Abstract
We begin the final issue in Volume 14 with an important announcement about Integrative Cancer Therapies. As of January 1, 2016, Integrative Cancer Therapies will be converting to an Open Access model. Open Access is rapidly becoming a widely accepted model for scholarly publications; in fact, as of 2013 there were 9804 open access journals being published worldwide.
There are many benefits to both the journal and authors in this transition. First of all, all articles in the journal, including those published in the past, will be freely available globally as of January 1, 2016. Many institutions and funding bodies are encouraging or even mandating open access publication of research conducted under their auspices. Integrative Cancer Therapies will now be open to the authors working under these mandates. Authors can expect the interest in and, potentially, citation of their articles to increase, since other researchers will be able to access them without restriction. The contributor and licensing agreements for published articles will give authors far greater latitude in copying, adaptation, display, and distribution of their articles for noncommercial uses. We expect this will encourage wider and easier research collaborations. Of special interest to cancer patient advocates is the fact that all articles published in Integrative Cancer Therapies will now be freely available to clinicians, patients, and the public, as well as to researchers.
While our publishing model will change, there are some things about Integrative Cancer Therapies that will not change. We will absolutely maintain our established editorial standards. This means we will continue to prioritize top-quality, high-impact articles for publication. All papers will receive expert and careful outside review as well as internal review and guidance from our editorial staff. There will be no change in the functionality of abstracting and indexing.
This new model will be supported by an Article Processing Charge (APC), as is standard for Open Access journals. Specific information on our charge will shortly be available on our website, http://ict.sagepub.com. Our APC will be competitive with other Open Access journals with Impact Factors.
Many institutions and funding agencies now support payment of Article Processing Charges for research publications. For those who face financial difficulties in publishing under Open Access, there are waivers available. Waivers will be handled through our publisher, SAGE. SAGE prioritizes free or lower-cost Article Processing Charges especially for Research4Life countries (http://www.research4life.org/eligibility/).
You will be able to find more details on the Open Access transition in the near future on our website.
Our first article in this issue is a systematic review of articles on acupuncture used for joint symptoms in women taking aromatase inhibitors. Aromatase inhibitors are an important treatment in postmenopausal breast cancer, reducing production of estrogen in tissues other than the ovaries. But numerous side effects hinder their usefulness and cause many women to stop treatment. One such side effect is arthralgia. Studies are being conducted of acupuncture as a treatment to stop arthralgia and enable these women to continue treatment. Bae Kyeore and colleagues at Daejeon University in Korea and Royal North Shore Hospital of New South Wales assess the status of these studies in a review that demonstrates some benefits for acupuncture but also outlines where questions remain on this treatment.
Oluwadamilola Olaku and colleagues at the Office of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the US National Cancer Institute present a study surveying use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) that uncovers some interesting associations. An impressive 90% of their population reported using CAM, mostly mind–body and biologically based interventions. The authors also reveal an intriguing correlation of CAM use with body mass index.
Gregory Levin and colleagues at University of Calgary and Edith Cowan University also studied patterns of use of CAM, with an interesting twist. They queried both patients and health care practitioners, comparing their answers to questions about information needs. In this study, 90% of health care practitioners expressed interest in receiving more information about CAM therapies. Illustrating the gap between patients and health care practitioners in communications about CAM, the patients and health care practitioners gave widely divergent answers when asked about whether practitioners ever initiated conversations on CAM use.
Sulfated polysaccharides are sulfur-containing compounds found in animals and seaweeds; familiar examples include heparin and carrageenan. Their health-promoting properties have been explored in recent years. The edible sea lettuce, Ulva lactuca, contains sulfated polysaccharides, which were explored for chemopreventive properties by Usama Hussein and colleagues at Beni-Suef University, American University in Cairo, and Larkin Health Sciences Institute. Their investigations used an animal model of hepatocellular carcinogenesis, a cancer widespread in the developing world that is poorly responsive to treatment, and thus in significant need of preventive strategies.
The black nightshade, Solanum nigrum, is often regarded as simply a toxic plant in the West, but in traditional Chinese medicine, this plant, referred to as long kui, is used for removing what traditional Chinese medicine refers to as “toxic heat,” a syndrome commonly seen in advanced cancers. Chen-Jei Tai and colleagues at Taipei Medical University examined its effect in ovarian cancer, another cancer usually found to be poorly responsive to treatment. In addition to demonstrating tumor-suppressive effects in ovarian cancer cells, these authors report that the plant extract improves the efficacy of conventional chemotherapy drugs.