Philippe Boucher's Rendez Vous Simon Chapman
Rendez-vous with Simon Chapman
By Philippe Boucher
>
Rendez-vous with Simon Chapman Editor of Tobacco Control
Thank you Simon for accepting our " rendez-vous ".
May I ask you to introduce yourself ?
Hi: I'm an Associate Professor in Public Health & Community Medicine at the University of Sydney.
I've worked in tobacco control since 1978.
My 1984 Ph.D. was on the semiotics of cigarette advertising and my books include:
Over our dead bodies:Gun law reform after Port Arthur (Sydney:Pluto 1998);
The Last Right? Australians take sides on the right to die (Sydney:Mandarin 1995);
The Fight for Public Health:Principles and Practice of Media Advocacy (BMJ Books 1994 with Deborah Lupton);
Tobacco in the Third World : a resource Atlas (International Organisation of Consumers' Unions 1990)
Great Expectorations: Advertising and the tobacco industry (London:Comedia, 1986);
and The Lung Goodbye: tactics for counteracting the tobacco industry in the 1980s (IOCU 1983).
I've been a member of the Governing Council of the Australian Consumers'
Association since 1982 and am currently chairman.
I also chair Australian ASH.
I am editor of the British Medical Journal's specialist journal, Tobacco Control, after working as deputy editor under Ron Davis since 1992
Since 1991 I've run dozens of training workshops in Australia, the United States and Great Britain in media advocacy for public health.
I was a key member of the Coalition for Gun Control which won the 1996 Australian community Human Rights award.
First question : Yesterday was cyberday for the Tobacco Control magazine at www.tobaccocontrol.com but can you first tell us about the "print version", what role do you envision for such a magazine at the start of the 21st century?
Why should globalinkers become subscribers if they are not already?
It's interesting that you call Tobacco Control a "magazine". The editors who produce it have always thought of is as a scholarly journal blended with lots of leading edge commentary, news analysis and illustrations.
>From that perspective, it has some of the look of a magazine that you'd buy at a newsstand -- and this is important because it reflects the very visual nature of much of tobacco marketing which of course we cover extensively in the journal.
While the content of the print & e-Tc is exactly the same, the two media obviously have different uses.
The print version is better for reading in bed, passing around to colleagues and having as an at-a-glance repository of high quality research.
But there is a worldwide trend for libraries to be cutting their subscriptions to small circulation specialist journals.
Around 40% of Tobacco Control's circulation is private, so like all journals, we rely very much on institutional subscriptions.
This suggests that the paper version may have a limited life unless we can lift private subscriptions.
The journal Nature published a large and persuasive analysis of the future of medical publishing earlier this year and argued that the "writing is on the net" for small print journals.
Going electronic, as we have done, is critical to survival as many libraries now subscribe to "aggregator" services which sell package deals to on-line access to lots of journals: if you're not included in these, you can become vulnerable.
I confidently predict a good future for print journals which are a "good read" -- which all our reader feedback says that Tobacco Control most definitely is!
We have been fortunate in getting a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to assist us in increasing our subscriptions. We expect to be working very closely with Globalink, the UICC, and several US tobacco control networks to do this.
"Why should globalinkers become subscribers if they are not already?"
Tobacco Control is the main research and policy journal in our field.
It really has become essential reading for anyone wanting to be up with the latest developments and synthesis of information.
Other fields in public health such as nutrition, drugs, alcohol, occupational health, infectious disease etc have lots more journals that publish specialist research in these fields.
We are fond of saying that tobacco is the single leading cause of death ...
yet remain a relatively small branch of public health compared to other fields.
And we are still a quarterly ...not a bi-monthly or monthly like many journals.
If everyone on Globalink could persuade their organisations to take out a subscription, we would be in much healthier shape and might be able to consider coming out more often.
2. You know my feeling that the subscription price is too high. I already received one enthusiastic e-mail from a friend boasting that the site was free (at least until January 1st). Aren't there ways to bring the price down?
Could not you get more financial support from institutions and advertisers so that the price could be lower?
Is that a concern at all for you and the rest of the managers/editors?
This year, our Department was asked to vote on cutting 20% of journal titles from our medical library.
We were given a list of all journals and their subscription costs.
Believe me Philippe, Tobacco Control is not expensive compared to many other journals.
It is not uncommon to have subscription fees over $1000/pa. Journals such as BMJ, JAMA and the Medical J of Australia are supported by their memberships (e.g.; all BMA members get the BMJ as part of their membership fee). Tobacco Control has no members,and so far, Globalink does not charge membership!
The fees are set by the BMJ's specialist journals section who publish nearly 30 other journals -- they are vastly experienced in medical publishing and do not make a huge profit out of Tobacco Control.
They are not a charity or interested in losing money in publishing the journal.
There are big costs in editing, printing and mailing 1100 copies of a journal with colour pages.
You may be comparing our price to "magazines" which have tens or hundreds of thousands of sales, and lots of advertising.
We try to attract advertisers, but given that 60% of our subscriptions are libraries and institutions, you can appreciate that sinking big $$ into some 400 personal subscribers is not particularly attractive.
And who would advertise with us beside drug companies .... think about it.
3. While browsing on the BMJ's site I read about "local editions". Do you think some "local editions" of Tobacco Control could be produced, that would focus more on certain geographical areas and also "speak" other languages than English?
We have tried to produce one local edition of TC in India. Dr Vaidya, who is tireless in tobacco control, was regional editor and used local (inexpensive) production to reprint articles that he believed would be of interest to Indian readers.
I'm sad to say it was a publishing failure. We receive (let alone publish) very few quality papers from Europe, Asia, Africa or Latin America.
The BMJ tells me that it is the same for all their specialist journals.
4. Back to your cyberbaby. I still haven't met it (not yet available when I typed this question) but can you tell us how different it will be from the paper edition, what new services you'll eventually provide, who is going to be "behind" these new services?
Everything -- pictures, cartoons ..everything ... that is in the paper version, is on the cyberversion.
But there is much more. There is a facility to send instant responses to anything you read.
We will publish this within 24 hours if it is not defamatory, obscene or full of incorrect information.
We hope this will create a lively forum.
There are also links to all the other BMJ journals.
5. Globalink is the main forum for cyber-exchanges among tobacco control advocates. What type of relationship is your site going to have with Globalink?
And the other tobacco control oriented sites?
We having major talks right now (well, next Monday night actually). Stay tuned!
Thank you Simon for taking the time to be with us today.
email simonc@pub.health.usyd.edu.au WWW: http://www.health.usyd.edu.au/tobacco
Editor: Tobacco Control (http://www.tobaccocontrol.com)
Prepared by Philippe Boucher mailto:IslandErsk@aol.com
***********************
Go To: Tobacco BBS HomePage / Resources Page / Health Page / Documents Page / Culture Page / Activism Page
***********************
***********************
END OF DOCUMENT