Neuroradiology Editorial Board members.A Happy and Healthy New Year to you, well-respected readers, authors, reviewers, editors, and Though 2022 has begun, we have yet to overcome the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, particularly in regions where vaccines are unavailable or where people refuse vaccination because they do not trust evidence-based science. The clear regional association between high COVID-19 incidence and low vaccination rates demonstrates the impact of illogical and unscientific thinking on the frequency of COVID-19 victims. As scientists, we are challenged to refute irrational arguments and guide global thinking on the pandemic.Neuroradiology’s chief aim is to disseminate state-of-the-art scientific information in neuromedicine fields. In 2021, we published 181 original research papers (eight related to COVID-19), 17 reviews, five editorials, 13 Letters to the Editor, and the Japanese and European Societies of Neuroradiology Congress Abstracts. We also published an increasing number of manuscripts related to artificial intelligence applications, which requires special guidance. Thus, we were very happy to publish Wagner et al.’s [Neuroradiology to be the preeminent home for their research efforts and articles. I offer heartfelt thanks to our Section Editors and reviewers for identifying the best science out of voluminous submissions. I thank the Editorial Board members for sharing their ideas and supporting a dynamic peer review process and also welcome our new Editorial Board members. Finally, I thank our Managing Editor, Dr. Lisa Babinec, for facilitating the publishing process alongside the production team and Springer Nature for their support and commitment to publication ethics.I am delighted to thank all authors who deemed In 2022, we aim to stimulate scientific discussions on emerging neuromedical diagnostic and therapeutic concepts by providing two new features with the support of Prof. Mayank Goyal, Calgary: “Controversies” and “Innovations.” Additionally, we continue to welcome reader suggestions regarding urgent questions that should be discussed in our journal.Prof. Dr. med. Rüdiger von KummerEditor-in-Chief


Open peer review practices are increasing in medicine and life sciences, but in social sciences and humanities (SSH) they are still rare. We aimed to map out how editors of respected SSH journals perceive open peer review, how they balance policy, ethics, and pragmatism in the review processes they oversee, and how they view their own power in the process.We conducted 12 pre-registered semi-structured interviews with editors of respected SSH journals. Interviews consisted of 21 questions and lasted an average of 67 min. Interviews were transcribed, descriptively coded, and organized into code families.SSH editors saw anonymized peer review benefits to outweigh those of open peer review. They considered anonymized peer review the “gold standard” that authors and editors are expected to follow to respect institutional policies; moreover, anonymized review was also perceived as ethically superior due to the protection it provides, and more pragmatic due to eased seeking of reviewers. Finally, editors acknowledged their power in the publication process and reported strategies for keeping their work as unbiased as possible.Editors of SSH journals preferred the benefits of anonymized peer review over open peer and acknowledged the power they hold in the publication process during which authors are almost completely disclosed to editorial bodies. We recommend journals to communicate the transparency elements of their manuscript review processes by listing all bodies who contributed to the decision on every review stage.The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s41073-021-00116-4. A recent cross-disciplinary review of scientific journals’ instructions found Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) journals disclosed their peer review practices more than other disciplines: humanities – 61%, social sciences – 72%, while physical sciences – 41% , 4, veryIn the above literature, “open peer review” has generally two meanings: peer review in which authors and/or reviewers are disclosed to each other, and the public sharing of peer review reports. A recent taxonomy  has suggTennant and Ross-Hellauer’s comprehensive mapping of the state of peer review research  identifiRelated to the above, Guetzkow and colleagues  conductePLOS ONE, which welcome manuscripts from virtually all disciplines, are changing the peer review landscape both through publication processes and outside of them , most of the scientific dialogue still takes place in discipline-specific journals, including those identifying with SSH subfields. Accordingly, this interview study was set up to answer three research questions:RQ1: How do highly-ranked SSH journals perceive open peer review processes and do these perceptions materialize in the actual processes they employ?RQ2: How do editors in chief position their journals’ review and publication practice between policy, ethics, and pragmatism?RQ3: How do the editors in chief situate their own powerful role in the manuscript review process and how is that role negotiating open science principles of the review process?Although megajournals, like Related to RQ1, Glonti and colleagues  recentlyA lot has been written about the ethics of peer review, which further relates to RQ2. For instance, one identified problem for both open and anonymized peer review formats is what Gorman has coined the “Oppenheim effect:” a known-author syndrome according to which some editors and peer reviewers (“We are going to publish it anyway”) tend to provide established scholars with special treatment . RecentlAs to our RQ3, Wager and colleagues  surveyedhttps://osf.io/wjztp), but due to the nonconfirmatory nature of this study, these expectations will not be discussed in detail. Future quantitative studies with good statistical power will be more suitable for hypothesis testing.Although we expand on the above existing findings, our study is not built on exact hypotheses. We did entertain and preregister some expected trends before data collection (https://osf.io/wjztp). The idea was that registering questions and general objectives of the research beforehand would build up both credibility as well as trust, and thus facilitate approaching busy editors in chief who presumably receive many contact requests daily. Further details such as the complete question list and outcome expectations were not disclosed but embargoed, as we did not want to influence the interviewees’ responses. After preregistration and testing, small changes were made to the