CARDIOVASCULAR JOURNAL OF AFRICA • Vol 24, No 8, September 2013
296
AFRICA
Google Scholar can be read in Bornman,
et al.
and Pendlebury.
5,6
The group also recommends consideration of non-journal
factors, such as effect on health policy and to develop metrics for
measuring scientific content rather than only publication metrics.
The journal and Pubmed Central
With CVJA, the other important development has been listing
in PMC. PMC is a free full-text archive of biomedical and
life sciences journal literature at the US National Institutes of
Health’s National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM). Advantages
and disadvantages have been discussed.
2,12
One can access
PMC-listed CVJA articles directly (
.
gov/pmc/journals/1961/) where all the issues from 2009 to
current are available in three formats: HTML, PDF and tablet
friendly, the latter very user friendly. Note that only primary
research and review articles are listed on PMC.
In a sense, one is using more than a belt and braces in using
multiple repositories. This ensures that articles published in the
journal will survive for a long time in cyberspace. The same
articles, in addition to editorial and other content in the journal,
can also be accessed through Pubmed (
.
gov/pubmed) by an article search. Here one can access full text
in addition to case studies published online through SAePub
(Sabinet).
Then there is the website of CVJA (
/)
where one can read articles in a number of formats, including an
e-reader format or, even better, browse through a facsimile of the
journal as it appears in print, with everything, adverts included.
Advertising income plays an important role in sustainability
of the CVJA and it is therefore important to maximise traffic
through the website of the CVJA.
In this regard, PMC has been shown to divert traffic from
PMC-listed journals’ websites or other repositories.
12
The ability
to cross-reference data from diverse sources, clinical, genetic,
DNA sequence, and protein is potentially very useful. For
example, accessing a recent article on long QT syndrome brings
up references to DNA sequences coding for cardiac ion channels
(a cause of LQTS) and also information on the channel proteins
contained within the NIH/NLM databases.
13
However, this easy
networking within PMC may create less of an impetus to use the
website of the CVJA.
In accessing OA articles, albeit through the journals’websites,
Pubmed, PMC or Sabinet, one needs only access to the internet.
This is good news for readers from low-resource settings. No
personal, departmental and library subscription is necessary.
There is however no such thing as a free lunch. The publication
bill needs to be settled.
With OA, distribution costs can be very low if a journal
chooses to publish only online, but there are still high costs
involved for proper peer review and editorial quality control.
Production costs are not necessarily cheaper and cost falls to
the author or institution.
12,14
For example, publishing in
PLOS
Medicine
, an OA journal with high impact, it will cost the
author(s) $1 900 (graded according to the economic status of a
country). In the case of CVJA, the up-front cost is $50 to have
a submission reviewed and the rest of the costs are covered by
advertisements, special projects and subscriptions. As indicated,
however, the last modality may be under threat. For the other
sources of income, using the CVJA website as a portal of entry
is very important.
It may well happen that institutions limit subscriptions to
journals not OA but deemed very important, such as
Circulation
and NEJM. It is interesting that a number of high-impact journals
with content perceived to be commercially of value have not
embraced PMC or OA, such as the NEJM and
Circulation
. Other
funds may be needed to carry publication costs on the author-
pay principle. All research is not backed by strong institutional
funding, especially not in Africa. This does provide challenges!
Conclusion
The CVJA is fromAfrica, but also part of the global environment.
Within Africa, the journal is well placed and a portal to the
world. Articles within the journal are visible, as the journal is
indexed in the major databases. Content is freely available on
date of publication, but the OA environment has created new
challenges. A last thought: Is there not a place for an African
journals database so that we can unlock synergies within Africa?
PAUL A BRINK, MB ChB, PhD,
Department of Internal Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences,
University of Stellenbosch and Tygerberg Hospital, Tygerberg
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