Editorial

This is my seventh editorial letter to you since I became the Editor-in-Chief of International Surgery by election of the governance of the International College of Surgeons.

In my last editorial letter to you in issue 97.2, I emphasized that online publishing provides many opportunities to enhance International Surgery and thereby better serve the Fellows of the International College of Surgeons and other readers of the ICS Journal. One such opportunity is open access publishing.

Over the past decade, governmental entities, which provide financial support for medical/scientific research with funds from the public sector, are mandating that the results of publicly funded research projects be made immediately available to all persons with interest in the research outcomes. Examples include the United Kingdom government, the European Union and major funding bodies in the US such as the National Institute of Health (NIH) and the World Bank. Other medical/scientific researchers, performing research without benefit of public funds, may also have the desire of making their respective research findings immediately available to the at-large scientific community. Time variations also exist, of course, whereby some research findings are embargoed for a period of time, and then released to the medical/scientific community. For example, the UK Wellcome Trust open access policy requires that all papers that follow from research that has been funded be made freely accessible from the PubMed Central as soon as possible and freely accessible within six months of the journal publisher's official date of final publication.1 The NIH Public Access Policy requires scientists to submit final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts that arise from NIH funds to the digital archive PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication. To help advance science and improve human health, the Policy requires that these papers are accessible to the public no later than 12 months after publication.2

To balance and encourage the open access publishing partnership between the author and the publisher, the arrangement is for the author to retain the copyright to their manuscript published in International Surgery and ICS will retain a non-exclusive right to the content, receive proper attribution and citation as the journal of first publication, and the authority to migrate the work to future formats and include the article in collections. And, as indicated in the foregoing paragraph, time variations for this may also apply.

Beginning with this 97.3 issue, the editorial staff of International Surgery has elected to follow a “hybrid” approach for an initial period of time, whereby one or two open access articles in each issue, will be published. We believe that those authors, who are willing to pay a special charge of USD$990 for the opportunity to make their research findings immediately available to medical/scientific research community, should be given the opportunity to do so.

As part of this partnership, discounts or waivers will be offered on a case by case basis to authors with restricted resources, who need to publish in an open access journal to satisfy their grant requirements. In particular, such discounts may apply to authors in low and middle income countries covered by the Hinari Program for Access to Health Research http://www.who.int/hinari/en/. Please note that the ability of an author to pay article processing charges will not influence publication choices, as open access charges will not be processed until after the article is accepted.3

At International Surgery, our overall goals are to assist surgeons/medical researchers to control their rights as they individually desire, and to assist them in having their work be referenced and used within the framework of restrictions that they choose. And, our goal for our readers is to increase access to original research information for their own education and for any research that they may undertake. We believe that this “hybrid” open access approach is the best arrangement, and we will keep you advised as we proceed.

Thank you for your continued support and for your ongoing suggestions/commentary.

Sincerely,

Professor Christopher Chen

Editor-in-Chief

International Surgery