Abstract
In this issue of Cephalalgia, Federico Mainardi (1) raises some important questions associated with the open access to full text publications. In essence, they concern the general question of financing research and publication of results.
Research is usually paid for by society through grants provided by the appropriate national or international funding authorities. Is it ethical to let society pay a second time to allow other scientists to read the results? The answer is probably manifold, and includes expensive and time-consuming production services, such as editing, proofreading, formatting and generally helping a manuscript to reach a publishable shape. All of the pros and cons have been repeatedly discussed and published (2,3) and open access journals finance these services by charging the authors. Dr Mainardi raises the question of whether this overreaches small labs and research centers, as they may have less funding than big and successful ones, and therefore might not be able to afford publication costs. Does this result in a new form of publication bias? To prevent this, most scientific funding authorities address this question and provide funding for open access publishing, and some funding authorities even request this. Furthermore, journals usually offer waivers on application, and even have a general policy to waive such costs for developing countries.
The second point raised by Dr Mainardi is the question of quality. This has also been discussed and even been investigated previously (4). Of note, there is no question that a scientifically rigorous and systematic review of the submitted content is the hallmark of good scientific publishing (5,6), and this is principally – and that is important – independent from open access.
The question that has not been asked is whether headache research really needs more specialised journals. In addition to the traditional flagships Cephalalgia and Headache, the open access Journal of Headache and Pain was recently successfully launched and has enriched the scientific scene. It is a very good sign for headache research that a substantial number of papers is regularly published in other highly prestigious journals such as Pain, Neurology, BRAIN, and Lancet as well as in (albeit not regularly) Nature and Science, to name only a few. One may wonder whether yet another journal specialised in headache would perhaps be one too many? The answer was indirectly given by the readers of Cephalalgia.
During the latest EHMTIC congress in Glasgow, we hosted an iPad survey and additionally sent out this questionnaire via email in September 2016 to IHS members and SAGE contacts. Among other items, we specifically asked how Cephalalgia was perceived, where it could be improved and what content was missing. 351 individuals completed the survey. Of these, only a few perceived their specialisation as underrepresented, hence, Cephalalgia’s content seems adequate. People who feel their interests were underrepresented asked for more clinical articles from boundary areas such as paediatrics, orofacial pain, and physiotherapy. Another suggestion was to publish clinical advice regarding headache diagnosis and treatment. Specifically, meaningful case reports and CME articles were asked for. 186 participants would like to read more clinical articles, while 139 asked for more research articles. We interpreted this result as a good balance between both types of articles in the current format of Cephalalgia. What was quite a surprise was the fact that of all responders, 60 reported reading Cephalalgia online and in print, and only 11 stated that they read print only. This encouraged us to strengthen the online focus and to reach out to headache-interested clinicians with more clinically based articles combined with clinical science and CME articles. We strive to launch a strictly open-access journal, tentatively called Cephalalgia Reports, that will respond to the needs of the scientifically interested readers who perceived their fields as underrepresented in the traditional Cephalalgia format. The most important and indeed indispensable prerequisite of this new journal is the strict adherence to the high Cephalalgia standards in all aspects of quality control, including being listed in Medline. We will always strive to only publish the best authors and the best manuscripts – as this is independent from open access.