CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 · Methods Inf Med 2017; 56(06): 414-415
DOI: 10.3414/ME2017020002
Editorial
Schattauer GmbH

One Year with Methods Open

Sabine Koch
1   Editor-in-Chief, Methods of Information in Medicine, Health Informatics Centre, Department of Learning, Informatics, Management and Ethics, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
,
Olaf Gefeller
2   Associate Editor, Methods of Information in Medicine, Institute for Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology, University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany
,
Reinhold Haux
3   Senior Consulting Editor, Methods of Information in Medicine, Peter L. Reichertz Institute for Medical Informatics, University of Braunschweig – Institute of Technology and Hannover Medical School, Braunschweig, Germany
› Author Affiliations
Further Information

Publication History

Publication Date:
10 February 2018 (online)

Background

Since January 2017 (volume 56) the journal “Methods of Information in Medicine” (Methods) consists of two tracks [[1]]. Authors can decide to submit their manuscript to either the subscription track consisting of six print and electronic (non-open access) issues per year, or the Methods Open track consisting of electronic publishing as gold open access only. With this step, Methods aimed to improve the visibility of the journal generally and contribute to sharing research results as timely and as widely as possible so as to promote scientific progress.

The submission and review processes for manuscripts in Methods are identical for all articles irrespectively whether they are submitted to the traditional subscription track or the Methods Open track. The author’s choice of track is not visible for the reviewers who evaluate the manuscript.

In case of selecting Methods Open, accepted manuscripts are immediately online accessible at the journal site after acceptance, copy-editing and typesetting. They are also immediately deposited in PubMed Central®. The copyright regulations are different, with significantly more rights to authors and readers of Methods Open papers through a Creative Commons licence. In particular, Methods Open articles are published under the Creative Commons License CC-BY-NC-ND. This license means that anyone may freely read, download, distribute and make the article available to the public (in printed and electronic form), provided that the author and the journal as the source are acknowledged (BY = attribution), whereas no commercial use is allowed (NC = non commercial) and the work may not be altered, transformed or serve as the basis for a derivative work (ND = no derivative). For manuscripts, appearing under this license in the Methods Open track, authors have to pay an “Article Publication Charge” (APC) of currently 1650 €, which is in the lower region of APCs in the field of medical informatics [[2]].

Hybrid open access papers have disappeared from Methods in 2017, as open access publications now appear in Methods Open and regular papers will only be published in the printed issues of the journal. Thus “double-dipping” is avoided.

 
  • References

  • 1 Koch S, Haux R, Gefeller O, Sarkar IN, Bergemann D. Methods Open – a New Journal Track Starting in 2017. Methods Inf Med 2016; 55 (06) 478-480.
  • 2 Kuballa S. Open Access Publishing in the Field of Medical Informatics. J Med Syst 2017; 41: 82.
  • 3 Haux R, Kuballa S, Schulze M, Böhm C, Gefeller O, Haaf J, Henning P, Mielke C, Niggemann F, Schürg A, Bergemann D. Exploring Possibilities for Transforming Established Subscription-based Scientific Journals into Open Access Journals. Present Situation, Transformation Criteria, and Exemplary Implementation within Trans-O-MIM. Methods Inf Med 2016; 55 (06) 481-487.