original 21 questions . The study followed the Finnish National Board on Research Integrity guidelines, according to which this type of study was exempted from ethical review. Before reaching out for participants, we created an interview structure and work plan which were stored in the Open Science Framework on June 25, 2020 . A protected university cloud service was used for storing the data; every five years the need to continue keeping the stored data with be re-assessed. The participants were informed of the research details via email before the interview and in more detail at the beginning of the interview, during which the interviewees were also invited to ask questions related to the study. Informed consent was collected in digitally-signed PDF format. Both authors were present in all interviews, taking turns in asking the questions. For transparency, we state that both authors are senior researchers, identify as men, and three of the interviewees had been communicated with before at least by one of us. The first author had previous experience of conducting research interviews  that are 1.5 page – then it's a desk rejection. But if it's a full article, the editorial manager will assign it to one of the other editors. And then it's the editor's task to go through the article.” (E10)“Chief editors have a look at the first round, we can then give a desk reject right away. But if it goes further, then two members of the editorial board read the text and assess whether it's good to go to review or not. We might not desk reject, but send ‘OK, didn’t go to review yet, but if you do these changes, we’ll reconsider.’” (E7)“In the external review phase, editorial power is not direct but manifests in reviewer selection. This could be done by the editor in chief or another staff member, or as a collective effort. Higher volume journals had reviewer databases with hundreds of potential experts; smaller journals would mainly recruit via the personal networks of the editorial staff. All editors agreed that academic qualifications were the primary selector, supported by a whole range of other criteria.It’s because they’re considered experts. It’s because sometimes we know them personally. It is because they are more committed, because they’re on the board. And it is also because they are familiar with the journal, the direction of the journal, the expectations and the level of quality of the journal.” (E5)“In some journals, editorial power was coordinated by having the screening supplemented with a full editorial review. In these cases, one or more persons of the editorial staff read the entire manuscript and provided (signed or anonymous) feedback before potentially moving to external review:age, biases, commitment, political/theoretical position, distance, expertise, nationality, personal preferences, and recommendations. Additionally, two journals were proud to have “harsh” or “super” reviewers who could be used for the most challenging tasks:And then there are my sort of super reviewers. They are people whom I have just learned to trust. Who will first of all do it if they say they’ll do it, but also are good at sort of sifting through, reading and picking things up. These are often people who have been journal editors or just have a track record. And if I had a structure of associate editors, these are people who would be associate editors.” (E5).“Altogether, nine unique criteria were considered relevant in choosing the reviewers: we don’t follow the peer review slavishly, but then again, the issue of not recognizing what the reviewer was saying has not really arisen – we end up reading every single piece submitted and everything, and then every piece that is published in the journals, we go over each one of us, more than once.” (E11)“The role of external review was somewhat polarized among the journals. On one side, certain editors consider the external review to be advisory instead of decision-making. These editors define their roles rather as curatorial or akin to editors in book publishing. Beyond assuring high quality publications, they see their responsibility in stimulating innovative impulses and helping authors bring their concepts to full fruition in a collaborative process.I tend to view myself as an umpire. I’m not qualified to make these decisions. My job really is to try and ensure that the reviewers are appropriate and that the reviews are fair, to the extent that I can. And I’m sure there are mistakes.” (E8).“At the other extreme, some editors in chief were utterly clear about operating as nothing but mediators between reviewers and the reviewed submissions. These editors pursued first and foremost the assurance of scientific quality, and in this picture, the external reviewers served as “objective” measures.Sometimes it gets complicated and then the person I ask will be somebody on our editorial board who has been fairly helpful in the past, because you're asking them basically to follow through the entire editorial history of this. I'll send them the whole thing, like, ‘here's the history, here are the reviews, what do you think.’” (E8)“Despite collectively following and agreeing on the previously discussed benefits of anonymized external review, doubts were voiced regarding anonymized communication in the revision phase. One editor in chief felt that the initial anonymized processes would benefit from increased transparency after the necessary “gatekeeping” had been cleared out:often what’s far more useful is a sort of semi-collaborative editorial process that follows after double blind peer review. That’s where the improvements are really made. This is just a kind of initial gatekeeping, and sometimes it’s useful and sometimes tokenistic.” (E5)“It is worth re-noting that sometimes editorial review was merged with the external review. In these scenarios, internal editorial reports could be delivered based on either double or single anonymized principles. None of the editors in chief expressed concerns or policies regarding the disclosure of these internal processes, but we also did not inquire directly about them.A completely open process, I think, is far more plausible. But then the issue is also that I’ve been on review committees where people have said, well, if this has not gone through a double blind review, it doesn’t count as much. So I still think there’s a huge hurdle to overcome in terms of how we can get the academy as a whole to value anything other than that kind of traditional double blind review.” (E3)“In cases such as the above where editors expressed a personal liking for opening the revision process, they also cited institutional requirements that would not index their