OPEN ACCESS AFRICA:

MALARIA JOURNAL –An Open Access success story

Marcel HommelEditor-in Chief, Malaria Journal

In 2001, creation of the OPEN ACCESS concept

= creation of Malaria Journal, online and open access journal (no paper version)

• Peer-review and copy-editing (= quality)• No cost for the reader, but cost for authors

who pay an ‘APC’ (£1,310/US$2,110/€1,630 in 2012)

• From the beginning, no APC or a reduced APC for authors from the poorest countries (World Bank list)

• Copyright belongs to author not the journal

Why a journal on Malaria?

In 2001, in which journal were malaria papers published ?

25% of the 1,660 articles published were inAmerican Journal of Tropical Medicine and HygieneTransactions of the Royal Society of Tropical MedicineTropical Medicine and International HealthAnnals Tropical Medicine and ParasitologyTrends in Parasitology (ex Parasitology Today)Infection and Immunity

Not a new concept: Tubercle created in 1919AIDS created in 1988J Viral Hepatitis in 1994

Number of malaria papers published

Number of malaria papers published

In 2011, Malaria Journal published 13% of papers on malariabut is it a quality journal ?

What makes quality ?

• Editorial Board• Peer-review process• Quality output – copy-editing papers• Influence in the discipline• Metrics : Impact factor, Eigenfactor, etc• Quality publisher

A strong Editorial board, with about 50 top names in the field, involved in peer-reviewing. Final decision made by Editor-in-chief

Unique feature: 20% of Editorial board are changed every year (randomly !)

Submissions and publications over the past 5 years

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 (year to date)

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SubmissionsPublications

Average submissions per month in 2012 = 60Average publications per month in 2012 = 38

Impact in the field

• 2011 Impact Factor - 3.19• Journal is ranked 2nd in Tropical Medicine (behind PLoS NTD) and 7th in Parasitology

Press releases

•Quality of anti-malarials collected in the private and informal sectors in Guyana and Suriname

•Implementation of basic quality control tests for malaria medicines in Amazon Basin countries: results for the 2005–2010 period•Malaria resurgence: a systematic review and assessment of its causes (Press Released on

World Malaria Day)•Artemether resistance in vitro

is linked to mutations in PfATP6 that also interact with mutations in PfMDR1 in travellers returning with

Plasmodium falciparum infections•Estimates of child deaths prevented from malaria prevention scale-up in Africa 2001-2010

•A new world malaria map: Plasmodium falciparum endemicity in 2010 •A framework for assessing the risk of resistance for anti-malarials in development

Malaria Journal publishes excellent high quality research, which is of interest to a wider audience. It is therefore, important to make sure that articles are disseminated to the general public as well as to the scientific community. In the past 12 months, Press Releases have been sent out for the following articles. Where possible, we have coordinated Press Releases with the authors’ institutes.

Journal quality: IMPACT FACTOR

We all would like to publish in ‘Prestige’ journals

Article accesses to Malaria Journal

* These are based on accesses from the journal website and do not include accesses from repositories such as PubMed Central

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The articles most read in 2011

Who reads Malaria Journal ? (October 2011)

Overall, for all BMC journals, the submission pattern is:

In 2011, Malaria Journal published 388 papers of which• 105 had African scientists as first author (27%)• 52 had African scientists as co-author (13%)• 14 concerned African issues, without African co-author

Based on 2010 published papers

Reading rooms with computers ?

Computers in the class room,the office, the lab, the home ?

Over 90% of the mortality due tomalaria occurs in Africa, but (in 2009) only 52 articles of 2586 (2%) had been published in an African journal

Is is possible to change this and regenerate/develop African medical journal ?

Top impact factor ‘prestige’ journals

High quality, high impact journals (IF >5)

Professional specialist journals

Regional journals, often non-English, non IF-rated

National journals

If you are a young scientist or medical doctor wanting to publish first paper or case study :

Where do you send your paper ?

There is a need for national and regional journals

• they contribute to the overall framework of academic life • authors are often more interested in their work being seen by colleagues nationally, in their own language, than internationally

• all data do not necessarily justify publication in an international journal, but may be of quality and local interest

• the Open Access ‘movement’ could encourage their development