AJNR Blog » Editorial aspects

AJNR Publications Honored at ESNR Meeting

MCastillo — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 17:27:48 +0000

Dr. Josep Puig Alcantara received the 2011 Founders Award for Diagnostic Neuroradiology at this year’s meeting of the European Society of Neuroradiology for two publications that appeared in AJNR:

J. Puig, S. Pedraza, G. Blasco, J. Daunis-i-Estadella, F. Prados, S. Remollo, A.
Prats-Galino, G. Soria, I. Boada, M. Castellanos, and J. Serena.
Acute Damage to the Posterior Limb of the Internal Capsule on Diffusion Tensor Tractography as an Early Imaging Predictor of Motor Outcome after
Stroke. AJNR Am J Neuroradiol, May 2011; 32: 857 – 86

J. Puig, S. Pedraza, G. Blasco, J. Daunis-i-Estadella, A. Prats, F. Prados, I. Boada, M. Castellanos, J. Sánchez-González, S. Remollo, G. Laguillo, A.M. Quiles, E. Gómez, and J. Serena. Wallerian Degeneration in the Corticospinal
Tract Evaluated by Diffusion Tensor Imaging Correlates with Motor Deficit 30
Days after Middle Cerebral Artery Ischemic Stroke. AJNR Am J
Neuroradiol, Aug 2010; 31: 1324 – 1330.

Both articles were previously selected as part of our “Editor’s Choice” series. We congratulate Dr. Puig and urge our subscribers to read these important publications.

Interventional Neuroradiology

MCastillo — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 14:19:25 +0000

This year, Interventional Neuroradiology will be published in the traditional printed hard copy format and also in a digital edition available on the Internet. This move will allow our readers to exploit the myriad opportunities digital medium has to offer, especially for a journal with an international readership. The subscription price will be lower in view of cost savings resulting from the digital format. The digital subscription will offer readers the leaf through format on-line, the PDF to download and print, and bibliography search with access to a dynamic articles archive. We are convinced that the digital format will further develop the journal and boost INR circulation worldwide. We hope that you will appreciate our decision to go digital and continue to support Interventional Neuroradiology by submitting your scientific articles. It is our pleasure to offer you a complimentary six-month subscription to INR Digital. This will give you ample opportunity to appreciate the quality of the journal and hopefully decide to subscribe to INR Digital once the complementary subscription expires. INR is now indexed on Pub Med.

To access your free subscription please visit our website

www.interventionalneuroradiology.it

and login with the

user: inrdigital@centauro.it

password: inuro-11

Thank you for your ongoing support of Interventional Neuroradiology.

Warmest regards,

Marco Leonardi

Professor of Neuroradiology

Bologna University, Italy

Come Snack with AJNR

MCastillo — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 19:12:41 +0000

Did you know that AJNR offers you now even more “brain food”? Twice per week- Tuesdays and Fridays- we give you a new Brain Snack. These are bite-size pieces of information (“pearls”) on clinically pertinent topics chosen from articles appearing in the corresponding month. All snacks come with their reference and a link to the article they came from. All you have to do to consume them is click on the Brain Snacks link on AJNRs homepage.… Continue reading >>

AJNR Blog for iPhone

MCastillo — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 19:03:22 +0000

This blogsite is now available on a special platform (WPtouch) for iPhone. Once you access AJNRBLOG.ORG, your iPhone should default into the mobile mode automatically (if not, you can manually change it at the bottom of the screen). For those using other devices, such as a Blackberry, our standard platform should continue to be satisfactory. The new platform should also work well with devices that are android-based. Please note that our iPhone application does not support “pinching and stretching” but despite this the text is clearly readable and the illustrations are of high quality.

Renting AJNR Articles

MCastillo — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 19:06:46 +0000

I know that many of you have faced the following annoying situation: you find an article that you must read but to do so you have to pay $20.00-$30.00! If you, or the institution you work for, subscribe to AJNR all of its contents should be available for perusing. If you do not subscribe we now offer an alternative to buying the article you need: DeepDyve. DeepDyve is the largest online rental service for scientific articles. Its database houses some 30 million articles and you may preview any of them free and rent the entire article for 24 hours for only $0.99. Other prominent journals such as Radiology and Radiographics also offer this service. If you are interested in finding more about this new AJNR offering please go to: http://www.deepdyve.com

Bias and Language in Scientific Articles

MCastillo — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 11:49:07 +0000

In the last issue of JACR (J Am Coll Radiol 2010; 7: 490-494) Dr. James Brenner addresses some of the more subtle manifestations of bias in the scientific literature. These biases arise because they are generally not identified during the peer review process and because literature is often (mis)quoted by not going back and reading the original articles. Misleading data self perpetuates when this happens. I urge all of our authors to go back to original articles and read them and judge their quality and significance that way. He also writes: “The use of adverbs should have a restricted place in medical discussions; objective results deserve discussions that provide for a rationale argument, without editorial emphasis.” Yes, I agree. There is little place for terms such as undoubtedly, unequivocal, compelling, etc. The term ”significant” should be used when describing the results of statistical analysis and nothing else (Radiology has a policy regarding the use of this term as stated in the AMA book of style). These terms give, to sometimes minor observations, a greater importance than they deserve. Negative results are equally important to positive ones. We are all afraid of reporting the negative (and disappointing) results of our investigations and tend to emphasize their positive trends because we know that this way our articles are more likely to be accepted. When I accept articles for publication in AJNR I always ask the authors to write a paragraph on caveats and limitations of their studies (there is no perfect study) just before the final concluding paragraph. Not doing this is certainly putting a “spin” on the results. If the author(s) works or receives remuneration from commercial organizations for his or her work, this can certainly lead to putting a spin on their results. There is nothing wrong about making some extra money working for corporations but it certainly must be disclosed up front. By disclosing it, editors become aware of potential bias and can work with the authors to reduce it to acceptable levels. The readership is entitled to know about these biases so that they can form their own opinions with respect to results of investigations. Editors aware of biases will choose reviewers who are unlikely to share the same biases, assuring an honest peer review. However, I do not completely agree with Dr. Brenner when he implies that many of these words should not be used in Editorials and other similar comments containing opinions. Opinions are already biased by their own nature. Editorials and commentaries may serve to “debunk” some misrepresented data. Editorials are “colored” by their author’s opinion, as they should be. Perceived bias may be openly discussed in Letters to the Editor or in our blogsite. I invite our readers to pursue these avenues if any bias is noted in articles we publish.

