BMC Psychology is launching a pilot to trial a new ‘results-free’ peer-review process, whereby editors and reviewers are blinded to the study’s results, initially assessing manuscripts on the scientific merits of the rationale and methods alone. The aim is to improve the reliability and quality of published research, by focusing editorial decisions on the rigour of the methods, and preventing impressive ends justifying poor means.The evidence that many of the findings in the published literature may be unreliable is compelling. There is an excess of positive results, often from studies with small sample sizes, or other methodological limitations, and the conspicuous absence of null findings from studies of a similar quality. This distorts the evidence base, leading to false conclusions and undermining scientific progress. Central to this problem is a peer-review system where the decisions of authors, reviewers, and editors are more influenced by impressive results than they are by the validity of the study design. To address this,  This distorts the evidence base, increasing the proportion of false positive findings, and leading to biased estimates in meta-analyses.Psychology has received much criticism of late, with classic findings failing to replicate, and high-profile cases of scientific fraud , 45. PsyCentral to the problem is the peer-review system, and the role it plays in perpetuating biases in the published record; generally, authors, reviewers, and editors prefer results which show support for tested hypotheses and are prejudiced against submitting or publishing inconclusive or null findings. Rosenthal famously referred to this as the file drawer problem ; statistAs will be discussed, there are many factors that bias the decision-making of authors, reviewers and editors throughout the publication process to the detriment of a reliable evidence base. In the absence of external pressures, the simple human desire for seeking information that supports one’s beliefs, and ignoring that which does not , 26, meaThe bias for positive results is further exacerbated by the external influence of a competitive research culture. Publications are the prime currency for advancing academic careers , and wheIn order to improve the quality and reliability of published research, the criteria determining publication must be aligned with those for conducting rigorous scientific practice. The purpose of scientific enquiry is to estimate the presence and size of causal associations, and results from studies designed and conducted to the highest standards of scientific rigour will provide the most reliable and informative estimates. Thus, for the optimal advancement of science it seems logical that decisions regarding what to publish would be better based on judging quality, rather than results . One wayBMC Psychology launches a pilot to trial a new ‘results-free’ peer-review process, to address the problem of bias in the editorial process. Editors and reviewers will be blinded to the study’s results, and decide whether to accept or reject manuscripts based on the scientific merits of their rationale and methods alone. There are multiple insidious ways in which the fixation on positive results biases decision to the general detriment of science, and as outlined below, ‘results-free’ review has the potential to address many of them.This month Publication bias is the term for what occurs whenever the research findings in the published literature differ systematically from the population of all studies completed in a given area . PublicaPsychologists provided some of the first empirical evidence that the literature was biased towards positive results , 39–41. Basing decisions to publish on the nature of a study’s results is wasteful. It distorts the evidence available for policy makers and other key stakeholders, leading to false conclusions which can have severe consequences. In the biomedical literature, this can put patients at risk if the published evidence falsely suggests that ineffectual or harmful treatments work . SelectiHowever, despite the undermining effects of publication bias on the evidence base, it persists for a variety of reasons. At a relatively simple level, there are asymmetries in the dominant model of statistical inference which mean that null findings are more difficult to interpret, and more afflicted by the limitations of poor study design, than positive results. Thus authors are less inclined to write them up and reviewers more inclined to reject. At a systemic level, career pressures to publish offer a sharp incentive to authors to favour writing up papers with the greatest chance of success, and under the current system of publication this will inevitably favour positive results.A major contributing factor to both reviewer and author decisions to publish is the differences in interpretability of positive and null findings. Despite its many documented problems, Null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) remains the dominant framework for much experimental psychological research. However, there are asymmetries in the inferences one draws in this approach that mean null results are more difficult to interpret than positive ones. NHST is a hybrid of Fisher’s concept of null hypothesis testing , and thep < 0.05) and one can boldly reject the null hypothesis and claim evidence of an effect. However, obtain a null result, and one has simply failed to reject the null hypothesis; one cannot claim evidence of no effect. The second and related asymmetry presents in the different weighting researchers give to the risk of type I and II errors. Text-book research designs adopt a 5% Type I error rate (p < 0.05), while accepting a higher Type II error rate of 20% . In practice, however, the asymmetry is even greater - researchers ostensibly adhere to the 5% type I rate but seem to pay little mind to statistical power, and studies with power as low as 20% are common [The first asymmetry arises in the strength of inferential claim. Obtain a positive result p < 0.0 and one The impact this has on author and editorial decisions is best illustrated with an example: Suppose a researcher runs a series of studies with 20% statistical power (and thus a type II error rate of 80%), and sets the significance threshold at 5%. A null result is uninformative. The study design is so poor  that the researcher expects 80% of the studies to miss genuine effects. As a null result is more likely than not to be an (type II) error, the researcher decides it is not worth writing up. If, on the other hand, the researcher finds a result that passes the 5% significance threshold, they might convince themselves (and the reviewers) that despite the low power, the finding is worthy of publication as the chance of it being an (type I) error is only 5%. While in the case of a single study this decision making may seem reasonable, it is clearly problematic when considered across a population of studies.despite the limitations’ of small sample size, or measurement error. Indeed, passing the significance threshold may be seen as indicative of how large, or robust that effect must be [The above example illustrates how the importance attributed to methodological limitations, such as low power, is highly influenced by the results. As methodological limitations tend to reduce a study’s sensitivity to detecting effects (via increasing standard errors), null results are often seen as an expected consequence of poor design. In contrast, finding a statistically significant result in a study of similar quality is often interpreted as a success, because the effect was found ‘ must be . Thus a Perhaps because of the differences in interpretation, reviewers have been shown to be highly influenced by the direction and strength of effects . On averReviewers have also been found to judge the methods and quality of null studies more critically than those of positive studies. Mahoney  randomlyReviewers and editors act as the gatekeepers to publication, and may hinder the progress of null findings that contradict their beliefs. Researchers can become welded to certain theories or ideas, promoting the evidence that supports the scientific dogma, while dismissing that which does not. Examining sex bias in psychotherapy, Smith  found thAnalysing a discrete population of conducted studies , Franco and colleagues found that strong results were 60% more likely to be written up, and 40% more likely to be published, than null results . When asAcademics are under increasing career competition and peer-reviewed publications, citations, and grant funding are the prime currencies for advancing academic research careers. Over the past 30 years, the number of faculty positions in the US has remained relatively constant, but the number of PhDs awarded has increased substantially . The comAs has been discussed, in the current publication system, positive results are more easily published, especially those studies reporting large effects which, despite methodological limitations, are often published in high-impact journals. Indeed, meta-analyses have found that the degree of inflation in positive results correlates to the impact factor of the publishing journal, with highly biased results from small studies published in some of the highest impact journals . In addiAll of this combines to create a powerful incentive structure for authors to find certain results, and powerful incentives lead to biased decision making. For example, pharmaceutical companies have received much criticism for prioritising the publication of trials showing drugs to be highly effective, while delaying or suppressing the publication of data suggesting more modest effects , 17. WhiThis pressure to publish in a publication system that favours positive results undermines scientific integrity, both by dissuading authors from publishing null findings, but also by incentivising researchers to adopt questionable research practices to maximise their chances of finding something positive, and thus more publishable, in each data set . FlexiblThere are numerous ‘questionable research practices’ which authors can use to exploit the multiple decision points during data collection and analysis to generate positive results . These iUndisclosed analytical flexibility is a particularly insidious form of bias, as it resonates so deeply with the natural human desire for seeking and embellishing information that supports one’s beliefs and ignoring or discrediting that which does not , 26. ThiTo reliably inform treatment decisions, social policies, or the design of the next incremental empirical study, the published literature must include all available data that is of acceptable quality . While pRegistration of clinical trial protocols before data collection commences is now mandatory, making it possible to trace trials from inception to completion. In the UK, the National Institute for Health Research has gone a step further and made publication of results, in addition to protocol pre-registration, a legal obligation for all studies that they fund. However, although this ensures that the publication record is virtually complete, and that risk of bias in results from questionable research practices is reduced, the direction or strength of results may still bias reviewer and editorial decisions, such that, holding quality constant, null findings might end up in lower impact journals , 28, or BMC series, also publish study protocol articles in an effort help to improve the standard of medical research, reduce publication bias and improve reproducibility.Pre-registration of study protocols is a powerful tool against some forms of publications bias. The protocol repository provides an audit trail for studies, recording what should be present in a complete publication record and thus opening the file drawer. The inclusion of detailed analysis plans deters questionable research practices, highlighting where data exploration deviates from the planned test of the