Moderator: Alok D. Sharan, MD, MHCDS
The explosion of new technologies to disseminate scientific information has challenged the notion of a traditional academic journal. Spine care providers would traditionally receive new knowledge through scholarly publications on spine care. The advent of new digital technologies to disseminate information such as blogging and social media are forcing journals to question their role as the locus of scientific knowledge dissemination. The goal of this symposium is to discuss the future role of spine journals in this new digital era. Some issues that will be discussed include how are journals incorporating new digital technologies, what type of content should be made open access, what is the role of print journalism vs digital.
Upon completion of this session, participants should gain strategies to:
- Understand the role of new digital technologies with scholarly communication;
- Understand the new role of Open Access;
- Understand what are the resources available to keep up with scientific information.
Agenda
This will be a roundtable discussion among leading editors of academic journals. The following topics will be discussed during the symposium:
- The fundamental goal of academic journals is to deliver information to improve spine care. Increasingly research articles are being disseminated through Open Access. What do you feel is the role of Open Access in today’s academic journal?
- The time from submission of a publication to press can be lengthy. In an era when information can be tweeted instantaneously how can we accelerate the process of disseminating information published in journals? What is the appropriate role of using social media to disseminate research findings?
- The fundamental business model of publications is changing. Advertising revenue and subscriptions represented the main source of income for a publisher. The competition for advertising revenue is increasing - going forward what will be the fundamental business model of scientific journals?
- Traditionally the impact factor has been used as a surrogate to determine the impact of scientific journals. Increasingly other metrics have been created including Altmetrics. What is the best method to measure the impact of scientific journals?
Faculty
Alok D Sharan, MD, MHCDS
Gregory D. Schroeder, MD
Jim Weinstein, DO (Spine)
Zoher Ghogawala, MD
Mark Schweitzer (Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging)