A QUESTION-AND-ANSWER SERIES WITH AUA PUBLICATIONS DIRECTOR DAN KULP This time of year, the AUA publications groups gather for strategy—we are a little off schedule due to the ice storm recently that shut down travel. One of our preparations for this month's editorial was to allow or readers to get to know our new publications director better. Here are some questions and responses: Tell us about your background in scholarly publications before joining the AUA. My background and introduction into scholarly publications came from the research side in physical sciences. As a PhD student and postdoc (Materials Science and Engineering), I had experienced publication from the perspective of an author and referee. In 1996, I had the opportunity to change lanes, from the academic research path to the scholarly publication path. I was recently married and my first child had arrived, and I was looking for a way to leverage my scientific knowledge without having to follow the time intensive path toward a faculty position. Instead as a full-time professional editor for a Condensed Matter journal (American Physical Society’s Physical Review B), I would be able to maintain contact with the researchers around the world and apply my knowledge and background to make critical decisions on what content made it into Physical Review B (PRB). At the time, PRB was the largest journal in the world, publishing roughly 52, 000 pages across 48 issues annually. I spent nearly 24 years with the American Physical Society, over which I expanded my knowledge of publication strategy and ethics. In 2007, I moved out of editorial work and became the Editorial Director for the entire Physical Review portfolio of journals. I began focusing on strategies for impact and growth, and launching 6 new open access journals over those 13 years. I was recruited by the American Chemical Society (ACS) to become their Editorial Director in 2020. At the time, the ACS had 64 journals and over the 3 years I was Editorial Director, we launched 12 more. Then, in late 2022, I shifted responsibility and became the Senior Director for Research Integrity and Global Developments. This new role leveraged my interest in publication integrity, which was reflected in my position as Chair of COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) —I am currently the past Chair, and my formal role with COPE ends in May 2026. What were the highlights of the interview process in terms of goals the AUA outlined for the position, and what attracted you to apply? I was recruited by Jack Farrell and Associates on behalf of AUA. Although my background was in Physical Sciences, I understood the broader ethical and operational issues that hamstring publishers and journals in the medical sciences through my time with COPE. Thus, the opportunity to shift into a new field was exciting and intriguing for me. It was the chance to learn something new after nearly 28 years in scholarly publishing. During the interview process, it was clear that AUA Publications needed more than a publications strategist. The team had high turnover, and AUA was not only anxious to stabilize the team but also to transform the team one that was more focused on the journals rather than on operational breakdowns, that is, team members were assigned to journals rather than a job such as editorial or production management. Having the opportunity to restructure the team, streamline processes, support the evaluation of request for proposal responses from a host of publishing houses, and work on a member news magazine was just too exciting to pass up. I was also thrilled to have the opportunity to work for another Association (I have spent my entire career with Society/Association organizations), and I must say, I was extremely impressed with AUA as an organization and especially Patricia Hope, the Executive Vice President for the Division. Her passion and vision for Publications really resonated with me. What are the challenges of working with such a subspecialized clinical/research focused organization? The move from the American Physical Society and American Chemical Society to AUA has been exciting, and a challenge as well. In my past positions, I have been able to fall back on my understanding and broader knowledge of the content of the journals. This understanding has allowed me to connect with editors, authors, reviewers, and readers on a more topical basis. I was worried that this would be an impediment in working in a more clinical and medical environment. Oddly enough, this has not been a barrier. I found that members of the urology community have been very accessible based on my knowledge and background in publishing, publishing ethics, and scholarly research, in general. It is also a very welcoming community. I have also come to understand the delicate balancing act when dealing with industry and advertising. In my previous positions, advertising was either minimal or handled by other departments within the organization. In medical publishing, I have the dual responsibility to increase revenues to support the activities of the AUA by encouraging greater opportunities for advertising, while at the same time ensure that real and perceived conflicts of interest are minimized to maintain the independence of our editorial actions. Luckily, for me, there is a wealth of experience at AUA, so I have avenues by which I can seek advice and guidance. What are the key changes you have made to the publications staff and workflows? The key change for the staff was the realignment of duties and expectations to focus on the journals. Before my arrival, the staff was focused on process (peer-review support or production) and not on collaborating directly with the editors to support a specific journal. By reorganizing the team to support journals in a wholistic fashion, staff were able to create collaborative bonds with the Editors and Editorial Board of their assigned journals, and it created an atmosphere of “ownership” and responsibility over the success of the journal. In aligning the staff with specific journals, we also discovered that there was a