a-priori hypothesis. Following medicine’s example, several platforms supporting protocol publication have been launched to promote transparency in psychology and the social sciences , to name just a few). Some journals, including the medical journals of the A problem as thorny as the publication bias will require multiple interventions to resolve. However, a central aim must be to re-align incentives for career progression with those for conducting high-quality rigorous research. The peer-review process offers a relatively self-contained process during which this re-alignment might be achieved, by basing editorial decisions on the scientific rigour of study design alone. If publication is determined by judgements of study quality, then it is expected that researcher behaviour will adapt accordingly, but this needs to be measured empirically. There are multiple ways journals could shift reviewer and editorial decisions towards concerns of study quality.BMC series, explicitly state that editorial decisions are based solely on whether the work meets rigorous technical and ethical standards. However, if reviews are based on full papers which include results, any judgements about technical rigour are likely to be confounded by the results; as described above, methods from null studies will likely be judged as less rigorous, and the implications of methodological limitations as much greater. While such initiatives are a positive step to addressing publication bias, bias will inevitably persist, due to the powerful retrospective influence results have on how study quality is assessed.Many journals provide guidance to encourage authors and reviewers to focus on assessing study quality. For example, in 2015, BioMed Central introduced a Minimum Standards of Reporting checklist for authors and reviewers . The ethPerhaps the only way to prevent the review and editorial process being influenced by a study’s results is to base the decision to publish solely on assessing the scientific merit of the study rationale, and the appropriateness and rigour of the proposed methods, without access to the results and discussion. This aligns the reward of publication with study quality. There are two routes by which this could happen. The first is where a commitment to publish is made before the study is begun, based on the strength of the study protocol, as in the case of Registered Reports . The secCortex [https://osf.io/8mpji/wiki). In RRs, the study protocol is submitted for peer review before any experiments are conducted and, if the protocol is deemed to have scientific merit, an editorial commitment is made, in advance, to publishing the outcomes. Armed with this provisional acceptance, authors can conduct the research safe in the knowledge that the results themselves will not determine the article's publication [The Registered Reports (RR) format was pioneered in the journal Cortex , and sinlication .The RR format has many advantages; it allows for peer review at a point where reviewers can suggest key improvements to study design, rather than simply stating why the experiment is flawed. It also clearly prevents the results from biasing the decision to publish. However, RRs impose time restrictions and may delay the start of studies by several months while the protocol undergoes peer review. The practicalities of busy academic life mean that RRs are unlikely to fully replace the traditional review process. Academics likely have a range of scientific endeavours, and RRs may suit the timescale or more confirmatory nature of some studies, but not necessarily others in their portfolio. For example, the timing of final year undergraduate student projects may be difficult to fit into a RR format .BMC Psychology launches a pilot to trial a new ‘results-free’ peer-review process, to address the bias in the editorial process. Editors and reviewers will be blinded to the study’s results, and decide whether to accept or reject manuscripts based on the scientific merits of their rationale and methods alone. Authors submit otherwise complete manuscripts, but omit any discussion of results, and provisional acceptance is based on peer review of the background and methods alone. The results and discussion of accepted manuscripts may then be reviewed in a second stage, to check for adherence to methods and to allow minor revisions.As there will likely be a place for the traditional ‘post-study’ peer-review process for some time, a logical and relatively simple way to encourage editorial decisions to be based on a study’s methods is to blind reviewers and editors to the study’s results. This month, This simple approach offers an eloquent solution to many of the key drivers of publication bias discussed above, and a recent pilot in a politics journal of a similar process  indicateBMC Psychology is taking the bold step to conduct a randomised controlled trial to evaluate their ‘results-free’ peer-review process. In the first instance, a single arm pilot will assess the feasibility of ‘results-free’ review and optimise the process. Following this we plan to conduct a full randomized controlled trial to assess the effects of results-free review on publication bias and the editorial decision-making process, and collating author, editor, and reviewer feedback. If deemed feasible and effective, it is our hope that we may roll out results-free review (with any revisions) across other BioMed Central journals. We have designed the process to be as simple as possible, as an alternative model that can be integrated as part of the traditional review process, or more radically, to replace traditional post-study review if the evidence shows it to be superior. We welcome comments and feedback on the process as the trial progresses.There has been a proliferation in new publishing initiatives designed to reduce publication bias, and while this is laudable, it is important that these initiatives are systematically and rigorously evaluated to ensure they are having the desired outcomes. BMC Psychology, offers a solution by focusing editorial decisions on the scientific rigour of the study design, and preventing editorial decisions being unduly biased by study findings. The human powers of self-persuasion and post-hoc justification mean that withholding results from peer-reviewers may be the only reliable way to protect reviewers and editors against the often unconscious influence of the results justifying the means.Addressing a problem as thorny as the wider reproducibility crisis will require multiple interventions to resolve, but a central philosophy must be the re-alignment of incentives for career progression with those for conducting high quality rigorous research. Scientist should be encouraged to conduct and publish science of the highest scientific rigour and integrity, and this will only be achieved if editorial decisions are based on the methodological quality of the research rather than its outcomes. The results-free review model, launched this month in


Dear Readers,Nanomaterials. When we started in 2011, the science publication landscape looked very different and I did not anticipate the breakneck speed of change that happened in the following years: the number of publications with the keyword ‘nanomaterial’ almost doubled (according to ‘Web of Science’), open access became mandatory in many countries, established publishing houses adapted their offerings, a multitude of new publishers and journals emerged, and, last but not least, journal metrics became the decisive factor for many authors. At the same time, ‘predatory publishers’ have tried to exploit authors by charging publication fees without providing editorial and publishing services such as peer review, thus chasing authors into the arms of large, established publishers. In other words, the scientific publication market became more competitive and more commercialised.After seven exciting years, it is now time for me to step down as founding Editor-in-Chief of Nanomaterials team has achieved. Rigorous quality control and peer review got the budding journal through the storm and the current journal impact factor of 3.5 is a great endorsement for this strategy. Over the last several years, we have observed a consistent increase in the number and quality of submissions and I would also like to take this opportunity to thank our authors for their trust and contribution to the journal. If we extrapolate the current trajectory of the journal, it will see a very bright future indeed.Given these turbulent circumstances, I am very proud of what the Nanomaterials to Shirley Chiang of the University of California, Davis, on 31 December 2017. Shirley is an eminent scientist and researcher in the area of scanning probe and electron microscopies. She is interested in the nucleation and growth of metals on surfaces and has an impressive track record in this area of nanomaterials research. I wish Shirley and the Nanomaterials team all the best.It is my great pleasure to announce that I will hand over the Editor-in-Chief position of With best regards,Thomas NannDear Readers,Nanomaterials. I congratulate Thomas Nann and the Nanomaterials team on the steadily increasing trajectory of the journal, resulting in the current impressive impact factor of 3.553. I look forward to working with the authors, reviewers, and the excellent editorial staff of Nanomaterials to continue to improve the journal’s quality and impact.It is a great honour for me to assume the position of Editor-in-Chief of With best regards,Shirley Chiang


That’s right, the now almost routine one asking faculty to voice their support, or lack thereof, for the ever-declining number of hard copy journals still being purchased by the library. As an associate professor of public health recently promoted to chair of the department, I appreciate their position, of course. The dominance and ease of online access to journal databases increasingly marginalizes such resources. The very idea of actually reading a hard copy of an article in its natural context  seems increasingly quaint, if not to say ludicrous, as time goes on. In an era of budget constraints and concerns over value for money, the library faculty and staff are only showing due diligence in financial oversight.Harry Potter and the Hogwarts library to assist in my description [Not that I am against electronic access, far from it. Such developments have revolutionized our access to what seems sometimes to be an almost overwhelming volume of information. I have often tried, usually in vain, to describe to current students the complicated, cumbersome, and painfully slow process that was involved in actually identifying a single relevant journal article when I went to college almost thirty years ago. As I attempt to describe the weighty tomes involved in this now defunct process, I usually end up drawing on scenes from cription .War and Peace, for example, should “feel” [Perhaps I am old fashioned or simply a fossil. Admittedly, at a personal level, I still prefer to read the hard copy. However, even putting this bias aside, I do wonder what else is lost as the online journal database access transformation continues. Although I am conscious of the advantages of online access, online-only access via library databases presents a number of disadvantages that should not be overlooked. Other writers have explored in-depth a number of issues associated with online access including slower speed of reading, decreased accuracy in recall, increased fatigue, lower comprehension , and sled “feel” . Researcd “feel” .The listd “feel” , 6, whild “feel” , kinesthd “feel” . It has However, valid as these commentaries may be, my own particular interest focuses on two additional areas of concern: serendipity and “complete” journals. The first of these is in part testimony to the success of online databases. This issue relates to a potential loss of breadth and richness in our learning. As search operations in our online databases become increasingly sophisticated