Behind the scenes: applying feedback

Elsevier’s Author Feedback Program (AFP) is a useful tool for monitoring how authors view your journal. The program is also useful because it can provide you, as an editor, with a starting point for any actions you decide to take to improve your journal or your authors’ experience of it.

Dr Per Morten Sandset is a specialist in hematology and a researcher at Ullevål University Hospital in Oslo, Norway as well as an editor of Thrombosis Research. Here, he discusses his work, his journal and how he uses the results provided by AFP.

Medical beginnings
A Norwegian native, Sandset started his medical education at the University of Oslo in 1975. Having qualified as an MD in 1981, he served as a physician in the Norwegian Armed Forces in 1983 and 1984. He then worked for five years as a senior lecturer of Internal Medicine at the Aker University Hospital, Oslo, and finished his doctoral degree in 1989. He spent one year as a visiting scholar in the Hematology and Oncology division at the University of California. He returned to Oslo to complete his training in internal medicine and hematology, again at the University of Oslo, and first starting working at Ullevål University Hospital as a Senior Consultant in Hematology and Head of the Hematological Research Laboratory in 1993.

2002 was an eventful year. Sandset not only became Assistant Director of the hospital’s Medical Division, he also took on the position of Professor of Hematology/Thrombosis and Hemostasis and went from being the Regional Editor of the Thrombosis Research journal to being the Executive Editor-in-Chief.

Sandset is married to Else, also a doctor, and has two children. As befits a man who devotes his life to the study of the heart, he keeps his own heart healthy by skiing and jogging.

Research with the patient in mind
Sandset continues to work at the Ullevål University Hospital, and is currently involved in clinical and epidemiological research relating to prophylaxis against and the treatment of thrombotic disorders, especially venous thrombosis and stroke. He is also involved in basic studies relating to how thrombosis is triggered.

Talking about his work, Sandset says, “I hope that my research will have positive implications for patients.” For example, in one study he and his colleagues investigated the effects of antithrombotic treatments in patients with acute stroke and atrial fibrillation (irregular heart rhythm). “We found that the anticoagulant heparin, administered by many centers worldwide, was not beneficial in such patients. As a result of this and other similar findings, treatment guidelines were later changed. In another study on the effects of postmenopausal estrogen therapy given to women at high risk of blood clots, we found that such therapy was associated with an unacceptably high risk of a recurrence of blood clots. Again, the findings of several other studies confirmed our results.”

He also anticipates that some of his studies that relate more to basic science may lead to the development of new targets for drug treatment and/or tailored treatment for individual patients.

Thrombosis Research
Sandset is Editor-in-Chief for Thrombosis Research, a journal that publishes 12 issues over two volumes every year. He works with a small team and is responsible for the Rest of the World, while two other editors-in-chief cover the Americas and reviews respectively. The journal also has an additional nine associate editors from different geographic areas.

“Our team is much more compact and, I think, efficient than it was a few years ago,” says Morten Sandset. “We used to publish 24 issues a year and we had nearly 50 editors working on the articles. It just didn’t work. In 2002, we made the decision to streamline our internal structure and modernize the journal, one of the results of which was to cut the numbers of issues per year by half.”

Thrombosis Research is an international journal that aims to rapidly disseminate new information on thrombosis, hemostasis and vascular biology to advance science and clinical care. The journal was founded in 1972, so will be celebrating its 35th birthday next year. In 2000, a special anniversary issue was produced to mark the publication of the journal’s 100th volume.

Making use of AFP
Sandset was asked about the eight attributes that authors can choose from when rating a journal in AFP and the importance that is attached to each of these attributes. With his own personal preferences in mind, Sandset said that he would rank Impact Factor most highly (1), followed by Publishing Services (2), Editor/Board (3), Refereeing Standard (4), Refereeing Speed (5), Reputation (6), Production Speed (7), with Physical Quality being the least important attribute (8).

However, he went on to say that if he had to rate his own journal based on how it performs against these eight attributes, his answers would be slightly different. In this case Editor/Board would come out on top (1), followed by Publishing Services (2), Physical Quality (3), Refereeing Standard (4), Refereeing Speed (5), Reputation (6), Impact Factor (7) and lastly Production Speed (8).

“At the moment, our journal has quite a backlog,” Sandset explains. “This means that although our editors are good, and we have been working heard on improving the speed and standard of our refereeing process, the fact that it can take 12 months if not more from the submission of an article to its publication, means that our production speed has not been at all good. Our aim is to get rid of the backlog and thus reduce the submission and review process to five or six months.”

An AFP report from September 2005 shows that Thrombosis Research is seen by authors as being above average in six of the eight attributes and below average in only two attributes: Impact Factor and Reputation, even though Reputation was listed as the third most important attribute when deciding to publish in the journal.

“Before 2002, we had so many issues to fill that the standard of some of the papers we accepted was definitely of poor quality. In addition, we are aware that our reputation is low because our impact factor is low,” says Sandset. “As result of the restructuring we initiated, the journal now has a high quality editorial board and the rejection figures for submissions have increased from below 30% to between 50-60%.”

In terms of further developments, Sandset concludes, “We plan to expand the journal to include an online companion and to publish more and better review articles. We are currently not the leading journal in our field but we have strong ambitions to be among the best two or three overall in the field in the coming years. I think that as a result of the changes and improvements we’ve made, based on what we know about how the journal is viewed, this is achievable.”

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