Online vs Print Publication: The Case for Online Publication

I will just come right out and say it … I enjoy seeing my publications printed in the Aesthetic Surgery Journal. Of course there is a certain sense of excitement that bubbles to the surface when that unmistakable gold-and-royal purple journal cover appears in the mailbox, knowing that as you leaf through those pages a culmination of your months of energy, dedication, and hard work will be reflected in glossy print for all the world to see. And when you are done celebrating this momentous achievement, maybe you place this tome of academia in a prominent position on your bookshelf to be gazed upon for all eternity by any who shall be fortunate enough to pass.

But what comes next? When you need to reference that article or revisit your seminal work, are you going to pull that journal issue off the shelf to leaf through the pages, or are you going to open your reference manager and double-click on the PDF copy of the manuscript? The truth of the matter is that while that venerated hard copy of the Aesthetic Surgery Journal sits atop a shelf in your office, you can much more easily carry a PDF copy of your publication with you everywhere you go on your laptop, tablet, or smartphone. So although this concept that print is perceived by some to be “superior” to online publication has become entrenched in our psyche over the years, I think it is time to take a step back and reframe our understanding of this concept.

The primary driving force in the propagation of the “print-superiority” fallacy is the very terminology we use when discussing publication … will this article appear “in print” or “online-only”? You would never go to a car dealership and hear a salesperson tell you that a new model comes in “all-wheel drive” and “rear-wheel drive–only.” By adding the modifier “-only” to online content, it makes it sound in some way less desirable. In fact, we need to completely remove “only” from our lexicon to refocus the entire discussion. Instead, we should be heralding “ASJ Online!” as the future of aesthetic education, a publishing tool that allows information to flow from our authors to our target audience as quickly as possible, keeping plastic surgeons up to date and at the forefront of aesthetic surgery. At the very least that certainly has more of a ring to it than “online-only,” no?

Because at the end of the day, we must always remember that the purpose of research is to create and advance knowledge within a scope of practice. To do that effectively, our goal as a journal must be to disseminate publications to the maximum number of people with as little time delay as possible. And if I am being totally honest, by the time I receive my monthly print issue of the Aesthetic Surgery Journal, I have already read the articles of interest to my practice months before in their “Advance Article” version (in some cases within a week of acceptance in their unformatted “Accepted Manuscript” version). This time lag is an inevitable consequence of the production and publication process. It not only takes time to collate, print, and distribute a journal issue, but each issue is subject to page limitations, restrictions on the types of articles published, and unforeseeable delays caused by busy authors. Therefore, it would stand to reason that, as an author, the best way for me to get my research seen by as many people as possible is online, because by the time my article goes through the publication process and waits in a queue to be printed, I run the risk that my data will be beaten to market, stale, or even irrelevant. So, instead of concerning myself with whether my article is going to appear in print or not, I should instead be focused on shining as much of a spotlight as possible on my online publication while the data are still fresh and relevant.

And the good news is that we now have a way of tracking this online spotlight. Traditionally, we have relied on a journal’s impact factor (based on the average number of citations against the total number of source items published in the preceding 2-year window) to determine its sphere of influence. However, the advent of Altmetrics (Digital Science, Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, Stuttgart, Germany) has allowed us to track how much attention an article is receiving based on its digital impact across various scholarly and non-scholarly platforms, including news media, social media, white papers, blogs, and more. In fact, it is not even fair to compare the potential reach of an online article to an article in print … that would be like racing a Concorde jet against a wheelbarrow. Currently the top Altmetric article in the Aesthetic Surgery Journal, “Report on Mortality from Gluteal Fat Grafting: Recommendations from the ASERF Task Force,” has 77 citations (which is amazing in and of itself), but more impressively it has been mentioned by 96 news outlets and has been tweeted over 320 times by 152 individuals with a total of 896,092 followers.¹ Sure, Altmetrics may not be able to capture or quantify the “scientific merit” or “importance” of a publication, but these data tell us whether an article is being seen and talked about. Because at the end of the day, the purpose of research is not for it to sit in a journal issue somewhere on a shelf collecting dust; it is for that information to be used for the betterment of our specialty and society at large.

So no, I’m not going to sit here and try to declare print dead, because just like hardcover books and vinyl records there will always be a place for the tried, true, and familiar. But undoubtedly the tides are turning, and it may not be long before “print” as we know it fundamentally changes, and issues of the Aesthetic Surgery Journal move from our mailboxes to our inboxes. For now, you can go ahead and worry about whether your article is going to appear in print or “just be online-only.” But remember that while you’re sitting there lamenting your predicament, I will be focused on getting my publication online immediately so I can link, tweet, like, and share it as many times as possible. Heck, I may even create an online video to showcase it too! In my humble opinion, online isn’t inferior to print … it is the new print. However, I invite you to read the counterpoint to my position by Dr Mohammed Alghoul² and decide for yourself where your loyalties lie.

Disclosures

Dr Austin is a key opinion leader for InMode (Lake Forest, CA). He is the lead next-generation editor for the Aesthetic Surgery Journal and a contributing editor for ASJ Open Forum.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and publication of this article.