The journal Ophthalmology and Eye Diseases was launched in 2009 as a fledgling journal published by Libertas Academica Press. At the beginning, the journal set out to adhere to rigorous research ethics and reporting standards, as evidenced through its membership of the Committee on Publication Ethics and peer-review process that has always required at least two independent expert referees. With these rigorous standards, the journal also established itself as an open-access resource, with all published articles freely available. Over the years, the journal grew slowly and deliberately. By 2013, the journal had its articles indexed in PubMed: soon thereafter, the journal was indexed by other major services such as the Directory of Open Access Journals and the Emerging Sources Citation Index, making the journal’s articles easily discoverable by anyone with internet access around the globe. At the end of 2016, the journal transitioned to a new publisher, SAGE Publishing.
In the beginning of 2018 the journal underwent its biggest change to date: the journal is now titled Therapeutic Advances in Ophthalmology. This title change reflects a wider rebranding process: Therapeutic Advances in Ophthalmology is now a member of SAGE’s Therapeutic Advances family – a flagship series of clinical journals, several of which rank in the top quartile of their respective specialties.
Some things will not be changing. The journal will continue to be a peer-reviewed gold open-access journal, with a commitment to rapid, rigorous peer review and stringent ethical and reporting standards. It will continue to publish original research, reviews, and case reports that are freely available immediately upon publication via PubMed Central and the journal website, taop.sagepub.com.
Among other new and exciting changes that Therapeutic Advances in Ophthalmology is going through, one of the more notable ones is the now complete transition to a new manuscript submission system (https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/taop). This new manuscript submission and tracking platform helps the editorial team to manage workflows more efficiently and provides authors with a familiar and easy-to-use interface. The submission system and the journal website are compatible with ORCID, Figshare, and Kudos, helping our authors to share and receive greater recognition for their work. Article-level metrics are provided by Altmetric, which generates individual impact scores for articles and examines the impact via social media, news outlets, etc. In addition, peer reviewers can opt to receive official credit for their efforts on Publons, enabling them to highlight their peer-review contributions without jeopardizing anonymity of the peer-review process.
Therapeutic Advances in Ophthalmology will continue to grow and develop. Along with the changes noted above, the journal is affiliated with Vision UK, a leading collaboration in eye health and sight loss. The journal is also expanding the international membership of its Editorial Board with the inclusion of Giuseppe Querques from the University Vita-Salute, IRCCS Ospedale San Raffaele, Milan, Italy, and Mariya Moosajee and Pearse Keane from the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and Moorfields Eye Hospital, London, UK.
Along with these remarkable changes, Therapeutic Advances in Ophthalmology is curating a Special Collection in 2018, entitled The Future of Ophthalmology: Novel Tools and Emerging Therapies, with Pearse Keane as the Guest Editor. The core of this Special Collection consists of invited reviews, but is also open for new submissions that can be either original research articles or reviews. All articles published as part of this collection will be promptly published online and collated to a dedicated page on the journal website.
As an introductory offer, all articles submitted to the journal before the end of 2018 will be free to publish, after which an article publication charge will apply. However, SAGE can waive or reduce the article publication charge for authors from developing countries and authors who are otherwise genuinely unable to pay.
Members of our editorial team will be attending the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology conference (29 April–3 May 2018, Honolulu, HI, USA), and welcome the opportunity to meet any of our readers, authors, reviewers, or other interested parties personally to discuss these exciting changes and to take on board your feedback and ideas. Please contact us if you would like to arrange a meeting; if you are unable to attend, you are always welcome to email us with any suggestions or feedback that you might have. In addition, we invite you to sign up for free email alerts at taop.sagepub.com and follow the journal’s official twitter channel @TAOphthalmology, which provides curated news and the latest progress in vision research.