JGH Open: The dawn of a new era in publishing!

Abstract

Welcome to the Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology (JGH) Open. It is with the greatest pride that I write this Editorial in the inaugural issue of JGH Open. Publication and sharing of scientific knowledge and findings is an age-old tradition which has been for so many years based on print “journals”. The advent and widespread use of the internet has brought about a dramatic change in publishing as it has in so many aspects of our daily life. The concept of “open access” journals came about following a meeting in Budapest in December 2001 amongst the members of the Open Society Initiative. Following that inaugural meeting, this group issued a statement—the Budapest Open Access Initiative—“An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good. The old tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals without payment, for the sake of inquiry and knowledge. The new technology is the internet. The public good they make possible is the worldwide electronic distribution of the peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers, students, and other curious minds.1” The idea of starting an “Open” journal in tandem with the JGH came about two years ago and after discussions between Mark Robertson, Vice President of Wiley Asia Pacific and President of Wiley Japan, and Julia Ballard of Wiley and I as Chairman of JGH Foundation at that time. As publishing has changed dramatically over the past decade or so, it was felt that the JGH as the flagship journal in the Asian Pacific area should venture into open publishing with its obvious benefits of fast review and publications while maintaining the high standards of close scrutiny and rigorous peer review. We thought of several names but JGH Open soon became the obvious choice with due recognition of our parent publication—the JGH. The JGH Open is jointly owned by the Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology Foundation (JGHF) and Wiley. The contribution of the JGHF will be immense—JGH Foundation will sponsor the article processing charges (APCs) of the first 20 accepted articles for a start. It is my fervent hope that JGHF will consider further sponsorship of APCs until we are firmly on our feet. Articles from resource-poor countries as stated in the journal information will automatically be exempted from APCs. The JGH Open covers all aspects of gastroenterology hepatology, gastrointestinal endoscopy, and gastrointestinal surgery. The journal accepts original articles, reviews, commentaries, and case reports. The JGH Open strives to provide readers with high quality articles and authors of a fast review and publication of their articles which may otherwise be bogged down by a lengthy review and publication process. We aim to provide a refreshing and appealing option to all authors and will additionally consider high quality cascaded articles from JGH which could not be accepted because of space constraints in a print journal. Special attention is given to results and clinical studies focusing on national or regional aspects and problems from all over the world but particularly from the Asian Pacific region which may not meet the overall international interests or standards of other international journals in the field. I have assembled a team of co-editors and together we will work as a team in sourcing articles particularly from young researchers, investigators, and clinicians in the Asia Pacific region. We will work hard and steadfastly with Wiley to achieve citation by PubMed and, we hope within two years, citation by the Web of Science with an ISI Impact factor. The editorial team at Wiley consists of an experienced team headed by Julia Ballard who will be the Head of Publishing and assisted by Emily Borromeo, Editorial Assistant, and Farhana Yusoff, Production Editor. This journal is for all of you and we hope you will support it wholeheartedly by contributing articles.