RESTON, Va.-- SNM's flagship Journal of Nuclear Medicine and the Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology have moved to an open access publishing model, providing free, full-text online articles 12 months after publication.

"This represents a significant step toward maximum dissemination of significant, scholarly, peer-reviewed research of interest to the nuclear medicine, molecular imaging, and therapy community," said SNM President Martin P. Sandler, the associate vice chancellor for hospital affairs for Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn. "JNM--with its worldwide circulation and high impact and immediacy factors--is considered the most important and influential international journal in molecular imaging and therapy and nuclear medicine," said Sandler, who speaks for 16,000 physician, technologist and scientist society members. "Such unrestricted access to scientific knowledge is bound to have a major impact on medical practice and on promoting the benefits of molecular imaging and therapy," added Sandler. "This move coincides with the society's recent announcement of redefining its core mission `to improve health care by advancing molecular imaging and therapy,'" he added.

"With digital open access, users are free to read, download, copy, distribute and print articles--with proper acknowledgement and citation," said Heinrich R. Schelbert, JNM's editor in chief. "This action speeds the delivery of important developments and innovations that significantly impact disease recognition, staging and management, thus expanding its audience to include medical researchers, physicians, technologists, other health care providers, patients and their advocates, students and the global public," said Schelbert, professor of molecular and medical pharmacology at the University of California at Los Angeles and the George V. Taplin professor at the university's David Geffen School of Medicine.

"With this action, accessibility to journal articles continues to remain high," said Beth A. Harkness, JNMT editor. "The Internet provides an economical and efficient conduit for delivery of important information," indicated Harkness, a physicist in the radiology department of the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, Mich.

Since 1960, the monthly JNM has covered a broad spectrum of subjects from basic science and chemistry investigations to clinical studies, molecular biology, therapies, and advanced technologies, along with continuing medical education articles, invited perspectives and commentaries, procedure guidelines, book reviews and professional news. JNM's articles are consistently ranked among the world's most cited medical imaging research, and it is in the top 5 percent of other publications in its category and the more than 6,000 publications rated by the Thomson Institute for Scientific Information's Journal Citation Report.

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