Aesthetic Surgery Journal Open Forum

About Aesthetic Surgery Journal Open Forum

Aesthetic Surgery Journal Open Forum — Journal Profile

Aesthetic Surgery Journal Open Forum — universally shortened to ASJ Open Forum — is a fully open access, peer-reviewed international journal of aesthetic surgery and cosmetic medicine, published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Aesthetic Society. Launched in January 2019, it is the open access companion — the sister journal — to Aesthetic Surgery Journal (ASJ), the specialty's long-established flagship title, and it was created to give aesthetic surgery a rigorously reviewed venue in which every article is free for anyone, anywhere, to read the moment it is published. Its online ISSN, 2631-4797, is the identifier carried in the JournalsWorld record, with Oxford University Press named as publisher, and both values match the journal's official presence on the Oxford Academic platform.

The journal's focus, in The Aesthetic Society's own summary, is the latest developments and practical clinical advances in aesthetic surgery and cosmetic treatments. That word practical is significant: ASJ Open Forum is oriented towards the working aesthetic surgeon, publishing research and technique content that changes what happens in the operating room and the clinic — original studies, pilot work, case reports, expert commentary and a strong strand of video content in a specialty where seeing a technique matters almost as much as reading about it. In a field with an unusually global and partly private-practice authorship, a fully open access journal also removes the subscription barrier that otherwise separates academic plastic surgery from the community surgeons who perform most aesthetic procedures.

At a Glance

• Full title: Aesthetic Surgery Journal Open Forum (ASJ Open Forum)
• ISSN (online): 2631-4797 — online only
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, on behalf of The Aesthetic Society
• Launched: January 2019
• Relationship: Official publication of The Aesthetic Society; sister journal to Aesthetic Surgery Journal
• Editor-in-chief: Al Aly, MD (per the journal's current Instructions to Authors, Oxford Academic)
• Model: Fully open access; article processing charges apply to most article types, with society-member discounts and waivers described below
• Peer review: Double-blind, following initial editorial assessment
• Indexing: MEDLINE/PubMed; Clarivate Journal Citation Reports
• Fields: Aesthetic (cosmetic) surgery, cosmetic treatments and related clinical science

Origins — Why The Aesthetic Society Built an Open Access Sister Journal

ASJ Open Forum began publishing in January 2019, announced by Aesthetic Surgery Journal together with Oxford University Press as an open access publication — free of subscription and access restrictions — that would share the editorial standards and, at launch, the editorial leadership of ASJ itself, with Foad Nahai, MD, then editor-in-chief of ASJ, also leading the new journal and Jeffrey Kenkel, MD, professor and chairman of plastic surgery at UT Southwestern, as associate editor. The founding announcement stressed that all papers would be peer reviewed and subject to the same rigorous process as submissions to the flagship journal. The logic of the launch is easy to reconstruct from the specialty's circumstances: aesthetic surgery research was growing internationally, many of its potential authors and readers sat outside university libraries, video had become central to surgical education, and the subscription model of the flagship title — however successful — could not deliver unrestricted global readership. An open access sister journal solved all four problems while keeping the society's editorial brand intact.

The journal has since developed its own identity and leadership. In a later editorial transition reported by the society, Jeffrey M. Kenkel became editor-in-chief of Aesthetic Surgery Journal and Al S. Aly — a board-certified plastic surgeon — was appointed editor-in-chief of ASJ Open Forum, the position the journal's current Oxford Academic instructions page records under the name Al Aly, MD, with the editorial office at 1801 Inwood Road, Dallas, Texas, the UT Southwestern medical district. The journal has also matured bibliometrically at a speed unusual for a young title: The Aesthetic Society reports that ASJ Open Forum received its first Impact Factor rapidly after launch, was recorded at 1.6 as its inaugural score in society communications, reached 1.9 for 2024 (ranked 119 of 312 journals in the Surgery category, placing it in the top third of surgery journals), and was reported in the society's most recent announcement to have climbed further to 2.3, alongside a rise for the flagship ASJ to 4.2. Readers should treat each figure as belonging to its reporting year — journal impact factors are annual values — but the trajectory itself, a new open access journal entering and then climbing the surgery rankings within a few years, is well documented by the society.

Aims, Scope and Article Types

The journal publishes scientific developments and clinical techniques across aesthetic surgery and cosmetic treatments: surgical procedures of the face, breast and body; minimally invasive and non-surgical cosmetic treatments; patient safety; outcomes measurement; and the practice questions that surround aesthetic care. Its published article types, as listed by The Aesthetic Society, are Video Articles; Original Articles; Review Articles (including continuing medical education reviews); Preliminary Reports; Case Reports; Special Topics; Video Commentaries; Commentaries; Editorials; and Letters to the Editor. The Oxford instructions group the chargeable categories slightly differently — Original Articles, Preliminary Reports, Reviews and Special Topics as the main research categories — but the two listings describe the same portfolio: full research at one end, brief and preliminary work in the middle, and a lively layer of commentary, correspondence and video around it.