journal as a proper scientific journal without anonymity involved. For instance:In the post-review phase, most journals draw strongly on their editorial assistants for technical quality assurance such as checking the integrity and completeness of the citations. In this phase, pragmatic differences, primarily relating to the ways in which the journals are financed, emerge. The journals that are primarily or exclusively financed by universities report dwindling subsidies, whereas journals with strong ties to associations or publishers appeared more stable. Relations to publishing houses were characterized unanimously as harmonious and unproblematic, except for some unease in cases of journals facing an upcoming periodic review of viability.now we run all papers through a system to see a possible relapse,” E12).Only one journal employed technical means to assure quality control beyond peer review, as they had recently started using plagiarism detection software “Transparency-wise, the foremost question at this phase was whether author or reviewer identities could be opened after a positive publication decision.So if the paper is not good, it will be lost in history, it won’t get citations. If it’s really influential but problematic, there will be some dialogue, there will be some criticism, there will be some contrasting results presented and so on.” (E5)“Finally, some editors in chief perceived the articles that they publish in the larger continuum of scientific evolution. Namely, the peer review of a publication is not something that takes place in or by the journal alone; rather, journal review is one evaluative event in an article’s life, which continues post-publication as peers read and review it in academic forums:From the above point of view, editorial power merges with the larger system of research evaluation that has already started before submission and continues after publication.In this study, we were interested in how open peer review is perceived by respectable SSH journals and how their own review processes align with those perceptions. All but one of the journals applied complete double anonymized peer review. The interviewees voiced that open peer review processes are perceived as less reliable and less fair than anonymized peer review processes, primarily due to the lack of protection the former provide for both authors and reviewers Table . HoweverWe also explored how the editors in chief position their journal’s review and publication practice between policy, ethics, and pragmatism. The interviewees systematically spoke of their journals’ (double anonymous) peer review processes to be largely defined by academic policies and ethical as well as pragmatic challenges. At the same time, the practices of journal peer review, reviewer selection, and editorial oversight were contextualized as a part of an overarching system. In this system, studies will have been vetted by university ethics boards and national or international grant givers. The journal then assesses through peer review the relevance and innovation of the research, while at the same time itself being subjected to oversight by a publisher or other funder, mostly based on success criteria like the impact factor and number of downloads. We acknowledge that emerging guidelines like Plan-S and best-practice recommendations from societies such as the Committee on Publishing Ethics (COPE) further complicate the relationships between authors, funders, and journals, among others. At the same time, the editors in chief expressed satisfaction with the means and the degree of quality, particularly in their own publication. One journal had even begun using a software tool to verify integrity and originality; however, the volunteer work of the external peer reviewers was perceived as an unchanging pragmatic cornerstone in all journals. In the end, our study witnessed a view from which editorial work and peer review serve not merely research publishing, but a process elevating the quality of said research.Finally, we were interested how editors situated their own powerful role in the review process and how in that role they negotiated open science principles in it. We did not find the journals explicitly regulating editorial power, but the editors voiced awareness of it and recounted various implicit strategies dealing with the issue. The pragmatics of organizing scientific journal peer review remain difficult to completely align with the professional ethics generally striven for – “papers do go to referees, but then editors choose referees” . The issResponsible Journals [who decides and how are central, as the criteria per se may operate as guidelines for interpretation. Following the above, a key outcome of our study is a brief policy recommendation regarding peer review transparency beyond reporting the “open” or “anonymous” types of the external experts’ reports – which is only a small part of any review process. Instead of disclosing “at what stage of the publication process does review take place” [stage by stage, and especially if the process is “double anonymous” . Although this must be added as a limitation, we may recall a previous review  finding In future research, the presented findings could be utilized as hypotheses and tested quantitatively with a larger and more representative sample of editors. On the other hand, self-reported practices, as in this study or survey research, are never direct evidence for actual practices – future studies should also keep assessing journal practices by other methodologies. We also did not interview editors in chief outside the SSH, so we do not know if the views presented here are unique to the SSH or if editors in chief in other fields share these views. Finally, we were not able to participate in data sharing due to some of the interviewees requesting anonymity; nevertheless, at least a few of our interviewees would have been willing to share their interviews openly even without editing.and other stages of review, we recommend journals to communicate the transparency elements of their processes by listing all stakeholders involved in reviewing and decision making. To further improve their transparency, journals could describe their process in the Responsible Journals platform [The scientific manuscript review process consists of multiple stages in academic journals. Our study suggests that, in the Social Sciences and Humanities, carrying out the stage(s) of external review by the double anonymized principle is perceived generally as a “gold standard” and superior to its open alternatives for various ethical, practical, and policy-related reasons. As for this platform .Additional file 1.


