Open access publisher BioMed Central, UK, has announced that the contents of the last regular print edition of the journal Arthritis Research & Therapy will be finalised at the end of 2010. In an editorial, published in the latest issue of the journal, Editors-in-Chief Prof Peter Lipsky and Prof Sir Ravinder Maini, discuss the reasons behind, and opportunities presented by, the journal's decision to become an exclusively online publication.
First published by Current Science Ltd in 1999, Arthritis Research & Therapy was conceived with a strategy to take full advantage the benefits of online publishing. It has previously made innovative decisions in the rheumatology community, such as making all research open access and, latterly, publishing only the abstracts of research articles in print to help remove limitations to article length and to reduce publication times. The latest move to online-only publication is expected to benefit readers, as they will see more cutting-edge review articles. Also, authors will no longer be faced with the choice of paying for colour figures in non-research articles.
It is expected that more innovations in rheumatology research publishing will be facilitated by the journal's transfer to BioMed Central's newly-designed journal platform in the coming months. The publisher will be communicating with the journal's registered users via an online survey to establish what other online features would most benefit this rapidly-changing field.
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