Two features of that portfolio deserve emphasis. First, the video programme: in aesthetic surgery, operative technique is visual knowledge, and ASJ Open Forum treats video as a first-class article type rather than an afterthought, including video articles and video commentaries in which experts respond to demonstrated techniques. Second, the journal functions as part of a two-journal system with ASJ. Its instructions explain that it publishes original submissions as well as submissions transferred from Aesthetic Surgery Journal, and that manuscripts reviewed at ASJ can be redirected to ASJ Open Forum carrying their earlier reviews with them, which speeds the process; such manuscripts may receive additional double-blind review before a decision. For authors, that cascade means a paper judged a better fit for the open access title is not simply rejected into the void — it has a defined path into a same-family journal with its review history intact. For the society, the pairing lets one editorial enterprise place each accepted paper at the right point on the spectrum between flagship selectivity and open access breadth.

Publisher, Society and Editorial Office

Oxford University Press publishes the journal on behalf of The Aesthetic Society — the professional society of board-certified aesthetic plastic surgeons whose official publications ASJ and ASJ Open Forum are. OUP is one of the world's largest university presses, and its Oxford Academic platform hosts the journal's content, instructions, submission links and licensing machinery, including the Read and Publish agreements discussed below. The society's own website presents the journal to its members, records its indexing and impact-factor standing, directs authors to the submission system (Manuscript Central, at the journal's dedicated submission address) and gives the editorial office contact route for enquiries.

Editorial governance follows the standard of a major society journal. The editor-in-chief leads an editorial team and board drawn from the specialty — the same community of academic and high-volume aesthetic surgeons who sustain the flagship title — and the journal's instructions place the editor and editorial team at the centre of decisions: original submissions are first reviewed by the editor, those selected proceed to independent double-blind review, and decisions are made on the basis of reviewer feedback together with the judgement of the editorial team. The journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics environment that Oxford Academic enforces across its list, and its published ethics framework, examined below, is correspondingly detailed.

Open Access Model and Article Processing Charges

ASJ Open Forum is fully open access: every article is published under an open access licence immediately upon publication and is free to read worldwide. That model is funded by article processing charges (APCs), and the journal publishes its charges openly in its Instructions to Authors — an important transparency point that authors should always verify on that page at submission time, because charges are revised periodically. As set out in the current instructions, the charges are structured by article type and licence: for Original Articles, Preliminary Reports, Reviews and Special Topics published under a CC BY or CC BY-NC licence, the regular charge for non-society members is $3,204, with a 25% discount for society members; for Case Reports and Video Articles the regular charge is $1,603, again with the 25% member discount; and Letters to the Editor, Editorials, Video Commentaries and Commentaries carry a charge of $0. Authors may be asked to evidence eligibility for the member discount.

Three mitigating mechanisms soften that headline pricing, and a careful profile should record all of them. First, the society-member discount (25%) rewards the journal's core community. Second, corresponding authors based in low- and middle-income countries and regions may receive a waiver or discount under Oxford University Press's open access waiver policy. Third, OUP's Read and Publish agreements with institutions and consortia mean that authors at participating institutions can publish open access with the charge covered by their institution's agreement. The instructions nonetheless ask authors to ensure they are able to pay the applicable charge before submitting — the honest, standard position for a fully open access journal whose continued operation depends on APC income. Nobody should submit to this journal without checking the current charges page, their society membership status, their institution's Read and Publish coverage and their waiver eligibility, in that order.

Peer Review, Ethics and Research Standards

All original submissions are initially reviewed by the editor; manuscripts selected for peer review are sent to independent reviewers in a double-blind process, in which authors and reviewers do not know each other's identities, and the decision reflects reviewer feedback and editorial judgement. The instructions also describe the journal's transfer pathway from Aesthetic Surgery Journal in detail, including that transferred manuscripts may be sent for additional double-blind review so that the final decision rests on the complete review record.

The ethics framework published by the journal is extensive, reflecting both Oxford University Press policy and the sensitivities of human clinical research in a visual specialty. Authors are held to the standards of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the World Association of Medical Editors and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE); fabrication, falsification, plagiarism — including duplicate publication of one's own work without proper citation — and misappropriation are defined and treated as unacceptable, with allegations handled under COPE guidance and, where unresolved, reportable to appropriate authorities. Manuscripts are screened with Similarity Check / iThenticate. Studies involving living human patients require Institutional Review Board approval (or an applicable exemption, or adherence to the Declaration of Helsinki and related frameworks where IRB structures do not exist locally), and the methods section must state that written consent was provided by patients for the use and analysis of their data — a requirement with obvious weight in a journal that publishes identifiable clinical photography and video. Cadaver and animal studies must follow the Declaration of Helsinki or applicable guiding principles, and United States animal work must follow the Public Health Service policy on humane care and use of laboratory animals. Every author must disclose financial interests and connections at submission, and the published article carries a conflict-of-interest statement whether or not any author declared one. The journal also publishes a specific policy on artificial-intelligence tools: AI-driven tools are used by the journal itself only for plagiarism detection under editorial oversight, no editorial decisions are made by AI, manuscripts wholly or partly written by AI-generated tools without proper disclosure handling will be rejected, AI may not be listed as an author, and any permitted use must be disclosed with a prescribed statement. Authors preparing a submission should read the current instructions in full; the summary here is a map, not a substitute.

