Behind the scenes of JAC: the publisher's role Free

Introduction

The JAC has been published by Oxford University Press (OUP) for just under half of its 40 year existence. OUP offers a unique partnership to the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (BSAC) to ensure that JAC continues to be very successful and serve its authors and readers.

OUP exists, first and foremost, to disseminate the highest quality content to the widest possible audience to meet its academic mission.

OUP is different from commercial publishers in several ways. Perhaps most importantly, OUP is a department of the University of Oxford and, as such, is not subject to sale or mergers. By contrast, commercial publishers are almost all publicly quoted and traded, can be taken over by other companies and are obliged to provide a return to their shareholders. At OUP, the only ‘shareholders’, as it were, are the society partners, authors and the scholars of the University of Oxford; the university scholars who steward the Press are known as Delegates, and the Delegates oversee all publishing activity.

OUP is the largest university press in the world, which enables it to compete with commercial publishers. The Press employs ∼6000 people worldwide. In addition to the main office in Oxford, UK there are 55 offices globally, including in Australia, Canada, China, India, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Pakistan, South Africa, Spain and Tanzania. Last year alone more than 400 new staff members were employed confirming the success of the venture.

A large team within OUP supports JAC, each member of the team having specific roles including editorial, production, marketing, sales and customer services. This article will highlight just some of the tasks they do, as publishers undertake an estimated 96 tasks of which 42 (44%) are their sole responsibility (Table 1).¹

Production aspects

Following acceptance of a manuscript by the Editor-in-Chief, JAC's Editorial Office passes the files to OUP's Production Editor.² The production process employs a bespoke manuscript tracking system, which is fully integrated with JAC's ScholarOne Manuscripts system³ so that XML metadata is automatically captured on notification of acceptance. A digital object identifier (DOI) is also generated to identify uniquely each journal article and is the reference for all subsequent correspondence. Once a manuscript is in the tracking system, an e-mail informs the corresponding author that the manuscript is in production and indicates when a proof can be expected. The author is simultaneously directed to complete the licensing agreement online and is asked whether they would like optional Open Access, in which case the Article Processing Charge (APC) can be paid directly online or an invoice can be requested. Currently only about 1 in 10 authors opt for Open Access, so most authors need take no further action. All the manuscript files (text, figures, supplementary material, etc.) are then sent to a specialist, freelance, native English-speaking copy editor and a typesetter. The DOI allows the manuscript to be tracked throughout the system and is matched with any files that have been transferred for production.

After being copy-edited and typeset, the author is sent the proof by the typesetter on behalf of OUP using an electronic proofing tool and a copy is sent to the JAC Editorial Office. The proofing tool provides the following files to JAC's authors online: the copy editor's queries, a fully annotatable PDF proof, a tracked change PDF displaying corrections made during production of a paper and a set of instructions detailing what is required of the author. Authors are requested to return corrections within 3 working days by uploading their amendments to the proofing tool, which then automatically alerts JAC's Production Editor and Editorial Office staff.

The aim is to complete the first stage of the production process—corrected proof published online—within 4–6 weeks (Figure 1). As the average time in 2015 was 4.6 weeks, the JAC set a target of 4 weeks for 2016 and many authors now see their articles published online within 3 weeks together with the MEDLINE citation.

Figure 1.

The process followed by a manuscript through JAC's production process at OUP. On the left, article processing, and on the right once the article is ready for inclusion into a specific issue, the issue workflow. This figure appears in colour in the online version of JAC and in black and white in the print version of JAC.

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Editorial aspects

OUP plays an active role in supporting BSAC and the Editor-in-Chief in realizing the journal's editorial strategy.⁴ Like all high-quality journals, JAC aims to attract the best authors and articles. In addition, in line with other publishers, OUP provides bibliometric data, coupled with usage data, to help identify potential authors and new areas in antimicrobial research and to increase the journal's visibility. If the Editorial team agrees, OUP contacts potential authors through targeted campaigns (see ‘Marketing’ section) to stimulate submission of manuscripts from particular research communities.

