Adapting to the Changing Landscape of Open Access Medical Publishing at JAMA Network Open | Medical Journals and Publishing | JAMA Network Open | JAMA Network

"The mission of JAMA Network Open will remain unchanged: “to improve health, health care, and health equity worldwide through open access dissemination of high quality, innovative, general medical research and commentary by and for a broad range of clinicians, researchers, policy makers, and public health and health care leaders.”⁵ In pursuit of this, JAMA Network Open will continue evolving to meet the challenges facing large-volume but selective, high-quality, open-access publications.

One of the first challenges we will face is that by the end of 2025, all US tax-payer–funded papers may be required to be published immediately with free public access, which is a change from the current 1-year embargo policy.⁶ Funder and governmental policies regarding open access are shifting worldwide. How journals respond to these policies could alter where authors send their manuscripts. In addition, deceptive practices and misinformation threaten the integrity of scholarly publishing and science on large scales.⁷ To meet these challenges and the competitive medical publishing landscape, which includes preprint and other repositories, I remain committed to upholding editorial standards and providing the highest-quality peer review possible.

Equitably reviewing more than 15 000 annual submissions is an immediate challenge. To address this issue, our 2 newly promoted deputy editors will assist with initial editorial review and triage of manuscripts. Likewise, we are hiring additional associate editors to expand the depth and breadth of our editorial team—our aim in doing so is to allocate additional time to individual manuscripts. In addition, we will collaborate with JAMA Network to identify ways we can use technology to assist with editorial and peer review. The focus of this collaboration will be to reduce potential bias in editorial decisions and the time burden inherent in any review process. Another way to increase the quality and fairness of our review process is by growing the networks we rely on for external peer review. There are highly qualified groups that have traditionally been left on the sidelines during peer review processes, and we welcome their participation...."