and accurate, so we inevitably start to exclude other publications that appear less relevant. Our knowledge undoubtedly becomes more specific and focused and probably deeper as well. However, perhaps we lose breadth in our learning and with this, some of our understanding of the interconnectedness of our fields. The very act of the routine reading of a contents page and the incidental knowledge gathered in flicking through the pages of the hard copy while searching for a particular article, or just perusing for items of interest, should not be dismissed. Serendipity in learning should never be underestimated. Such “unintentional knowledge” strengthens us and feeds our appetite for new knowledge , 8. ArmeAmerican Journal of Public Health, which invites twelve different types of submission: research articles, brief articles, systematic reviews, letters and responses, editors’ choice, opinion editorials, commentaries, analytic essays, history essays, voices, news, and images. Lack of familiarity with and understanding of the broad structure of journals and their richness and diversity is a loss. The apparent Holy Grail of publishing a peer-reviewed research article  stymies intellectual debate, commentary, and connection. Learning about the diversity of publication types facilitates access to more engaging and more accessible material. At its most basic level, this broader learning can even include the artwork on the cover of the journal. As an academic who worked for almost two decades in Ireland, I learned to appreciate the often modernist artwork on the cover of the Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine, which challenged and changed my taste in art.Another potential loss in the age of online journal database access is the reduction in students’ awareness of the full range of academic products that many journals routinely include. Take for example the My resistance to online only access is muted. How does one quantify such intangibles? In an era of budget contraction, even I cannot articulate coherent arguments in defense of library-purchased print copies. However, I do fear the loss…


Journal of Applied Clinical Medical Physics also employs a very special business model. The JACMP is free on all counts: researchers submit manuscripts for free, subscriptions are free, and there is no charge to access the Journal from the website. This is quite rare among open‐access academic journals, but the 14‐year existence of the JACMP proves it can be done. This can only be accomplished by keeping our costs absolutely as low as possible, while maintaining competitive and excellent publishing quality. At times, we feel like we are walking a high wire. If you are a user, you might appreciate this model and likely you realize it is very difficult to maintain, especially as the JACMP continues to grow. Patients also benefit, as do physicists worldwide; however, the bills need to be paid by someone. So who should pay the invoices for copyediting, layout editing, proofreading, maintenance of the system including software updates, and other costs that arrive on our doorstep quarterly? Where the money should come from is an essential question, and another of equal importance is, where should the money be best directed?As well as being the oldest open‐access academic journal in radiology, the JACMP, let us consider the cost of scientific publishing. From Nature News and Comment (http://www.nature.com/news/open‐access‐the‐true‐cost‐of‐science‐publishing‐1.12676), we find:Before we address where we should find the funds to support the “Data from the consulting firm Outsell in Burlingame, California, suggest that the science‐publishing industry generated $9.4 billion in revenue in 2011 and published around $1.8 million English‐language articles — an average revenue per article of roughly $5,000. Analysts estimate profit margins at 20%–30% for the industry, so the average cost to the publisher of producing an article is likely to be around $3,500–$4,000.”Nature News and Comment article above:The article continues on to explore the costs of publishing an academic science article. The range of claimed costs to publish such an article is simply astounding. Again referring to the Nature, estimates his journal's internal costs at £20,000–£30,000  per paper. Paul Peters, president of the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association and chief strategy officer at the open‐access publisher Hindawi in Cairo, says that last year his group published 22,000 articles at a cost of $290 per article.”“Philip Campbell, editor‐in‐chief of JACMP publishes at a value very close to the lowest cost number reported above. It does this while maintaining a publishing quality that essentially matches that of other academic journals in radiology and radiation oncology.As you can see, the scientific publishing industry is reporting costs that vary over an astonishing two orders of magnitude, with the bulk of publishing in our field close to the average stated above. The costs for these articles are paid through subscriptions and print advertising. Sometimes the academic journals return money to sponsoring societies, but this is certainly not always true. The So, why are many mainstream academic publications so expensive? The most obvious initial answer is that printing and mailing hardcopy journals is expensive, at about $2 per printed issue. This explains about 15%–20% of the cost differential between print and online‐only journals. Another part of the difference is profit margins for the publisher. Reliable numbers are difficult to come by, but it is estimated in the article referenced above that the profit margin for the scientific publications division of a very large academic publisher is between 40% and 50%. The ethics of this profit, which largely goes to executive salaries and investor dividends, must be critically evaluated and balanced with the need to keep costs low; this is an essential environment for open‐access to flourish and for rapid and low‐cost dissemination of clinical information to benefit patients. It is, therefore, essential for us to ask where the money should go.JACMP publication model should be maintained. This is currently the consensus of our Board of Editors. We have already accomplished the first component of our goal: low costs and excellent publishing quality. Let us now consider some of the options for funding:JACMP community. This is an excellent baseline source of revenue, but there are only so many vendors and there is only so much physical space for banner ads.Advertising revenue from banner ads — Advertisers pay to reach the worldwide JACMP, this potential source of revenue is so far untapped. Potential societies include the American Association of Physicists in Medicine, the Canadian Organization of Medical Physicists, and the International Organization for Medical Physics.Grants — Universities, societies or charitable foundations may cover some of the cost of open‐access journal operations. For the JACMP Board of Editors.Contributions — It is possible to raise some revenue through directed voluntary contributions. Perhaps a check box for contribution on our annual invoice with a certain suggested contribution? This idea has not yet been explored by the JACMP website has crossed the threshold of 10,000 users, 20,000 visits, and 35,000 impressions per month. It may be able to attract advertising from other sources than society corporate members. Google ads are a suggested alternative source.Advertising revenue from other sources — The Let us assume for the moment that the consensus of our users is that the present JACMP free is very desirable, it is also difficult to do. I welcome emails from you if you have an idea in addition to those listed above. Please remember to visit one or two of our banner advertisers every time you visit the JACMP website. It is an easy habit to entertain and one of the surest ways to help us maintain the totally free business model of the Journal.While keeping the Michael D. Mills, PhDEditor‐in‐Chief


Medical Physics. I mention her because the JACMP might not have come into existence without her observation that there was an urgent need for a clinical medical physics journal. I took this thought to Alex Turner, Chair of the ACMP, with the additional idea that with the emergence of the Internet, we would not need to print and mail the journal and could keep the costs down.  At least initially, I thought we could make this new journal:free to submit and review any articlefree to publish any articlefree to access any of our publications on the InternetMy friend and colleague Ann Wright passed away earlier this year; you can find her memorial in the pages of JACMP model is no longer considered possible, largely because banner ads alone cannot generate enough to keep a journal in the black for a long period of time, especially when it grows at 20% per year every year  and eschewing print, the information could be delivered weeks earlier.Technology � With a flood of new technologies on our doorstep , not to have an efficient communication venue would mean medical physicists everywhere would waste vast time and resources solving the same problems, and consequently severely limiting our rate of clinical progress and potentially the quality of our services.Instead, I want to focus on why in 1998 it seemed reasonable to offer clinical articles electronically and as soon as possible:JACMP in 2012, the AAPM, to its credit, has come to understand the open access publication model and recognize its intrinsic benefits.So, apart from the general arguments for scholarly open access publication, clinical medical physicists have specific, urgent, and ethical needs to publish their articles with as few barriers as possible. Since assuming ownership of the JACMP business model, the following motion was initiated by the AAPM�s Strategic Planning Committee and approved by the AAPM Board of Directors at the 2015 RSNA Board Meeting:Faced with the problem of addressing the widening deficit of the current JACMP to at least break even by the end of 2018 while maintaining a gold open access model.��Recommend to the Board that the Journals Business Management Committee (JsBMC) be charged with setting a publication fee that will enable JACMP cannot be allowed to continue to grow at a 20% annual rate while also maintaining a deficit to the AAPM that also grows at a 20% annual rate. There was no alternative but to implement an Article Publication Charge (APC). The question became what should that charge be?The JsBMC agreed that the The APC is designed to recover the costs of copyediting, layout editing, proofreading, quality assurance, and electronic publication (and the cost of the platform that supports these activities). In other words, the APC pays the cost to transform an accepted article into a publication‐worthy document. The APC is not designed to recover the costs for the work of the Editor, the manuscript manager, the submission process, or the submission/peer‐review platform.JACMP offer for which the author could reasonably be expected to pay? In paying the APC, the author retains the full copyright of the article and provides the publisher with noncommercial archival publication rights. The author may then disseminate and distribute the article to anyone without restriction. The author retains full commercial rights to the article and can negotiate to have it posted on any vendor site. Occasionally, I receive requests to reprint content from a JACMP published article; I refer all such requests to the author.Also, what special benefit does the the support of the peer‐review platform,the support of the Manuscript Manager,the support of the Section Editor, which is volunteer labor,the support of the Reviewers, which are also volunteer labor, andthe support of the Editor during the review and editing processSo to summarize, the author receives the following benefits without cost:the support of the editorial platform,the support