WITH the fresh air of spring, there will be a very exciting new benefit for readers of The Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation (JHTR). This past fall, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW), our publisher, announced the launch of "myLWW," a "[horizontal ellipsis]new, personalized and intuitive interface that integrates medical journal content and rich media to enable collaboration, sharing, and innovation among medical professionals." This new platform already supports a number of leading medical journals, and as of March 30, 2009, JHTR will be joining them.
Of course, Web-based functionalities are only as good as what you make of them; it will fall to the editors and editorial board to bring the new site to life. Plans are already in the works for implementing the Published Ahead of Print feature. In 2008, JHTR experienced an unprecedented increase in the number of submissions of new manuscripts. We attribute our success both to the new Editorial Manager, Web-based manuscript submission system, and to our #1 ranking among rehabilitation journals in the ISI Social Science Index. With this new interest in JHTR, we have made several changes to ensure that the time to publication of accepted manuscripts remains short. One important step will be our use of the Published Ahead of Print capability with the new Web site. Unsolicited manuscripts accepted for publication will no longer be held and processed in a batch for 1 of the 2 annual Focus on Clinical Research and Practice issues. Manuscripts now will be sent to copyediting as they are accepted. Once galley proofs are approved by the authors, the articles will be available to readers on the JHTR Web site under the Published Ahead of Print tab. The articles will be picked up by MEDLINE, Ovid, and other research databases and can be cited as published work prior to their appearance in print.
Another valuable feature of the new Web site is the capability for Supplemental Digital Content. We will educate our topical editors, reviewers, and authors about the option for publishing large tables, supplemental figures, or appendix materials via Supplemental Digital Content on the JHTR Web site. This material will be permanently linked to the manuscript. The feature allows us to conserve printed pages while still making available to our readers information that is less central to the manuscript. Even more exciting is the potential for complementing the written word with other types of media. We intend to promote the use of Supplemental Digital Content for both audio and video files. Imagine how a 3-dimensional figure could enhance the description of a brain image, a biological structure, or even a complex theory. A short video would allow an author to actually show how a procedure was conducted. Supplemental Digital Content is a gateway to options limited only by our creativity.
The new JHTR Web site will have many new bells and whistles intended to assist our readers to quickly obtain information of interest. Online journal subscribers will have access to
* featured articles, editor's picks, "most viewed," and "most e-mailed" articles;
* new options for article delivery, including an enhanced HTML format for easier reading;
* New customization options, including saved searches, personal article collections, and e-mail and RSS alerts;
* improved search across all content and media type.
We hope that you share our excitement about these new capabilities for JHTR. We feel quite strongly that staying up with the dynamic change occurring in the publishing field will only serve to make JHTR a more valuable resource to our readers. Last year was remarkable in many ways (eg, #1 ranking for rehabilitation journals in the ISI Social Science Index, Editorial Manager went live, and new relationships with the Brain Injury Association of America and the North American Brain Injury Society). This year has already seen the first Mitchell Rosenthal Memorial Webinar featuring our topical issue on "TBI in the Military." And now, we have a new Web site with exponentially expanded capabilities. If you have suggestions or questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.
John D. Corrigan, PhD, ABPP
Editor-in-Chief