AJNR Blog » Editorial aspects

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.

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.

Announcing changes in AJNR

MCastillo — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 23:24:13 +0000

As I hinted on my blog of Jan 10^th some changes need to happen to AJNR to keep it current and make it more relevant than ever before. Thus, the following changes will take place immediately:

Review Articles: Currently we publish 3 x month, they have been cited very little and are working against the improvement of our Impact Factor. We will honor those accepted until today and as such the current publication scheme will continue until February 2011. After that date, only one Review Article per issue will be published. I expect the new reviews to be more cutting edge, preliminary communications akin to the current Methodologic or Research Perspectives. Before embarking in writing one of these articles please consult with me.

Case Reports: Please be aware that our new threshold for acceptance of Case Reports is 5% of all those submitted (same applies for Technical Notes). Case Reports receive very few citations and do not favor increasing our Impact Factor. Series with less than 5 cases are considered as Case Reports.

Original Research: These articles are prospective and hypothesis-driven. Although up to now we have published descriptive case series under the same rubric, we believe that this practice does not reflect the true nature of these two different types of articles and is unfair to authors of true research, as such a new category of articles has been created: Clinical Reports (see below). The structure of Original Research articles remains unchanged.

Clinical Reports: These are series of cases (more than 5) that are retrospective and descriptive. The total number of allowed words will be 3500 (one illustration counts for 100 words). This length is between that of Case Reports (1650 words) and Original Research (6100 words) articles. A structured abstract is not needed. In its place, a summary abstract (such as the one currently used for Case Reports) suffices.

We hope that these refinements will make AJNR a better journal and we thank our authors and readers for their understanding and support. The goal of your Editor in Chief and Senior Editors is continue to provide with you with the best Neuroradiology articles and assure the pre-eminent position of AJNR.

ajnr: changes for 2010

MCastillo — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 18:37:29 +0000

AJNR is constantly changing, many times thanks to suggestions made by our readers and others by decisions taken by myself and the senior editors. These are some of the changes that will happen this year:

Physics review articles: These have been very difficult to obtain despite due diligence of our two physics consultants. More importantly, they have not performed well and have been read, downloaded and quoted a surprisingly small number of times. For the time being we will discontinue them on regular basis and we are in the process of rethinking what would be best way to bring some physics to our readers. Suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Case reports: Their numbers will continue to decrease. We will go from five per issue in 2009 to 3 per issue in 2010 and then to 2 per issue in 2011. In 2011 all case reports will appear only online to allow us more paper space for major articles. Case reports, while interesting, are quoted very little and do not contribute to improve our impact factor.

Technical notes: These can be basically considered as case reports and also contribute very little to the improvement of our impact factor. Expect to see their number decrease considerably during the next two years.

Review articles: Another surprise! They are read, downloaded and quoted well below our expectations. We will be making a decision about them soon and may discontinue them too.

Pharmacology vignettes: Dr. Suresh Mukherji is starting this nice new section. These “capsule size” articles will deal with drugs and how they impact imaging findings. Expect to see 3 or 4 per year.

White matter tracts: Drs. Thomas Naidich and Girish Fatterpekar are working in this new section that will deal with one tract at a time. Articles will describe not only the tract but also its functional unit and imaging features. Expect to see 2 or 3 of these articles per year.

Book reviews: Dr. Robert Quencer will continue to serve as the editor of this valuable activity. They are now found exclusively in this blog site which allows input from other readers and the authors too. They are accessed much more here than they were in the journal.

Abbreviations: All articles will now contain a shaded box under the abstract detailing all abbreviations used. Other journals do this and our readers will find it very helpful.

Web-related activities:

Case of the week: It continues to be a very popular activity. For nearly one year all postings have been submitted from fellows all over the world which is very satisfying. I am thinking about choosing an editor for this section (if you are interested please contact me) and making some changes to increase its educational value.

Poll of the week: Finally we are getting more and more of you to answer the weekly question. Don’t be afraid, it is not a test!

Podcast: Dr. Doug Phillips will continue as the editor of this activity which has been initially very popular, you can expect a new podcast every month at about the time that the new issue of AJNR comes out. They are also available through iTunes.

Special collections: They will continue to be published two times per year. The next one will be on brain tumors and will be edited by Dr. Soonmee Cha from USCF.

Editor’s and Fellow’s Journal Club choices: These will be continue to be selected by myself. An icon will now mark each article chosen for any of these two selections. They will be commented on a monthly basis in our podcasts.

LAST MINUTE! Usage reports for ajnr.org have just come in as follows: total number of hits during 2008: 8,255,366; total number of hits during 2009: 9,595,879!

AJNR Tops list of “most read” in mdlinx.com

MCastillo — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 14:07:15 +0000

This week, the most read article in www.mdlinx.com comes from AJNR. This is very nice review article written by our colleagues from Boston Children’s Hospital. What I find very satisfying is that this article has not yet appeared in print and comes from our publication preview section. This is an indication that the electronic journal is becoming more and more popular. The reference is as follows:

D.P. Rodriguez and T.Y. Poussaint. Imaging of Back Pain in Children. AJNR Am. J. Neuroradiol., first published on Nov 19, 2009 as doi: doi:10.3174/ajnr.A1832

ajnrblog reaches 50,000 visits!

MCastillo — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 14:22:20 +0000

Eleven months after launching our blog we have reached over 50,000 visits. That is an average of nearly 5,000 monthly visits. Although the numbers of visitors vary day to day, they tend to be higher during workdays than on weekends. On a daily basis I look at the subjects viewed, terms searched and referral sites and have not been able to find a pattern, meaning that our audience interests vary widely. Although I am happy about these statistics, we now need our visitors to shed away their shyness and start contributing. AJNRBLOG is the “living room” of our journal and society, allowing us interaction of ideas and opinions. Talking about ideas, here are some that may increase participation:

1. Book reviews: These will appear exclusively on the blog starting January 2010. They are visited much more often than they are hit/downloaded from AJNR.ORG. If you have read the reviewed book, feel free to add your comments (a la Amazon). If you are an author and not happy with review your book received, the blog gives you an opportunity to respond, otherwise not afforded by the journal.

2. Cases: AJNR accepts less than 10% of case reports submitted. Starting next year the journal will carry only 3 case reports per issue and in 2011 this number will further reduced and they will appear only online. I recognize that this impacts small projects that our fellows like to do and have time to complete now that most programs last only one year. The blog is not peer reviewed but allows fellows and residents to post interesting cases and gain some name recognition. If you need cases to finish a project, the blog is an excellent manner to let colleagues know this.

3. Meeting information: Let your colleagues and the public know about your meeting through the blog; it is free!

4. Educational presentations: I have started posting older educational exhibits and some conferences which our fellows prepare weekly. I am sure that many of you have old exhibits that were not selected for Neurographics but are nice and informative. Download one of the free file minimizers from the Web, crunch your presentation and upload it here for all to see. Why have it “sitting” in your computer?

5. Protocols: Our string dealing with imaging protocols has been the most widely read. If you would like to share what you do at your institution, post it here. If you are doing something special to control radiation exposure, this is where you should place it.

6. Podcasts: Comment on the contents of AJNR podcasts here or let our podcast editor know which topics you want to hear.

7. Aunt Mickey: Have a cool case that fooled everyone? This is a fun activity and all are welcome to contribute to it.

These are some ideas of how you can contribute to the exchange of ideas and opinions here. We hope to see many more of you participating in the months to come!