of the publishing platform in perpetuity,the support of the copyeditor,the support of the layout editor,the distribution of the article potentially to any of the 3 billion individuals with web access, andthe full and unrestricted copyright ownership of the article.And for the $500 APC, which is typically a small fraction of the costs  to gather and analyze data, to write the manuscript, and to navigate the review and publication process, the author receives:JACMP in the medical physics publication community. Consider these perspectives:One of the purposes of the $500 APC is to strengthen and solidify the presence of the JACMP is now stronger than ever as it continues to evolve as the premier clinical journal complementary to Medical Physics. As many of the world�s scientific journals are or are becoming open access, JACMP remains at the forefront of that movement. The $500 charge helps solidify the journal�s optimistic future. The Journal has managed to keep the publication fee very small compared with fees of other journals in our field, and this fee represents a relatively small cost compared with the effort of performing the work upon which an article is based and the publication efforts of the authors and institutions.The Medical Physics and JACMP are intended to serve as separate, complementary AAPM journals, each with a different purpose and persona in the community:AAPM Ownership � Both journals are valued AAPM journals in which AAPM members take pride and which advance the mission of the AAPM.Journal Content � Both journals will cooperate to improve, review, and update specified journal content to be inclusive of AAPM needs yet as mutually exclusive as possible. Together the two journals will meet the needs of research medical physicists, professional clinical medical physicists, medical physics educators, and medical physics students and trainees.Publicity � Both journals are to be distinct with a strong branding. Journal content can be publicized through publications in AAPM journals and the newsletter, presentations at chapter and national AAPM meetings, as well as by partnering with the publisher to establish the presence of both journals in the international medical physics community.JACMP is truly a worldwide journal, which publishes articles from every continent. So consider how the $500 APC compares to that of other international open access journals in the radiology, nuclear medicine, imaging, and radiation oncology space. The JACMP was free to publish. But consider this benefit was based on much volunteer effort. A typical article takes several hours of labor for the Editor to guide from submission to publication. Add time for the manuscript manager to oversee peer‐review; until recently, the Editor donated his time to perform that function. The total became several man‐years of volunteer editorial labor that built and supported the JACMP, not counting the contributions of the many Section Editors and Reviewers, as well. We donated this time because we wanted the JACMP to succeed and JACMP articles to be published without cost to the authors for as long as possible.I realize that for some readers this explanation of why and how the APC came about might be less than persuasive. I can understand why, since for many years, the JACMP. The other side of this benefit is that the JACMP author community represents about 3,000 AAPM members out of our membership of almost 9,000. If AAPM were to continue to support the full cost of publication in the JACMP, a large benefit would accrue to just one‐third of the membership, not to mention the many JACMP authors who are not AAPM members.As seen in JACMP meets that need. I trust you will also conclude that publishing in the JACMP is a good deal and the $500 APC is a reasonable price to pay to provide the benefit of our scholarly contributions without barriers to the worldwide medical physics community.If you would consider the unique need of the clinical medical physics community to have an open access clinical journal, I hope you see how the JACMP, for their valuable and perceptive comments. Special thanks also to Ken Hogstrom and Sam Armato for their insightful perspective and support.I want to thank Timothy Solberg and Per Halvorsen, Associate Editors‐in‐Chief of the This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.Michael D. Mills, PhDEditor‐in‐Chief


Royal Society Open Science celebrated its third birthday in September 2017, and as we look ahead to fresh successes, the start of 2018 seems an opportune moment to pick out some journal highlights from the last 12 months:— We received over 2067 submissions, resulting in more than 640 accepted papers.— The journal received and published its first Computer Sciences Registered Report, which explored ‘…the relationship of university performance and its global physical connectedness'  and genehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQVMpHRojdw (accessed 20 December 2017)). All the papers in the collection are available at http://royalsocietypublishing.org/cc/city-analytics and make for fascinating reading.— Working with the Alan Turing Institute, who kindly hosted the journal, we launched our first completed special article collection in February 2017, examining the multidisciplinary topic of ‘City Analytics' ), is a fine example of Royal Society Open Science supporting research regardless of its source. More recently, it transpires that sheep are surprisingly good at recognizing human faces (whether film stars or former American Presidents) [sidents) .Royal Society Open Science. To this end, readers may be aware that from 1 January 2018 all new submissions will be subject to a modest article processing charge if accepted for publication ). This will ensure that the journal, which has been supported by the Royal Society during its launch phase, will remain sustainable and continue to drive publishing innovation at the Society. The charge will cover the costs of maintaining a dedicated in-house editorial office, managing the peer-review process, providing copyediting and typesetting services, publication and hosting services, as well as enabling the Royal Society to effectively promote authors' work. In the event that a small surplus is generated, this will be used by the Royal Society to support its range of activities promoting and supporting high-quality science and public engagement with the work it undertakes. Nevertheless, the journal recognizes that even modest charges may be unaffordable for some authors, and this is why we have prepared a generous waiver policy ). In summary, the waiver will apply to any author who does not have the ability to pay for publication, though the journal does reserve the right to ask authors for evidence to support the waiver application. With the waiver in place, we will not be disadvantaging our geographically diverse authorship.With these firm foundations in place, it is now time to look to the future for Royal Society Open Science exploring ways to recognize the support we receive from a small army of volunteer referees—we remain very grateful to them for their assistance. Indeed, we will shortly publish our latest list of referees who opted to have their work for the journal recognized.A number of our Associate Editors completed the end of their term of service at the end of 2017, and we wish them all the best in their future endeavours. The early successes of the journal would not have been possible without their hard work. We welcome the newly joining members of the Associate Editorial Board, and look forward to working with them to develop the journal. The next year will see Royal Society Open Science.We hope you will join us on the next steps of our journey, submitting your work to the journal, refereeing when asked, and reading and sharing the manuscripts published by


The peer-review process is a vital part of scientific publication and seeks to ensure that what is published has been effectively scrutinised for scientific integrity, validity and ethical conduct in research. No matter how good peer review may be it is inevitably, by its very nature, limited to the opinions of a small number of reviewers and editors.An important part of peer review, little mentioned, occurs after publication when the published work is exposed to a very much wider audience. This readership is often in a better position to offer critical opinions or commendations than the initial reviewers and is able to make its opinion known through letters to the editor. When these are published they offer important insights into the merit or otherwise of prior articles and serve an important educational purpose.Sadly of late there have been few such letters submitted to this journal. I encourage all readers of this journal to consider submitting letters of criticism or acclaim to the journal for consideration for publication. Ideally they should be brief and to the point, referencing the article under discussion with no more than three to five additional references. All letters will be submitted to the author of the original article, offering a right of reply. The letter and response, if forthcoming, will be published together. Letters to the editor (and the response) will not be subjected to further review but will be accepted or rejected based on the opinion of the editor.The contributions by readers criticising or commenting on published work are an important part of scientific and clinical responsibility for all of us and I encourage all readers to participate actively so as to enhance the scientific integrity and value of the CVJA. Detailed instructions for authors of letters to the editor will be added to the website shortly but in the interim I will gladly accept submissions under the conditions outlined above.In an attempt to diversify the content of the journal and to cater for the ever-growing importance of diverse imaging modalities, I plan to develop a series of ‘Images in Cardiology’. The exact requirements will be posted in the instructions for authors on the journal website shortly. In the interim, I invite the submission of suitable images for consideration for publication. The images should be of high quality and suitable for publication, as already specified on the website. They should be accompanied by a brief clinical vignette, a report of why the imaging modality was chosen and how it contributed to patient outcome. A description of the results of imaging, suitably labelled with arrows or other markers, indicating areas of particular interest is essential. A maximum of five references may be supplied. Priority will be given to images of cardiac diseases commonly seen in Africa. Submissions will be subject to peer review by experts in the field.With the dramatic developments that have occurred in the field of imaging and that have revolutionised cardiovascular diagnosis over the last several decades, some ‘old standards’ seem to have fallen away and receive less attention than they did previously. One such is electrocardiography, which many believe, as I do, still serves as an essential aid to clinical diagnosis. It is cheap, reproducible, non-invasive and readily available. I hope to develop a series of ECG presentations to be produced on a regular basis. Other cardiovascular journals publish an ‘ECG quiz’ and I enjoy them. I sense however that some such quizzes are often difficult for the average clinician, such as myself, and therefore are avoided. My plan is to provide educational ECGs linked to clinical cases, which would be of interest to physicians and clinical cardiologists, rather than specialist electrophysiologists.I hope that these new initiatives will meet with your support and that you will continue to contribute to the journal and criticise or comment in letters to the editor when you find it necessary. Please feel free to contact me, by a letter for publication, as above, or via the journal e-mail, with suggestions as to how the journal could be improved to better meet your needs.


