The Acta Clinica Belgica: a new publishing policy.

Norbert Lameire, Joris Delanghe, Mirko Petrovic

In their  editorial of 2011 1, the editors described some of the problems of the journal related to a progressive decline in individual subscriptions and advertising and the associated fall in financial income of the journal. The efforts to increase the awareness of subspecialties of internal medicine to join the Acta for publishing their papers in one common journal were disappointedly unsuccessful. 
 Confronted with these increasing difficulties to maintain a scientifically attractive journal that at same time remained financially alive the editors and the supporting societies have fnow decided that we  should move to a more “modern” editing  and publishing policy aiming at making the   journal more “up to date” and attractive to a younger and more “electronically minded” author and readership.  One way to substantially reduce the financial burden on the journal and its societies is moving away of the printing and postal distribution costs and replacing it by  an “online only” publication of the journal.
After 2 years of exploring several possibilities the editors and the societies, owning the journal are pleased to announce a partnership with Maney Publishing to publish Acta Clinica Belgica on behalf of the the Belgian Society of Internal Medicine, the Belgian Society for Clinical Biology and the Belgian Society of Clinical Chemistry from 2014. 

Maney is an independent publishing company with a diverse and growing list of journals in health sciences and clinical medicine, and so Acta Clinica Belgica will complement and encompass their portfolio nicely. Maney is an international company and has offices in Leeds and London in the UK, and Philadelphia in North America; as well as local sales representation across the globe. Maney focuses on the publication and dissemination of high quality, peer-reviewed scientific research. For more information on the titles published by Maney, visit www.maneypublishing.com/health. 

In addition to publishing its own journals, Maney works closely with professional societies and institutions throughout the world. Its international reach, online publishing technologies, and experience in the publishing of research journals in healthcare will undoubtedly benefit our journal. In the immediate future, the journal will benefit from their online submission and peer-review system (Editorial Manager) which will be available to submitting authors from late October. 

Maney has introduced the Maney Online Research E-journals (MORE) licensing options in order to meet customers’ needs for stable pricing models that reduce the unit cost of information, while at the same time expanding access to a wider range of electronic content.. Maney also licenses its journals electronically via consortium purchasing groups and content aggregators such as EBSCOHost, reaching over 8,000 institutions worldwide, including many scholars at institutions in the developing world.

Acta Clinica Belgica’s current and archived content will be hosted on Maney’s new online platform, Maney Online, from 2014. The new online platform will offer advanced search and browse capabilities, and tailored article recommendations. Current content will be published in Full-Text HTML as well as PDF. Under Maney’s Advance Articles system, final typeset articles can be published online, prior to inclusion in an issue. Readers will be able to sign up to receive contents alerts and RSS feeds, free of charge, which will inform them of new content as soon as an issue is available. 

Maney’s web-based production tracking system, ManeyTrack, will allow authors and editors to check on the production status of their articles using a unique ID for login. The system provides key dates for authors (e.g., when proofs are due) and live information for editors (e.g., the number of budgeted pages remaining in the volume). ManeyTrack also enables author purchases of press-quality offprints and issue copies, as well as Open Access payments when required or requested.
Institutional subscribers will receive the journal in print and online or online only, and Society members will be able to access the journal online only from Maney Online.
We look forward to taking the journal to the next level of international dissemination, online usage, and citation. 

This change to an online only publishing policy will in no way modify the independence of the editorial board, the reviewing process and all other advantages of the journal, like citation in PubMed, and the impact factor. We predict that this new electronic submission and reviewing system, together with the introduction of advanced access will allow a substantial shortening of the time from acceptance to publication. 

To achieve greater international dissemination and to increase our international attractiveness 
Acta Clinical Belgica will also introduce  a subtitle, i.e. “International  Journal of Clinical and Laboratory Medicine”  and will ask more international reviewers to evaluate the content of the submitted manuscripts.

We do hope that besides an international readership also our Belgian specialists and our trainees in clinical and laboratory medicine will continue to support this initiative by continuing to submit their best original and educational work to the “new” journal.

The editors sincerely thank the boards of the respective societies for their understanding and continuous support of the journal.
Last but not least, we are very grateful to Peeters Publishers company, Leuven who have always been extremely cooperative with the editorial office in ensuring the production and  publication of a high quality printed product.  It has been a privilege to work together with such a professional company.

1.	Lameire,N, Delanghe,J., Petrovic,M. Acta Clinical Belgica: same goal, new means.
Acta Clin Belgica, 2011, 66: 1.