huge amount of duplicated work and micromanagement that slowed progress, increased work, and diminished the staff’s sense of direct contribution and ownership. In the new model, I see the team take direct accountability which has led to a sense of pride in what they do. This new structure created a more formal framework of responsibility for each team member, giving them a better sense of expectations and understanding of their job. This has led to greater direction and purpose, thus creating more streamlined processes. This level of streamlining, through reorganization, has allowed us to become even more flexible and with greater bandwidth despite having reduced the staff by 2 full-time equivalents. The feedback I have received from the team is very positive, and I think the clear definition of duties has helped focus the team over the past year. A common question we have debated: What is a _____ paper? Of course you have 4 answers to the blank—J Urology, Urology Practice, JUOP, and AUANews. The goal of the Journal of Urology® (JU) is to serve the field of urology by publishing the highest quality, rigorously peer-reviewed research and clinical content. A JU paper should focus on cutting edge advances that have significant immediate or future impact on the field of urology, which will vastly improve the quality of care for patients. JU papers should be foundational and be instrumental in directing future research directions. Urology Practice (UPJ), as the name implies, is focused on the practice of urology. As such, UPJ papers should directly impact the practice of urology by focusing on results that influence and guide the education, leadership, and career development for professional urologists and that are immediately applicable to clinical setting or have an influence on policies or regulations that affect urologists. JU Open Plus (JUOP) complements JU in publishing content that advances the field of urology through broad dissemination through open access. Thus, a JUOP paper should contain results that support and inform all urologists. It should contain information that is important and interesting to all urologists, and support their ability to offer the best care to their patients. What are the key goals moving forward for each of the 4 publications? For the 3 scholarly journals (JU, UPJ, and JUOP), there are some key goals that are common across them. Moving forward, it is important that we grow the impact of the AUA journals and position them to be the place where important, practice changing advances are communicated to urologists around the world. The 3 journals must work together to facilitate the dissemination of important results that can be used to support and advance patient care. We also need to grow the journals. One important factor in growing impact is growing the footprint of the journals. Of course, this growth has to be performed carefully and strategically to ensure that we also continue to increase our citation impact (mostly encapsulated through the journal impact factor). A more specific goal for JUOP is to get the journal indexed. This is important to authors seeking to advance in their institutions, so it is incumbent on us to make sure the journal responds to the needs of the physicians. For AUANews, the fourth publication in the AUA family, our goal is to provide key insights into clinical advances in short easy to understand articles that help physicians, residents, medical students, advanced practice providers, etc gain insight into what is happening across the field. Since it is a member magazine, we are also committed to bring greater insight into what AUA is doing to help and support urologists. It is also important for us to ensure that AUANews remains financially viable and to return some profit back to the AUA. We are thrilled that over the last couple years, AUANews has generated revenues, through advertising, that goes into supporting all the good work done by AUA on behalf of our members and the greater community of urologists. What are the challenges and key changes you foresee for the overall scholarly publications world? Scholarly publications is changing fast, and many challenges have come to the fore. Beyond the challenges of maintaining the integrity of the literature in the face of concerted efforts to circumvent and profit through the dissemination of false or pirated information (paper mills, publication rings, authorship for sales, etc), we are struggling with the introduction of new technologies that can both help and harm the industry. Primarily, I am referring to artificial intelligence (AI), which comes in the form of large language models, small language models, agentic AI, etc. As tools, they can be used ethically in ways to help support publication, reduce bias, accelerate the process, and support the efforts of humans. However, when used unethically, these tools can be used to spread disinformation and misinformation, create fake data that can distort systematic reviews and meta analyses, and generally cut out the human factor. Financial pressure is also playing a strong role in challenging the status quo. Publishers are investing more and more in research integrity but are facing challenges in how to finance these efforts in light of diminishing funds for publications. Should publishers maintain a more diffusive subscription model where the readers, through their institutions, pay for content, or the more localized open access model primarily supported by the authors to cover the dissemination of their work. Of course, these are the 2 extremes, and publishers are experimenting with other models to determine which models maintain the necessary revenues to continue to invest and innovate. Shadowing all of these issues is the decreasing public faith in the scholarly process. This is the gorilla in the room. Falling public understanding and confidence in scholarly advances is threatening the entire scholarly publication world. Use of misinformation and disinformation for financial or pollical gain is becoming more prevalent. Preprints, non–peer reviewed publications, are being leverage