2021-04-21 OMA Agenda - Board of Trustees

One way to mitigate this inevitability is for the Editor to moderate roundtable or point/counterpoint discussions of controversial topics, with subsequent publication of the transcript, and inclusion of disclaimers regarding the opinionated nature of such discussions. Experience suggests roundtable discussions and point/counterpoint are highly popular among readers and members. It is the nature of these discussions that the opinions of the participants are clearly identified as the opinions of the participants. Roundtable discussions and point/counterpoint are not position or scientific statements. They are clearly identifiable opinions. The process is as follows: o The Editor decides on a topic, and serves as moderator o Participants are invited (usually 2 - 3), with the understanding the Editor has final editorial control on what is published o The OMA staff schedules the audio recorded meeting to occur at an OMA meeting, or virtually between OMA meetings o The recording is sent to a transcribing service who transcribes the recording into text o The transcription is sent to the individual participants, who edit their individual sections o The Editor makes final edits o Disclaimers are included o The roundtable discussion or point/counterpoint discussion is published, without further review The proactive early adoption of a roundtable, point/counterpoint format might not only mitigate foreseen challenges, but also help acknowledge the work and opinions of OMA committee members and their leadership. While short reports may be acceptable (and even encouraged), most higher end journals shy away from publishing case reports. Recommendation #6. OMA should fund transcription of OMA Adult and Pediatric Algorithms into journal articles, to then be “authored” by applicable OMA members (e.g., Obesity Algorithm Committee members), undergo peer review, and then be published in JOMA. Rationale: Journals are rated by their “impact factor.” An impact factor is a scientometric index dependent upon how often articles from the journal are cited by other peer-reviewed articles 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., publication of sentinel clinical trials).

The Obesity Medicine Association has an advantage over other medical societies

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