ST. LOUIS — It’s been eight months since Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, a basic internist, cardiovascular researcher, and epidemiologist turned the seventeenth editor in chief of the Journal of the American Medical Affiliation and its community of journals. Bibbins-Domingo, who beforehand labored on the College of California, San Francisco, was named this week as a member of the 2023 STATUS Record of individuals making a distinction in well being care and life sciences.
She lately spoke on the annual convention of the Affiliation of Well being Care Journalists, in St. Louis, the place STAT’s Usha Lee McFarling sat down along with her to study extra in regards to the modifications she’s applied on the journal, together with a brand new open entry coverage. Below this coverage, most JAMA articles stay accessible solely to subscribers, however authors can publicly publish their manuscripts the day they’re revealed, and they don’t seem to be charged open entry charges as many journals do. Bibbins-Domingo additionally spoke about what lies forward for JAMA.
This interview has been edited and condensed for readability.
I’ll begin by asking how issues are going at JAMA and what your largest challenges have been, apart from adapting to the Chicago winter.
It’s a really massive change. I knew that this was going to be a giant studying expertise. What I’ve began with is determining the logistics, and likewise fascinated by how a company that has executed issues in a really robust method, for a really very long time — we’re 140 years outdated this 12 months — can change in an setting that’s quickly altering.
What’s been a very powerful focus for you?
We’re asking ourselves what are the problems on the forefront of medication and the way does JAMA keep not solely related to these points, however deliver these points to gentle for our readers? How can we guarantee that many various voices and views could be discovered on our pages? We’re asking, how does this community of journals maintain tempo with the instances and actually shine a light-weight on a very powerful points in medication?
You had been chosen to steer JAMA after an issue over how the journal dealt with the problem of structural racism in medication, which is one thing many journals are confronting. You’ve since introduced various new hires and variety editors at every journal. What are these editors bringing to the publication course of?
All of our journals have an editor targeted on problems with fairness, variety, and inclusion and so they work in numerous methods. These editors are a part of the editorial staff that’s reviewing papers, however they’ve a specific lens or perspective they may deliver to these papers. When we’ve a manuscript, we wish to put science in context with an editorial, and so they can play a task within the essential alternative of who writes these editorials. We’re additionally launching applications to deliver extra folks in to be a part of our editorial groups via fellowships and these editors have an essential position in shaping these applications.
The problem for fairness for me is just not that one particular person ought to maintain that for the group, but it surely needs to be the strategy the whole group takes. What these editors do is assist take into consideration that. Over time, you’ll see these editors considering throughout the journals and writing about what we at medical journals can do higher on this space. You’ll see us constructing on the ability of getting 13 or 14 folks fascinated by this.
Open entry is a large concern in scientific publishing proper now. You’ve known as broad entry a “cornerstone of transparency” that’s essential to belief in science. Are you able to clarify JAMA’s new coverage and the way it was developed?
Scientific findings have to be obtainable to as broad an viewers as doable to allow scientists to do higher experiments and translate science into enhancements in well being. The motion behind open science is about that. Because it seems, with most issues, this includes that folks pay for what makes this data nice — journals vetting the content material and conveying it in a number of codecs to achieve readers, for instance. I don’t wish to stand in opposition to open science.
So what we determined as a journal was that authors, on the day we publish their work, could make their work obtainable to any public repository and publish it. So if you wish to discover the outcomes of an article and also you’re in a rustic or at an establishment that doesn’t subscribe to our journals, you’ll be able to nonetheless discover that science as a result of it’s obtainable in a public repository. This choice is rooted within the ideas of what’s good for science and it’s rooted in fairness, frankly, as a result of not all establishments, and never all folks, have a subscription to JAMA.
This public entry strategy can be rooted within the ideas of fairness of who can publish. Open entry has targeted on principally ensuring there’s fairness in what’s accessible to learn, however that’s on the backs of generally very excessive charges that authors pay to publish in open entry journals. What we’re saying is we imagine in open entry — and likewise imagine within the worth of what we do. We nonetheless assume folks pays to subscribe to JAMA as a result of there may be worth within the closing model of report, the graphics editors making the figures, the podcasts, the corrections that get posted as a result of issues do change over time, that’s what that subscription is shopping for you, all of these items.
However we are able to’t have open entry charges put publishing out of attain for authors that may be early-career, or in disciplines or at establishments that aren’t as well-funded. We’re actually happy that the Nationwide Institutes of Well being simply introduced and posted for public remark that that is the strategy they’re contemplating for all funded researchers within the NIH.
I’d additionally prefer to ask you about one other subject that has some editors quaking of their boots: ChatGPT and different AI instruments in publishing.
I’ve to say there’s plenty of expertise that comes throughout and we consider it as a basic shift and an existential menace, however I view plenty of these as instruments. In a lot of what we do as scientists, as publishers, as clinicians, we’d like to have the ability to discover methods to entry data higher and these are instruments that look like useful. I don’t assume it’s helpful to ban a software that’s going to fill a necessity, however I do assume we’ve to ask what it means for us.
Apparently ChatGPT is already listed as an writer in PubMed, as a result of persons are already utilizing it inside simply weeks of its announcement. So we needed to be very clear: No, ChatGPT can’t be an writer. Solely people could be authors. If authors use these instruments, they’ve to inform us. That’s what we are saying for any instruments, like statistical applications — it’s important to inform us in the event you use them. And also you’re accountable for them. ChatGPT could also be filling a distinct segment however it’s clearly not the skilled within the subject we anticipate authors to be that publish with us. The writer takes duty for what’s revealed on the web page, so if this software is used, the writer in the end takes duty for it.
My final query is in the event you can provide us any glimpses of what could also be forward, or new, for JAMA. What’s one thing new your subscribers could also be seeing quickly?
There are plenty of points associated to the conduct of science. We expect our duty is to be a spot the place a few of the controversies and large dilemmas in how science is presently being carried out could be mentioned. We wish to have these conversations in our journal and we wish to have them in particular person. You’ll see us having extra convenings, you’ll see us offering a discussion board for a number of factors of view. Covid confirmed us how nice our scientific discoveries could be when it comes to translation to well being but additionally how they’re not fairly retaining tempo. They don’t occur fairly quick sufficient, they don’t occur to assist me to know a difficulty for the affected person in entrance of me. You see plenty of introspection now about how science is funded, the way it’s regulated, the way it’s carried out, and we as a journal wish to be a house for convening and having these discussions.