National Science Review, published online: 3 September 2020, doi: 10.1093/nsr/nwaa223). The authors have alerted us that recent experimental work conducted indicates that some expiations of this manuscript need to be further discussed. In agreement with the authors, editors and publisher, National Science Review has therefore decided to retract the paper. The journal would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused to the reader.‘Constructing interfacial potential barrier via a gradient configuration: an effective method to enhance energy-filtering effect’ (


Proceedings B. We present preliminary comparisons between the focal topics and geographic origin of submitting authors of papers submitted in the traditional (non-solicited) route versus solicited preprints. This analysis suggests that the solicitation process seems to be achieving one of the primary goals of the preprint solicitation endeavour: broadening the scope of the papers featured in Proceedings B. We also use an informal survey of the early-career scientists that are or have been involved with the Preprint Editorial Team to find that these scientists view their participation positively with respect to career development and knowledge in their field. The inclusion of early-career researchers from across the world in the preprint solicitation process could also translate into social justice benefits by providing a career-building opportunity and a window into the publishing process for young scientists.Preprints are manuscripts posted on a public server that do not yet have formal certification of peer review from a scholarly journal. The increasingly prominent online repositories for these preprints provide a means of rapidly making scientific results accessible to all with an Internet connection. We here describe the catalysis and subsequent development of a successful new process to solicit preprints for consideration for publication in  The widespread acceptance of preprints required global availability of the Internet, the concomitant maturation of information technology, and willingness of journals to accept papers originally posted as preprints (reviewed in ).https://asapbio.org/funder-policies; [There is an increasing sense that preprints constitute meaningful scholarly contributions ,11, exemolicies; ). In rec. 2Proceedings B decided in 2017 to appoint Maurine Neiman as Preprint Editor from the slate of Associate Editors to take on such a role. In particular, Proceedings B was hoping to use the recruitment of submissions from preprint servers to increase disciplinary breadth, especially with respect to papers outside of the behaviour-, evolution-, ecology-, and organismal biology-focused research that often makes up the bulk of their submissions. The editors were also hoping to raise awareness of the journal across biology. Finally, the Editorial Board was interested in the potential of preprint solicitation to increase participation and inclusion of perspectives of authors from a wider range of countries than currently featured in Proceedings B.Aware of the growing prominence of preprints and that other publishers were starting to screen preprint servers for appropriate manuscripts, the Editorial Board of  (a)bioRχiv because this fairly new server had been modelled after aRχiv, one of the original and most successful preprint servers. bioRχiv's search settings also enabled structured scans for papers within particular time frames and biological subdisciplines. The latter mapped nicely onto Proceedings B's disciplinary coverage, which extends into biomedicine, bioengineering and biophysics, psychology, and epidemiology. Finally, bioRχiv is having an impact on our field: nearly 40 000 preprints were uploaded to bioRχiv in its first 5 years, and the number of submissions per year is steadily increasing [bioRχiv are also cited more often and have higher Altmetric ratings than counterparts that were not deposited in bioRχiv [We started by focusing on preprints posted in creasing . Preprin bioRχiv .Proceedings B meant that we would need a broadly trained team to identify potentially appropriate papers across biology. Neiman was fortunate to have such resources available in the University of Iowa graduate and undergraduate students and postdocs in her courses, laboratory group, and across campus. An editorial team made up of early-career researchers also afforded a unique opportunity to empower young scientists by providing a direct opportunity to interact with the scientific reviewing and publishing process. Neiman enlisted about 20 of these early-career scientists, drawing from expertise in biology and beyond, to serve on the brand new Preprint Editorial Team.The disciplinary breadth of bioRχiv that also fits within Proceedings B's purview. Each team member then scans through some or all  of the manuscripts submitted in that subject on a monthly basis. We request that new team members familiarize themselves with Proceedings B's scope in their focal subject area by reviewing recently published papers in Proceedings B in their assigned area of focus and scanning preprints that other members of the topical team have suggested in the past few months. We also reminded team members that part of our task was to increase the breadth of submissions to Proceedings B, so that we were especially interested in identifying preprints that fit the topical purview of Proceedings B but that might focus on topics not often seen in the journal.Together, the group formulated their process . We recommend that team members use this feedback to refine their preprint selection process. As time went on and the team grew, Neiman appointed team members (and co-authors) Dr Robin Bagley and later Dr Dorota