Kurt A Jellinger

Kurt A. Jellinger is neurologist and neuropathologist, Professor of Neurology and Neuropathology at Vienna University School of Medicine, Vienna, Austria. He studied medicine at the University of Vienna, was director of the Department of Neurology, Lainz-Hospital, Vienna, Austria, and of the L.Boltzmann Institute of Clinical Neurobiology.

What prompted you to submit an article?

Publication via the web allowed me to reach a large proportion of the neuroscience community rapidly. In classical publications, such as printed journals and books the publication process is both time consuming and restricted by circulation limiting the exchange of knowledge, thus hampering the rapid development of new insights into important scientific problems. Fortunately, electronic submission and rapid publication are now available, enabling rapid communication of information through the scientific community. Our own paper at BioMed Central was considered to present new data on the impact of traumatic brain injury and ApoE allele frequency on the development of Alzheimer disease.

What was your assessment of the electronic submission and peer review process?

Publication and peer review process were rapid and well prepared. It was a rewarding experience.

What do you think you gained from publishing in an open access journal?

An unexpected large readership and rapid publication of new, hitherto not published scientific data of an important problem.

Kurt A. Jellinger submitted this article to the open access journal BMC Neurology in June 2001. The article was published online in July 2001, i.e. only one month after submission. The article received attention of the international press with coverage in a range of publications including the BBC and Pub Med.