Journal Watch Online Relaunch Brings New Options to Subscribers

Since the original Journal Watch began publishing in 1987, the Journal Watch series has provided busy clinicians with time-saving tools for keeping up with important medical research. Visitors to the Society’s Journal Watch Online website, www.jwatch.org, can now see the results of a nine-month overhaul intended to take Journal Watch into a new realm of electronic publishing.

“The Journal Watches are highly successful print newsletters,” said publisher Alberta Fitzpatrick. “But until now, Journal Watch Online has been little more than an online repository for the content of our printed newsletters.”

Added Subscriber Value
The redesign is being managed by David Mecsas, editorial manager of professional newsletters at the MMS Publishing Division. “The overriding goal of this project has been to build a platform for electronic publishing,” said Mecsas. “The print newsletters aren’t going away, but the website adds value for our subscribers.”

Besides a new look and feel and greatly improved navigation, the redesign brings new functionality to the content, with 40 to 50 percent of the summaries having direct, toll-free links to the full text of the original articles.

New Marketing Tools
Service and marketing are also improved. Readers can subscribe and renew online and have instant access to content they have purchased. Subscribers to all 10 titles can receive either the entire contents of each electronic issue or the table of contents by e-mail. Visitors will be able to sign up for e-mail delivery of an abbreviated table of contents and the lead summary from each issue or purchase a one-week trial subscription.

New content will be posted to the site every day, as sample summaries from all 10 Journal Watch publications rotate through the Journal Watch Online home page.

Meeting Expectations
“Full-text access to original articles and e-mail delivery options are two things that crop up regularly in reader surveys,” said Mecsas. The team also sought input from Journal Watch editorial boards and integrated lessons learned in the recent overhaul of the New England Journal of Medicine website.

The relaunch is the first step in an evolution, said Fitzpatrick. “Everyone expects more from the Internet -- things like ‘syncing’ with their PDAs [personal digital assistants].” For now, these options lie down the road. “But with the new Journal Watch Online,” Mecsas said, “we’ve built the platform that can take us down that road.”

- David Graves