Paczesniak as ‘Associate Editors’, tasked with handling communications, subject area assignments, and recruitment. We also used monthly in-person meetings to discuss our process and to suggest improvements. Within the last year, we have also streamlined the submission process for solicited preprints, enabling direct access to submission to thank you for your interest’ replies to heartening messages along the lines of ‘I hadn't thought about Proceedings B until I received your email, and I think it could be a great fit’ to encouraging words about our use of preprint servers. These responses also revealed another phenomenon: the majority of papers that we solicit for submission are already in review. What this meant is that many authors responded by saying that they would either consider Proceedings B if their paper was rejected or submit to Proceedings B in the future. This information also provided a good explanation for our unanimous perspective that the papers posted on bioRχiv are almost always of very high quality with respect to formatting, structure, and visual elements.While a few authors that we have solicited have responded negatively , our general sense is that our efforts are welcome: we have received hundreds of positive responses since we began this project, ranging from simple ‘Proceedings B's Twitter account and website and our own personal social media accounts to announce the opportunity. We ran another such search in 2020. These searches have been successful, and we have to date recruited over 60 early-career scientists from 29 institutions in 10 countries across the world . We are grateful to have been able to attract team members from across the world, but we recognize that additional team members representing even more geographical diversity and a greater breadth of perspectives would be an improvement. We will continue to make an effort to recruit as broadly as possible via social media, the Proceedings B website, and our own personal networks.By 2019, transitions like graduations or new positions meant that most of the early-career trainees that were part of the first iteration of the Preprint Editorial Team had moved on. In response, we initiated an international search for new team members, using . 3Proceedings B, especially among researchers who might not otherwise think to submit to this journal. We also hope that this means that we are making a good case for preprint servers as a mechanism of making science more widely accessible and increasing scholarly productivity.As of January 2021, we have sent 1469 personalized solicitation emails to individual authors regarding 1239 manuscripts . As of January 2021, 96 solicited articles had been submitted to Proceedings B for consideration since we started soliciting preprints in September 2017. Twenty-nine of those articles (approx. 30%) were ultimately accepted for publication (https://www.socscistatistics.com/tests/fisher/default2.aspx) to compare the number of accepted versus non-accepted papers for each submission type. This analysis revealed that a significantly higher proportion of solicited papers were accepted for publication than papers submitted through the ‘traditional’ (non-solicited) route in 2017–2020   to find that there was not a significant difference in the topical representation of solicited articles versus articles submitted via the ‘traditional’ (non-solicited) route from 2018–2020 . This result finds additional support from a Kendall's rank sum correlation analysis (as implemented in IBM SPSS Statistics v. 27.0) demonstrating a strong positive correlation between the representation of topics covered by the two paper categories . Nevertheless, a visual comparison of topical representation for solicited versus traditional-route papers does hint that the solicited papers might represent a broader swath of biology (We then used a Wilcoxon signed-ranks test (as implemented in IBM SPSS Statistics v. 27.0) comparing representation across the 30 topics covered by  biology . For exa biology . By cont biology . It willZ = 0.122, p = 0.903). The similarity in geographic representation of authors from these two submission categories is supported by a Kendall's rank correlation analysis, which revealed a strong and positive correlation between the per cent contributions of countries of origin for the submitting author for traditional versus solicited manuscripts . In contrast with topical diversity, visual inspection of the data did not indicate any trends towards any differences. Indeed, there were no countries uniquely represented among co-authors of solicited submissions. Instead, this figure presents a picture of striking similarity between the geographical representation of authors of papers submitted via each of the two routes  authors, precluding an analysis that included these data, the ability to perform such an analysis in the future could also be illuminating.We performed a similar set of analyses from the same dataset of traditionally submitted manuscripts versus solicited preprints aimed at comparing geographic diversity of the affiliation of the submitting author in these two groups of submissions . A Wilcoxon signed-ranks test did not reveal any evidence for a difference in geographic representation of authors of submitted papers between traditional versus solicited categories across the 20 countries that contributed at least 1% of all submissions in at least one year between 2018 and 2020 and the pooled submitting authors from all other countries  in response to a set of eight focused questions and four more open-ended comment-format questions regarding their participation on the Preprint Team . These eWith respect to the latter, respondents generally agreed (15/27) that