A decade of the Therapeutic Advances journals: who we are and where we are going
BY HEMI MALKKI
SAGE’s Therapeutic Advances series of clinical journals was launched in 2008, with the aim of providing clinicians and medical researchers a platform to publish their findings in a free-to-read format, thereby offering universal access to the latest information in the field.
Currently comprising 16 journals covering the majority of clinical specialties, the Therapeutic Advances family has established itself as a high-quality series with stringent editorial standards and internationally renowned Editorial Boards. Besides external academic editors, all the journals benefit from an expert in-house Managing Editor who, together with the Editors-in-Chief, facilitate journal development and content commissioning, and are engaged with peer review and other editorial processes. The journals offer rigorous, expert peer review; after acceptance, articles are published rapidly online.
Many of the journals now have Impact Factors that place them in the first quartile in their respective fields; most are indexed in the Web of Science and Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), and all are listed on PubMed. The journals adhere to transparent reporting and ethical standards, and all the journals are members of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). All of the journals are now published gold OA, with Creative Commons licensing used for all articles. Moreover, important advances have recently been made in giving authors and peer reviewers the credit they deserve for their contributions, as well as measuring the impact of research beyond citations.
With over 50,000 articles being published each year at SAGE, it is important for us to facilitate the discovery of research articles to maximise visibility, usage and citations. SAGE has partnered with Kudos, a third-party service that allows authors to explain, enrich and share their articles, and then measure the impact of their actions. You can find out more information about how to engage with your audience on the SAGE Journal Author Gateway. SAGE also has a resource for authors to disseminate their articles on social media.
Increasing mobility of researchers between institutions necessitates a way of having an authenticated record of contribution to the scientific community as an author and peer reviewer. Authors are encouraged to use ORCID ID, a consistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from each other. ORCID is a non-profit organisation, and an ORCID ID is free to obtain.
Peer reviewers can now also get official credit for their contribution to a journal via Publons. All reviewers are encouraged to register and create a reviewer profile on Publons, and they can opt in to receive credit for their review when completing the peer review process, after which their reviews will by authenticated. Since Publons only publishes the year of the review and the journal title within the reviewer profiles, there is no breach of the journals’ single-blinded peer review system.
We hope that these features help the Therapeutic Advances journals to serve clinicians and researchers, providing them access to the latest proceedings in their field and giving them credit for their contributions to science. We are always keen to take on board your feedback and ideas – if you feel there is something we could do better, please do not hesitate to contact us!
Hemi Malkki is a Managing Editor for the Therapeutic Advances series at SAGE Publishing.