The Future of the Molecular Therapy Journal Family: Change Is Inevitable. Growth Is Optional.
Authors: Robert M. Frederickson
Journal: Molecular Therapy (2019)

As noted in last month’s editorial, the field of gene and cell therapy has evolved rapidly over the two decades since the founding of this journal, and the ambitious aims of the early leaders of the field are starting to become real treatment options for patients. This period has also been quite transformative for the field of scientific publishing. Molecular Therapy was launched in 1999 under a business model that had been standard over many decades: a printed journal with revenue largely generated from library subscriptions. This model was already coming under some pressure at the time, as journals were beginning to move online, library budgets were coming under pressure, and calls for open-access publishing were gaining traction. The launch publisher of Molecular Therapy was Academic Press, long since merged into Elsevier. Despite strong backing from the American Society for Gene and Cell Therapy (ASGCT) and its members, the early years were difficult ones from a business perspective, as the original plan for the journal was not particularly financially advantageous to ASGCT. Library subscriptions were based on the “Big Deal” model whereby the journal was offered to libraries as part of a consortium of the publisher’s journal portfolio, but accorded only a small fraction of the resulting revenue in a manner unlinked to actual usage. However, in 2006, under the leadership of then Editor-in-Chief (EIC) David Williams, Molecular Therapy was taken on by Nature Publishing Group (NPG) as a stand-alone journal under a business model whereby its commercial value reflected its usage and, by then, leading position—based on impact factor (IF)—among a handful of journals focused on gene therapy research. The latter event, in my view, was the most transformative for the journal as it put it on a financially viable path forward working with a “top shelf” publisher, which helped cement the journal’s reputation and, importantly, provided ASGCT greater resources to fund its various projects. It also laid the groundwork for the next key event in the evolution of what has since become the Molecular Therapy family of journals: the launch of the new “sibling” journals under a complementary business model. As noted above, there has been a grass roots push for the results of publicly funded research to be freely available, and various jurisdictions have put measures in place to promote and/or mandate this. Publishers have responded by opening up greater access to their portfolios following defined embargo windows, commonly a year, but also by investing in open access publishing platforms and business models. It was clear that ASGCT also needed to adapt to these changes in science publishing, and, in 2011, under the leadership of then-EIC Malcolm Brenner, plans were approved with NPG to launch our first open access sibling journal, Molecular Therapy - Nucleic Acids (MTNA), in January 2012. John Rossi graciously agreed to serve as founding EIC of this new project. While growth was slow at first, MTNA has been embraced by the community, with a healthy IF and surging submissions. The launch of the next two siblings, Molecular Therapy - Methods & Clinical Development (MTMCD) and Molecular Therapy - Oncolytics (MTO), was delayed owing to logistical issues at NPG, but both eventually appeared in 2014. Under the guidance of EICs Roland Herzog and Yuman Fong, respectively, MTMCD and MTO have similarly been embraced by the community and are also seeing strong growth in submissions and heavy usage. Beginning in 2016, we saw a greater number of papers published in the open access sibling journals than in Molecular Therapy itself, and, this year, we will likely publish twice as many in the siblings as in our flagship journal. This has allowed the journal family to rapidly grow its “market share” while simultaneously allowing us to be a bit more selective at Molecular Therapy itself, with a view to further improving the IF. Despite all of the talk of the imminent demise of the primacy of the IF over our first two decades, it appears to me that it remains as important as ever, at least for the research communities we serve. All of our journals are expected to see a healthy increase in IF this year. So, as we close our first two decades, what is on the horizon for the journal group? In 2016, under the leadership of EIC Seppo Yla-Herttuala, we moved to Cell Press, which has maintained the high standards of our predecessor publishing partners while growing the usage of our journals. Certainly, the business of science publishing continues to evolve and we must continue to adapt. Open access publishing is becoming the new normal. Preprint servers, such as Bioarchiv, are rapidly growing in usage, and ASGCT and our publishing partner must adapt our practices to accommodate them. China’s rise as an economic powerhouse shows no sign of abating, and we have seen rapid and significant growth in submissions from research groups in China. We must therefore ensure we have the proper resources to maintain our standards of speed and quality of review despite the large increase in submissions from a region of the world with whose research community we are less familiar. In response, each journal will be adding Deputy Editors based in China throughout this year to help manage this increased workload. Finally, periods of change can produce great challenges, but, as we have seen over the past two decades, they can also afford great opportunity. The journal group must ensure that we continue to identify and embrace the opportunities afforded us as the science publishing landscape continues to change and evolve.