The Success of a Journal Makeover

Abstract

The Federation Proceedings had a long history of service to the biomedical sciences, but diminishing current interest in the consortium of research and professional societies who subsidized it through automatic member subscriptions. Among its problems was a heavy reliance on after-the-fact accounts of specialty symposia presentations for its content. These papers were invited by a relatively tight circle of symposia organizers, and their appeal to the majority of subscribers could be limited, as evidenced by low subsequent citation rates. The presence of convention abstracts which were also little cited relative to their enormous numbers further dragged down the impact factors. A new editor, backed by the Federation's publication committee, shifted the format to brief reviews and communications, and assumed a greater degree of control over manuscripts, continuing to invite some but welcoming unsolicited papers as well. Together, editor and board systematically stressed greater diversity of topics and authorship, with emphasis on increasing foreign involvement. The pagination of the journals was adjusted to avoid abstracts being included in impact factor calculations. Certain minor features were also upgraded. An analysis of the revamped successor, the FASEB Journal, discloses that the change to reviews and the increases in diversity of domestic authorship and topics were actually the most significant components in what is now a very highly cited publication.