Why does the Australian Society of Anaesthetists have a journal? Part II *

Part I of this editorial addressed the question of why the Australian Society of Anaesthetists (ASA) initially founded a journal, discussing the events, motivations and motivators leading to the establishment, in 1972, of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care. ¹ In this instalment, we will consider the reasons for its ongoing success for nearly 50 years (and therefore why the ASA still has a journal) and the efforts being undertaken to ensure this continues (and so will the ASA still have a journal in the future?).

Why does the Society still have a journal?

The short answer is because from the outset it was an unmitigated success and the Journal continues to fulfil its mission as detailed in Part I. ¹ Surveys consistently indicate the value placed on the Journal by the ASA Membership, leading the Executive to support the Editorial Board’s efforts to ensure its ongoing quality and viability.

The earlier concerns about finance and quality that led to the failure of the ASA to start a journal in the 1950s have proven to be unfounded. Across the first 15 years or so, subscriptions grew to around 2000 locally and 1000 internationally in more than 70 countries, ensuring its financial viability.^2,3 The rapid rise in the reputation and popularity of the Journal was the result of many factors, and pulling all these things together was the founder and first Chief Editor, Ben Barry. Having convinced the ASA membership to take the risk, he went on to ensure its success.^2–5 Thanks in great measure to Barry’s efforts over the first decade, the Journal fulfilled and continues to fulfil its mission and the wider vision of the ASA—to ‘support, represent and educate’. The Journal supports the membership by providing a vehicle geared towards Asia–Pacific research, and it was certainly well patronised from the outset by leading local researchers in anaesthesia, intensive care and pain medicine. Many of these researchers have also served on the Editorial Board. It still provides a unique means by which articles of local and regional relevance, which might not otherwise find a suitable venue, can be published alongside articles with broader international appeal. The Journal rapidly earned an international reputation, which reflects well on the ASA and its membership. Members benefited educationally from timely dissemination of research, interesting cases and other information provided in the extensive correspondence and book review sections, along with highly valued symposium issues, ² the first of which (Volume 1, number 6, 1973) was on paediatric anaesthesia. ⁶ The focus of the content has changed considerably over the years, but the educational value continues.

As noted by Maxwell, the importance of Barry’s role in the early consolidation of the Journal was recognised internationally. Quoting Prys-Roberts of Oxford, from a speech in honour of Barry in 1987: ‘More than anyone else, Ben Barry established the Journal which we now recognise as one of the leading English language journals in the world’. ⁵

Many other people have been central to the progress of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care, and without whom it may have floundered, but some warrant particular mention. Critical to the early success of the Journal was the Society’s first secretary, Suzanne Butterworth, who became the first Manager of Production. ² Butterworth remained in that role until 1986. She has been followed to the present by a series of very adept successors, to whom the Journal and Society owe a great debt of gratitude. The rapid progress of the Journal soon led to the need to appoint additional editorial staff. Jeanette Thirlwell initially assisted the Chief Editor informally but after several years was appointed as Assistant Editor in 1982, and subsequently Associate Editor in 1989, and ultimately became the first Executive Editor in 1993. Thirlwell’s pivotal role with the Journal over more than 30 years, spanning the first five Chief Editorships, has been well documented. ⁷ She was also responsible, almost a quarter of a century ago, for the early ‘recruitment’ to the Journal of the sixth and current Chief! Thirlwell and the first five Chiefs—Ben Barry, Brian Horan, John Roberts, Alan Duncan and Neville Gibbs—have provided the necessary leadership to steer the Journal very successfully through many challenges, maintaining its mission, and thus ensuring its survival for nearly half a century.

As mentioned in Part I, ¹ the Editorial Board involvement of several Deans of the Faculty of Anaesthetists, Royal Australian College of Surgeons (FARACS), ensured the initial and subsequent support of the Faculty and College as well as the Society. This cross-organisational support has almost certainly been a very significant factor in the ongoing regional and international success of the Journal. This support was further strengthened by what Joseph described as the ‘prophetic’ inclusion of Intensive Care in the title and content of the Journal. ² Central figures in the early days, such as Brian Dwyer and Maurice Sando, recognised the importance of, and were also leaders in, this developing field, both in Australia and internationally, with FARACS being one of the first bodies worldwide to hold examinations for a Diploma of Intensive Care in 1978. The importance and number of intensive care submissions therefore grew rapidly, eventually necessitating the appointment, in 1989, of a separate Editor for Intensive Care, Alan Duncan.^2–4 By 1998, Anaesthesia and Intensive Care had gone on to become the official journal of the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society, requiring the appointment of a second Intensive Care Editor, and the same year the Society also approved the appointment of additional Editors for Paediatric and Obstetric Anaesthesia.^8,9 Ongoing success of the Journal was further ensured in 2006 when it also became the official journal of the New Zealand Society of Anaesthetists, and two of their members joined the Editorial Board. ¹⁰

A unique feature of the Journal, and one that has also contributed very much to its success and ongoing popularity, is the focus on the history of anaesthesia, pain and intensive care. In 1984, historian Gwen Wilson was asked to write a note to accompany a photo of Gilbert Brown, the first ASA President, that was to appear on the cover to mark the 50th anniversary of the Society. Thus began the tradition of the Historical Cover Note that has continued ever since. ¹¹ In 1988, Wilson was unable to continue due to other writing commitments, and the curators of the Geoffrey Kaye Museum, Christine Ball and Rod Westhorpe, were asked to take over. Westhorpe retired in 2015 while Ball continues, now ably assisted by Peter Featherstone. Thirlwell also commenced publication in 2005 of the Journal’s annual History Supplement, ⁷ which also soon required its own editor, currently Michael Cooper. This supplement has also proven to be very popular with readers both nationally and internationally, and provides a unique venue for the publication of articles of local historical relevance.

