Editorial

Abstract

In 2009 I wrote an editorial that reflected on the history of the first 20 years of this journal; this was prompted by the concurrent celebration of the 25th year of the European Society of Veterinary Dermatology. The ensuing five years have passed very quickly and we now see the 25th volume of the journal. Since 2009 the journal has changed in a variety of ways. We have increased the number of links with other organisations that have an interest in veterinary dermatology. The World Association for Veterinary Dermatology is behind the quadrennial World Congress of Veterinary Dermatology (WCVD) and we can look forward to the eighth such congress in Bordeaux in 2016 (http://www.wavd.org/en/kat.php?k=1); abstracts and papers from the highly successful congress held in Vancouver in 2012 (WCVD7) were published in the journal and the abstracts are available online via the Wiley Online Library website: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1365-3164/homepage/wcvd_abstracts_archive.htm. Some years ago the American College of Veterinary Dermatology supported a taskforce to look at canine atopic dermatitis and this has developed into a substantial international group of veterinary dermatologists which is now called the International Committee on Allergic Diseases of Animals (ICADA: www.icada.info). This journal has made a number of articles submitted by ICADA and its predecessors free access so that veterinarians in practice and owners can access key information on canine atopic disease. The International Society of Veterinary Dermatopathology (http://www.isvd.org/) has also become an official affiliated organisation of the journal and we draw upon their membership for expert reviews for articles covering dermatopathology. In recent years we have extended the abstract translations that cover French, German and Spanish to include Japanese and Chinese – this is, in part, to give readers in other countries access to material from the journal and particularly to acknowledge the importance of the contributions from Japan. The abstracts are not printed with the journal and are held as free access for anyone to read via the online version of each article. We have recently changed the style and format of the table of contents (TOC) which will hopefully make the content easier to peruse. The online TOC has graphical content to provide more information and visual appeal to the articles. A major change for authors and reviewers and editors was the move in 2010 from the Editorial Manager software system for electronic submission to the ScholarOne system, which is widely used in veterinary journals and in large publishing companies. We have modified the submission process to encourage reviewers to provide structured reviews by answering a series of key questions which are aimed to establish a systematic overview of the important issues within all papers. Other developments in the submission process include double-blind review which has been used to reduce the risk of bias in reviewing papers. Inevitably in a relatively small discipline it can be difficult to hide the identity of some authors from the reviewers but we believe that it is worth the extra work to remove all trace of identity before articles are sent for review. It is often said that review articles are good for journals because they tend to attract more citations and thus increase the journal impact factor. There is a lot of discussion about the merit of the impact factor (IF) as a way to assess quality and a number of other calculations are available to assess the impact of articles. In recent years this journal has seen a steady rise in its IF and the relative position compared with other veterinary journals. In part this reflects that we have published some key review articles about canine atopic skin disease which remains, arguably the most popular and important area of research and clinical activity in veterinary dermatology. The articles from ICADA, in particular, have contributed to the rise of the IF; it may be the case that as certain highly-cited review articles drop outside of the IF calculation period we will see a downturn in its value for the journal in the near future. The journal often receives large manuscripts and in some cases it is clear that we do not have to reproduce all of the images or all of the text, so we offer authors scope for providing what is termed ‘supporting information’, also referred to sometimes as supplementary material. There has been a growth in this contribution to the journal and it is an area in need of some revision in due course. Other journals have also seen a growth in supporting information and there are now guidelines to help publishers deal with some of the issues that may arise from publishing such material. For Veterinary Dermatology we see supporting information as additional content rather than integral. In some journals the material and methods, for example, may be placed into this category, but since you cannot understand the main paper without access to the materials and methods then it is deemed to be integral content. For more information about this topic see the article ‘Recommended practices for online supplemental journal article materials’ published by the National Information Standards Organization at www.niso.org. One of the more significant changes for authors this past year has been the replacement by Wiley of the Electronic Licence Form and the adoption of the new electronic Copyright Transfer Agreement as part of the Wiley Author Licensing System (WALS). Changes to license requirements in the UK have been brought about in part by new publication policies from the UK Research Councils and the Wellcome Trust and a likely increase in OnlineOpen (pay to publish open access) publishing activity. The WALS allows authors choosing OnlineOpen to select an Open Access Agreement (OAA) which provides for publication using the Creative Commons license of their choice. For journal authors who are not funded by UK research bodies the Creative Commons license system does not usually apply. Authors can still pay for open access of their article if they wish. Some organisations outside the UK that sponsor research also require articles published from research studies to be made open access (e.g. NIH). The roads to open access (OA) have been termed green (where there is no cost to the author) and gold (where the author pays a publication fee). There is considerable debate about the provision of OA and it is a contentious area of publishing with a plethora of journals and publishers joining the OA arena. Some academics have been concerned about the fast development of OA journals and their standards (see article ‘Who is afraid of peer review?’ by John Bohannon (2013) Science 342: 60–65; (www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.full). There is no doubt that many leading veterinary research groups are paying the publication fees and publishing in leading OA journals – especially those with high impact factors. A parallel process to the development of OA is the development of online-only journals. This journal is read by a community of vets who in the main wish to have access to a print copy. As paper and print costs continue to rise and with new people joining the discipline there will inevitably come a time when an online-only version is provided for all readers. At the same time we see developments in publishing houses to add value to the online content of a journal and to stream content to a variety of systems used for downloading information and through a variety of social media networks. In years to come we may see the journal provide online-only open-access articles and derived content through a variety of social media networks and download systems. The need for scrutiny and some form of peer review will not go away and our challenge is to ensure that readers will still come to the journal and know that they can see articles on all aspects of veterinary dermatology that are both interesting and valued by clinicians, pathologists and scientists alike. In 2014 we welcome to the board Mar Bardagi and Pilar Brazis from Spain and Kim Coyner from the USA; they have been regular reviewers for the journal and I am pleased to recognise their contribution by inviting them to join the board. They bring a wealth of expertise in clinical specialty practice, research and clinical trials. I would like to thank two retiring members of the board who have provided expertise in the field of pathology, namely Judith Nimmo and Claudia von Tscharner. It remains for me to thank our readers who purchase access to the journal through a variety of affiliated organisations, societies and libraries; to authors, editors, reviewers and to the team at Wiley, for their support of the journal over the last 25 years. I am particularly grateful to the support given to the journal by one of its founding editors – David Lloyd – who continues to publish papers with the journal and provide expert advice to the editors. Aiden P. Foster December 2013