SpringerPlus is fully and immediately open access and will publish articles under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license. This makes it easy for authors to fully comply with open access mandates and retain copyright. SpringerPlus offers open access and our expertise in delivering high-quality and rapid publications, from online submission systems and in-depth peer review to an efficient, author-friendly production process.

Over the past year we saw the number of submissions increase from around 50 in ...

Read more]]> Early 2012 we announced SpringerPlus, Springer’s first peer-reviewed Open Access journal open for research from all disciplines in the Humanities, Science, Technology and  Medicine. For SpringerPlus a manuscript is never out of scope: when the science is sound we will consider it for publication!

SpringerPlus is fully and immediately open access and will publish articles under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license. This makes it easy for authors to fully comply with open access mandates and retain copyright. SpringerPlus offers open access and our expertise in delivering high-quality and rapid publications, from online submission systems and in-depth peer review to an efficient, author-friendly production process.

Over the past year we saw the number of submissions increase from around 50 in July to a total of 422 at the end of the year, clearly indicating that SpringerPlus found its place as an attractive place to publish scientific research. And SpringerPlus is all about high quality science, we follow the same high standards for publication as all other Springer journals and this shows from the statistics: in 2012 we accepted 101 manuscripts for publication and rejected 83, giving an acceptance rate of 55%.

All our articles are peer-reviewed and this requires an exceptional editorial board with leading academics from all disciplines, and we are grateful for the efforts these academics and all our peer-reviewers put in providing our authors with valuable feedback.

All the SpringerPlus sections received manuscripts in 2012, and by this time (February 2013) all sections have published articles. We received the majority of submissions in the biological and medical sciences, the next four sections computer science, chemistry and materials science, mathematics and earth and environmental sciences nearly tie at around 30 submissions each:

In 2012 we also launched our first themed article collection, the SpringerPlus Breast Cancer article collection edited by Professor Lippman. Already seven outstanding articles were published in this collection in 2012, and we hope to publish many more. We hope to launch more article collections and special issues later this year, and we’re always interested to learn about new topics!

We look forward to our second year of scientific interactions and great publications. Join SpringerPlus now and submit your next manuscript here: http://www.springerplus.com/manuscript

The SpringerPlus editorial team
Max Haring, PhD, Executive editor

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy: the dangers of getting “dinged”
Shaheen E Lakhan, Annette Kirchgessner

Folate Receptor alpha (FRA) expression in breast cancer: identification of a new molecular subtype and association with triple negative disease
Daniel J OShannessy, et.al.

Differential impact of body mass index and its change on the risk of breast cancer by molecular subtype: a case–control study in Japanese women
Aiko Sueta, et.al.

The age-phenome database
Nophar Geifman, Eitan Rubin

Please visit our Breast Cancer collection, edited by professor Marc Lippman. SpringerPlus Breast Cancer is a high quality collection of articles devoted ...

Read more]]> These articles in our medicine section, headed by prof. Massoud Mahmoudi, were accessed most in the last 3 months:

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy: the dangers of getting “dinged”
Shaheen E Lakhan, Annette Kirchgessner

Folate Receptor alpha (FRA) expression in breast cancer: identification of a new molecular subtype and association with triple negative disease
Daniel J OShannessy, et.al.

Differential impact of body mass index and its change on the risk of breast cancer by molecular subtype: a case–control study in Japanese women
Aiko Sueta, et.al.

The age-phenome database
Nophar Geifman, Eitan Rubin

Please visit our Breast Cancer collection, edited by professor Marc Lippman. SpringerPlus Breast Cancer is a high quality collection of articles devoted to rapid communication of breakthroughs and results featuring advances in research and clinical developments for the international oncology community.

Why publish with SpringerPlus?

High-quality peer review
Our dedicated Section Editors, all active academics and experts in their field, guarantee the quality and scientific soundness of each article.

Easy submission and fast editorial process
There are no restrictions on the number of words, figures or supplementary material, and manuscripts are accepted in any appropriate format. Evaluations based solely on the quality of the research support quick decision-making.

Open access: high visibility, high impact
You can be certain of complying with open access mandates and retaining copyright to your work.

Benefit from our Membership Program
If your institution is one of our over 400 members, the article-processing charge (APC) is covered in full or in part by the membership.

We all have benefited from the impact of mass communication in our daily life, whether in the form of a mass e-mail invitation, or watching a televised media report. Putting aside the social values, the role of sharing information in science and medicine have become more crucial and important than ever. Each means of communication has its own value in conveying information and all sources collectively help us to be effective communicators.

Internet – Learning and sharing information are two useful aspects of internet usage. Whether we use internet to link with a support group or access an organization website to collect information of a specific product, read science or medicine news, or gather information on ...

Read more]]> Mass Communication in Science and Medicine

We all have benefited from the impact of mass communication in our daily life, whether in the form of a mass e-mail invitation, or watching a televised media report. Putting aside the social values, the role of sharing information in science and medicine have become more crucial and important than ever. Each means of communication has its own value in conveying information and all sources collectively help us to be effective communicators.

Internet – Learning and sharing information are two useful aspects of internet usage. Whether we use internet to link with a support group or access an organization website to collect information of a specific product, read science or medicine news, or gather information on description of an illness, we are benefiting enormously for this valuable resource.