After summarizing over 2,400 articles in plain language, the eLife Features team shares what it has learnt about writing and editing for a broad audience. Nearly every profession or trade has its own technical language or jargon, and science is no exception. Scientists in every discipline rely on a specific vocabulary of well-defined words and phrases to communicate efficiently with their peers. In fact, this vocabulary, combined with a formal way of writing, means that precise statements can be made in only a few words. Yet this kind of economy also comes at a cost; it can prevent people from outside of the field understanding what is written or said.trogo" is essentially Greek for gnaw or nibble, and that "cytosis" refers to the transport of molecules into or out of cells, the exact meaning of the word is still far from obvious. You either know its meaning or you don’t.Consider the word "trogocytosis", for example. Put simply, those 12 letters describe a process whereby certain types of white blood cell briefly fuse with another cell so that some proteins are transferred between the membranes of the two cells. However, even if you know that "Plain-language summaries are one way to combat this exact issue, and eLife has included such summaries – called eLife digests – in research articles since it first started publishing in 2012. An eLife digest is intended to briefly explain the background and significance of a research paper in words that people outside the field can understand. Readers of the digests range from scientists working across the life sciences to interested individuals who do not have a science degree.On the Origin of Species, or almost one-and-half-times the length of War and Peace. It would also get someone two thirds of the way into the sixth Harry Potter book – Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince – if they read from the beginning of the series.Over 2,400 eLife digests have been published to date. With an average length of 347 words, that number brings the total word count to over 832,800. That is equivalent to over four copies of So, what is the point of eLife digests? Firstly, we see digests as part of a wider effort to make original research as open and accessible as possible. Being an open-access journal means that anyone (with an Internet connection) can freely read articles published in eLife. The digests should mean that the majority of those readers can also learn something about the latest research results reported in the journal, regardless of their background.Secondly, eLife is a journal with a broad scope and eLife digests are one small way that we can help to foster interdisciplinary research. A plant biologist with decades of experience in research, for example, is unlikely to also be an expert in neuroscience (and vice versa). By explaining the findings of a paper in plain language, we hope that digests will help other scientists to identify new connections between different scientific disciplines.Lastly, from giving talks to writing papers, communication is part of the everyday life of a scientist. However, not every scientist gets formal training in communication skills. By working on an eLife digest, the authors of the original research article gain skills and experience that can be applied to other situations.So, who writes an eLife digest? Being aimed at a more general audience, the digests have always been handled by the Features editors who also look after Insights, interviews, podcasts and the other magazine-style content in the journal. Together with some freelance writers, we write most eLife digests. Every digest is edited carefully and sent to the authors of the research paper for checking before it is published; we work closely with the authors to ensure that each digest is a clear and accurate explanation of the main findings of their paper.Writing an eLife digest for a paper is definitely not "dumbing it down". That rather arrogant phrase (which thankfully we do not hear too often) shows disrespect to those interested readers who, either because of a lack of opportunity or inclination, just so happen not to be experts in the field. Instead the challenge is to explain the same concepts and findings as the paper but in language that most people would understand, and without assuming that the reader has any previous specialist knowledge.The writing style in a digest should also be more active and engaging than the passive and formal style that is characteristic of most scientific articles. However, this does not mean that digests should be viewed as exercises in creative writing either: flowery language and convoluted analogies can be just as difficult to follow as text laden with scientific jargon. Instead, a good eLife digest is clear, concise and complete; it states the facts without resorting to exaggeration or hype.Medium, a social publishing platform.Each eLife digest is published in a prominent position, immediately below the abstract of its research article. However, the intended audience also includes people who do not normally visit journal websites. To reach more of these readers, we regularly re-publish some digests on Homo naledi and how one in four shark species are on the brink of extinction. But we have also tackled topics like how scuttle flies develop as embryos, how proteins form changing patterns inside artificial chambers, and how sodium and potassium ions are pumped across cell membranes. We feel that digests are especially valuable in such papers because they are unlikely to be highlighted in a press release or attract coverage in the media.After almost five years of publishing eLife digests, what have we learnt about writing plain-language summaries? We are confident that you can write a digest for any research paper, including papers that would not typically attract the attention of the wider media. Sure, we have written digests about the discovery of Over the years, we’ve also experimented with different approaches to preparing digests and refined our process. We have found, for example, that providing regular feedback to freelance writers results in better drafts that require less editing and revision.We have also found that most authors are willing to get involved in preparing an eLife digest for their paper if given the opportunity. Initially, the digests were written using the accepted manuscript and authors’ cover letter as the primary sources of information. However, reading this material, getting familiar with the background and then distilling it down to the key findings took a lot of time. In 2015, we started to think about how we could involve the authors of the paper – who already knew all of these details – earlier in the process. From May to July 2015, we ran a pilot study with 100 authors who had recently been invited to submit a revised manuscript. We asked these authors about the key points that should be covered in the digest, and gave some brief guidelines on how we would like them to answer our questions.this blogpost).This pilot study worked better than we had expected; most authors sent us some answers (79 out of 100), often before their manuscript had even been accepted. Importantly, most of the answers were useful. Rather than starting from scratch, we could edit them for clarity and style, and fill in any gaps by reading the accepted manuscript. Authors also made fewer edits than before when checking their digests, and now we ask authors to answer four questions to help us write their digest. .Based on surveys, we know that the current audience is mainly scientists, though some non-scientists regularly read digests too. Among the scientists, there was a slight preference for reading digests in papers in their own field as opposed to other fields of research, but 93% of those who read digests in other fields found them useful. Lastly, scientists and non-scientists alike felt that more journals should consider providing plain-language summaries of research articles. (More details about a survey of digest readers are available in In the future, we’ll be looking to ask authors about their motivations, expectations and experience of writing plain-language summaries. In particular, we’d like to get a better understanding of what they might gain from working on an eLife digest for their paper, and if we can help them more. In addition, we will be increasing our efforts to reach new audiences, and make digests more discoverable in general. Finally, we hope that, by sharing our experiences, we might encourage others – from publishers to individual scientists – to join us in taking steps to make more scientific research not just open access but also as accessible as possible.


Despite being in publishing for the best part of two decades there is one thing I cannot adequately explain. Why is it that when a journal wants something from an author, the journal gives a deadline of barely a week but when an author wants something from a journal he can seemingly wait for ever? A typical example is when waiting for review. An author spends a year, or more, undertaking a research project, he writes it up, dots every ‘i’ and crosses every ‘t’, takes a deep breath, crosses his fingers and then sends it in. The journal may send out an acknowledgement of receipt but then the wait begins. Therein lies the problem; the review time.In approximately 1980 the median time between submission and acceptance was of the order of 70 days for the 4353 journals that made up the PubMed database at that time. By 2015, this delay had risen to 100 days for the then 9045 journals on PubMed. This delay has hovered around the 100-day mark for almost a decade.JHPS we are fortunate as our reviewers—each utterly brilliant in my view—are specialists in the world of hip preservation. I note how so many other journals, some highly established, struggle when seeking a reviewer for an article concerning hip preservation. At JHPS we are so very lucky. We have many reviewers, all voluntary, all invaluable, and requests come in regularly to be added to the journal’s reviewer database. Never once have we had to ask an author to recommend a reviewer. To do so worries me anyway, as one of the latest scams in the world of scientific publishing is for an author to recommend a reviewer but actually to fabricate the recommendation, supplying a false email address so the author ends up by reviewing their own article and recommending acceptance. I am not joking. At JHPS we see none of that, nor would I expect to do so.There are several issues that lead to a delay in a decision being made about an article. In many respects at So how long is too long? That is impossible to say. However, if a recent internal debate among members of the World Association of Medical Editors is anything to go by, one journal held onto a submission for 5 months before sending it out for review. To me that is inexcusable. The general feeling was that if a journal takes longer than 3–6 months to make a decision, then you should be looking elsewhere to publish.JHPS—and reviewer characteristics. For example, one might imagine that individuals actively involved in research, academic orthopaedics, or members of research-funding bodies would make better reviewers. This does not appear to be the case, a feature that was well noted in 1998 by Black et al.But specialist reviewers are busy people and they do the job for love. It takes time to review a submission, in some cases the best part of half a day. How many of us have that amount of time to spare in an otherwise frenetic existence? Not many I would suggest, which makes our reviewers remarkable people. Surprisingly, there is a lack of association between the quality of a review—generally first class for Once reviewed, very few articles are accepted first time. It is totally normal for an article to be sent back to the authors for revision once, twice, sometimes thrice and, on occasion, even more. After every revision comes another review, ideally by the same reviewers who saw the submission on the first occasion, but not always so. And full agreement? No way. That is most unusual. The editor treads that dangerous No-Man’s Land between reviewers’ opinions, trying hard to make sense of expert decisions and to reach a fair judgement. We do our best, although cannot always pretend to get it right. But the multiple submissions, the toing and froing of behind-the-scenes editor/reviewer debate adds time. Meanwhile the author is back at base, perhaps not understanding why there is such delay when, in fact, their article is the topic of heated discussion among his peers. This is one of the problems of blinded review, where journals act in a similar way to Secret Services and authors tread gently in order to avoid upsetting the eventual decision. As Editor-in-Chief, please let me reassure you. Do chase the journal if you feel we are taking too long—we are not perfect—and have no fear whatsoever that your query will in any way influence the eventual decision. It will not.JHPS (issue 3.2), again we were blessed by the usual collection of brilliance, from which I find it repeatedly impossible to choose the best. However, of real interest to my own practice was the article from Wilson and Keeneet al. who put the article together and are doing much to show us the way with registries. For those other registries in the world that I realise also exist, indeed to those that are just starting out, do please send us your work and data. We would love to look at it.Turning to the last issue of et al.And for this issue, number 3.3? Again, we are spoilt for choice. For some reason I have been seeing numerous cases of avascular necrosis (AVN) in the past year, perhaps because of increasing periods spent outside my shortly-to-become-non-European-Union country of the United Kingdom. Consequently the article by Vaishya And let me slip this one in as well, otherwise you might miss it. I beg of you to go to Ajay Malviya’s What the Papers Say section and look at his very last entry. I admit that the International Journal of Biometeorology is not normally at the top of my reading list. However, an article from HungaryMy very best wishes to you all.


