Open Access News

Abstract (provisional): CytoJournal organized its first Peer-Reviewer's Retreat of 2006 during the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology Annual Meeting at Atlanta on Feb 12, 2006. The major topics discussed were open access, peer review, and impact factors. Representative participants volunteered to join the task force to prepare an instructional guide for peer-reviewing cytopathology manuscripts. Concern about CytoJournal's Impact factor was discussed. A feedback to its reader and authors was recommended. Impact factor needs at least three years of journal statistics. It is only possible after two years from the time a journal is first accepted by Thomson-ISI for citation tracking. CytoJournal is still too new for an impact factor to be calculated. However, general progress of CytoJournal suggests an encouraging pattern for high impact factor.

Excerpt from the body of the paper:

We all sweat as academician[s] to create wonderful sculptures in the form of published research in the hope of sharing it with all our colleagues and the general public. With the traditional model for publishing scholarly work, we have to lose the copyright (and in reality the only right with reference to that work) and turn it to a close custody with restricted access. Open access is now a reality and is widely appreciated. It does not need hightech deduction to understand the benefits and philosophical principles of open access. However, we as authors and the general public have to be more proactive and imaginative to create a more robust sustainable model for generations to come. Traditional methods of publishing have done an excellent job with the resources and technology available at the time. Today with all the advances in communications technology, digitization, internet, archiving, memory cost, and so on, it is a high time to think and revolutionize our attitude towards the way we publish our work....In [the traditional subscription] model, only those of our colleagues who are lucky to pay for the journal access can read your publication. Is this restricted access what we want as a researcher? And if not, why should we follow such a flawed unfavorable model? In the past the answer was simple - we did not have any alternative!...But any new model, however powerful and beneficial it may be, has to evolve on all fronts including financial. Success of any enterprise depends on its financial viability. Open access is showing tremendous success even on that front....[A]ll professional socities, associations, and funding agencies strongly consider supporting open access and extend opportunity to their constituents to publish their work in open access to further their ultimate mission of disseminating scientific information to fulfill their public responsibility....What can we do as individual academician? The first step would be to question current publication model and insist on the open access model to our respective societies, including free publication in society journals for all their members. It could be argued that those members who are not interested in publishing may discontinue their membership. However, a few studies presented at the International Congress on Peer Review and Biomedical Publication at Chicago in September 16, 2005 showed that membership is not affected by choosing open access option. Table of contents comparable to a hard copy of the journal could be e-mailed periodically to all members saving significant resources and costs spent on journal printing and mailing....It would be unusual to find a research generated by publisher’s funds for publishing in their journals after paying due honororium to the researcher. Thus vast funding is spent at present on the research, but most of such funded research is lost ultimately to non-open access model of publication. If only a tiny fraction of this enormous fund is invested with sincere commitment, most of such research could be rightfully salvaged to be channeled to open access mode for general public good in future.