Publications Committee braced for major change in year ahead

Jan 03, 2021 Re-posted from the January 2021 issue of Vascular Specialist

By Beth Bales

The Publications Committee is responsible for overseeing, among others, the Journal of Vascular Surgery (JVS) family, the Rutherford textbook and Seminars in Vascular Surgery. After conducting reviews and interviews, committee members as a group put forth candidates for the editorship of JVS and Rutherford to the SVS Executive Committee for its final decisions, according to committee chair Peter Henke, MD.

“This next year is a big year for us,” he relates. “We have been charged with performing a full review of the journal as it relates to the Elsevier (publisher) contract, and the journal as it stands in processes and impact. We have hired the esteemed consulting group, Clarke and Esposito, to accomplish this.

“Over the years, the JVS has been a part of the SVS bottom line, and the journal contract is a major financial issue. Moreover, the academic publishing world is in a state of significant change, not the least of which is the future of Open Access.

“We have a timeline of about 15 months to complete this charge, and will hopefully set the stage for the next decade or so. Intertwined with this will be creating a vision for how best dissemination of scholarly information occurs, in the short- and long-term, for SVS members and vascular disease caregivers overall.”

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