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

• It is logistically feasible to have journal review articles derived from the Obesity Algorithms, and maintain the current OA slides and an eBook.

Journals are rated by their “impact factor,” which is a scientometric index dependent upon how often articles from the journal are cited by others in the prior two years. For perspective, the journal Obesity has an impact factor of around 3.7. The New England Journal of Medicine has an impact factor of 75. Two of the best ways to increase the impact factor of a journal is via high quality review articles and high importance original science (i.e., sentinel clinical trials). The Obesity Medicine Society has an advantage over other medical societies in that its current Obesity Algorithms already are of high level content and have undergone review and edits over years. While it is best to defer to the OMA staff regarding the advisability of continuing the eBook, it seems unreasonable and self-defeating to extract and transform the current OMA Obesity Algorithms into review articles AND keep the online Obesity Algorithm slide postings as well. The most likely and reasonable scenario is that once OMA commits to JOMA, the Obesity Algorithms cease to exist, as their content will be transformed into journal articles (again, with eBook considerations being a separate decision). The transformation of OMA Obesity Algorithm content to high level review articles that will then be published and be available free online to readers. Such an approach has a likelihood these published articles will be cited - leading to improved impact factor for the journal. The current management and updates to the OMA Obesity Algorithm has evolved into substantial and somewhat unreasonable time commitments on the part of writers and committee members. It is unlikely OMA Obesity Algorithm members would have the time resources to transform the existing Obesity Algorithm content into JOMA article submissions, and then respond to reviewer comments. Thus, this transformational process will require hiring a medical writing team. • MYTH: Because JOMA articles will be published for free, then JOMA is an investment where OMA will lose substantial amounts of non-returnable investment, with no potential for generated revenues to the medical society. Elsevier funds the journal, not the medical society. Also, journal publishers such as Elsevier often sell advertisements. Other potential sources of revenue include pharma-sponsored supplements. Finally, authors who submit articles will be expected to pay to have the articles published, and available free online. The amount and process of publication costs is negotiated with the publisher. In the beginning, medical societies are typically allotted an agreed upon number of free article, which for JOMA, would initially be required for transformation of the Obesity Algorithm – derived articles. Over the subsequent years, the number of allotted free publications diminish. At that time, the decision as to which authors will have their submission/publication costs waived will be a matter of discussion, which will likely involve prioritization of: • OA authors have the time resources to convert existing OA content into journal article review.

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