Readers of the Radio Times can visit locations used in the filming of Sir David Attenborough’s Africa on a tailor made tour offered by the 90 year old UK listings magazine. The Africa trip is one of dozens of destinations listed on RT Travel page and the latest example of how publishers are increasingly thinking like retailers to offer their readers everything from holidays to horticulture. more…

Each year the BMJ runs an online reader survey. The survey is mainly multiple choice but there is also a free text question where we ask readers: “What single improvement to bmj.com would make the most difference to you?” Every year the most popular response is “Make it free.” There are other recurring responses to the survey. In 2012 there were lots of requests for a simpler navigation and less clutter, a better search engine, and clearer access to article pdfs. more…

Cuba’s population witnessed huge economic change after losing the former Soviet Union as a trading partner in 1989. Food shortages caused by the downturn led to obesity rates falling from 12% to 7% in six years, an average weight loss of between 4-5kg across the whole population.

The country also introduced new green policies, including the creation of neighbourhood gardens and the arrival of 1.5m imported bikes from China.

Can developed countries currently affected by the economic downturn learn from Cuba’s experience? Can it be used to prevent cardiovascular disease and diabetes in say, Spain, the UK, and US? How important is a country’s transport policies in helping to reduce obesity and diabetes incidence?

All of the above information was gleaned not from the full text or abstract of a BMJ research paper, but from the video abstract  published to accompany it when it went online last week. more…

In the early 1990s I spent the weekend at the home of a friend’s parents, both of them GPs. I’d recently started work as a political news reporter on the GP magazine Pulse. “Never read it,” said my friend’s dad. “I’m a BMJ man through and though.”

He’s now retired, but whenever I visit a well-thumbed copy of the latest print journal sits on his desk. At the time I did not ask how he defined a “BMJ man,” but now realise he likes the journal’s general readability, and its mix of peer reviewed research and educational articles, editorials, and obituaries. At the time he had little interest in medicopolitical news which the BMJ’s competitor titles for UK family doctors (Pulse, GP, and Doctor) covered comprehensively. more…

In 2011 research physician Tristan Barber responded to an editor’s choice on conflicts of interest, saying: “Reading the current BMJ and noting several letters regarding conflicts of interest, it was particularly distracting to have the front cover being a fold-out advertisement for a pharmaceutical product.

“As a consequence I was very aware of all of the pharmaceutical advertising throughout the current edition. This may have been commented on before, but whilst considering industry impact on researchers and authors, has there been much consideration of the impact of advertising within a journal on the opinion of readers on its editorial policy or contents?” more…

At the beginning of 2013 bmj.com’s most accessed article in India typically received between 100 and 200 views. In three months the figure has more than doubled.

In the first full week of January there were 9,784 visits to bmj.com from India. The figure has been rising since. Last week there were 12,121.

In November 2012 we ran our first online poll for readers in India. Should the UK withdraw aid to India, we asked. The poll was live for two weeks, and it received just 64 votes, with 40 saying no. Our latest India poll, “Should AYUSH doctors be allowed to prescribe allopathic drugs?” received 217 votes over two weeks. Of that figure, 114 readers (52.5%) said no. more…

Last year a colleague phoned a patient named in a BMJ practice article. The patient had consented to her story being published (it was about to go live), but had wrongly thought her account was destined for publication in an obscure medical journal that would gather dust on library shelves.

My colleague was concerned that the patient might not realise that because bmj.com is well optimised for search engines, her name and details might appear high up in a list of Google results for years to come. It would also be seen by the BMJ’s 120 000 print subscribers, and those with access to the journal’s iPad app. Instead the woman opted to have her first person account anonymised, so she could not be identified. more…

Yesterday morning the BMJ’s press officer needed to locate a rapid response about Tamiflu from Peter Doshi, a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. Doshi’s response accuses the drug’s manufacturer Roche of “all talk and no action” following its promise to share full clinical study reports (CSRs) for 10 treatment trials.

Our Tamiflu open data campaign page was a logical starting point. It wasn’t there. Doshi had in fact responded to this news story, posted last week: Roche says it will not relinquish control over access to clinical trial data. more…

The horsemeat scandal has triggered calls for the UK’s food safety watchdog to have stronger regulatory powers. The Food Standards Agency was stripped of its nutrition and labelling roles in a cull of quangoes shortly after the coalition government entered office in 2010. Isn’t it time they were returned, to restore public confidence in the food chain?

Food campaigner Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall certainly thinks so. He told journalist Rachel Sylvester in an interview in Saturday’s Times that reducing the power and responsibilities of the FSA has put British shoppers at risk. “Self-regulation is a popular theme with this current government, whether you are talking about the press or the supermarkets. more…

This blog is the first in a series about you, our readers. Fiona Godlee, the BMJ’s editor in chief, suggested I write a regular blog explaining some of our policies and procedures. Many of them have been in place for decades, but our readership of practising physicians and academic researchers may not be aware of many of them. I’ll aim to choose topics based on recent questions from readers around the world who see the journal in print, online, and on the iPad. more…