OUP also advises BSAC and the JAC's Editorial team on the many issues that affect the journal—from digital developments, to the latest standards in ethics, or for example, new research-funder mandates for Open Access publishing. JAC's Editorial team and BSAC receive transparent reporting, analysis and advice to support evidence-based decision making.

OUP reports twice a year in the Spring and Autumn on the journal's performance, including circulation, usage, citations and Impact Factor, author feedback, production statistics, editorial and functional developments, marketing activities and plans, and of course, finances.

JAC: an international journal

The JAC is an international journal as shown by the geographical spread of corresponding authors of all manuscripts published in 2015 (Figure 2). Authors were drawn from a total of 39 different countries, with the UK (15%), USA (14%) and Spain (11%) contributing the most published articles. These figures are similar to those from 2014, with manuscripts coming from 46 different countries, with the USA (15%), UK (13%) and Spain (9%) again contributing the most. Usage data also indicate how well JAC is performing, e.g. during 2015 there was an average of 345 171 full-text article downloads from JAC every month.

Figure 2.

Authors' provenance for JAC, articles published in 2015 issues. This figure appears in colour in the online version of JAC and in black and white in the print version of JAC.

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Bibliometrics

Impact Factor

The Impact Factor is the most widely known metric and was originally created by Garfield and Sher in the 1960s to ‘compare journals regardless of size or citation frequency and also to help libraries decide which journals to purchase’.⁵ Garfield's company, the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), was bought in 1992 by the Thomson Corporation, and the publisher of the Impact Factor was thus known as Thomson ISI, Thomson Scientific and, from 2008, as Thomson Reuters. In July 2016, Thomson announced the sale of its Intellectual Property & Science Business to Onex and Baring Asia for US$3.55 billion. What effect, if any, this may have on the continued reliance on the Impact Factor and related bibliometrics remains to be seen.

Journal Impact Factors are also used by authors to help decide where to submit their articles since prestigious journals typically have a high Impact Factor. However, prestige does not necessary equate with quality. More controversially, the Impact Factor has also been appropriated to judge the quality of single articles and even an individual author's merit, thereby affecting decisions made by researchers, their institutions and their funding bodies. This has led to widespread criticism in some circles resulting in certain societies, e.g. the American Society of Microbiology, eliminating information on the Impact Factor from all their journal websites.⁶ However, while it has supporters and critics, the Impact Factor is likely to continue to be a widely used measure of journal quality. OUP uses Impact Factor for its original purpose—in discussions with library customers to help them make acquisition decisions for their collections but will continue to list the Impact Factor on journal homepages at least for the time being.

Alternative metrics

In part as a reaction to criticisms of Impact Factor, and in part due to changes in digital media and the evolution of social media such as Twitter and Facebook, OUP now uses altmetrics to report on journal articles.⁷ An ‘Altmetric Score’ is calculated for each JAC article, and if the score is non-zero a ‘doughnut’ badge is displayed on each article's web page.

This ‘Altmetric Score’ is a measure of the amount of attention an article has received online, in social media and from news sites, from early 2012 to date. It is not necessarily a good measure of article ‘quality’, but the information can be of interest in showing the wider impact of journal articles. Often we observe that the articles with high Altmetric Scores are those with findings that are humorous or of general public interest. This score is the number that appears in the centre of the Altmetric ‘doughnut’. The colours of the ‘doughnut’ indicate the source of the attention.

Each mention that an article receives in one of the included sources contributes a positive amount to the Altmetric Score. Each contribution is weighted according to the attributes of the source. An Altmetric Score can also be calculated for other time periods (e.g. the past day, past week, past 6 months, past year).

Figure 3 shows the articles in JAC that have received the highest Altmetric Score of all time (i.e. since Altmetric started measuring in early 2012). Clicking on the ‘doughnut’ takes the reader to the Altmetric Explorer website where they can see a basic summary of the attention that article has received.

Figure 3.

