Australiasian College of Physical Scientists and Engineers in Medicine

APESM joins Springer stable

Since early in 2008, APESM has been in negotiations with a number of publishing companies about publishing the Journal. This followed an approach to the Journal by a publishing company and was given considerable impetus by the review of the Journal that was undertaken in 2008. The main motivation for considering commercial publication was to reduce the reliance of the journal on the Editor’s office. Having a commercial publisher will greatly reduce the risk of editorial discontinuity. Secondary, but also significant considerations were: the need to improve the capacity and flexibility of the Journal’s website and the desire for an online manuscript submission and tracking capability.

The culmination of these negotiations is that a publishing agreement between ACPSEM and Springer Science + Business Media B.V. has recently been signed. Commencing with issue one in 2010, APESM will be published and distributed by Springer who are a commercial publisher of professional journals based in the Netherlands (see www.springerlink.com ). The ACPSEM through APESM’s editorial staff, will continue to exercise sole control of the editorial development and editorial content of the Journal. The editor will continue to be responsible for all day-to-day editorial development, exercise control over the material to appear in the journal and be responsible for the peer review of submitted manuscripts. Springer will prepare manuscripts for publication, print and distribute the hard copy, maintain the electronic version and promote and market the Journal. They have the right to sell the Journal in all its forms and advertising within it. In return, Springer will pay the College an annual royalty from the net revenue. The College still owns the Journal and the copyright to the articles published in it.

The shift of the production of APESM to Springer will bring significant benefits to the College, its Journal and published authors.

• The visibility of the Journal on the world wide web will increase. Springer will host the Journal’s homepage at www.springer.com/13246
• The promotion and marketing of the Journal will be undertaken by Springer.
• Subscribers and libraries who are not College members will be able to have a hard copy and electronic access to the articles and to the APESM electronic archive.
• Submitting authors, reviewers and editors will use Editorial Manager™ www.editorialmanager.com/apesm. - Springer’s online manuscript submission and handling system for submission, tracking the progress of peer review and status of manuscripts. This will streamline the work of the editors.
• Accepted articles will be published online as soon as the page layout is completed (“online first”). This means that they are readable and citable (using their DOI) as soon as they are posted and before the print version appears.
• The cost to the College will be equal to or less than the present cost of producing the journal.
• The cost of subscribing to the journal for members of ACPSEM will not rise.
• The abstracts for the College annual scientific meeting (EPSM-ABEC) will be published in the Journal at no additional cost to the College or the meeting.
• It is possible that the Journal will return income to the College in the form of a royalty

The journal will also take this opportunity to modify its referencing style so that (1) the year of publication is placed immediately after the authors’ names and (2) the authors will be identified by surname and first name and initials of other names. This will make individual authors more easily identifiable to publication and citation counting software. References in the text will be cited within square brackets thus [4] rather than using superscript numbers.

The 2008 review of the Journal also recommended a reduction and restructuring of the Editorial Review Board. This process commenced in 2009 and will continue with the retirement at the end of 2010 of three long-serving Board members. The editor would like to thank Professor Jagan Mazumdar, Dr. Michael Repacholi and Professor Alun Beddoe, whose service on the Board has extended across the term of the past four editors. I have appreciated their advice during my term and their erudite reviews of manuscripts. Three new members of the Editorial Review Board will be appointed shortly to three year terms commencing in 2010.

The Kenneth Clarke award for “best paper published in 2008 by a College member” was awarded to Sergei Zavgorodni, 2008, Application of the equivalent uniform stochastic dose (EUSD) to TCP calculations incorporating dose uncertainty and fractionation effects, Australas. Phys. Eng. Sci. Med. 31(1), 1-9.

Martin Caon