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Who is the Journal being read by? Where is it being cited in policy documents? How much reach does it have in changing policy in practice, nationally and internationally? That’s exactly the type of impact that I will be looking for, for the Journal
THE incoming Editor-in-Chief (EIC) of the MJA and InSight+ has forecast a renewed emphasis on improved patient outcomes and guidance for frontline physicians in a wide-ranging interview.
Professor Ginny Barbour, Director of Open Access Australia and one of the founding editors of PLOS Medicine, will take over from incumbent EIC Laureate Professor Nicholas Talley AC on 23 January 2023.
“I’m very excited to be joining the MJA,” Professor Barbour told InSight+ in an exclusive podcast.
“I’m passionate about medical journals and the good that they can do, so I’m extremely excited to be getting back into medical publishing again.
“National medical journals have a unique role to play. To be honest, sometimes international journals are a little bit jealous of national medical journals because they can rightly have a view on the national issues at the time.
“When they are working at their best, they can be very influential in both political and public health policy. I value that opportunity, and that’s what I would love to see the MJA doing.”
Professor Barbour said her focus would be firmly on helping working doctors improve outcomes for their patients.
“It’s absolutely about helping doctors on the frontline, patient outcomes, public health outcomes, and impact in the much wider sense,” Professor Barbour said.
“My position on impact factors is really clear: they’re a very poor metric of a journal, particularly when they’re only considered on their own.
“I would want to see the Journal looking at its impact overall. There are many, many more important things that a journal can do than think about one number, particularly the impact factor, which we know is so problematic.
“Who is the Journal being read by? Where is it being cited in policy documents? How much reach does it have in changing policy in practice, nationally and internationally?
“That’s exactly the type of impact that I will be looking for, for the Journal.”
Professor Barbour spotlighted the changing open access landscape globally, promising that the MJA would move with the times.
“The MJA is very typical of many society journals; that is, it’s challenging to make journals like the MJA open in a way that both ensures their long term sustainability but also ensures that they can fully embrace open access,” she said.
“There’s no doubt for me that we are moving along a trajectory where open access is absolutely going to be the outcome. The question is just how we get there and how quickly we get there.
“Just a couple of weeks ago, the Office of Science and Technology Policy from the United States White House put out an edict that all federally funded research in the US must be made open access by 2026. In Australia already, we have a number of moves that are going in that direction.
“We know that our Chief Scientist Dr Cathy Foley is looking at that closely, and the [National Health and Medical Research Council] and the [Australian Research Council] have open access policies.
“I think it’s fair to say that this is a topic of great interest and Australia probably needs to move a little bit quicker.
“For the MJA, there’s no question that we want open access. We want that research to be read; it needs to be used and reused, not just by practitioners but by patients. Open access can only be a good thing for the Journal.”
Preprints are also on Professor Barbour’s agenda. Although the MJA published many preprint articles about COVID-19 during 2020 and 2021, the last was in August 2021.
“The pandemic really showed that preprints are part of the medical publishing landscape,” Professor Barbour told InSight+.
“I know the MJA did dip its toe in the water with this, and it’s to be congratulated for doing that.
“My feeling would be that the opportunity now is to link into international initiatives such as medRxiv and other related preprint servers.
“The challenge for the MJA is it has double blind peer review, and of course, you can’t really have double blind peer review easily if you’ve got a preprint that’s out there. But there are ways of getting around that and I’d like to have a good conversation about what model of peer review works best for the Journal.
“Preprints themselves have extra value. We know that they increase the impact of the final published research. So, researchers should not be worried about them. They are part of the evolution of a paper in many ways. You should think about all versions of a paper having equal value, potentially.”
Earlier this year Professor Talley announced he would stand down from the EIC role at the end of 2022 after 7 years. He will stay on as Emeritus EIC until June of 2023 in an advisory role.
During his tenure, the Journal’s impact factor rose to an all-time high of 12.776, and the Journal is now consistently ranked as one of the top 10% of general medical journals in the world based on impact factor. The MJA had more than 1.4 million article downloads in 2021.
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I strongly disagree as I personally have not seen any increase in confidence or help in their services.
I think the workers are good and well-intentioned, but the programs don’t seem workable and are more damaging in the long run as more people are just evaluated with no real solution that gets to the CAUSE of the persons issues.
I feel that HeadSpace is not helping our community as it’s purpose is not correct. That money can be use in a much better way. We are all trying to help each other but sometimes we do more hurt than help
Put the funds into good nutrition, exercise programs, suitable employment incentives, better education that results in literacy and 90% of headspace and other pharmaceutical solutions would evaporate.
While I am mindful of the many peopleworking in headspace who have a genuine desire to help young people, they are let down by the design of Headspace that, no matter what path you follow for help it alays leads to a prescrption psychiatric druga as the end solution. There are so many better options where communucation skills, good food, proper rest and adressing underying physical health gets real results. Statisically for the money spent on Headspace, the problem hs gotten worse, not better so it is not viable.
Considering the wealth of evidence refuting psychiatric claims of scientific validity it’s no wonder headspace is an abject failure. The recent serotoninin myth debacle is just another nail in the coffin of a fake “science.”
No matter how persuasive or how well funded, an opinion is and will always be an opinion. And a pychiatric diagnosis is just that, an opinion. Until a psychiatrist can provide actual scientfic proof of a mental disorder, such as a brain scan or blood test as is used in real medicine, they will never be anything more than highly paid drug sales outlets.