JOURNAL OF NEUROINFLAMMATION LAUNCHED BY TWO UAMS FACULTY

Drs. Robert Mrak (Chief of Neuropathology at UAMS) and Sue Griffin (Vice-Chair of Geriatrics at UAMS) launched the Journal of Neuroinflammation, a new, online, open-access journal, in April of 2004. In the first nine months of publication the new journal has attracted 50 manuscripts and published 27 papers, making JNI one of the top 5 of 62 ‘independent’ journals published by BioMed Central, the original open-access publisher. The most popular paper, authored by Dr. Wolfgang Streit of the University of Florida, has already been viewed or downloaded over 2,500 times.

'Neuroinflammation' is an encapsulization of the new idea that microglial and astrocytic responses and actions in the central nervous system have a fundamentally inflammation-like character, and that these responses are central to the pathogenesis and progression of a wide variety of neurological disorders. Much of the work contributing to this new vision has taken place at UAMS, involving Drs. Griffin and Mrak, Dr. Steve Barger (who is on the Editorial Board of the new journal) and others. Over the past decade, this idea has revolutionized our understanding of Alzheimer's disease, where it originated, and now has applications to other neurodegenerative diseases, to ischemic/toxic diseases, and even to normal brain development. The new journal is the first to represent this new field, and has received an enthusiastic response from workers in this area.

Open-access publishing makes full-text online and pdf versions of published manuscripts freely available to anyone, anywhere, with an internet connection. There are no fees, no passwords, no subscriptions, and no limitations on dissemination of published material. This publishing model, pioneered by JNI’s publisher, BioMed Central, has revolutionized scientific publishing and availability of published work. In the USA, this has attracted Congressional attention, where there is a move to promote open-access publication of all NIH-sponsored research.

Another advantage of online publication is rapid manuscript turnaround. The average time from manuscript submission to online publication at JNI is currently 42 days, with a fastest time-to-publication of 15 days. One recent manuscript submission to JNI was accompanied by this comment: “We are submitting to your relatively new journal because of the quality of articles recently published, our support for the open access concept, and our hopes to obtain a rapid review [and] publication. We note that [two] recent publications . . . required less than 1 month [for review and publication].”

Read the Journal of Neuroinflammation at http://www.jneuroinflammation.com/ .