participation in the preprint group has improved their academic career, and overwhelmingly (24/27) indicated their work with the group aided their awareness of their research area. Several commented that regular exposure to preprints helped them to stay on top of new developments and trends in their field or to identify papers relevant to their work. Several respondents felt that engaging in the regular review of preprints made them more aware of key aspects of the publishing process such as the manuscript review process, editorial handling, and the scope or ‘fit’ of research journals.Participants generally indicated their work in the group improved (11/27) or did not change (13/27) their existing viewpoint on the quality of preprints; as well as either no impact (8/27) or an increased likelihood (17/27) to deposit their own work on preprint servers. There were a range of comments on the overall concept of preprints, including notes of their importance in making science accessible to scientists and non-scientists alike, and expressing the view that engagement with and amplification of preprints provides a community service. Altogether, we believe that these survey results reflect both that these early-career scientists are playing a central role in preprint solicitation and that the participation of these scientists is likely to translate into downstream benefits from the establishment of connections to other scholars to a better understanding of the process of academic publication.. 5While the reception of our preprint solicitations has generally been positive, we have also encountered some challenges. One early issue arose when, after sending a non-personalized email to a list of authors, we realized that many of these authors assumed that our solicitation was spam from a predatory journal. We addressed this issue by enlisting a talented then-undergraduate member of the team, Jorge Moreno, to design a Python script that we could pair with a spreadsheet to quickly send out personalized emails. Although this has not been a perfect solution—we still get the occasional annoyed reply from an author who asks us to not email them again—we do think it is a step in the right direction.Proceedings B. In the former case, we were embarrassed that we had repeatedly emailed authors. In the second case, the understandably frustrated authors would email us, confused that their article was solicited post-rejection. The solution to both problems came from simple computational fixes. First, to avoid repeated solicitations, we added a script to our shared spreadsheet that flagged email/title combinations that we had previously emailed. Second, to avoid soliciting already rejected papers, we used a simple script in Microsoft Excel software to check the titles of a list of rejected papers that we receive every week from the editorial staff at Proceedings B against of list of to-be-solicited papers. We then removed any papers that had already been considered and rejected before sending out our solicitation emails each month.An awkward situation emerged on a handful of occasions when we inadvertently solicited papers that had already been solicited by (and not submitted) or submitted to but then rejected by Proceedings B, we might not yet have appropriate breadth in the Editorial Board, or familiarity with certain topics, to be able to fairly evaluate papers that do provide an expansion in scope. One partial fix to this problem came by simply sending papers back to Editor Neiman that an Associate Editor had rejected without review for one last look. In most of these cases, Neiman agreed with the Associate Editor's decision.A more nuanced issue is posed by the occasional rejection without review of solicited papers by Associate Editors because of their perception that the paper is ‘outside of scope’. This problem is somewhat circular in nature: if our goal is to broaden the scope of Proceedings B, so Editor-in-Chief Barrett, Editor Neiman, and Publishing Editor (and co-author) Shalene Singh-Shepherd together decided to design a new science studies-focused topical category, Biological Science Practices. We recruited a science studies scholar, Dr Stephanie Meirmans, to serve as Associate Editor. This new paper category has been quite successful, with 30 submissions—and five papers published—to date since late 2019, including several  receivi. 6bioRχiv, to expand access to and scope of Proceedings B, a broadly oriented biology journal. Our model has been successful enough to be adopted by other journals (e.g. Open Biology), who are using a virtually identical approach to identify and solicit promising preprints for submission. We used comparisons of the focal topics of papers submitted via the traditional (non-solicited) route versus papers solicited via our preprint team to provide a preliminary indication that we might be succeeding in terms of increasing the topical diversity of papers submitted to Proceedings B. We also detail the involvement of a large group of early-career researchers and then use a small informal survey to assess workload and how participation affects perception of preprints and career development. This survey, though representing a relatively small sample of team members, revealed generally positive consequences of participation for these members of the preprint team. Altogether, we believe that this paper reflects an overtly successful but still imperfect process for leveraging preprint servers to raise awareness of a journal with a global reach and to move towards achieving goals regarding broader disciplinary coverage and author representation.We here describe our process for using a widely available and prominent preprint server, Click here for additional data file.


