CytoJournal CytoJournal’s move to the new platform: More on financial model to the support open-access charter in cytopathology, publication quality indicators, and other issues

As discussed during the Nov, 2008 editorial board meeting (corresponding with the 56th Annual American Society of Cytopathology (ASC) Scientific Meeting at Orlando, FL, USA), CytoJournal has moved to a new platform (MedKnow Publications, http://www.medknow.com/). Currently most of the aspects of the move are complete. PDFs of all the articles published previously in CytoJournal before June 2008[1–86] will continue to be available on the new platform under the same URL of www.cytojournal.com (in the top blue bar, click on ‘Browse articles’ http://www.cytojournal.com/browse.asp) or click on ‘Search CytoJ Articles’ http://www.cytojournal.com/search.asp). They will also be available through other sites including PubMed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/). All the articles published after the June, 2008 move would be available free under open access charter in HTML format. The PDFs will be available free to all Cytopathology Foundation members (http://www.cytojournal.com/CFMember.asp) and to the members of various organizations joining the ‘CytoJ OA steward’ program (http://www.cytojournal.com/OASteward.asp).

As discussed during the Nov, 2008 editorial board meeting (corresponding with the 56 th Annual American Society of Cytopathology (ASC) Scientific Meeting at Orlando, FL, USA), CytoJournal has moved to a new platform (Med-Know Publications, http://www.medknow.com/). Currently most of the aspects of the move are complete. PDFs of all the articles published previously in CytoJournal before June 2008  will continue to be available on the new platform under the same URL of www.cytojournal. com (in the top blue bar, click on 'Browse articles' http:// www.cytojournal.com/browse.asp) or click on 'Search CytoJ Articles' http://www.cytojournal.com/search.asp). They will also be available through other sites including PubMed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/). All the articles published after the June, 2008 move would be available free under open access charter in HTML format. The PDFs will be available free to all Cytopathology Foundation members (http://www.cytojournal.com/ CFMember.asp) and to the members of various organizations joining the 'CytoJ OA steward' program (http://www. cytojournal.com/OASteward.asp).

'CYTOJOURNAL OPEN ACCESS STEWARD' PROGRAM
In addition to the continued high standard of CytoJournal publication quality and the excellent online submission and online peer-review system, this platform offers many additional features. With the completion of this move to the new platform, Cytopathology Foundation Inc. (http:// www.cytopathology-foundation.org/) (CF) and CytoJournal can extend numerous benefits of open-access charter in Cytopathology to encourage dissemination and sharing of scholarly Cytopathology literature. This is a significant benefit to Cytopathology as a science in particular and as information pool for evidence based information in general. As a result, the Cytopathology Foundation and CytoJournal have structured a 'CytoJournal Open-Access Steward' (CytoJ OA Steward) program.

EDITORIAL BOARD [Figure 1]
Because of an increase in the number of manuscript submissions, CytoJournal has updated and reorganized the http://www.cytojournal.com/content/5/1/15 editorial board, (http://www.cytojournal.com/eb.pdf) [ Figure 1]. Some editorial board members who have expressed interest in contributing more time and efforts are identified as Associate Editors (AE). Designated AE of that month will complete the entire peer review cycle for all the manuscripts submitted during the corresponding month. The peer review cycle generally includes identifying qualified peer reviewers, inviting the qualified peer reviewers, and sending the manuscripts in a double blind fashion to the reviewers who have accepted the invitation. After reviewing the comments by various peer reviewers, the manuscripts would be processed further up to the stage of final evaluation by the AE. The final decision regarding acceptance or rejection would be communicated to the executive editor. Depending on the complexity of the manuscript subject matter and reviewer's criticisms, the executive editor may consult other editors in chief and the editorial board members as indicated to make the final decision of acceptance, re-revision, or rejection. After final acceptance, the manuscript is moved to the publisher for completing the publication process.
The current editorial board with designated Associate Editors and other updates [ Figure 1] are posted under 'editorial board' http://www.cytojournal.com/eb.pdf on the CytoJournal web site.

SELF SUSTAINING FINANCIAL MODEL FOR LONG-TERM STABILITY
CF membership program (http://www.cytojournal.com/

CFMember.asp)
Cytopathology Foundation has introduced a very economical CF membership program http://www.cytojournal.com/CFMember.asp. This program is to establish a self-sustaining financial model with the opportunity for constituent beneficiaries of the open access charter in cytopathology to contribute to its long-term success.

As most of the manuscripts would be published under the Cf membership benefit, this model should nullify the perceived conflict of interest about the alternative of charging all the authors for the publication of accepted manuscripts.
Although the regular annual membership fee is nominal ($50 per year), it is free during 2008 and 2009. The other option is a full membership at the low cost of $1,000 for life. full membership has more benefits than the regular annual membership, with many more features to be added in the future.
CF members receive the following benefits: 1

Information about the Article Publication Charge
For any enterprise to be self-sustaining, it is crucial to establish and execute a financially vibrant model. As mentioned at the beginning of this editorial, the new platform facilitates many of these features. One of the components of this model is contribution by the readers and authors as CF members for long-term financial stability and viability of CytoJournal. In addition to this avenue, the readers, authors, and other CytoJournal well-wishers are appealed to donate through online encrypted secure process with PayPal (click 'Donate' icon on left lower side of the Cyto-Journal home page www.cytojournal.com). The APC pays for many expenses mentioned below as a brief list (but not an exclusive).
a. Processing of raw manuscript for high-quality online publication in various formats.

INDICATORS TO ASSES AND COMPARE THE QUALITY OF PUBLICATIONS
CytoJournal, being an online journal, has many benefits of monitoring quality indicators in real time on its web site itself (http://www.cytojournal.com).

Most popular articles
The ten most popular articles are displayed by clicking on 'Most popular articles' on left hand side.

Article access statistics
Article access statistics for individual articles is available on line in real-time while reviewing each article in HTML (left hand side) [ Figure 2].

Other additional quality indicators
Other additional quality indicators, some in real-time as

3A. Commercially available quality indicators
Impact factor-Usually abbreviated as IF and provided by the commercial resource Thomson Reuters http:// thomsonreuters.com/about/ previously called The Institute for Scientific Information® (ISI). It is one of the measures of the citations and historically had been the important indicator in the non-internet era. Although it has many limitations, [87] it is traditionally used as a tool to compare the importance of particular journal in a particular field.
IF is calculated from the data gathered over three-year period. It is calculated on the basis of the average number of citations (in year X for which IF is calculated) by all journals to those articles published in the two preceding years by journal ABC. [88] For example, the 2008 IF of a journal ABC would be calculated as follows:      Figure 3]. Citation analyses can be performed for individual authors [ Figure 4] or journals [ Figure 5] in 2 minutes based on online real-time Google scholar data http://scholar.google.co.uk/

CYTOJOURNAL OPEN ACCESS ADvOCACY
CytoJournal strongly recommends that all the editorial board members, reviewers, authors, readers, and other well-wishers to participate in the 'CytoJournal Advocacy