Below is a transcript of the 2017 testimonial by Dr. J. James Frost, formerly of Johns Hopkins Department of Radiology, about his experience publishing the paper, “Symmetry and symmetry breaking in cancer: a foundational approach to the cancer problem,” with Oncotarget.
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Dr. J. James Frost
Hello. Yeah, I’m Jim Frost. I’m a professor and professor emeritus at Johns Hopkins Department of Radiology, and have recently become interested in cancer and the physics of cancer. In a recent article on symmetry and symmetry breaking in cancer, which we submitted to Oncotarget, I had really an excellent experience with the whole process, and the review was exceedingly rigorous and efficient. Just of the online submissions, really stress- and aggravation-free.
We had four excellent reviews that really did substantially improve and focus the article. So that part was excellent. Then afterwards, Oncotarget had this excellent post publication promotion approach that I wasn’t really familiar with, including doing a YouTube interview on the article and how it developed and the conceptualization of all that. But I was kind of uncertain how it would turn out, but actually it was a really enjoyable process for my co-author and me.
We sat down and we just talked about how the project developed the conceptualization, the execution of the research. And we really enjoyed that because I think a lot of authors don’t get the chance to really take a breath and sit down and recap and celebrate their research and the findings. So I enjoyed that a lot.
Then after that, we actually were fortunate to have a cover article and then a series of press releases, which was excellent too, and we got a huge response. I think our Altmetrics score was 416, which was in the top 5% of Altmetrics total scientific output, so we were pleased with that as well. We had a blog feature from the article and I had a second interview on sort of my background going back to my math and physics undergraduate and then in graduate school, highlighting how I came to point of cancer physics. So that was nice.
Then we also had a podcast on the findings of the article and how we came to this approach of symmetry breaking and cancer. So the other thing about the YouTube interview, we like that because, of course, it highlighted our research not only to other scientists, but I think also to patients and families with cancer, which is a very nice aspect.
If you think about the vast number of articles that are published in the literature and the extent to which a lot of excellent articles really don’t receive the full recognition they deserve, the YouTube interview really fully highlighted our article and the value it could bring to better understanding cancer. So we like that aspect of it too. So all in all from the presubmission, post submission, publication, the number of views, the Altmetrics score really highlighting the potential value of the research, we thought Oncotarget was excellent.
Click here to read the full study, published by Oncotarget.
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