Words to be avoided in research articles: undoubtedly, unequivocal, significant (only to be used when it refers to statistical results), substantially, always, and other related adverbs.

AJNR’s New Impact Factor for 2010

MCastillo — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 15:45:15 +0000

I am very happy to announce that AJNR’s new Impact Factor is 3.296 up from 2.745 last year. AJNR will continue to offer the highest quality scientific articles and we will be fine tuning the contents of the Journal to assure that the Impact Factor and other metrics continue to improve.… Continue reading >>

AJNR’s New Special Collection and Podcast Survey Brain Tumor Imaging

MCastillo — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 14:54:35 +0000

“Brain Tumor Imaging, Volume 1: Pretherapy” is the latest Special Collection from the American Journal of Neuroradiology. Distilling the best of the many articles related to brain tumor imaging that appear in the pages of AJNR posed a daunting task, but Editor-in-Chief Mauricio Castillo knew that Collection Editor Soonmee Cha of the University of California, San Francisco would be successful. “Dr. Cha is a respected investigator, a contributor of high quality and clinically relevant articles to AJNR and other journals, and a member of our Editorial Board,” he explained. Dr. Cha chose to categorize and present this compilation of research in two volumes. “Brain tumors consist of a heterogeneous group of neoplasms numbering more than 120 different histologic types with a wide range of clinical, biologic, and prognostic behavior. Due to this breadth, I organized the articles by specific imaging modality and selected those that best utilized imaging to address disease-specific questions,” she said. The first volume covers essential anatomic and physiologic clinical imaging methods as well as highly innovative and potentially ground-breaking imaging that promises even greater progress in caring for brain tumor patients in the future. Volume 2 will include articles that focus on imaging of brain tumors aftertherapy. In the accompanying podcast, Dr. Cha and AJNR’s Podcast Editor C. Douglas Phillips discuss the collaborative role of the neuroradiologist in the treatment and prognosis of brain tumors and the benefits of advanced diagnostic imaging techniques. This special podcast, along with Dr. Phillips’ summaries of each issue’s most salient articles including the Editor’s Choices and Fellow’s Journal Club selections, are available to download on the AJNR Website and in the iTunes Store. AJNR Special Collections provide a comprehensive source of imaging-related articles on a single topic and are released biannually on an open-access basis. Previous Collections include “Imaging Acute Stroke and its Consequences,” edited by Pamela W. Schaefer and R. Gilberto GonzÃ¡lez, “Acute Stroke Intervention” edited by Colin P. Derdeyn and Avi Mazumdar, “Percutaneous Vertebroplasty,” edited by Mary E. Jensen and Joshua A. Hirsch, and “Radiation Dose in Neuroradiology CT Protocols,” edited by Max Wintermark and Michael H. Lev. All are available through AJNR’s print-on-demand service (Brightdoc), where readers can order a full-color hard copy for just US $50.00, plus shipping.

Interventional Neuroradiology: Now in MEDLINE

MCastillo — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 16:33:01 +0000

Most of you know that last year AJNR entered a cooperative agreement with Interventional Neuroradiology (IN). Since AJNR accepts very few case reports and technical notes, we encourage the authors of these types of articles to send them to our “sister” journal, IN. Many prospective authors can rest assured that their articles will be thoroughly and fairly evaluated by Dr. Karel terBrugge and his editorial team. Through the efforts of Dr. Marco Leonardi who publishes IN the journal is now indexed in MEDLINE making it more important, relevant, and useful. IN is now in its 15th year of publication and circulates worldwide. IN is the official journal of the World Federation of Therapeutic and Interventional Neuroradiology and several other major neurointerventional societies and appears quarterly. Its website is: http://www.centauro.it/neuro.htm. I congratulate IN for its indexing in MEDLINE. In the 2011 January issue of AJNR an editorial describing what is needed for a journal to be indexed will be published (this article will appear within a few weeks from today in the publication preview section of AJNR). As the reader will then be able to understand, achieving indexing is a highly selective, competitive and complex process.

Hotlight: A Cool New Feature for AJNR

MCastillo — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:35:42 +0000

We are happy to announce that starting on March 19th, AJNR will be enhanced with the Hotlight feature. This nifty addition allows readers to instantly retrieve medical images (from the ARRS Goldminer program), journal articles (from PubMed), and view terms and their definitions (from MeSH and RadLex). How does it work? It is simple:

-When you are viewing an article on hypertext form (HTML) simply highlight the term you want to search (remember that Hotlight only works when viewing articles on the HTML format),

-if this highlighted term is in the database a “lightbulb” icon will show up beside it,

-click on the lightbulb and it will take you to a different window displaying the results of your search.

Other journals such as Radiology and AJR also offer this enhancement and we are proud to bring it to a subspecialty journal such as AJNR. We hope that you will use and enjoy it and will share any comments that you have regarding it with us.