When considering both the past and the future of the scientific journal, one key feature of this form of publication that needs to be kept at the centre of our analysis is expertise. Amidst the calls to democratize access to research, to broaden participation, and to create a more inclusive and accessible scientific practice for the twenty-first century, it is easy to find the notion of expertise a difficult one to include in the new landscape of publication. It is easy to imagine the drive to author-pays open access as a form of direct access to expertise, enabling anyone to read the original papers and in some cases see the data generated by scientists and other researchers. But at the same time, this model acts to erase the reality and significance of expertise, by assuming that access to research is the same as access to the understanding or meaning of research—by prioritizing the individual need for direct access to a consumable material, and by figuring all forms of gatekeeping as essentially anti-egalitarian, exclusivist, and negative. This is an extraordinarily naive understanding of how research ideas reach a public audience, fostered by a failure to recognize the diversity of the ‘publics’ that exist as potential readers of scientific journals. It is not a mistake made by successful science journals, past or present. Nineteenth-century editors were acutely aware of the variety of reading audiences available to them, and in an era of for-profit science publishing, they perhaps had a more acute ear for the levels of expertise of their audiences, and, crucially, an understanding of the many reasons why someone might want to read a scientific publication. These audiences might range from the researcher with high expertise but low institutional access to libraries with comprehensive journal subscriptions, to the journalist with medium expertise and a need to translate research for a lay audience, to the lay audience themselves.This erasure of expertise, and distrust of ‘gatekeepers’, has recent historical precedent. The long, detailed descriptions of counter-indications and side-effects available in packets of medication are a consequence of concerns (particularly relating to the contraceptive pill) in the 1970s that doctors were not acting as efficient gatekeepers, and were not providing patients  with enough information to be fully informed consumers of medicine. Yet, amongst those concerned with scientific literacy today, there is genuine anxiety about the ability of many of us to estimate and understand risk; so there is a serious question here about whether these leaflets achieve what they were intended to—that is, to produce better informed patient-consumers. Allowing ‘data to be free’ does not seem to remove the need for expert communicators and adjudicators. Realistically, journals are therefore likely to retain at least one role: curating and guaranteeing expertise. Even where an individual cannot understand the contents of a paper, the name of the journal may still instil confidence. In a crowded information marketplace, journals can be used as a useful shorthand to sift and rank masses of—often unintelligible—data. The future role of the journal seems very similar to its past role, despite changes in format and funding: to disseminate research, to provide authority. Prioritizing one half of this role and ignoring the other will lead to poor solutions to the problems journals face; and critics who ignore the variable expertise and interests of the people to whom one might ‘disseminate’ are probably the biggest threat to a stable future for scientific journals.


Faculty members, research scientists and academicians are currently under lot of pressure to publish their work for various reasons but it has also created lot of problems not only for the authors but also for the medical journal editors. Every author wish to see his/her work in print immediately but it is not possible for the editors to oblige them as formatting, plagiarism check, internal and external review, revision of the manuscript by authors, post acceptance editing and final publication all take time with which a vast majority of the authors are not familiar.Authors and editors both had to face certain hurdles, cross different barriers during their journey. Whenever some problem was identified, a solution was also found. In the past good old days, only correspondence author was required to give a written undertaking that the manuscript being submitted to a particular journal was an unpublished material and was exclusively being submitted to that particular journal which was accepted. All this was based on Trust but then this trust was shattered when different authors in the same manuscript started submitting the same manuscript to various journals in order to ensure early publication. Hence as soon as it was accepted by one journal, the authors would ask for withdrawing their manuscript from other journals which resulted in wasting lot of precious time of the editors and reviewers. So the solution was found and now all the listed authors have to give a written undertaking about its exclusive submission.Similarly in the past, head of the department with keen interest in research would select a topic and ask different people working in the unit to work on that particular project. At the same time the staff in the unit will be working on more than one project/study. In a particular study if one was entrusted to do literature search, other will do the data analysis and interpretation while another one will prepare the draft which will then be looked at and approved by all the listed authors before it was submitted for publication to a journal. Here again it was trust between the different team members working in a unit. Since in the past no software was available to check for plagiarism, the mutual trust of the team members had assumed lot more importance and it was expected that each one will do his/her job honestly. Later on when software for plagiarism checking became available screening for plagiarism and detection of plagiarism became much easier. However, though different plagiarism checking software are available free on the net, they are not so effective and one has to subscribe Turnitin/iThenticate which is of course expensive and small journal with resource constraint could not afford it. Hence, if the reviewer had the facility of plagiarism check, they used it and the journal editors relied on the Reviewers report.Plagiarism check and detection of scientific misconduct had become quite popular but neither all authors nor all the editors had the luxury of having access to this plagiarism check software like Turnitin/iThenticate till the Higher Education Commission, Government of Pakistan provided this facility to public sector medical and other teaching institutions including the medical universities. When this facility became available, some of the old published manuscripts were also scrutinized by the conscious authors and some of them did find that some of their colleagues had not been so honest and while working on a manuscript, they did plagiarized some portion in their write-up. Hence, when it was realized, detected, they opted for the right decision to request the editor to retract their paper which they did. Such admission of honest errors and self retraction should not be stigmatized or penalized by the authorities. The objective is to avoid any scientific misconduct and instead of taking any punitive measures, in such cases of self retraction, it will be much better to create awareness about plagiarism and upholding professional ethics. Moreover, if such things have taken place at a time when these facilities were not easily available it also calls for showing understanding. Now even if the authors have indulged in some scientific misconduct of plagiarism, the journal editors are able to detect it before it is published but in the past they too were handicapped due to lack of these facilities. Now it is extremely difficult for authors to get any such manuscript published in a good quality peer reviewed journal as all of them have plagiarism check facilities which they have themselves subscribed or have been provided by the HEC or the Reviewers utilize this facility to which they have access as faculty member of some institution which has been provided this facility by HEC.At present following are some of the freely as well as commercially available online plagiarism detection tools which can be used for screening manuscripts for plagiarism.2Cross Check™http://www.ithenticate.comhttps://turnitin.com/static/indexhttp://www.scanmyessay.com/plagiarism - free software)Viper  after thorough discussion came up with an additional criteria No. 4 in its authorship Guidelines which states that:3“Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.”Most of the journals now also ask the authors to give details of individual contribution of all the listed authors at the end of the manuscript so that in case of any reported scientific misconduct later, the concerned author is penalized instead of penalizing all the listed authors.In view of the above, we have to look at all these issues in their correct perspective while taking any decision. Punitive measures do not work all the time and in certain genuine cases, restraint, warning and forgiveness works better. Just like there is a difference between “Medical Errors” and “Professional negligence”, there is a difference in “Honest Errors” as well as “Self-Retraction” and deliberate plagiarism wherein the authors accept their mistakes hence they should be handled differently. There are examples where the scientific community has rewarded scientists who retract papers for honest errors. Retraction Watch is doing the right thing in this regard. It will be much better if all the stake holders promote research integrity and highlight examples of scientists who benefitted professionally by doing the right things. Reforms in Retraction are also needed to distinguish between honest errors, self retraction and deliberate scientific misconduct. At present most of the researchers and the journal editors as well as institutions and regulatory bodies have poor understanding about these things. Many such problems reported are the result of Lack of knowledge and experience. In addition there are limitations in journal policies and most of them are not equipped to handle cases of self- retraction efficiently.4


Th. Thhttp:Ln1Y and ). A clichttp://www.ascb.org/dora/], , . HoweverIn recent years, for instance, “post-publication peer review” (PPPR) has taken root as an alternative to the usual “pre-publication peer review” . The reawww.mededpublish.org] which went online very recently. Manuscripts are published immediately without prior review or, as is the case with MedEdPublish, after a more formal check by the editorial office. Readers review the manuscripts after publication. While this procedure generally can take many forms, MedEdPublish allows anyone who is registered on the platform to review and rate the article. The hope behind this rationale is that by involving a potentially unlimited number of reviewers this will increase the reliability and validity of the review. However, there is also a panel of official reviewers whose judgment is essential on whether or not an article receives a recommendation. It is the intention of the initiators that this recommendation will then lead to referencing the respective article in PubMedCentral which, in turn, would put it on par with publications from PubMed-indexed journals with traditional peer review. In some places, at least, this would also make it count toward career advancement.PPPR is intended to overcome these weaknesses. An example from the field of medical education is “AMEE MedEdPublish”  and Academia [www.academia.edu]. On these platforms scientists can share their publications, read and comment on the publications of others, and engage in discussions on different topics, as in other internet forums. On ResearchGate these activities, along with the responses they trigger, are registered by calculating a specific measure (“RG score”) that – at least in the company’s view – mirrors the reputation of the individual scientist within the platform and, perhaps, even beyond. Studies examining ResearchGate revealed that, for now, the social and network-related functions are rarely used except to share scientific articles   to publicly document their activity as reviewers. Since a number of big publishers  support the portal, reviewers are asked to document their reviews on Publons as part of the routine reviewing process. Depending on the type of contract with the journals, different modes of documentation exist ranging from simple and anonymous documentation of the number of completed reviews to the full-text documentation of the review itself. Even if a publisher or journal has no contract with Publons yet, as is currently the case for JME, reviews can still be documented quantitatively. Publons has also installed an index measuring the quantity and quality of the reviews. It is the idea of the Publon founders that this measure might pay off in terms of career advancement or at least academic recognition [At least with regard to the reward for preparing a scholarly peer review (pre- and post-publication), solutions are also being developed. Reviewers can create an account on the “Publons” portal [ognition .This cursory overview on some of the online activities that contribute to the Altmetric donut and score makes it clear that a multitude of opportunities for public scientific communication exist beyond journal articles and the heavily criticized Impact Factor. Currently, their potential has not yet been fully explored, and their significance cannot be fully appraised . HoweverThe authors declare that they have no competing interests.


