Dear AuntMinnieEurope Member,
Yesterday I sent an email to the permissions department of a large scientific publisher, asking if we could reproduce a figure. An automated reply told me to enter the details on a Web page. When I did so, I was shocked to get an estimate of nearly 981 euros ($1,400 U.S.). I told the author, who'd already given me permission to use the figure, and he replied, "Well that's the law of publishing. Paying $1,400 for your 'own' data."
Incidents like this suggest some journal publishers are putting too much emphasis on short-term profits. Admittedly, the financial downturn has hit the sector hard over the past two years, and traditional print-based companies have struggled to protect their revenues during the online revolution, but many authors and readers are becoming increasingly disillusioned by publishers' moneymaking methods.
Find out what radiologist Dr. Peter Rinck has to say about the situation in this week's Maverinck column. Click here to read more.
Meanwhile, Budapest proved a popular location for the 2011 World of Health IT congress, and make sure you don't miss our news reports from the meeting in the Healthcare Informatics Digital Community. The first article discusses the need for a change of approach to electronic records, while the second looks at the phenomenon of cloud computing.
We are all standing on the shoulders of giants, as the saying goes, and this is certainly true of CT. Today's practitioners owe a great deal to the modality's pioneers, and you can read about them in our new history column, produced in association with the International Society for the History of Radiology.
Cancer imaging is an emerging field, as was evident at last week's European Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology meeting in London. Among the scientific highlights was a Dutch study that showed how PET/CT prior to radiotherapy can help oncologists target a more powerful dose of radiation to non-small cell lung cancer. Click here to find out more.
