Dear HIFA colleagues,
'There is little formal guidance regarding how to start a scholarly journal'. This is the key finding of a new paper in PLoS One. Citation and abstract below. Full text here: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0282168
Does anyone have experience or recommendations on guidance (formal or informal) for people wishing to start a new journal? I would imagine this could be part of the remit for journal editor communities of practice such as WAME or EASE? There is also an innovative programme called African Journal Partnership Project which links Africa journals with journals in the US and UK https://www.fic.nih.gov/About/center-global-health-studies/Pages/african...
CITATION: PLoS One. 2023 Mar 31;18(3):e0282168. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0282168. eCollection 2023.
Recommendations and guidelines for creating scholarly biomedical journals: A scoping review.
Ng JY(1), Cobey KD(2)(3), Ahmed S(4), Chow V(4), Maduranayagam SG(4), Santoro LJ(4), Sikora L(5), Marusic A(6), Shanahan D(7), Townsend R(7)(8), Ehrlich A(9)(10), Iorio A(4)(11), Moher D(1)(2).
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Scholarly journals play a key role in the dissemination of research findings. However, little focus is given to the process of establishing new, credible journals and the obstacles faced in achieving this. This scoping review aimed to identify and describe existing recommendations for starting a biomedical scholarly journal.
METHODS: We searched five bibliographic databases: OVID Medline + Medline in Process, Embase Classic + Embase, ERIC, APA PsycINFO, and Web of Science on January 14, 2022. A related grey literature search was conducted on March 19, 2022. Eligible sources were those published in English in any year, of any format, and that described guidance for starting a biomedical journal. Titles and abstracts of obtained sources were screened. We extracted descriptive characteristics including author name, year and country of publication, journal name, and source type, and any recommendations from the included sources discussing guidance for starting a biomedical journal. These recommendations were categorized and thematically grouped.
RESULTS: A total of 5626 unique sources were obtained. Thirty-three sources met our inclusion criteria. Most sources were blog posts (10/33; 30.30%), and only 10 sources were supported by evidence. We extracted 51 unique recommendations from these 33 sources, which we thematically classified into nine themes which were: journal operations, editorial review processes, peer review processes, open access publishing, copyediting/typesetting, production, archiving/indexing/metrics, marketing/promotion, and funding.
CONCLUSIONS: There is little formal guidance regarding how to start a scholarly journal. The development of an evidence-based guideline may help uphold scholarly publishing quality, provide insight into obstacles new journals will face, and equip novice publishers with the tools to meet best practices.
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org
