We have become an Open Access journal!

It has been 4 years since Journal of Diabetes Investigation (JDI) was launched as a bimonthly journal in 2010, as the official journal of the Asian Association for the Study of Diabetes (AASD). Two years after the launch, the first Impact Factor was released with the evaluation of 1.861. Contributions come from all over the world, and in 2012 almost 300 papers per year as original articles have been submitted. The acceptance rate is approximately 30%. The development of JDI is slow – at a snail's pace – but steady and encouraging progress is being made.

The mission of our journal is summarized by the title of ‘Why do we need a new journal?’ in my editorial, as Editor‐In‐Chief, in the first issue of JDI in 20101. Part of the story is as follows: ‘It is now accepted that the achievement of better outcomes in prevention and treatment of diabetes must be made on the basis of evidence obtained from fundamental and clinical research. The extraordinary worldwide increase in type 2 diabetes predicted to occur from 2010 to 2030 also indicates the importance of paying attention to ethnic difference in the pathophysiology of the disease. An understanding of these differences in diabetes and complicating disease will improve management of patients. A number of studies suggest that there are significant differences in β‐cell function, insulin resistance, degree of obesity, quantity of thrifty genes, frequency of cardiovascular diseases, and causes of death between Caucasians and Asians'.

To date the launch of JDI has achieved some of these aims. A number of excellent papers regarding ethnic difference in the pathophysiology of the disease have been submitted and published during the past 4 years. Even if it is only a small part of the whole, I am sure our journal plays an important role among the many journals in the field of diabetes, providing valuable information about Asian people with diabetes and its related disorders. Whatever JDI contributes it will prove to be useful for the members of AASD, in both fundamental and clinical research, and patients' management. However, I fear that such valuable information might not spread widely to the rest of the world because the journal is still too new and not yet well‐known in the academic community. The most recent impact factor for JDI was ranked only at 89 out of 122 in the same subject area. Therefore, it is of the utmost importance for the position JDI move up the ranking of journals in the subject area so that it can spread information on diabetes in Asia to the whole world.

In a recent issue of ‘Science’, interesting information was reported in the article with the title of ‘The Rise of Open Access’2. The following is my own rough interpretation and opinion of the main point of the article. According to the chronicle on the publishing of scholarly articles, the first issues of Nature and Science were published in 1864 and 1880, respectively, and all academic articles from before 1880 fit in just a few volumes – a list of papers published in 1880 would fill only 100 pages2. Since then, the scientific publishing has grown considerably and today, a new paper is now published roughly every 20 seconds2. It is difficult to conceive this state of enormous overproduction?

To accommodate this overproduction, online journals were developed and the first online journals appeared in 1987–1989. Furthermore, the Director of the National Institutes of Health proposed an archive of free Biomed papers in 1999, and PubMed Central debuted in 20002. All of these innovative systems are very useful for researchers and clinicians, not only in the field of diabetes, but also in other academic areas, to publish their novel studies and to expose their studies to be seen and judged by many investigators. Moreover, news in Science reports that much of scientific publishing has been moving to Open Access since the advent of the Web. It is thought that Open Access reached a ‘tipping point’ around 20112. This tendency in the public publishing of scholarly articles is growing with increasing speed, contributing to spreading novel information rapidly and widely. It is the reason why any academic articles recorded in Open Access journals are recorded in PubMed and anyone can easily check and read new academic articles through PubMed. There are both advantages and disadvantages in everything. Open Access journals are no exception. Evaluation depends on the situation of authors or readers and my own views are summarized in Figure 1. I will leave it to your judgment as to whether you agree with my views or not.

Figure 1

To be an Open Access journal, or not to be: That is the question. As publishing of research in Open Access journals grows, there are some disadvantages and advantages, as shown in the figure.

Thus, based on this tendency in scientific publishing and the availability of research for authors and readers, JDI will convert to full Open Access from the first issue in 2014 (Vol. 5, Issue 1), hopefully resulting in much more exposure of either basic or clinical studies of diabetes in Asia to the rest of the world. This will reinforce the Aims and Scope of JDI in that ‘Translated research focused on the exchange of ideas between clinicians and researchers is welcome. Authors and readers from all countries are welcome’1. We hope our journal will continue to grow with Open Access, thus contributing to the development of diabetology and the improvement in quality of life for patients with diabetes.