Putting feline medicine and surgery into the hands of everyone who works with cats

JFMS is at the start of a new adventure. As of January 2023, JFMS will be published Gold Open Access, meaning that the journal will reach all veterinary professionals interested in feline medicine and surgery, as well as others who work with cats, without restriction. As joint stewards of JFMS, the International Society of Feline Medicine (ISFM) and the American Association of Feline Practitioners (AAFP) – JFMS’s owner organisations – have nurtured its development into a major and mainstream veterinary journal and an essential benefit for their members. Expanding the reach of high-level feline content aligns with their mission and goals, and their commitment to improving feline care and supporting veterinary professionals. JFMS also joins the open access movement at a time when it is gaining considerable momentum and the benefits of scientific information being made available without restrictions are widely recognised.

The journey of JFMS began in 1996 with the launch of the European Society of Feline Medicine (the forerunner of the ISFM) and, with that, a small quarterly newsletter – Feline Focus. The European society developed a plan to make the huge leap to convert this newsletter into a fully fledged peer-reviewed journal and, coincident with the publishers WB Saunders also expressing an interest in developing a feline journal, the first issue of JFMS was published in 1999. At that time, there were a modest four issues a year. In 2002, the AAFP, which had also published its own newsletter for a number of years, joined ISFM in the journal partnership. The expansion of JFMS to six issues a year followed shortly in 2003. After a few publisher changes, in 2009 the organisations, both of which were primarily serving veterinary practitioner members, started commissioning high-quality clinical reviews, publishing them in a further six ‘Clinical Practice’ issues a year. This unique blend of Classic (clinical research) and Clinical Practice (review) editions of the journal provided an exciting combination of cutting-edge, clinically relevant research findings, along with state-of-the-art clinical reviews, for AAFP and ISFM members and journal subscribers. In 2015, ISFM and the AAFP expanded their publishing activities further and launched JFMS’s sister title, JFMS Open Reports, in order to provide a platform for the publication of case reports and small case series, and small studies of regional (but not necessarily international) relevance.

Having partnered with SAGE Publications in 2012, JFMS has remained in their hands ever since, and we are delighted that SAGE, ISFM and the AAFP will be stepping into the open access arena of publishing together. Our editors, with us from the beginning, and our Editorial Board and reviewers, have supported and helped guide these developments, and we thank them for their exceptional hard work and care for the journal over the years.

In moving to open access and away from print, very careful consideration has gone into ensuring there is no loss in the quality of the journal. The AAFP and ISFM are keeping the editorial team and advisors who developed and continue to maintain the style and quality of the publication. We will also continue to publish guidelines and other tools to help our readers and busy practitioners. We will be keeping the popular and easy-to-read ‘Clinical Practice’-style reviews, a practical resource for veterinary professionals, which will now be promoted as Clinical Spotlight articles to ISFM and AAFP members, alongside additional features, such as author interview podcasts that will help listeners to gain further insights on clinically relevant material.

In 2021, there were over 1 million downloads of JFMS articles, and this underscores the usage and usefulness of the journal. The importance of the journal is also evidenced by the maintenance of its impact factor, which demonstrates the impressive number of citations that JFMS papers receive. Once JFMS is open access, the sky truly is the limit, and we look forward to putting feline medicine and surgery into the hands of everyone who works with cats.

Read the full article here.

Authors: Heather O’Steen, Claire Bessant, Nicola Martin

Source: https://journals.sagepub.com/

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