Top five most mentioned articles from JAC since the start of Altmetrics recording in 2012. This figure appears in colour in the online version of JAC and in black and white in the print version of JAC.

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Marketing

JAC has a dedicated marketer within OUP and benefits from the support of a network of ∼200 marketing specialists. The strategy of the global marketing team focuses on developing five core areas: readership, dissemination, profile, submissions and citations. Improving any one of these areas has a positive impact on the others.

This marketing infrastructure means OUP is well placed to provide the JAC with a comprehensive bespoke marketing service, and our experience in marketing other infectious disease and microbiology journals (Clinical Infectious Diseases, Journal of Infectious Diseases, Open Forum Infectious Diseases and Medical Mycology) means that we have a clear focus on how best to support JAC.

JAC's dedicated marketer participates in strategic planning sessions with the journal's Editorial team and BSAC. As part of this planning process, specific marketing objectives are agreed upon and then implemented by our marketing team in close collaboration with the Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Office.

In line with OUP's mission to ensure that our authors' work reaches as wide and diverse an audience as possible, we devise bespoke marketing campaigns to drive the journal's online usage. We encourage citations of the original and high-quality antimicrobial research published in the journal to increase the journal's growth, which ultimately is reflected in the Impact Factor.

Strategies to increase usage and citations include promotion of relevant JAC content as part of global annual events, such as European Antibiotic Awareness Day. We actively employ a variety of channels to market the JAC. Typical marketing activities used to maximize the reach and discoverability of JAC articles include digital marketing, promotion at conferences and publicity.

As technology evolves, digital marketing has become an increasing focus for marketing the JAC, as it allows us to easily and quickly reach target markets. Some of the approaches we employ include e-mail marketing, social media marketing and online advertising. We regularly analyse the JAC's marketing campaigns to check their effectiveness and to inform our plans for future campaigns. It also enables us to provide the Editorial team and BSAC with regular, comprehensive reporting on our marketing activities and successes.

Much of our direct marketing starts with our extensive database of global infectious disease and microbiology contacts. Our marketing services team work hard to ensure that the database is up to date and that we have as much information as possible about the interests of each contact. Accurate information means we can make certain that any campaigns we carry out are as targeted as possible.

The JAC is promoted at a number of relevant conferences worldwide. This is an excellent way of maintaining and raising the global profile of the journal. We attend ECCMID, ASM Microbe, ID Week and many more. Articles may be hand-picked for promotion at these events based on their relevance to the conference theme. The JAC's presence at these conferences comprises both online and offline marketing to maximize engagement with the journal.

OUP highlights JAC articles selected by the Editor-in-Chief in every issue and promotes articles that are newsworthy and of interest to a wider audience. A dedicated publicity team is devoted to the promotion of journal content. If an article is identified as suitable for a press release, the OUP publicist will liaise with the author(s) as well as the JAC's Editorial team and marketer to agree an embargo date that is suitable for all. The approved release will then be sent to relevant journalists and uploaded to newswire services such as EurekAlert! and AlphaGalileo. The publicity surrounding the article of Kneale et al.⁸ on global access to antifungal therapy provides a recent example.

Our global Institutional Marketing team uses OUP's strong local relationships and excellent reputation with librarians worldwide, along with targeted end-user and library promotions, to drive sales and retain subscriptions. We have a dedicated institutional marketing staff partnering with our global sales teams located around the world, including regional offices in India, China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Australia, Dubai and Brazil. This regional approach ensures that the JAC is promoted in the most effective manner to the region, by staff who understand market conditions, business practices and native languages of customers in their region, as well as the key decision makers at major university libraries.

Conclusions

JAC's success stems from the fruitful cooperation between its publisher, its Editorial team (including peer reviewers) led by the Editor-in-Chief, the skilled, professional Editorial Office and, of course, its society owner—BSAC. Each has its role to play to ensure the continued viability of the journal, such that JAC serves authors and readers, and thus the wider field of antimicrobial research.

Transparency declarations

None to declare.

References