and presented as fact, reducing critical thinking and trust in science. I do not want to sound too pessimistic. There are also significant advances that are more positive. Publishers are working more closely and collaboratively to counter misconduct (STM Association Integrity Hub) ; AI tools are being used to identify questionable work and practices and to identify inappropriate use of AI; new financial models are being introduced to expand access to information and knowledge; and new publication models are being introduced to make knowledge more accessible to a broader readership. Scholarly publishing can no longer exist within an ivory tower, so we must innovate and ensure greater access to the ideas and advances that appear in the pages of our journals. Accessibility includes making the information more understandable and digestible to a greater range of interested readers. JANUARY 2026 JUOP ARTICLES Clinical Trials Staskin et al1 report on an extension trial from the COURAGE randomized trial with vibegron for men with overactive bladder symptoms (OAB). Of course, this population will often be managed with obstruction-related drugs or procedures, but related OAB symptoms might go undertreated. The initial publication was in The Journal of Urology® in 2024 (ref 15 in the paper). In this study, patients who did not come off study for side effects were extended another 28 weeks. They report continued benefits with minimal new side effects. This is an excellent use of JUOP for a secondary or downstream reporting from a clinical trial. If you are doing a deep dive on this topic for a review paper or presentation, be sure to cite both papers and have a look at the supplemental information provided for more details from the cohort. See also Howard Goldman editorial comments. 2 Retrospective Study Sasaki et al3 report on a unique collaboration between 9 Japanese centers and a U. S. tertiary center, focusing on any regional differences in biochemical recurrence rates (BCR) after robot-assisted radical prostatectomy. This was a retrospective study on prospectively entered patient data, and biases addressed with good patient numbers and propensity score matching. The U. S. group was approximately 6% worse in BCR, including a White only/U. S. comparison. On the broader questions on regional differences in diet, environment, and genetic contributions to prostate cancer incidence, this study shows a hypothesis-generating finding that the differences continue into treatment outcomes in localized disease. Zimmern et al4 accumulated a large database of women with uncomplicated, recurrent urinary tract infection (UTI) and examined the relationship between low pH (under 6) and the tendencies. Overall, 75% had low pH in the recurrent UTI group; however, more than half of controls with no UTI were also in the category. The related question is how to recommend Hiprex for its bactericidal effects, which require a low pH. Our reviewers liked the overall data collection for this cohort—pointing out additional factors in this population needed to study, such as postvoid residuals and use of vaginal estrogen. Lahiji et al5 provide a useful retrospective analysis of data surrounding the many prognostic feature in renal cell carcinoma—from inflammatory to nutritional. There are many reports in this category, given the broad set of standard laboratory values collected in cancer staging and treatment. This paper takes the findings from the link between hypoalbuminemia and mortality and looks further at other hospital stay parameters. The key findings were a link between low albumin and longer hospital stay and readmission. This study focused on nonmetastatic disease. Given this is a low-cost test that may stratify high-cost encounters, it may be a method to triage affected patients for more focused nutritional support. See additional editorial comments. 6 PEOPLE, PLACES, AND THINGS For this month, the highlights include AUA strategy in publications, a holiday visit to the Pop-Air Balloon Museum, and the 36th annual International Prostate Cancer Update in Vail, Colorado. Figures 1 and 2 show Dr Kulp and his home office at AUA headquarters. The building includes our history museum—worth a visit if in the Baltimore area. For Figure 3, imaging a whole museum dedicated to art and illusions mostly made from inflatables and light effects. The Pepper's Ghost illusion featured is something to experience—you walk down the middle of that display of mirrors and lights. The museum looks permanent but actually tours several cities for 3 to 4 months at a time. For Figures 4 and 5, we have highlights from the International Prostate Cancer Update which featured approximately 20 faculty from different specialties and some well-deserved awards. A key goal of the meeting is to improve how subspecialists work together and how we can each understand our own field better, but also understand the strengths and limitations of treatments from other fields. Figure 1.: People: Our interview this month with Dan T. Kulp, PhD, Director of Publications at the AUA. Figure 2.: Places: The headquarters of the AUA with its multistory entry rotunda. This is the home to the AUA publications team, although after COVID, the AUA still has a hybrid work from office/home schedule. Figure 3.: Things: A Pepper ghost illusion at the Pop-Air Balloon Museum. Figure 4.: People: A highlight this month was the 36th Annual Vail International Prostate Cancer Update. This is a true multidisciplinary event, and the photographs displayed include urologists, radiation oncologists, medical oncologist, and pathologists. A, Dan Petrylak (medical oncology, Yale), on the right, presents the Vanguard award to David Crawford, on the left, for more than 30 years as chair of the meeting. B, Three radiation oncologists featured in a urology journal: Jeff Michalski, Grgur Mirić, and Peter Orio. Dr Mirić was awarded the Brian Moran lectureship. C, A multidisciplinary panel discussion—Jonathan Tward, Yaw Nyame, Brian Helfand, and Scott Lucia. Figure 5.: Things: The Vanguard award for David Crawford.
John W. Davis (Sun,) studied this question.