JACMP was a continual work in progress as an open‐source, open‐access academic journal. We have discovered there are both benefits and challenges to providing articles without cost to the world. The benefits are mostly obvious: immediate and free access to all articles, wider distribution of academic knowledge, ever‐growing participation by medical physicists throughout the planet, and the consequent benefit to the tens of millions of patients that undergo radiation oncology and imaging procedures each year. The primary challenge is this: The more “successful” any open‐access journal becomes, the more articles are submitted, accepted, and published. Therefore costs rise and donated time becomes burdensome, while at the same time, there is only a limited and finite amount of revenue that may be expected from banner ads. So we often return to and test our first principles of why the JACMP was needed and what it means now.Throughout its 13 years of experience, the JACMP over to George Starkschall five years ago, I was seeing about 40 articles under review and between 12 and 25 articles in editing, depending on where we happened to be in the quarterly publishing cycle. These numbers have about tripled in the intervening years. Today, I see about 120 articles under review, and between 35 and 60 articles in editing, depending on the now bimonthly publishing cycle. The time and effort of the Editor‐in‐Chief is directly proportional to the number of articles. I find that despite a recent decision by the AAPM Board of Directors to compensate the JACMP Editor‐in‐Chief, I am actually donating more time to the JACMP than I was when I surrendered the Journal to George in January of 2008.When I turned the JACMP has established a premier international presence is due entirely to the tireless, thorough, efficient, and politically savvy editing efforts of George Starkschall. Each day, the JACMP website is accessed by over a thousand unique IP addresses, and each month by almost 10,000. There are a total of approximately 4,500 registered users of the JACMP which includes reviewers, authors, and editors. George has moved the bar far higher and it will be a challenge, both for me and for any editor who follows, to maintain the level of excellence he demonstrated as Editor‐in‐Chief. So George, let me document sincere thanks and admiration not just for myself, but on behalf of all of the Section Editors, Reviewers, and Authors for what you did for the JACMP. Thank you for the thousands of hours you donated to make the JACMP what it has become.That the This is a lesson for the younger medical physicists. While few have sacrificed as much as George, many medical physicists devote hundreds of hours each year in volunteer efforts to our profession. Are you doing your part?In 1998, many clinical physicists were puzzled because there were limited options available to publish clinical articles and make them available to the clinical physicist community. It seemed wrong to put barriers in the way of articles that would help clinical physicists do their work better. It seemed equally wrong for patients not to have the benefit of their medical physicists being able to access the best and most contemporary clinical information. The Internet, which was relatively new at the time, offered hope.Medical Physics was publishing outstanding scientific articles, and I was grateful to receive it each month. It was well worth the cost of the subscription, which I was (and am) required to pay as an AAPM member. But while we all valued the scientific articles, it seemed there was a community consensus to ascribe less value to clinical contributions. Perhaps if the JACMP offered the articles for free (at least for a season), no one would protest.Yes, JACMP was a very early participant in this revolution. It was almost certainly the first open‐access journal in radiology and one of the first in medicine. If you know of an earlier open‐access radiology journal, please send me the documentation.The big question that could only be answered over a number of years is: What is the value of clinical  academic articles that are offered for free? What we are finding is that the current medical physics generation both appreciates and largely expects academic articles to be available without cost or barriers. This is not to say these articles are not valuable and worthwhile. I believe it can now be maintained that the intrinsic value of open‐access medical physics articles is now an established fact, worldwide. Most universities now require that open‐access articles be valued equally with those published in traditional journals when considering promotion and tenure for faculty. Additionally, the value of open‐access academic publishing now extends far beyond medical physics, radiology, and medicine to the entire academic community, as well. The JACMP and have loyalty to it. They marketed themselves by linking their webpage CVs to the articles they published knowing there would be no barriers or copyright issues and that the entire article would be available to a potential employer. Today it is not unusual for a faculty physicist to earn tenure with up to half of the articles having been published in the JACMP. While 13 years ago there was a lot of doubt and more than a few naysayers, today medical physicists expect the JACMP to exist as an open‐source, open‐access journal. But when information wants to be free, who is going to pay the bills? Indeed, who pays the bills and who profits are essential questions to consider respecting the meaning of academic publishing.Many younger medical physicists published their first article in the Next issue, I intend to discuss the business model of an open‐access journal, and provide some tentative opinions as to how the bills might be paid and who should bear the cost. I invite you to send me your thoughts and ideas.Michael D. MillsEditor‐in‐ChiefJanuary 16, 2013


Barbara Smith, who spearheaded manuscripts highlighting innovative results that impacted the global health spectrum implementing new methods for disease diagnosis, including technological and product development for enhanced point-of-care and personalized health care. Dr. Smith undertook this endeavor as she transitioned from a post-doc position (from George Whitesides' lab at Harvard University) to a faculty position at Arizona State, getting acclimated and setting up her laboratory. We want to thank Dr. Smith for her time and commitment to our journal. It's worth noting, we had a high number of submissions throughout the year, however, the expectations of the manuscripts not published fell short due to our review process, indicating the emphasis of publishing high quality manuscripts. We thank all the reviewers for their time and feedback.As we conclude another year (2015), Volume 2 completed, we are pleased with the number of quality published manuscripts. We are also excited to announce Nanobiomedicine has been indexed in DOAJ  ( The top 3 countries by number of submissions were USA, Czech Republic and Spain, while the most frequent readers were from India, Austria and USA. Based on the ratio between the number of views and downloads, the most popular research paper published in the journal for the year 2015 is the following:By the end of its 2ELISA-like Analysis of Cisplatinated DNA Using Magnetic Separation- by Kristyna Smerkova, Marcela Vlcnovska, Simona Dostalova, Vedran Milosavljevic, Pavel Kopel, Tomas Vaculovic, Sona Krizkova, Marketa Vaculovicova, Vojtech Adam and Rene Kizek.This original research article was viewed more than 800 times in the two months since being published online.On the other hand, the most downloaded paper of 2015 is another original research article titled:Influence of Growth Parameters on the Formation of Hydroxyapatite (HAp) Nanostructures and Their Cell Viability Structures- by Murugesan Manoj, Ramesh Subbiah, Devanesan Mangalaraj, Nagamony Ponpandian, Chinnuswamy Viswanathan and Kwideok Park.The journal looks forward to 2016 with new initiatives, by increasing our efforts to reach out to academia and industry to submit their manuscripts around nanobiomedicine including, but not limited to the following areas; bioengineering, nano-technological applications in diagnostics, therapeutic application, vaccine, drug discovery/delivery and regenerative medicine. Also, given President Obama's call for $215 million in 2016 to support his Precision Medicine Initiative, this will enable a new era of medicine in which researchers, providers and patients will work together to develop individualized care. Precision medicine is an emerging approach for disease treatment and prevention, which exams each individual based on their variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle. $130 million of the allocated budget will be allocated to NIH to build a national, large-scale research participant group, called a cohort, and $70 million will be allocated to the National Cancer Institute to lead efforts in cancer genomics.There are many similar precision medicine initiatives globally and given the field of nanobiomedicine, there are many opportunities in the area diagnostics, therapeutics and monitoring the response to therapy. So as a result of these ongoing initiatives, we will seek to partner with conference organizers not only in technical and application, but to the precision medicine topics, to play a role as their media partner, to publish abstracts and selected papers presented at their conferences.Lastly, we have been actively engaged with the BioPharma Research Council (a partnership established last year) to co-host webinars related to the journal on a variety of topics and allow the presenter(s) to convert their presentation into a manuscript as part of a BioPharma Research Council/ Nanobiomedicine webinar series. One initiative in the process of being scheduled for April 2016 is a virtual conference around the theme of Point of Care Diagnostics. A committee with members from industry, including Thomas White, retired Chief Scientific Officer from Celera and, Joe Almeida from Siemens Healthcare have outlined a framework of relevant topics  and adoption) to be discussed during the one day (from 5–8 speakers) virtual conference.http://www.intechopen.com/journals/show/nanobiomedicine/submit-your-paper. In addition, we are enforcing to expedite the acceptance to publishing time for our authors and will request informal opinions from our Editorial Board for borderline cases.NBM accepts original and review articles as well as editorials, perspectives, short research reports, protocols and methods, notes to the editor, letters to the editor and meeting dispatch reports. The NBM manuscript processing and peer-review is entirely online. The Editorial Manager facilitates the manuscript processing time, reducing costs and is a better experience for our authors and reviewers. We have received numerous positive comments on this evolving electronic system, and we are indebted to InTech for managing this program for us. For more information, please visit our new manuscript submission system at We would like to mention, InTech Open Access Publisher has decided that NBM will not apply any article processing charges for authors whose research papers have been accepted for publication in Volume 3/2016. Finally, we would like to thank InTech for supporting the initiatives of this journal and acknowledge Petra Nenadic and her team for her continuous and endless support, passion and dedication for making this possible. In addition, we would like to thank our highly renowned and respected Associate Editors and Editorial Board members from all over the world, whose expertise range from nano-fluidic systems to nano-scale drug delivery to nano-imaging that are bridge and a catalyst in their respective fields of nanotechnology and biomedical research.


