1:30min
Emeritus Professor Leo Carney
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By Sandra Shaw
National Communications Manager
Optometry Australia members are being surveyed as part of a major review of Clinical and Experimental Optometry.
A review committee has been established under the chairmanship of Emeritus Professor Leo Carney, who is also chairman of the journal’s Editorial Board. The committee will report its findings and recommendations to the Optometry Australia National Board.
The review will consider the aims of the journal and how the aims can be met in the most relevant and cost-effective way for members of Optometry Australia. It will consider the content, operations and management of the journal.
The views and comments of all stakeholders are being sought. These include the international Editorial Board, heads of optometry schools, reviewers, authors, Optometry Australia’s State Organisations, and professional association partners in New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore.
Some face-to-face interviews have been conducted but the gathering of evidence is primarily taking place through electronic surveys.
The previous major review of the journal was conducted in 1999 by Emeritus Professor Barry Cole, who served as chairman of the Editorial Board from 2000 to 2015. Emeritus Professor Barry Collin has been editor of the journal since 1993. Both have given outstanding leadership, service and dedication to our journal.
Digital channels
In 2016, Clinical and Experimental Optometry moved to digital-only publication, keeping pace with the demand for fast-moving and well-connected electronic communications. The world’s other top optometry journals, Ophthalmic and Physiological Optics and Optometry and Vision Science, moved to digital-only publication at about the same time.
Readers are increasingly asking for convenient access to communications anywhere and at any time. The Wiley Online Library and App for iPad provide this access, with significant viewing benefits that the printed issue cannot deliver.
Optometry Australia members now have direct and easy access to the Wiley website. They must first Register and Affiliate on the website in a once-only process but will then enjoy immediate access to the journal with a one-click login every time they visit the site. There is no need to remember a username and password.
About 200,000 articles were downloaded from the journal’s website last year.
Wiley Online Library Login Instructions
A contents alert email is sent each issue to all members, and to 1,000 academics and researchers in optometry and vision science worldwide.
Clicking on a link in the journal’s email alert will take a member directly to a published paper with full open access, once the member has registered on the Wiley website. Members have welcomed the convenience this service delivers.
Achievements
We can be proud of Clinical and Experimental Optometry‘s achievements since 2000, when a large and prestigious international Editorial Board was established to guide the journal’s development.
The journal became abstracted by PubMed and is listed on the ISI Web of Knowledge. It is now ranked 39/57 in ophthalmology with an impact factor of 1.343.
From its inception in 1919 until 2005, the journal had been published in-house by Optometry Australia, along with Australian Optometry and various magazine supplements. In 2006, publication of the journal was transferred to Blackwell, which was later acquired by John Wiley, to harness the prestige and influence that a global publishing house can bring.
The New Zealand Association of Optometrists became a partner in 2001, the Hong Kong Society of Professional Optometrists in 2002 and the Singapore Optometric Association in 2012. All support the journal with subscriptions on behalf of their members.
Apart from being available to the members of the four professional associations, the journal is purchased by about 5,000 institutions worldwide. Access is extended to another 4,000 institutions in developing nations at low cost or no cost under Wiley’s philanthropic initiatives.
In 2017, the journal will mark the publication of 100 volumes since its establishment in 1919. A remarkable archive repository is located on the Wiley website, where all issues of the journal since its inception are available.
Members are encouraged to voice their opinions by participating in the survey. In planning the future of Clinical and Experimental Optometry, it is important for us to know members’ views.