This is an appeal to donate funds through Medwave Foundation, with the aim of strengthening and ensuring the editorial independence of Medwave. Here are my reasons.

In 2001, I founded Medwave. In the beginning, it was an open access website that published edited transcripts of medical conferences. For a full decade, we produced 11-12 issues/year. With time, we achieved an important registered user base from all of Latin American. In 2012, we became a peer-reviewed journal, and in 2014, we were indexed in MEDLINE/PubMed. We have been consistently publishing 11 issues a year and now we even have supplements.

Medwave readers come from all the countries of Latin America and many other countries. Now that we are also publishing in English, we have been reaching out to readers, peer reviewers and authors from North America and Europe. Our readership is truly international. I believe we have fulfilled our mission to be a reference point for health professionals and researchers, to help improve the quality of research methods and reporting and, consequently, to improve the quality of the medical professional practice in Latin America.

However, all this implies resources, involves financing. Medwave is not an amateur magazine. It strives to have the highest ethical and publication standards. How has the journal been financed all these years? Back in 2000, when we were doing conference coverage, we got grants from the pharmaceutical industry, which helped cover the costs of editing and publishing. Then, when we become a peer-reviewed journal, that source of funds dried up, and the journal’s costs have had to be entirely covered by Medwave companies.

The time has come to make a quantum leap, a leap that should provide long-term sustainability to the journal. Medwave should not have to rely on one person, or a couple of companies. A hundred years ahead, Medwave should still be around. That is why, in 2014, I set up Medwave Foundation, to channel support, solidarity subscriptions, donations, etc., to the journal, but also to the dissemination of clinical epidemiology, research methodology and evidence based medicine.

We need your help to raise USD 36 500. Why this amount? Because it roughly corresponds to the Journal’s direct costs in publishing 11 issues a year, 10 articles each. We know it is not a small amount, but we also know that Medwave is providing an unprecedented service to the region and, increasingly, to the world, by communicating locally pertinent research results, as well as updates on a variety of topics, including clinical ones.

We have never charged readers, and we shall never do so.

Likewise, until recently, we had never charged author-processing fees. At present, we do consider charging for this when the authors report external grants, but in the vast majority of cases, submitting authors do not have any institutional funding. These authors, therefore, are exempt from any payments.

For all of these reasons, we are now launching this fundraising campaign to help strengthen and consolidate the Journal. The campaign begins today (16 March 2016) and ends on April 12. Our goal is to raise USD 36 500. One hundred dollars finances the journal for one day. Consequently, we need 365 people donating $ 100 each. Alternatively, 730 people donating $ 50 each. One thousand four hundred and sixty people donating $ 25 each.

How will you benefit from responding to this appeal?

1. Medwave’s open access policy will persist.
2. We can strengthen and professionalize even more our editorial processes.
3. We will be able to boost social media and scientific community dissemination, thus increasing article impact.
4. We will have the resources to publish more articles on cutting-edge topics.
5. We will maintain our editorial independence, especially from the pharma and device industry.
6. Medwave will become the top general biomedical journal of the region.

Please donate.

Esta obra de Medwave está bajo una licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial 3.0 Unported. Esta licencia permite el uso, distribución y reproducción del artículo en cualquier medio, siempre y cuando se otorgue el crédito correspondiente al autor del artículo y al medio en que se publica, en este caso, Medwave.