This paper examines research on peer review between 1969 and 2015 by looking at records indexed from the Scopus database. Although it is often argued that peer review has been poorly investigated, we found that the number of publications in this field doubled from 2005. A half of this work was indexed as research articles, a third as editorial notes and literature reviews and the rest were book chapters or letters. We identified the most prolific and influential scholars, the most cited publications and the most important journals in the field. Co-authorship network analysis showed that research on peer review is fragmented, with the largest group of co-authors including only 2.1% of the whole community. Co-citation network analysis indicated a fragmented structure also in terms of knowledge. This shows that despite its central role in research, peer review has been examined only through small-scale research projects. Our findings would suggest that there is need to encourage collaboration and knowledge sharing across different research communities. Peer review is central to research. It is essential to ensure the quality of scientific publications, but also to help the scientific community self-regulate its reputation and resource allocation . WhetherUnder the impact of recent scandals, where manipulated research passed the screening of peer review and was eventually published in influential journals, many analysts have suggested that more research is needed on this delicate subject –10. The This study aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of peer review literature from 1969 to 2015, by looking at articles indexed in Scopus. This analysis can help to reveal the structure of the field by finding the more prolific and influential authors, the most authoritative journals and the most active research institutions. By looking at co-authorship and co-citation networks, we measured structural characteristics of the scientific community, including collaboration and knowledge sharing. This was to understand whether, despite the growing number of publications on peer review in the last years, research is excessively fragmented to give rise to a coherent and connected field.th century [Finally, it is important to note that the period covered by our analysis is highly representative. Indeed, although many analysts suggested that peer review is deeply rooted in the historical evolution of modern science since the 17 century , recent  century .JAMA publishing abstracts and articles from the second, third and fourth editions of the congress [congress . This waAbout half of the records were journal articles, the rest mostly being editorial notes, commentaries, letters and literature reviews , Nature (n = 110), JAMA (n = 99), Scientometrics (n = 65), Behavioral and Brain Sciences (n = 48), Chemical and Engineering News (34), Academic Medicine (32), Australian Clinical Review (32), Learned Publishing (n = 31) and Research Evaluation (n = 31). However, research articles on peer review were published mostly by JAMA (n = 62), Behavioral and Brain Sciences (n = 44) and Scientometrics (n = 42). This means that top journals such as Science and Nature typically published commentaries, editorial notes or short surveys, while research contributions have mostly been published elsewhere. If we look at the impact of research on peer review on journal citations . However, it is worth noting that the contribution of research on peer review in terms of journal citations has been increasing over time , “publishing” (93), “research” (76), “open access” (56), “quality improvement” (47), “evaluation” (46), “publication” (44), “assessment” (41), “ethics” (40) and “bibliometrics” (39). The primacy of the link between peer review and the concept of “quality” was confirmed by looking at nouns/verbs/adjectives in the paper titles  and in the abstracts . This would confirm that peer review has been mainly viewed as a “quality control” process rather than a collaborative process that would aim at increasing the knowledge value of a manuscript .Data showed that research on peer review is typically pursued in small collaborative networks (75% of the records had less than three co-authors), with the exception of one article published in 2012, which was co-authored by 198 authors and so was excluded by the following analysis on co-authorship networks to avoid statistical bias  and exported all available fields for each document retrieved as a CSV  file. After several tests and checks on the dataset, we identified three samples of records that were hierarchically linked as follows:Our sample included all records on peer review published from 1969 to 2015, which were extracted from Scopus on July 1Sample 1 (n = 6402 documents), which included any paper reporting “peer review” either in the “article title” or “author keywords” fields . This sample was obtained after deduplication of the following query to Scopus: (TITLE("peer review") OR AUTHKEY("peer review")) AND PUBYEAR < 2016.Sample 2 (n = 3725 documents), which restricted sample 1 to journal articles , books, book chapters and conference papers, so excluding editorial notes, reviews, commentaries and letters. This sample was obtained after deduplication of the following query to Scopus: (TITLE("peer review") OR AUTHKEY("peer review")) AND (DOCTYPE("ar") OR DOCTYPE ("ip") OR DOCTYPE ("bk") OR DOCTYPE ("ch") OR DOCTYPE ("cp")) AND PUBYEAR < 2016.Sample 3 (n = 1955 documents), which restricted sample 2 to records that were not listed among “Medicine” as subject area. This sample was obtained after deduplication of the following query to Scopus: (TITLE("peer review") OR AUTHKEY("peer review")) AND (DOCTYPE("ar") OR DOCTYPE ("ip") OR DOCTYPE ("bk") OR DOCTYPE ("ch") OR DOCTYPE ("cp")) AND PUBYEAR < 2016 AND NOT(SUBJAREA("MEDI")).With sample 1, we aimed to exclude records that were not explicitly addressed to peer review as an object of study. With sample 2, we identified only articles that reported results, data or cases. With sample 3, we aimed to understand specificities and differences between studies on peer review in medicine and other studies. If not differently mentioned, we reported results on sample 1. Note that, in order to check data consistency, we compared our Scopus dataset with other datasets and repositories, such as PubMed and WoS . Although these queries could filter out some relevant papers, we strongly believe these cases had only a marginal impact on our analysis. For instance, we tried to use other related search terms and found a few papers from Scopus (e.g. just 2 documents for “grant decision making” and 3 documents for “grant selection”) and a number of false positives .In order to visualize the collaboration structure in the field, we calculated co-authorship networks  in all sWhen constructing co-authorship and co-citation networks, we only used information about documents explicitly dealing with “peer review”. The rationale behind this decision was that we wanted to measure the kind of collaboration that can be attributed to these publications, regardless the total productivity of the scientists involved. Minor data inconsistencies can also happen due to the data exported from Scopus, WoS and PubMed not being complete, clean and free of errors. If a paper is missing, all co-authorship links that can be derived will be missing too. If an author name is written in two ways, two different nodes will represent the same researcher and links will be distributed between them. The continuous refinement, sophistication and precision of the algorithms behind these databases ensure that the amount of mistakes and missing information is irrelevant for a large-scale analysis. In any case, we implemented automatic mechanisms that cleaned data and removed duplicated records that reduced these inconsistencies to a marginal level given the scope of our study .Diameter: the longest shortest path in the network, which indicated the distance between its two farthest nodes , so showing the degree of separation in the network.Betweeness centrality: the number of shortest paths between any two nodes that passed through any particular node of the network. Note that nodes around the edge of the network would typically have a lower betweeness centrality, whereas a higher betweeness centrality would indicate, in our case, that a scientist or a paper was connecting, respectively, different parts of the co-authorship or the co-citation network, thus playing a central role in connecting the community.Number and size of clusters: here, we found the number and size of densely connected sub-communities in the network after performing a simple breadth-first search. We used these indicators to understand if the community was characterized by a multitude of sub-groups relatively independent from each other, with someone sub-connecting more researchers.S1 Appendix(DOCX)Click here for additional data file.S1 File(R)Click here for additional data file.