Indexing and Standing

The Aesthetic Society states that ASJ Open Forum is indexed in MEDLINE/PubMed and covered by Clarivate's Journal Citation Reports — the two credentials that matter most for a clinical journal, because MEDLINE indexing drives clinical discovery and JCR inclusion produces the Impact Factor by which surgery journals are compared. Its reported Impact Factor progression — an inaugural 1.6 in society reporting, 1.9 for 2024 with a Surgery category rank of 119 of 312, and a further reported climb to 2.3 — reflects sustained citation growth for a journal launched only in 2019, and the society notes the companion flagship, Aesthetic Surgery Journal, at 4.2 in the same recent announcement. Those figures belong to their respective JCR years and will change annually; what they establish durably is that the journal passed the selective evaluations for MEDLINE and JCR inclusion unusually early in its life, sits within the ranked surgery literature rather than outside it, and is treated by its society as a flagship-grade publication in its own right rather than a repository for overflow.

Who Should Publish in ASJ Open Forum — and Who Should Read It

The journal's authors are aesthetic plastic surgeons and allied researchers worldwide: academic departments reporting outcomes series and comparative studies, private-practice surgeons publishing technique innovations and case experience that university journals may overlook, and interdisciplinary contributors in areas such as patient safety, psychology of aesthetic patients, and non-surgical technologies. Its open access nature is a deliberate advantage for this community — a surgeon in any country can read a technique article or watch its video without a subscription, and authors gain the widest possible distribution and a correspondingly higher potential for citations, as the society itself puts it. The transfer route from ASJ makes the journal additionally relevant to any author submitting to the flagship: a submission to the family can end in either title, with reviews preserved.

Prospective authors should weigh the real costs alongside the benefits: APCs are substantial for the main article types unless a member discount, institutional agreement or waiver applies, and the journal's ethical and reporting demands — IRB documentation, patient consent, conflict disclosure, image integrity screening — are those of a top-tier clinical title, so informal or under-documented work will not pass. Readers, meanwhile, get a free, current, clinically focused literature: original research, pilot studies that signal where the field is moving, case reports of rare complications and unusual presentations, and expert commentaries that translate evidence into practice. For librarians and evaluators, the identity anchors are simple — title Aesthetic Surgery Journal Open Forum, online ISSN 2631-4797, publisher Oxford University Press for The Aesthetic Society, launched 2019 — and should not be confused with the flagship Aesthetic Surgery Journal, which is a separate, subscription-based title with its own ISSNs, however closely the two journals cooperate.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is ASJ Open Forum the same journal as Aesthetic Surgery Journal? No. It is the fully open access sister journal to Aesthetic Surgery Journal, launched in January 2019, with its own editor-in-chief, its own ISSN (2631-4797) and its own article processing charges — though the two share a publisher, a society and a manuscript transfer pathway.

Who publishes the journal? Oxford University Press, on behalf of The Aesthetic Society, of which it is an official publication.

Who is the editor-in-chief? The journal's current Oxford Academic instructions name Al Aly, MD. At launch in 2019 the journal shared ASJ's editor-in-chief, Foad Nahai, MD.

Is the journal open access, and what does it cost? Yes, fully open access. Current published charges are $3,204 for main research article types and $1,603 for Case Reports and Video Articles for non-members, with a 25% society-member discount; Letters, Editorials, Video Commentaries and Commentaries are $0. Waivers or discounts may apply for corresponding authors in low- and middle-income countries, and institutional Read and Publish agreements may cover the charge. Always confirm the current figures in the Instructions to Authors.

How does peer review work? The editor first assesses each submission; selected manuscripts undergo double-blind peer review by independent reviewers, and decisions rest on reviewer feedback and editorial judgement.

Is it indexed? Yes — in MEDLINE/PubMed and in Clarivate's Journal Citation Reports, per The Aesthetic Society.

Sources and Verification

This profile is drawn from official sources: the journal's Instructions to Authors on Oxford Academic (editor-in-chief and editorial office, open access charges by article type, member discount, waiver and Read and Publish notes, peer-review process, publication ethics, human-subjects and consent requirements); The Aesthetic Society's journal page (fully open access model, scope summary, article types, MEDLINE/PubMed and Journal Citation Reports coverage, 2024 Impact Factor and Surgery ranking, submission route and APC guidance); the society's launch and leadership announcements (January 2019 launch with Oxford University Press, founding editorship, subsequent appointment of Al S. Aly as editor-in-chief of ASJ Open Forum, and the reported Impact Factor climb to 2.3); and the JournalsWorld record, whose ISSN (2631-4797) and publisher (Oxford University Press) match the official listings. Charge figures are the journal's published figures at the time of writing and should be re-checked on the official instructions page before any submission.