Abstract
I am pleased to announce the launch of Palliative Care: Research and Treatment—a new peer reviewed open access journal published by Libertas Academica. Palliative Care: Research and Treatment is an international, open access, peer reviewed journal which considers manuscripts on the clinical, scientific, and policy issues surrounding palliative care.
All journal articles will be accessible without any access boundaries to all internet users throughout the world. This freedom is coupled with rigorous, fair and prompt standards of peer review.
Palliative Care: Research and Treatment is published exclusively online. Articles will follow a consistent format so that the visual impact will be high and equal to that of the best hard-copy publications. In contrast to paper-based journals, however, the electronic format allows the full use of digital technologies and permits the inclusion of large data sets, from field and laboratory studies, links to other web pages, animations, slide shows, video clips and unlimited colour, all at no additional charge. Open access means that all articles are freely available to all, worldwide, and at no cost to the reader. Authors retain copyright of their work and can grant anyone the right to reproduce and disseminate it, provided that it is correctly cited and no errors are introduced, under the Creative Commons “CC-BY” licence.
In Palliative Care: Research and Treatment, as in other open access journals, the costs of publication are borne by the author in the form of a publication processing fee (PPF). Many grant-awarding bodies recognise the value of open access publishing by allowing their funds to be used for PPFs. Fee waivers and discounts are available on a case-by-case basis, and we shall make every effort to ensure that lack of funds does not impede the overall objective of publishing the best science, irrespective of authorship or country of origin.
Open access is of huge benefit to the researchers working in institutions around the world where institutional libraries are unable to afford subscription fees for a full range of journals.
I expect that Palliative Care: Research and Treatment will attract manuscripts of the highest quality which are of the greatest possible benefit to readers. Peer review is undertaken by at least two leading experts in the area of the manuscript.
For further information on what we hope will be an exciting and highly useful new journal, please click on the “about this journal” links on the journal's web page.