Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery—Global Open: The Beginning of a New Era in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Publishing

We are very excited to introduce the official launch of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery—Global Open (PRS GO), the first companion journal to Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (PRS) since its inception date in 1946. In May 2012, the PRS Editors, PRS Section Editors, leadership of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), and Journal editorial staff unanimously agreed that the time had come to create a companion open-access (OA) journal to PRS. The ASPS Director of Publications, PRS' Senior Managing Editor, and Journal's Publisher from Wolters Kluwer Health|Lippincott Williams & Wilkins were tasked with the development of a business plan for the new journal. The late spring and early summer period was filled with multiple meetings, conference calls, presentations, and com-muniques between the Journal office, ASPS executive office, journal publisher, and Editorial Board. In late July, the new journal received overwhelming Society and Editorial Board approval, and PRS GO was begun. Creating a new journal requires a remarkable amount of work! A new editorial board had to be created, new Information for Authors had to be written, new manuscript submission protocols had to be developed, and a new Web site needed to be created. Even though many things were similar to PRS, PRS GO operates on a completely different business model, and we had to think in new ways. Fortunately, we were given abundant help from the ASPS and excellent guidance from the Wolt-ers Kluwer Health|Lippincott Williams & Wilkins team, and we are now pleased to present to you PRS GO. Even though PRS GO represents the first OA journal in the history of PRS, there is an extensive history of OA publication, which serves as the foun-dational underpinning of PRS GO. In previous editorials this year in PRS, we discussed the history of OA journals, the mechanics of OA publication, and how OA publication meets the rapidly growing demands of dissemination of new peer-reviewed scientific data. 1,2 We encourage you to look there for more information on how PRS GO fits into a rapidly growing literature and legacy. 1,2 OA publishing offers many benefits to a wide audience. In numerous instances, it provides a viable answer to meeting the research needs of the many in an economical way. There remain many compelling arguments in favor of traditional, subscription-based journals; OA publication of Science, Technology, and Medical data represents a complimentary way to disseminate high-quality medical literature to a large number …