CARDIOVASCULAR JOURNAL OF AFRICA • Vol 23, No 3, April 2012
AFRICA
125
Cardiovascular Topics
From the Editor’s De k
The Cardiovascular Journal of Africa
(
CVJAfrica
) has updated
its electronic presence with a modern website to provide for
quick and easy access to the Journal’s contents and services.
Importantly, for narrow-band users in developing regions, the
Journal has ensured that access to its articles is direct to text in
compact PDFs.
For our advertisers, within both the pharmaceutical
and academic environments, the Journal site has links via
advertisements to further product details. For authors, their
articles are indexed in PubMed, Medline, Embase and Scopus
and are tracked by Thompson Reuters (Web of Knowledge – ISI)
which provides the Journal’s impact factor.
Reassuringly, in the current debate on ‘open access’, all
articles published in the
CVJAfrica
are provided as full text,
free of charge on the Pubmed and
CVJAfrica
site. The copyright
of published articles is held by the
CVJAfrica
and if these
articles are reproduced internationally, payment is made via the
US-based Copyright Clearance System. Again, the charge for
academic use is extremely low (0.1 American cents per page)
while commercial use reflects the actual costs more closely.
Printed versions of the Journal are provided to South African
reference libraries and to relevant specialists in South Africa.
Increasingly, the Journal is accessed electronically, with 1 800
visitors to the site monthly, who view on average four pages of
Journal content. In addition, 2 500 articles are downloaded per
month globally by readers using the Pubmed full-text facility.
The challenge for all e-based, independent journals is how
to ensure sufficient financial support. We have reluctantly
introduced a modest ($50) submission fee to help us cover the
significant costs of Editorial Manager; the well-known and
highly regarded Aries manuscript submission system. Many
open-access journals such as those in BioMedCentral charge a
$1 000 author submission fee.
The
CVJAfrica
focus is to publish quality research articles
in the field of vascular disease. We thank our authors, reviewers
and editors across the country for their support of the Journal’s
activities.
AJ Brink
Editor-in-Chief
Electronic innovation and readership
