Abstract
For a number of years, the Editorial team of Global Spine Journal and the team at AO Spine have conducted an annual survey among AO Spine members to get valuable feedback and opinionated input about the Journal. We value this highly and anticipate the results eagerly each year. So what are the key points from the 2020 survey, surely a special year for medical publishing?
One hundred seventy-six respondents from all regions of the world completed the full set of questions and many took the opportunity to provide additional open comments.
Generally the needs of our readers are met by the Journals content. Scoring 8 out of 10 for research needs and clinical needs is satisfactory.
Two-thirds of the respondents discuss the articles with colleagues and 50% file them for future research and citations. The key topics of interest for our readership are “degenerative spine,” “spinal trauma” and “deformity” with “spinal oncology,” “minimally invasive techniques” and “spinal infections” following closely. Given the global scope and inclusive spectrum of our topics, this is not surprising and represents the usual workload of the majority of spine care specialists around the world.
With our valued “Special Issue” collection, the 2 most popular were “Clinical Practice Guidelines for DCM and Traumatic Spinal Cord injury” and “The 6 T´s of Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery” with a generally fairly even spread in the replies to this questions.
The pinnacle question about recommendation likelihood of GSJ to a colleague was given a 9 out of 10 score which makes us proud and thankful to our constituents.
Just as interesting was the section with free comments from the participants where basically 3 key points stood out:
Missing the option of a paper-print copy was mentioned which we decided to discontinue a while back. The need for an educational section on scientific publishing which we try to meet during annual sessions at the Global Spine Congress to a certain degree.
And finally the request for more articles from certain regions or on certain topics was mentioned. Here 2 aspects need to be considered: Just as any scientific journal, Global Spine Journal is able to publish only those manuscripts which get submitted. The review process is completely blinded so the decision to accept or reject a manuscript is completely independent from the origin of the authors. Our reviewers and deputy editors represent all regions of the world and decide pure based on scientific merit of a paper and not any regional aspects.
To focus on highly specific topics we encourage potential authors to either submit a manuscript or, if they are aiming at a comprehensive multi-author effort to submit a detailed proposal for a special issue.
Generally we are very humbled and thankful for our growing number of readers, authors and reviewers and thank everyone dearly for answering our survey to help us improve and re-focus and continue to make the Global Spine Journal the go-to spine journal for all aspects of spine research.