Open Access Web-Only Peer-Reviewed Journal for Radiology Case Reports: Development and Implementation

By:
Felix Chew
Michael Richardson
Kira Lichtenfeld
Annemarie Relyea-Chew

Presented at

PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference

11-13 July, 2007

Vancouver, BC

Canada

Presenter: Felix Chew

Department of Radiology, University of Washington

The presentation covers the following:

• What we did
• Why we did it
• How we did it
• How are we doing
• Future challenges

What we did:

A number of diseases have entered the scientific medical literature in the form of case reports such as Paget's disease, Parkinson's disease, and AIDS. However, the established radiology journals have focused their efforts on bringing major research studies and review articles to their readers, while simultaneously de-emphasizing case reports. Therefore, authors of case reports have less chances of their work being published.

Because of the case reports significance and because of level of attention paid to case reports by established radiology journals the presenter and others have decided to establish the Radiology Case Report journal. The journal is peer-reviewed, open access, and specializes in case reports.

Why we did it:

Because there is no place to publish case reports. In addition, they have a business plan for case reports journal, and the presenter has the knowledge of being author, editor, and publisher.

The decrease rate of case reports acceptance made the presenter and his colleagues to think seriously about publishing a journal that focuses on case reports. For example, the American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR), the last large-circulation general radiology journal to accept case reports has announced that they will not publish case reports any more.

How we did it:

• UW Technology Transfer
• Open Journal Systems (OJS)
• Open Access business model
• No capital required
• Revenues and profits increase with size
• Personal relationships to recruit peer reviewers and authors

How are we doing?

The Radiology Case Report is becoming popular day by day, downloads are increasing, and it is becoming visible via search engines such as Google.

Downloads of articles per day from RCR

June 06 = 18

Dec 06 = 84

June 07 = 127

Downloads per article per day

June 06 = 2.08

Dec 06 = 2.20

June 07 = 2.52

Future challenges:

Indexing (Pubmed Central, Pubmed, ISI)

Journal Operations

Cash flow, revisions, editing, layout

Marketing, marketing, marketing

Competition

BMC Medical Imaging

BMC Medical Case Reports

Additional information:

Abstract: http://ocs.sfu.ca/pkp2007/viewabstract.php?id=16

Radiology Case Reports Journal:

http://radiology.casereports.net/index.php/rcr/about/editorialTeam