(Hypertension. 1998;32:379.)
© 1998 American Heart Association, Inc.
AHA Journals Lead With Definitive New Online Site
David P. Faxon, MD AHA Scientific Publishing Committee Chair
The American Heart Association (AHA)
continues its half-century tradition as the premier provider of the
highest impact cardiovascular and stroke science information with this
month's debut of AHA Journals Online. The introduction of the AHA's
new World Wide Web (WWW) site is another major step toward expanding
the reach of the journals, providing readers with virtually instant
access to an unparalleled breadth of information. Online availability
of the AHA journals—Circulation; Arteriosclerosis,
Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology; Circulation
Research; Hypertension; and Stroke—make
this new site the single most important gateway to cardio- and
cerebrovascular information available for professionals.
AHA Journals Online provides an unprecedented wealth of published
material: full text and graphics in the AHA Journals as they publish;
sophisticated searching capabilities; the full text and graphics of the
past three years of the AHA Journals (available in 1999); references
linked to MedLine abstracts; and free links to various related
scientific journals (major among them Science, Journal of
Biological Chemistry, and Blood). The integration of
Adobe PDFR files ensures that when online information is
printed, content looks exactly as it does in the print publications.
Advanced cross referencing and hyperlinking enable you, when reading an
article in any journal, to connect directly with the full text of
referenced articles, even if you are not a subscriber to journals in
which those articles appear.
You can register to receive additional special services, such as
advance e-mail notification of the online release of the latest issue
of the publication or publications to which you subscribe, complete
with entire tables of contents. AHA Journals are committed to bringing
breakthrough medical and scientific news and intelligence to
cardiologists, researchers, and other health care professionals as
swiftly as possible. The prompt availability of current issues is of
particular value to our overseas subscribers, who otherwise wait from
several days to several weeks after publication to receive their
journals even by the expedited air delivery service employed by the
AHA. International users will find the high-speed connection through
the "International" sites a welcome relief from the slow
connections on the public Internet.
As you know, the goal of the AHA Journals is to attract papers that
represent the cutting edge of cardiovascular and stroke scholarship and
practice. This is evidenced in AHA Journals Online by advanced but
easy-to-use keyword searching and other features designed to support
researchers and authors. By completing a personalized profile
indicating areas of interest (particular authors or certain words in
titles or abstracts, for example) you may request that the Researcher
Alerting Service notify you by e-mail when material of interest to you
is published in AHA Journals. Another feature of significance to
researchers is the capability, built into the site, that formats key
information in an article and allows the reader to export it to a
citation manager—a cut and paste feature that spares authors the need
to retype citations.
With the inauguration of the new AHA Journals Online site, the AHA
proudly opens the door to the world's leading cardiovascular and
cerebrovascular resources, making them available around the clock and
from one central location. The Web site is and always will be a work in
progress, dependent on feedback from readers. The AHA invites visitors
to AHA Journals Online to complete and e-mail back the user
questionnaire. The information received will shape the ongoing
evolution of content and features.
Until the end of the year, AHA Journals Online is giving readers free
access to the five journals in their entirety. After this, readers will
be able to access full text and graphics of the journal(s) to which
they subscribe and hyperlink to full text and graphics of referenced
and related articles in the other journals. Online-only subscriptions
also will be available and libraries will be able to sign up for site
licenses.
You can reach AHA Journals Online at http://www.ahajournals.org/. We
welcome your interest and participation in this exciting new
venture.