The second half of the Journal’s existence has seen a progressive need to provide electronic services to authors and readers. This need was recognised early in the 1990s, led by Roberts and Thirlwell with considerable help from Margaret Connolly and Clarissa Fletcher (Production Managers) and Allan Palmer (Editorial Board Member), among others. Submission on floppy disk commenced in 1993 and an infant website appeared in 1996. In 2001 and 2002, the Journal released CD ROMs containing all the content back to 1993, then, in 2003, this content was launched onto a revised website. Another website revision in 2006 saw the commencement of online submission, and by 2011 the entire back catalogue of the Journal had also been made available. These developments have been more or less contemporaneous with similar progress at other major journals, allowing Anaesthesia and Intensive Care to remain competitive and relevant in the field, but in recent years this has become more of a challenge.

At this point, it is worth digressing to consider why any journals still exist. This was summarized well by Bernd Pulverer, Editor-in-Chief of The EMBO Journal, in his plenary at the European Association of Science Editors meeting in Bucharest, 2018. Journals provide a very important ‘value-adding’ service in a large number of ways:

Editorial selection is critical for quality control of data, ethics and integrity as well as to ensure sufficient interest for the journal readership.

Editing services are provided for text, graphics and data.

Dissemination occurs through the journal itself, e-content feeds, reviews, social media, the press and other means.

Discoverability is facilitated through interfaces with indexing and abstraction services, assignment of digital identifiers, etc.

Impact is both provided and assessed via the journal brand and metrics, now also at article level.

Credit is afforded to both authors and reviewers for their contributions.

Archiving of the scientific record is facilitated.

Anaesthesia and Intensive Care has been able to successfully provide the majority, but not all, of these functions over time, and keeping up with industry standards with our in-house publishing model has become increasingly difficult in recent years.

Will the ASA still have a journal in the future?

Academic publication is currently undergoing an extraordinarily rapid transition. As also summarised by Pulverer in his recent plenary, subscription models are being challenged by Open Access and Open Science, the data summary provided by traditional papers is being replaced by open data publication and data reuse, the Journal Impact Factor is evolving to article level metrics, print publication to novel dissemination methods, and human readable content also now needs to be machine readable. Publishers are therefore increasingly required to be advanced technology providers, a challenge that is largely insurmountable for self-published society journals.

Jeroen Bosman and Bianca Kramer of the Utrecht University Library provide a very useful graphical insight into the complexity of modern scholarly communication. ¹³ What used to be a relatively straight line between discovery and publication with few, if any, paths down which to stray has become a bewildering maze of workflow possibilities. For the editors and board members of many society journals, primarily practitioners of medical or other crafts and largely self-trained in the editorial role, it can be impossible to keep abreast of this rapid progress.

The Society and its Journal have therefore been increasingly faced with a number of specific challenges, many arising directly or indirectly from this changing environment of scholarly publication. These challenges have involved uncertainty in human resources and workflow, reliability of editorial tools such as duplication screening, and the need to provide industry-standard publication facilities: e-publication ahead of print, assignment of digital object identifiers (DOIs), open access alternatives, version tracking, ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID, or equivalent) integration for authors, Publons (or equivalent) integration for reviewers, integration with data repositories and perpetual electronic access facilities to name a few.

In order to provide these services and ensure the immediate and longer-term security of the Journal, and after extensive consultation, the Society has taken a decision to partner with SAGE for its ongoing publication. From the beginning of this year, members, subscribers and other readers will have seen a transition to the new Journal website, ¹⁴ while authors and the Journal’s editorial team will have similarly seen a transition to our new SAGE Track (ScholarOne Manuscripts™) submission system. ¹⁵ This transition will have presented, and will continue to present, some new challenges for all of us, at least in the short term, but we hope these will not be too difficult and that all involved will be patient with us. We are confident our new partnership with SAGE will provide significant benefits for readers and authors and greater surety for the Society and the Journal.

Members and subscribers will continue to receive the Journal in print unless they choose not to do so, continuing the previous arrangements. As noted by Roberts in 1999, ‘… we do not concur with the gloomy prognostication that printed journals will disappear – the paperless office was, after all, predicted some 20 years ago’. ⁸ Yet another 20 years have passed and we still have paper journals, at least for the time being. However, there is little doubt that this is something the Editorial Board and Society will need to revisit in the not-too-distant future for financial and environmental reasons. App users will see a difference, as the Journal app drew indexing functions and individual article content from the previous website. A facility to download full-issue PDFs to the app for later offline perusal may still be available, however, and full-issue PDFs can also be downloaded from the new SAGE website, which is also platform responsive, hopefully providing an improved user experience with tablets and smartphones. Please let us know!

The future of the Journal can only be assured by the ongoing support of the authors who contribute the content, reviewers who give their time to assess the submissions, and you, the readers. As we move into this new era of the Journal’s production and publication, we sincerely hope with your support that the tradition and the success of the Journal continue.