“As one of the most effective and broad-reaching specialist Asian scientific journals, a new professional responsibility was placed upon the editorial team, to secure its huge bulk of published articles into the future”
In April 2016, the Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Preservation received an email from the chief of Bibliographic Services Division, National Library of Medicine, with a given deadline of October 2016 (later extended to Dec, 2016) to address the preservation of journal’s archive in a CRL certified repository service. The email was reporting on the status of APJCP’s compliance with MEDLINE/PubMed policy (the entire email is quoted for both transparency and documentation as exhibit 1). At the time, the preservation of huge number of published articles (8,082 papers) was seen as a major challenge and an impossible task to achieve with the then available resources (Moore, 2016a) and a decision was taken to cease acceptance of submissions (Moore, 2016b), pending resolution of this preservation Issue. Fortunately a new editorial team was established in Tehran to undertake the necessary measures. After a thorough evaluation of few available options, this team decided to partner with the PORTICO Repository Service to preserve its archive. The partnership was signed in July, 2016 and announced on August 16th, 2016. APJCP’s page is now up in PORTICO’s website and a certificate of preservation achievement was obtained from the PORTICO (exhibit number 2). In addition, as part of the same efforts, the new editorial team decided to utilize the PubMed Central’s (PMC) archiving and free availability of e-journals contents for its future issues and volumes. For this, a new infrastructure was developed enabling seamless production of PMC tagged XML’s. The journal now has passed the scientific and technical requirements for PubMed Central’s archiving and it is in the midst of signing agreement with PubMed Central authorities to have future issues archived in PubMed Central and be available as free PMC full text articles.
More than four months since the preservation issue was posed as a huge challenge to the routine activity of the Journal, the new editorial team is proud to officially announce that the past Archive has been safely deposited in PORTICO’s repository system, and the APJCP editorial team has fulfilled its professional responsibility.
As the Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention proceeds to the next stage in its activities many challenging issues remain to be addressed. These hinge on the mandate that the executive committee of the Asian Pacific Organization for Cancer Prevention has commissioned for the new editorial team. The mandate specifically reads:
To advance the standing of the journal in the Asian-Pacific scientific community and increase its impact.
To take on ultimate responsibility for a transparent peer review process and academic quality of the journal.
To maintain a balanced and inclusive Asia-wide editorial board committee for the journal.
To develop an industry standard preservation system for past archives and future production of the journal.
Exhibition number 1. The content of the email received from the Chief Bibliographic Services division, National Library of Medicine
“I am writing concerning the MEDLINE/PubMed status of the electronic-only publication Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention (APJCP) (ISSN 1513-7368). At the National Library of Medicine (NLM), my division is responsible for the indexing of the biomedical journals covered in MEDLINE. Electronic-only publications applying to MEDLINE or currently indexed in MEDLINE must be compliant with the MEDLINE Policy on Indexing Electronic Journals (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/policy/ejournals.html); see also the FAQ at https://www.nlm.nih.gov/services/ejournals.html.
There are 3 compliance components for the indexing policy. Here is what we know about
Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention (APJCP) and its compliance status:
1) XML: In order for your journal’s citations to be included in MEDLINE/PubMed, the journal must provide NLM with bibliographic citation data in XML format. Your journal currently provides the appropriate XML data, and is compliant for this item. No other action is needed.
2) ACCESS: NLM must have immediate access to all content published in your journal under a license that allows efficient support of NLM operations, onsite services, and interlibrary loan requirements. Access to an online journal via username and password is not acceptable. NLM has a current subscription meeting this compliance item and no other action is needed.
3) PRESERVATION: NLM wants to ensure that your journal’s content is preserved in a certified repository so that future MEDLINE/PubMed users can access the full text of the citations found in PubMed. From our review, your journal is not compliant for this item – it is not actively participating in a certified repository. NLM’s PubMed Central is a preferred repository; details about PMC participation are available at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/pub/pubinfo/. Portico.org and CLOCKSS.org are also acceptable repositories; information about these repositories can be found at their respective web sites.
Becoming compliant with the policy requirements can take some time. We will need to see that Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention (APJCP) is compliant within the next 6 months (by 15 October 2016). If compliance is not reached by this time, we will need to change its status to no longer indexed in MEDLINE/PubMed. It is up to you to inform us when compliance has been met”.
Exhibition 2. The Preservation Confirmation Certificate Issued by the PORTICO’s System
Acknowledgments
The APJCP editorial team in Tehran is obliged to acknowledge that in achieving the PREZERVATION issue (read it “the saving of the journal”), the APJCP editorial team in Iran received unconditional and generous helps from Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences and Sabzevar University of Medical Sciences where the huge task of XML and meta data preparation for preservation purpose was performed.
References
- Moore MA. Possible APJCP loss of PubMed/Medline Listing. Asian Pac J Cancer Prev. 2016;17:2349–50. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Moore MA. Provisional cessation of acceptance of submission to the APJCP on June 3-th and transfer of chief editor responsibilities. Asian Pac J Cancer Prev. 2016;17:2736. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]