describes a project for the development of a consortium assembling universities and research institutes libraries of the Sao Paulo State, Brazil. It proposes to enhance the information access, increase users satisfaction, and reduce costs of international electronic journals subscriptions, through cooperation and resources sharing activities among those institutions. It highights the advantages of those procedures and presents the objectives, management and installation steps of the project, submitted to the Fundacao de Amparo á Pesquisa do Estado de Sao Paulo-FAPESP.