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Digital Information Archiving Policies in High-Impact Medical and Scientific Periodicals
To the Editor: Medical and scientific journals increasingly cite information available only on the Internet.1-2 The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors stated that "Electronic publication is an area that is in flux," and recommended that "Editors should develop, make available to authors, and implement policies on . . . archiving . . . and electronic publication."3 This observational study examined the policies of high-impact medical and scientific journals for the preservation of citations to digital information.
Methods
The Web sites and published Instructions for Authors of the 100 highest scientific impact periodicals4 and their corresponding publisher Web sites were examined (October-December 2003). Journal impact factors were determined using the ISI Web of Knowledge journal citation reports for 2002. The query was performed for all journals included in the science edition database, which includes more than 5700 journals in the areas of science and technology. The journal impact factor is a measure of the average frequency with which an article in that journal has been cited in a particular year. It is calculated as the number of citations to articles published in that journal in the 2 previous years, occurring during the year of interest, divided by the total number of articles published in that journal in the 2 previous years.
Only 99 of the initially identified 100 journals were in publication at the time of the study and available for analysis. Two journals (Immunology Today and Trends in Immunology) effectively constituted 1 journal that underwent a name change in 2001 to Trends in Immunology.
Two authors (D.P.K., A.L.D.) independently constructed databases extracting the relevant variables. Discrepancies were reconciled by consensus of these authors, with 93.2% initial concordance.
Results
Thirty-five publishers produced 99 journals (list available from the authors upon request); 55 journals allowed Internet uniform resource locator (URL) citation formats and none explicitly prohibited their use (TABLE). Only the Archives of General Psychiatry requested that authors maintain cited Internet information, specifically by keeping a print copy of any reference to Web-only information and noting that if the URL changes or disappears, interested readers may contact the corresponding author for a copy of the information.
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Table. Journal Characteristics and Internet Citation Policies (n=99)
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Digital object identifiers (DOIs), persistent electronic data identification names initially developed by the Association of American Publishers but now managed by the International DOI Foundation,5 were used by 71 journals to maintain online articles. Instructions for Authors for 11 journals presented examples of Internet citations that used DOI protocol, but none required DOIs. Thirty-six journals required at least 1 of the following dates for Internet citations: accession date, date created or posted, or date of last revision.
Comment
Many high-impact journals do not provide instructions for Internet citation formats (44%), nor do they provide recommendations to archive cited digital information (99%). Although correspondence with a citing author (or the original author of digital information) may allow recovery of information no longer available via the Internet, personal archiving by individuals constitutes a less than optimal policy for preservation of digital information.
An alternative approach, the DOI system, assigns a permanent identifier to a digital resource, analogous to the identifying bar code found on grocery store merchandise. A central authority then provides a permanent link to the resource via the assigned DOI. Although DOIs were frequently used by the examined journals to maintain their own online articles, the overhead costs of DOI registration and concerns about the system’s complexity and maintenance cast doubt on whether DOIs will solve all digital information archiving problems.6
Our study highlights the absence of explicit standards and policies to preserve access to Internet-sourced content in high-impact periodicals. As a first step toward better digital information archiving, we recommend that all Instructions for Authors provide examples of formats for citation of digital information; request that authors maintain cited Internet-sourced content, both digitally and via hard copies; and request that authors submit digital information to journal supplementary online material archives as well as existing open-access digital archives.
Access to Data: Dr Schilling had full access to all of the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analyses.
Funding/Support: This study was supported by grants from the National Cancer Institute (K-07 CA92550-01A1) (Dr Dellavalle), National Institutes of Health (T32 AR07411) (Dr Hester), and a Health Services Research Award Faculty Development in Primary Care (5 D14HP00153) (Dr Schilling).
Role of the Sponsors: None of the funding organizations had any role in any aspect of the study, including data collection and analysis; manuscript preparation; or authorization for publication.
Lisa M. Schilling, MD
lisa.schilling{at}uchsc.edu
Department of Medicine
Desiree P. Kelly, BA;
Amanda L. Drake, BA;
Lauren F. Heilig, BA;
Eric J. Hester, MD
Department of Dermatology
University of Colorado Health Sciences Center
Denver
Robert P. Dellavalle, MD, PhD
Dermatology Service
Denver Veterans Affairs Medical Center
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3. International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: Writing and Editing for Biomedical Publication. Available at: http://www.icmje.org/. Accessed October 4, 2004.
4. Institute of Scientific Information (ISI). Journal Citation Reports: JCR Science Edition. 2002. Available by subscription at: http://isi10.isiknowledge.com/portal.cgi. Accessed October 4, 2004.
5. International DOI Foundation Web site. Available at: http://www.doi.org/. Accessed October 14, 2004.
6. Kennedy S. A Dozen Primers on Standards: DOI. Available at: http://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/feb04/primers.shtml. Accessed October 18, 2004.
Letters Section Editor: Robert M. Golub, MD, Senior Editor.
JAMA. 2004;292:2724-2726.
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