Electronic Health record – The effective communication in medicine has tremendous impact in our life as patients or as health providers. The electronic health record is one example of an effective communication tool among peers and, at the same time, one that replaces the paper trails and makes the filing system efficient. Since its inception in the 1960’s (1), we have witnessed the development and availability of various electronic Health record products on the market that have notably changed the way we share information amongst colleagues.

Journals – Newsletters and journals are important means of communication. Physicians may choose to communicate with their patients by creating a newsletter consisting of news in medicine or science, or discussion of a disease entity. A small company may use a newsletter to share information on a product. On a larger scale, we as scientists, clinicians, or educators communicate via published journals.

There are two vital aspects of publication; accuracy and time intervals. Although the contributor is responsible for the accuracy of collected data and presentation of information, the role of an editor or a publisher is to check such data to ensure that it is scientifically and logically sound and worth sharing; such a task is accomplished in a peer-reviewed fashion. The second aspect of publication is the time interval between presentation of a manuscript to the publisher‘s office and the actual date of publication; shorter publication intervals ensure that the information is still new and up-to-date. As we all do our share of going “Green”, the movement of online publication has not only helped the efficiency of communication, but has shortened the time interval of publication.

Finally, the effectiveness of mass communication is measured by how generously the information is distributed; by this, I mean the availability of general user access. Unfortunately the majority of journals are accessed by subscription and unless you are using the journal via an academic center, individuals or independent researchers may not have the luxury of accessing those subscribed resources. The Open Access Journal is a solution in widening circle of communication without a cost to the readers. To date, there are thousands of open access journals; In February 2012 the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), a directory maintained by the Lund University Libraries, listed 7513 (2).

One of the latest additions to the Open Access Journal family is SpringerPlus, the present journal, which launched in January 2012. This scientific peer-reviewed journal is a wide medium for various aspects of science and medicine covering all disciplines of science for publication. We as editors appreciate the effort of scientists, clinicians, and educators for time spent in research and for presentation of their valuable data for sharing with others; we will make every effort to ensure such information is reviewed, presented and shared with the rest of scientific community in a timely fashion.

Dr. Massoud Mahmoudi

Medicine Section Editor for SpringerPlus

University of California, San Francisco

References

1-Electronic Health Records Overview, National Institute of Health, National Center for research Resources, April 2006, Mitre Corporation

2-Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), 2012, Lund University Libraries. www.doaj.org

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At SpringerPlus we believe there should be as few barriers as possible to publish the results of scientific research. Authors invest a lot of time and effort before an article is accepted and, with the high level of specialization of many scientific journals, authors must often submit the same manuscript to several journals consecutively. SpringerPlus is not like that. SpringerPlus won’t reject articles because the subject is deemed out of scope, unfashionable, a niche field or unable to attract citations. The only thing necessary for SpringerPlus ...

Read more]]> It is my pleasure to introduce Springer’s new Open Access journal open for research from all disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering and Medicine. SpringerPlus offers easy submission, fast processing and straightforward publication of your results.

At SpringerPlus we believe there should be as few barriers as possible to publish the results of scientific research. Authors invest a lot of time and effort before an article is accepted and, with the high level of specialization of many scientific journals, authors must often submit the same manuscript to several journals consecutively. SpringerPlus is not like that. SpringerPlus won’t reject articles because the subject is deemed out of scope, unfashionable, a niche field or unable to attract citations. The only thing necessary for SpringerPlus is that manuscripts are scientifically and methodologically sound when judged by our academic editors and peer-reviewers. Put simply, SpringerPlus will consider any article from any field, however interdisciplinary, as long as the science is sound. We aim to be predictable, fast and low-effort for our authors while still maintaining the high quality readers expect from Springer. After all, all good science is worth publishing!

SpringerPlus publishes good quality research fast and with little extra effort. Our authors save time and resources by not having to reformat their work: we are happy to accept manuscripts already formatted for another journal. Researchers are also encouraged to submit review reports from previous journals as these may help the SpringerPlus review process. SpringerPlus practices a clear editorial decision policy: we only accept or reject manuscripts. Minor changes to the manuscript may be required but we will never ask an author to spend months performing additional research before an article can be accepted.

Editorial decisions on accept and reject are taken exclusively by our editorial board consisting entirely of academic scientists, all experts in their field. Today (January 12th 2012) we can introduce six editors and we expect to announce more shortly:

Biomedical and Life Sciences: Professor Jochen Graw, Helmholtz Center Munich, Germany
Chemistry and Materials Science: Professor Bradley Fahlman, Central Michigan University, USA
Earth and Environmental Sciences: Professor Charles W Finkl Florida Atlantic University, USA
Engineering: Lakhmi C Jain, University of South Australia, Australia
Mathematics: Panos M Pardalos, University of Florida, USA
Medicine: Dr Massoud Mahmoudi, University of California, San Francisco, USA

To find out more about SpringerPlus and the Editorial Board, or to submit your manuscript, please visit the SpringerPlus website at www.springerplus.com!

Max Haring, PhD
Executive editor for SpringerPlus