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REPORT OF THE BOARD 2007
25.09.2007
INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY OF ADDICTION JOURNAL EDITORS:
REPORT OF THE BOARD 2007
The activities of ISAJE this year can be summarized
as follows:
1. Management and Organisation of ISAJE
1.1 Board meetings
The ISAJE board has had five telephone conferences during
the course of the year, 16 October 2006, 8 January 2007, 12
March 2007, 14 May 2007, and 16 July 2007, and there will
be a face-to face meeting on 28 September 2007 immediately
prior to the annual meeting of the society.
1.2 Structure for board responsibilities
A work structure was initiated by the President at the beginning
of his term of office and a schedule on the website shows
the board members and their responsibilities for the full
range of ISAJE activities (see attachment).
1.3 Finances of the organisation
There has been steady improvement in the financial status
of ISAJE but it has not yet been sufficient to fully cover
the costs of the executive officer's time (at half a day per
week). ISAJE is reimbursing Addiction by means of phased payments
over three years and 2008 will see the society meeting the
whole of the costs from accumulated funds and ongoing income
received from membership fees and sponsorship. The current
sponsorship programme by publishers which ends this year has
been immensely valuable in giving us some financial stability
and enabling us to plan ahead to pursue an ambitious programme
of activities.
1.4 Membership recruitment
In the ten years since its incorporation, ISAJE membership
has risen slowly but steadily and now stands at 55 full members
and 2 associate members, representing 41 journals and associations.
Personal contacts have been made with editors at conferences
and through informal networks and where new editors of journals
have been appointed they have usually agreed to join. A new
category of corporate membership is available for organisations
such as publishers that are sympathetic to ISAJE's aims and
we hope that our publishing colleagues will wish to sign up
in token of their continuing and much valued support.
1.5 The websites www.isaje.net and www.parint.org
The ISAJE website has been remodelled during the course of
the year and a members' only section has been introduced.
Current content includes a list of members' email and postal
addresses; last year's conference presentations; and restricted
circulation documents intended to benefit members, such as
a report by Gerhard Bühringer and the Access and Dissemination
of Information group on 10 major abstracting and indexing
databases and two citation analysis systems.
Parint.org, Publishing Addiction Research Internationally,
the NIDA-funded website developed and managed by ISAJE, has
increased its content significantly during the year. It hosts,
among others, the self-guided tutorial described elsewhere
in this report; a support paper for peer reviewers and the
reviewer database, which will be of benefit to ISAJE editors
looking to enhance their own lists of reviewers and to support
researchers in low and middle income countries by using their
expertise as reviewers.
Ian Stolerman will be stepping down this year
as development manager of the parint
website. The society is in his debt for the enormous amount
of work he has done to get the website established and to
secure funding for its first three years of operation.
1.6 Office location and administrative support
The executive officer has announced her intention to step
down in September 2008 and the management board is addressing
the matter of future location of the ISAJE office and arrangements
for ongoing administrative support as the society moves into
its second decade.
2. Work programme in the past 12 month
On the 2006 meeting in Helsinki quality assurance
was adopted by the members as the work programme for the current
precedence two year term. This will also be the major theme
for the meeting in Dresden.
2.1 Quality assurance
" … to promote excellence in the communication and
dissemination of information on addiction and related sciences
…" is a major part of the mission statement. ISAJE´s
work in the last 10 years follows directly this mission statement
and can be summarised under the general topic of quality assurance.
This term covers activities in the field of quality guidelines,
quality improvement and quality control.
2.2 Quality guidelines
This field of work was the focus of activities in the past
years. The Farmington Consensus, the Ethical Guidelines and
the book Publishing addiction science were the first activities
of ISAJE.
In the past 12 months members worked on workshop
guidelines and on ethical guidelines for publishers. New areas
like a nomenclature and terminology working group, will be
discussed during the meeting. PAS 2: A decision was taken
at the 2006 annual meeting to publish a revised and expanded
edition of Publishing Addiction Science. Specifically, the
editors were encouraged to update and revise each of the existing
chapters and commission a set of new chapters that will considerably
expand the scope of the book. The lengthy appendices will
be removed to the society's website where they can be kept
more easily updated. The UK Society for the Study of Addiction
has made a generous grant towards the production of the new
edition, which it is hoped will be ready for launch at the
ISAJE annual meeting in Maine in September 2008.
2.3 Quality improvement
An ISAJE workshop for young authors was the first activity
to improve publishing quality in our field. During our meetings
it's a long standing tradition to discuss ethical dilemmas
in small working groups to improve our sensibility for ethical
problems and our range of handling options.
In the past 12 months several new activities
have been developed or planned in this field. A first version
of a self-guided online tutorial for authors is available.
We established the ISAJE Young Scholars' Award and announced
the first winner, and established the basis for a mentoring
programme for authors. New possible activities like a mentor
system for new editors and the need for a positive author
statement will be discussed during this meeting.
Online Tutorial: To make learning opportunities
more easily available to young investigators, an on-line tutorial
has been developed based on chapters from the first edition
of the book. A pilot version of the tutorial has been posted
on www.parint.org,
the NIDA-funded website managed by ISAJE. Five modules are
operational and we have begun to advertise its availability
to constituency groups. Once the new chapters have been added
to the second edition of Publishing Addiction Science, it
is intended to expand the tutorial to include further modules.
Support activities targeted at researchers in
LAMI countries: ISAJE's efforts in this direction, led by
board member Isidore Obot, are coming to fruition. It is pleasing
to announce the first winner of the ISAJE Young Scholars Award,
Dr Jaeuk Hwang, a research scientist from Korea, who receives
the award for a paper published in Drug and Alcohol Dependence
on decreased cerebral blood flow in former methamphetamine
users. Dr Hwang will receive his prize at an international
scientific meeting to be held during 2008.
A reviewer database to broaden international
participation in the peer review process has been set up and
will shortly be made accessible to ISAJE members via the parint.org
website.
Two board members met Dr Steven Gust, director
of NIDA's international program, during the summer and discussed
their ideas for a mentoring programme for authors which will
go into initial development shortly. It is pleasing to announce
that ISAJE has just signed a contract with NIDA for a third
year's funding which will enable these online resources to
be refined and further developed. Most significantly, work
will begin on a mentoring system targeted at enterprising
investigators working in environments without a history of
relevant research.
2.4 Quality control
ISAJE did not engage in that field of quality assurance up
to now. We ask new members to sign the Farmington consensus,
but we do not check if the different working guidelines have
been fulfilled. We will discuss during this meeting if, and
if "yes" how, ISAJE should step into the work of
quality control. Based on the recent contacts of the president
to data base and indexing systems during the last 12 months
it might be a possible strategy in order to help our member
journals to be better covered by these systems.
Gerhard Bühringer
On behalf of the ISAJE board
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