[Ed. We recently learned from the George Maldonado, University of Minnesota epidemiologist and editor-in-chief of Epidemiologic Perspectives and Innovations (EP&I) that the journal would cease publication. According to Maldonado, “the journal will stop being published by BioMed Central as of March 30, 2012 because we do not publish enough articles to fit their business model.”

We were surprised by the news and wondered how Emerging Themes in Epidemiology (ETE), a second online epidemiology journal launched at the same time and published by BioMed Central was faring. These were the only exclusively online journals we knew about in epidemiology and we were curious about the state of online publication of epidemiology journals. We contacted the editors and asked them to reply to a common set of questions to help readers understand the current situation. What emerges is a contrasting but always interesting set of perspectives on epidemiology in 2012.

The first interview published below is from the editors of EP&I (George Maldonado [GM]and Carl Phillips [CVP], former professor now operating a private, academic-style epidemiology and economics research shop called Populi Health Institute. This is followed by comments from the team of editors of Emerging Themes in Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine [LSHTM] ((Peter Smith, Clarence Tam, Ben Lopman, and Anita Ramesh)

First Interview

Editors of Epidemiologic Perspectives and Innovations

EM: When was the journal launched?

GM: September 2004

EM: Have the editors been the same since then?

GM: The Editor in Chief was originally Carl, then I joined him as co-editor-in-chief in April 2007, and then Carl left it entirely in June 2010. We are currently discussing how to possibly continue it under a different publishing model.  I would be in charge, and Carl is considering joining me in a co-chief type role.

The original editorial board consisted of a group of well-known and impressive senior and junior epidemiologists.  Over the years, it evolved toward less involvement by most of them, with a few younger scholars really being the supporting editors.

Hopes and Expectations

EM:  How has the journal lived up and fallen short of your hopes and expectations?

CVP:  The quality of the journal was great.  I genuinely believe that the average quality of the articles, in terms of value and scientific legitimacy, was the highest of any journal in the field.  Of course, it was biased toward that by being designed to capture what we thought were critical aspects of epidemiology that no one else would publish because they deviated too much from business as usual.  However, part of the reason for the high average quality was low volume.  When I started this, I had the notion that there was a huge backlog of ideas that were ideal for this journal because I heard so many of them from our colleagues. Unfortunately, many of those just never appeared -- not in EP&I or anywhere else.  Sadly, even among those who really want to help push the field away from where it seems to have been stuck since well before I joined it, there is not really much incentive to spend one's time that way.

GM: Authors from "subscriber" institutions could publish in EP&I at no charge. Authors from non-subscriber institutions are charged a publication fee that has increased over the years and is currently at $1700. That is a steep price for the kind of papers that EP&I hoped to publish---methodological work that often has no grant support. Over time, fewer institutions subscribed to BioMed Central, and consequently a rising proportion of authors faced this publication cost. I believe this has been a significant disincentive to submit to EP&I. And over time, as BMC was sold and it's business model evolved, BMC decided that they are not interested in publishing small-volume journals like EP&I. 

The Future