Public Health Nutrition, you will know the journal is transitioning to Open Access from January 2022 onwards and as 2022 commences it seems a good time to review the change and what it means for us.As readers of Public Health Nutrition community, Open Access means articles are freely and permanently available to all, facilitating further research and adoption of research findings. For authors, Gold Open Access articles published by Cambridge University Press & Assessment received three times the use in the first 12 months relative to subscription articles, and more citations across 2 years for both humanities and social sciences; and science, technology and medical fields.For the While some Open Access journals have been of questionable quality and appear to be a means for authors prepared to pay for publication to publish whatever they want, PHN has not changed the rigorous peer review and publication process that we have always had, maintaining the high quality of articles.The requirement for researchers to make their research findings freely available will also increase with the adoption of Plan S which has the following objective: ‘With effect from 2021, all scholarly publications on the results from research funded by public or private grants provided by national, regional and international research councils and funding bodies, must be published in Open Access Journals, on Open Access Platforms, or made immediately available through Open Access Repositories without embargo.’ PHN signalled its commitment to Open Access by becoming a Transformative Journal in October 2020, and now, in January 2022, makes the transition to being fully OA.The imposition of article processing charges is not intended to limit access to publication by authors with limited budgets. As detailed on the PHN website, authors whose institution has signed a Read and Publish agreement with Cambridge University Press & Assessment receive either a full or partial waiver of the charges.https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/public-health-nutrition/public-health-nutrition-open-access-frequently-asked-questionsWhen the corresponding author is based in a Research4 Life Group A country, article processing charges will be waived, and a 50 % waiver will be granted where the corresponding author is based in a Research4Life Group B country. Individual cases will also be assessed, and in rare cases when authors and their institutes can clearly demonstrate their inability to pay, charges will be waived. In this way, we maximise the opportunity for all authors to publish in PHN, regardless of their funding availability.And what has happened to journal submissions because of the transition to Open Access? The figure below shows the cumulative number of manuscripts submitted each month over the last 6 years. The green line for 2021 clearly shows a drop in the rate of submissions after March when PHN changed to Open Access, but this has been smaller than anticipated, and is a typical trend for all OA flips. In fact, since the ScholarOne site transitioned to OA ahead of the 2022 volume, PHN has received submissions from seventy-one counties, with the number of submissions being substantially greater than what was forecasted, which is very encouraging. These are exciting times for the journal, but our experience with the transition so far affirms our ambition that PHN will maintain its place as the destination for dissemination of research and scholarship aimed at understanding nutrition-related public health achievements, situations and problems around the world.I would like to thank the team at Cambridge University Press & Assessment, all the reviewers, authors and readers for continuing to make PHN the success it is today and wish you all the best for 2022.


The journal and the authors retract the article “Formation of Proto-Kranz in C3 Rice Induced by Spike-Stalk Injection Method”  cited abFollowing publication, concerns were brought to the attention of the editors regarding experimental results from  that werIn accordance with our ethics procedures, an investigation was conducted. The authors have not been able to provide a satisfactory explanation for these irregularities and the journal’s Editors-in-Chief no longer has confidence in the conclusions of the paper. Therefore, to ensure the addition of only high-quality scientific works to the field of scholarly publication, this paper  is retraWe apologize to our readership that this went undetected until now.


The authors wish to make the following erratum to this paper :The published version of The list of authors was incorrect and did not accurately reflect the contributions of individuals that contributed to the overall work. It is changed to:1,*, Stephanie J. Spada 2, Vanessa M. Hirsch 2 and Fadila Bouamr 2Kevin M. Rose 1 Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, University of California—Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA2 Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Rockville, MD 20894, USA; stephanie.spada@nih.gov (S.J.S.); vhirsch@niaid.nih.gov (V.M.H.); bouamrf@mail.nih.gov (F.B.)kevin_rose@berkeley.edu* Correspondence: The Author Contribution section was changed to: S.J.S. conceptualized nuclear envelope mechanisms. F.B. co-wrote the manuscript. K.M.R., V.M.H.–writing. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.The authors would like to apologize for any inconvenience caused to the readers by these changes.


Communications Biology to reflect on their experiences with peer review, and the importance of including and recognizing early-career researchers as part of this process.This year’s theme for Peer Review Week is “Identity”, with a focus on promoting equity in peer review practices and recognizing how personal identity can influence the process. While many researchers may involve trainees with their reviews, not all will acknowledge the contributions made by these early-career researchers or request that journals provide them with direct recognition. In this Q&A, we asked pairs of faculty and post-doctoral fellows who previously co-reviewed manuscripts at  Dr. Stefanie Robel is an Assistant Professor at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Neuroscience. She received her Ph.D. in neurobiology from Ludwig-Maximilian University and Helmholtz Zentrum München and was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Alabama at Birmingham before joining the faculty at Virginia Tech in 2015.Dr. Carmen Muñoz-Ballester received her Ph.D. from Institute of Biomedicine of Valencia before joining the Robel lab as a post-doctoral fellow. In the future, she would like to lead her own lab with a focus on the molecular basis of sex differences in cognitive decline and aging.Dr. Yan Zhu is a Principal Investigator at the Institute of Biophysics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He received his Ph.D. in molecular and cell biology from Washington University in St. Louis