In My Opinion

Why Archives should remain our journal
by K. Thomas Robbins M.D.

The Archives of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery has been the official journal for the American Head and Neck Society (AHNS) for the past 3 years. Prior to the merging of the two head and neck societies, Archives had a similar long-term arrangement with the American Society for Head and Neck Surgery. The more recent commitment between Archives and AHNS has been to publish as many of the papers from the annual meeting as possible in an especially dedicated monthly edition. The scientific quality of these publications has been held to the highest standard by processing each submission through the standard peer review process for all AMA journals. My role as an assistant editor has been to assign members of the AHNS to participate in this process whenever feasible. To date, this has worked well and we are currently scheduled to publish the third special monthly edition in March 2002. John Wiley and Sons, Inc., has made a bid to have their journal, Head and Neck, serve as the official journal of the AHNS.

The following comparisons between the Wiley offer and the AMA Archives commitment are outlined in order to fairly judge the substance of each.

Head and Neck

Archives of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery
  • Wiley will dedicate one issue each year to the AHNS articles and guarantee a 12-week print production schedule.
  • The AHNS agreement with Archives is to dedicate one “double issue” (180 editorial pages) each year containing its papers. The Wiley journal appears to be about 90 editorial pages per issue, considerably less than Archives.
  • Wiley has agreed to publish all of the accepted manuscripts online concurrently.
  • Archives has been doing this for 3 years including audio reproductions of the keynote talks.
  • Wiley will allow the Society to publish the abstracts of the upcoming meeting on the AHNS web site but limited to 15 days after the meeting and a note of the Wiley copyright.
  • Archives will allow AHNS to place the meeting abstracts on the AHNS web site without any time or copyright restrictions.
  • The affiliation between AHNS and Wiley would be noted on the cover of the journal.
  • Archives also highlights this affiliation on the cover of every monthly publication.
  • Wiley offers to make available without additional cost to the Society up to 2 printed pages per issue for the publication of its news, announcements, and a membership application.
  • Archives is willing to match this.
  • Wiley will provide 50 complimentary online subscriptions to Head and Heck for candidate members to AHNS.
  • Archives provides complimentary subscriptions to all residents and fellows in Otolaryngology (currently 1041 subscriptions). Archives is willing to extend this to AHNS candidates who are non-otolaryngologists.
  • Wiley requires a price for their service: $85.00 per member for the annual subscription (print and online) or $60.00 per member for the online only. For the 223 AHNS members who currently subscribe to Head and Neck at the full rate ($225.00), this would represent a personal savings.
  • Archives provides its journal to all otolaryngologists and all members of the AHNS on the basis of a controlled circulation. The AMA covers the cost of this service. Membership in the AMA is voluntary and not a requirement to receive a subscription to Archives. Thus, regardless of the discount offered by Wiley, it is still far more costly to the AHNS membership as a whole to change journals.
  • Wiley has offered an unrestricted educational grant of $15,000. However, the 884 active AHNS members would be required to collectively pay Wiley $75,140 for the printed version of the subscription. Who wouldn’t be prepared to pay back this amount of money if there was a guarantee to collect an amount 3 to 4 times as much?
  • Archives choses not to play the game of giving grants in return for subscription quotas.

In a performance comparison between the 2 journals, the following parameters are available:

Archives

Head and Neck

Circulation

12,584

2000-3000

Readership

82%

unknown

Number of Citations (1999)

6,448

1834

Impact Factor (2000)

1.527

1.917

International Circulation

1,555

Unknown but far less

Average issue reader trend

82%

Unknown but far less

Immediacy Index (1999)

0.221

0.096

John Wiley and Sons, Inc., has joined a consortium of private publishers to support the web-based Crosref. AMA plans to join Crosref as well as HighWire, a web vendor that already exists. Access to this latter network will be made available to all Archive subscribers without charge.

In summary, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., is a for-profit private enterprise whose primary goal is to make money. They propose to sell back the intellectual property of our members for a few small perks to the society but at a significant cost to the membership as a whole. On the other hand, Archives is a member of a family of journals sponsored by the AMA, a non-profit institution whose primary mission is to represent physicians and disseminate medical information. Archives has been the sponsor of several otolaryngology societies for years representing head and neck surgeons. It is highly visible and provides a broad spectrum of reading material including oncology and other head and neck disorders. Such topics have an interest to AHNS members including those whose practice is not confined to oncology. Its tradition, visibility, missions, and associations deserve our allegiance