Who reads the paper?
Authors: Andres T. Blei
Journal: Hepatology (2005)

As the current editorial team embarks on its last year of operation, I have chosen to complete a trilogy that dealt with ownership of data1 and authorship of articles2 by focusing now on you, the reader. The editors triage and select manuscripts, solicit review articles, and commission meeting reports with the hope that the written word is read. Is this the case? The world of scientific publication is undergoing a metamorphosis without a precise indication on what the final product will be. Looking at my desk, there is little doubt that something has to change. Weekly and monthly journals continue to accumulate at a never ending pace, waiting for that moment when I will be at leisure to read the fine articles each issue brings. That moment seldom arrives, the stack keeps growing until the moment of rupture is reached, when the pile is discarded and a new mound commences its burgeoning ascent. And if the complainant is the Editor, whom the AASLD allots a stipend in order to have time to read, busy academicians and clinicians are even more likely to drown under the same pile. A new mode of reading has been quickly adapted, based on the downloading of manuscripts from the web site. Since our publisher has kept track of the statistics, the number of downloads per month has reached a steady state, averaging ca. 44,000 “hits” a month. The web allows us to peek into the identities of the readers: 82% of successful downloads originate primarily from institutions while 18% from single individuals, be it a small library, a government office, or an AASLD member. For the downloads that come from institutions, Japan has 10% of the total, the rest of Asia 16%, America (North and South) 38%, EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) 34% and Oceania 3%. HEPATOLOGY, the journal of the AASLD, is also an international journal. When we examined the distribution of the top 20 downloaded articles in 2005, review articles and editorials figured prominently in the list. Such statistics highlight the educational role of a journal and is in accordance with the experience of other publications.3 Review articles are often cited, so is downloading a new metric to assess the impact of published articles? One journal noted no relation between downloads and citations of original research articles.4 As HEPATOLOGY has kept track of downloading since 2004, our own statistics will await another year in order to compare the individual citation index with the download “hits.” What will emerge from this new paradigm of readership? Will the monthly delivery of a colorfully covered journal become obsolete? These questions are posed at a time when the Open Access movement, based on the principle of web-based access, has had a measurable impact on the handling of manuscripts by all journals. In fact, an open access scenario is already evolving. Wren has recently shown that over a third of articles from high impact journals can be found at non-journal websites.5 A decentralized sharing of scientific reprints through the web is evolving and will have a profound impact on how journals are read. In keeping with this change, our publisher will implement a rolling 12-month open access for HEPATOLOGY in early 2006 under which, for example, the March 2005 issue will open online when the March 2006 issue is published. In addition, when this policy goes into effect past issues dating to January 1996 will also become fully available online to anyone worldwide seeking this content. As a new year begins, one of my usual resolutions is to keep the journal pile at a minimum. Increasingly, we will change the contents of the pile from journals to downloaded articles. Whether the latter are actually read is still another metric, one for Big Brother to fathom. I suspect a quick look at the abstract, tables, and figures will continue to be the usual pattern of reading. In the meantime, while the pace of discovery continues to accelerate, having time to read is a precious commodity. HEPATOLOGY, now in its 25th year, is worth the investment.