bmj.com: new initiatives

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• bmj.com new initiatives
• Tony Delamothe
• web editor
• bmj.com
• http//bmj.com/misc/talks

tdelamothe_at_bmj.com
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Where I stand
Traditional paper journal
?
Traditional electronic journal
1995
2000
?
The paradigm breaks down
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Early lessons

• The gap between idea and robust implementation on
  the web is as long or longer than elsewhere
• Listen to your customers

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The common trajectory
electronic
paper
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We are in great haste to construct a magnetic
telegraph from Maine to Texas but Maine and
Texas, it may be, have nothing important to
communicate.

• Walden, Thoreau

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New solutions for old frustrations

• Letters to the editor
• Papers
• The distance between us
• Peer review

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The mystery of decision making at the centre

?
Yes, if
No
unsolicited
solicited
tdelamothe_at_bmj.com
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Moving from black box to jellyfish

Yes, if
No
?
unsolicited
solicited
tdelamothe_at_bmj.com
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Theme issues chosen by readers

• Global voices on the AIDS catastrophe
• War 2002
• Evaluating the quality of health information on
  the internet
• The limits of medicine and the medicalisation of
  human experience
• Road traffic crashes
• Neurodegenerative diseases
• Doctors' well being
• What is a good doctor and how can we make one
• Managing chronic diseases
• Doctor-patient communication and relationships
• What doesn't work and how to show it

tdelamothe_at_bmj.com
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Transferring power

• This is meant to be a cautionary tale. I choose
  to read it the other way.
• Perhaps the chief lesson of the whole story
  is the capacity of the internet to transfer
  absolute power to the consumer.
• For years now, companies have been
  complaining quietly of their loss of influence
  over their customers. It may be, of course, that
  as the internet matures, they will be able to
  reassert themselves. If not, the tech frenzy
  could turn out not so much to have exaggerated
  the internet's promise as to have missed the
  danger it poses.
• FTs review of Dot.com the greatest story ever
  sold

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New solutions for old frustrations

• Letters to the editor
• Papers
• The distance between us
• Peer review

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Peer review and our dance of the seven veils

• Revelation of reviewers identity to a
  co-reviewer
• Revelation of reviewers identity to the author
  (led to signed reviewers opinion from 1999)
• Revelation of reviewers signed opinion to the
  entire world

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Peer review who needs it?

• The eprint server
• free, full text, fast
• vs
• slow, expensive, and peer reviewed

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Exploiting new possibilities

• Organization/discovery of material
• Alerts (including email a friend)
• Tracking behavior
• New material/new platforms

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Email a friend
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Tracking behavior

• Email a friend
• Hit parade
• Annual online questionnaire
• (see About us on bmj.com)

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Exploiting new possibilities

• Organization/discovery of material
• Alerts (including email a friend)
• Tracking behavior
• New material/new platforms

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With increasing divergence, which is the
journal?
electronic
paper
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Complementarity

• Remember, paper currently beats electronic for
• readability
• portability
• durability
• cost
• Conclusion we should exploit the best of both
  media

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Despite the availability of the electronic
journal, I want to keep receiving the paper
journal (BMA members, 2001)
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Free the upsides

• Readership
• Manuscript submissions
• Impact factor
• Site traffic
• Influence

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Readership nearly doubled in 4 years

• paper (120 000) electronic (116 000)

Overlap 16 000
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Manuscript submissions
Non-UK submissions
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Free the upsides

• Readership
• Manuscript submissions
• Impact factor
• Site traffic
• Influence

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Average traffic ratingSource http//www.alexa.com

• NEJM 9411
• BMJ 13040
• Lancet 30 538
• Annals 133 507
• JAMA 830 647

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Free the downside(?)
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Looking ahead
?
1995
2000
?
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Looking ahead
?
1995
2000
?
the forms may change but the aims of
scientific publication remain the same
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What were scientific journals for?

• The permanent record
• The glue to keep a community together
• Communication
• To make money?

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The purpose of journals
looking ahead

• Paper is brief and beautiful and I love it,
  but its a wholly inadequate medium to conduct
  the conversations that humanity has to have. What
  were journals created for in the first place? To
  enable knowledge creation by conversation, except
  that every exchange took six months. What we need
  is much more proficient knowledge creation.
• - Bela Hartnavy, 1996

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Understanding whats happened to journals using
the model of automation

• Electrification
• Enhancement
• Evolution
• Valerie Florance, 1996

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New paradigm for problem solving tapping into
the collective intelligence made possible by the
internet

• The power of bringing together the right minds
  around a subject in an on-line dialogue, well
  facilitated, well deliberated, I think has
  enormous potential to help us get through issues
  that weve never solved before. You see this
  embodied in the open source model for software
  creation. But that same model could apply to
  policy issues, social issues, educational
  issues.
• - Mario Morino