Presentation Interacting with bmj'com

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Presentation Interacting with bmj.com

• Tony Delamothe
• editor in chief, bmj.com
• 13 September 2006

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Your boss writes.

• We regard the bmj.com as supremely strong in the
  area of interaction (polls, debates, webchats,
  blogs, etc and of course your rapid responses
  which appear to me a really rich area of
  user-generated content).

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The BMJ and bmj.com brief background

• BMJ (1840)
• The membership journal of the British Medical
  Association
• 100,000 print copies go to BMA members, 10,000 go
  to librarians
• bmj.com (1995)
• Now has three times the circulation of print BMJ

Number of Online v Paper readers
Online now 3 x Paper
1995
1998
2001
2006
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Increasing divergence the ejournal becomes the
journal
electronic
paper
1995
1998
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Different platforms
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How this plays out

• No winner or loser
• (But) bmj.com is the canonical version
• Magazine is a subset of the online offering (an
  editors choice)
• Offering targeted according to market
• Maximal exploitation of the unique features of
  both media
• Generate content in a medium neutral way -
  XML

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Interactive stuff

• Rapid responses
• Theme issues
• Polls journal issues and wider
• Debates
• Interactive case reports
• Q A
• Webchats
• Blogs

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Some of the messages of rapid responses

• Simplicity
• Familiarity
• Fulfilled a need
• Moderation ( so overhead)
• Dysfunctional folk
• Showed the way ahead

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The bores were taking over

• Some respondents -
• Felt the urge to share their opinion on any given
  topic, and piled in early and often, despite
  having little of interest to say.
• Had pet topics, which they returned to
  obsessively, finding almost any peg to hang their
  views on.
• Didn't feel really alive until theyd sparked off
  an angry response from someone else. Rows then
  continued longer than interested anyone other
  than the combatants.
• Attacks on views moved swiftly to attacks on the
  holder of those views these were often continued
  via abusive emails until we stopped posting email
  addresses with responses.

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The rapid response editorials

• Letters to the editor the new order (1998)
• http//bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/316/71
  42/1406
• Twenty thousand conversations (2002)
• http//bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/324/73
  47/1171
• Revitalising rapid responses (2005)
• http//bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/330/75
  03/1284

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The way we were
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The distance between us

Yes
No
Decision making ?
unsolicited
solicited
tdelamothe_at_bmj.com
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Towards the jellyfish organisation

Yes
No
?
unsolicited
solicited
tdelamothe_at_bmj.com
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(No Transcript)
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Other interactions

• Theme issues
• Polls journal issues and wider
• Debates
• Interactive case reports
• Q A
• Webchats
• Blogs

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Theme issues chosen by readers (2002)

• Global voices on the AIDS catastrophe
• War
• Evaluating the quality of health information on
  the internet
• The limits of medicine and the medicalisation of
  human experience
• Road traffic crashes
• Neurodegenerative diseases
• Doctors' well being
• What is a good doctor and how can we make one
• Managing chronic diseases
• Doctor-patient communication and relationships
• What doesn't work and how to show it

tdelamothe_at_bmj.com
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Theme issues

• http//bmj.bmjjournals.com/misc/fcissues.shtml

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Other interactions

• Theme issues
• Polls journal issues and wider
• Debates
• Interactive case reports
• Q A
• Webchats
• Blogs

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Polls and debates

• Past polls
• Would the NHS benefit from a single, identifiable
  leader?
• What is your idea of a good death?
• Are doctors and the drug industry too close for
  comfort?
• How political should a general medical journal
  be?
• Past debates  
• Giving pain relief hastening death Is intention
  crucial?
• Internet bookshops how do they stack up?
• Education and the BMJ could we do better? 
• Honey, I shrunk the articles pleasing both
  authors and readers
• http//bmj.bmjjournals.com/misc/strawpolls.shtml

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Creating virtuous circles between online and
print

• Collect
• Commission articles for special issue
• Vote

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Other interactions

• Theme issues
• Polls journal issues and wider
• Debates
• Interactive case reports
• Q A
• Webchats
• Blogs

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Interactive case report

• Interactive case report
• A 2 year old child with rash and fever
• This child's case was described on 20 September
  and 27 September
• (BMJ 2003327 668, 720Free Full Text). Debate
  on her management continues on bmj.com
  (bmj.com/cgi/eletters/327/7416/668). On 18
  October we will publish the outcome of the case
  together with commentaries on the issues raised
  by the management and online discussion from a
  general practitioner, a paediatric cardiologist,
  a specialist in paediatric infectious disease,
  and the patient's mother.

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Other interactions

• Theme issues
• Polls journal issues and wider
• Debates
• Interactive case reports
• Q A
• Webchats
• Blogs

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Webchats
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Transferring power (a cautionary tale)

• From FTs review of Dot.com the greatest story
  ever sold (2002)
• Perhaps the chief lesson of the whole story
  is the capacity of the internet to transfer
  absolute power to the consumer.
• For years now, companies have been
  complaining quietly of their loss of influence
  over their customers. It may be, of course, that
  as the internet matures, they will be able to
  reassert themselves. If not, the tech frenzy
  could turn out not so much to have exaggerated
  the internet's promise as to have missed the
  danger it poses.
• How out of date this looks in 2006, by when the
  customers have taken over

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Community ?

• Every site owner wants to build Community and
  every site owner wants blogs
• bmj.com our country is the whole world
• UK 35, US 20, Canada 5, Australia 5, Germany
  2,
• Italy 2, Ireland 2, India 1, Brazil 1......
• User generated content much of a scientific
  journal is already that