2021-02-22 OMA Agenda - Board of Trustees (002)

To: Board of Trustees From: Katrina Crist, Executive Director Date: February 17, 2021 Re:

Journal of Obesity Medicine Association (JOMA)

There are three major participants or components of a journal. The Association (owner), the Editor-in- Chief, and the Publisher. In an in-house model, the publisher is also part of the Association. In an out-sourced model the publisher is an independent publishing company that the Association contracts with to publish the content, manage the process, sell the advertising, and promote/market the journal. In both an in-house and outsourced publishing model, a key partner is the Editor-in-Chief who leads the editorial side of the journal including an editorial board, setting standards, soliciting papers, soliciting reviewers, and makes decisions to accept or reject content. A contract between the Association and the Editor-in-Chief is put in place to set the expectations and terms for the editor position. While both the publisher and editor are responsible to and report directly to the Association, they work closely together to manage the processes that ultimately result in publication of the content. The OMA through me as executive director and Dr. Bays as a board member with experience and interest in having OMA launch a journal, have been exploring interest and options with Elsevier, a world- wide publishing company with experience in both subscription based (subscribers pay a fee) and open access journals (authors pay a fee). Elsevier has provided a proposal (attached) to the OMA to publish and market an open access journal focused on obesity medicine. Articles would be published online on a rolling basis for the first year or two, or until sufficient submissions of content would support a quarterly or monthly publishing schedule. A top priority for all three participants (association, editor, publisher) would be to apply for JOMA to be indexed and citable in the shortest amount of time possible. A draft of the journal scope and aims follows: