Things Can Only Get Better

This wasn't the track/vid that I was looking for (as an introduction) but since Howard Jones et al provided much inspiration to me as a musician in the past, I pasted it in.




Two new-ish fab Open Access Journals to blog about c/o BioMed Central.

Journal of Medical Case Reports (JMCR)

Video Introduction from Editor-in-Chief, Prof Michael Kidd

and sister publication

Cases Journal

Video Introduction from Editor-in-Chief, Prof Richard Smith

In light of McDawg's ongoing interest in Patient Advocacy and Open Access - these are most certainly worth spreading the word about.

To me, this very much ties in with the likes of PatientsLikeMe and similar entities like Health 2.0 and Sermo where web 2.0 concepts come to fruition.

From the Cases blog:-

The patient’s perspective: What are they so excited about?

"..a great cutting-edge idea!” – Robert Dellavalle MD, PhD, MSPH

“a welcome idea that chimes well with other initiatives around the world - this is a great idea from JMCR” – Professor Robert Hunter BSc, MBChB, MD, FRCPsych

“a great addition to JMCR” – Christian A. Koch, MD, PhD, FACP, FACE

“..a fantastic idea… looking forward to see how it develops” - Jean Karl Soler MD MSc MMCFD

More under the fold.


Why do we need Cases Journal?

"...There are then more frivolous - but still important - reasons for encouraging mass publication of case reports. Doctors - just like everybody else - relate more to stories than they do to statistics and abstractions. Successful politicians understand this well - eschewing complicated numbers for powerful human stories. And this is the age of Web 2.0 and Facebook. We are fed up listening to experts and watching the same old television channels. We want to create our own material, live in a bottom up rather than a top down world. That's perhaps why our sister journal and Sermo, "a practicing [online] community of 50,000 physicians [in the US] who exchange clinical insights, observations, and review cases in real time - all the time", are doing so well [18]. Here on our site everybody who sees a patient - and everybody who is a patient (that's everybody) - can contribute. We urge you to do so. Let's see if we can create something exciting, special, new, fun, and useful."


Kudos to Michael and Richard.

Comment - There is (of course) a heck of a lot more to Open Access than just Health related issues. McDawg however is personally attuned to this objective area - hence this particular post.