and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of California, Los Angeles, before starting his lab at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2009.Dr. Shaowei Hu received his Ph.D. in neuroscience from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2017, and is currently a post-doctoral fellow in the Zhu lab.Dr. Robel and Dr. Muñoz-Ballester, please tell us about your research interests.Stefanie Robel (SR): Proper brain function is mediated by neurons and shaped by glial cells. Astrocytes are glial cells in the brain that have many roles during development and in the mature brain. Our lab studies the fascinating changes that astrocytes undergo in neurological disease or when the brain is injured by mild traumatic brain injury or concussion.We ask how these changes affect astrocyte functions: (1) At the synapse, where astrocytes are responsible for maintaining ion and neurotransmitter homeostasis. (2) At the network level - Do local changes in astrocyte function affect neuronal network function and behavior? (3) At the vasculature, where astrocytes contribute to the maintenance of the blood-brain barrier and regulation of blood flow. We study how cellular changes affect astrocyte physiology in the context of brain injury or disease and if these may contribute to neurodegeneration and dementia.Carmen Muñoz-Ballester (CMB): I decided to do my post-doc in this laboratory because I am fascinated by astrocytes, glial cells in the brain that were thought to be mere structural support for neurons for a long time, but we now know are essential to maintain the healthy functions in the brain. I am also interested in the response of the brain to injury and other physiological processes like aging, and astrocytes are key in the adaptation of the brain to these new conditions. More specifically, I am studying why females respond differently to brain injury and aging than males and the role that astrocytes are playing in these contexts.Dr. Zhu and Dr. Hu, please tell us a little about your research.Yan Zhu (YZ): I am interested in the neural basis of desires. Using Drosophila as a model organism, I investigate the neural circuits regulating the basic processes of thirst for water, appetite, mating, and aggression.Shaowei Hu (SH): My research interests include: (1) the neural and molecular basis of innate behaviors like aggressive behavior and courtship behavior; (2) gene therapy for inherited diseases like deafness.Why is it important to include trainees in the peer review process and provide them with direct recognition for their involvement?SR: From my perspective, it is critically important to extend the training that mentees receive, especially at the post-doc level, to all activities that a principal investigator is responsible for so that they can make informed career decisions. This includes aspects of team leadership and management, as well as communication with and service to the research community. The publishing process can be difficult to navigate without insight into all aspects of it. In my lab we spend time discussing the different roles that researchers take when participating in the process. Yet, a direct experience is worth a thousand words, which is why I ask mentees to participate in the peer review process. Additionally, post-doctoral fellows in my lab are often closer to the technical aspects of the work or have stronger expertise in parts of the work that is being evaluated. Working on a peer review together allows me to train mentees in a systematic approach to evaluating manuscripts, as well as in writing a review that ensures scientific integrity and is genuinely helpful to the authors. I put emphasis on striking a professional tone that lays out our perspective about the quality of the manuscript, strengths and weaknesses without coming across as harsh or judgmental. Because a high-quality review takes considerable effort and time, especially when mentees who have not yet reviewed many manuscripts, it is important to recognize the effort and involvement. It is also crucial to the transparency of the peer review process to disclose who reviewed the manuscript. Peer review is confidential and all people involved in the process should be on record with the journal. In addition, this creates a record that establishes a junior researcher as competent reviewer and increases the diversity of the reviewer pool.YZ: Reviewing manuscripts is an important part of the training process for a trainee who would later become an independent researcher. The trainees deserve full recognition for their time, efforts, and intellectual contributions to the reviewing process.SH: Most of the trainees will be independent investigators one day, so they must learn how to judge unpublished work from other groups. Including trainees in the process will ensure that peer review is a self-sustained process with constantly high standards over time.CMB: In my opinion, a mentor is much more than a person who guides you through your science but someone who helps you to grow as a scientist in every aspect necessary to succeed in your career. In my case, I want to lead an independent research program, and being able to be a good reviewer who helps the authors, the journal, and the scientific community to have reliable and solid manuscripts is a contribution that is expected from a good academic. While I could learn this skill on my own, it was much better for me to have the exposure to the peer review system with my mentor, not feeling disoriented and preparing me for future independent peer reviews. On the other hand, I also put my time and effort to do a good job and, as in every other contribution to science, it is ethical to acknowledge this work to the person who did it. Just like a person who contributed to a paper should be an author, everyone who contributes to peer review should be named a reviewer. You did the work; you get the recognition. I just wish more journals informed principal investigators and reviewers in general about the possibility of co-reviewing manuscripts with trainees.What has been your main takeaway from the peer review experience, and why is peer review important?YZ: Peer review critically evaluates a manuscript for its merit. More importantly, the process gives authors opportunities to obtain constructive suggestions, which are directly related to their research, from the experts in the field. Because of this, I had much improved manuscripts at the end of the process. Additionally, I observed quite diverse perspectives of thinking in the reviewers.CMB: Peer review is a system that allows the scientific community to improve a scientific publication. Reviewers bring a new pair of eyes on the argument, helping to have more clarity and to identify blind spots. While I do not think improving a manuscript is necessary the work of a reviewer, I truly believe that it is our responsibility as scientists to make sure that any manuscript has certain standards of quality and reliability.Being on the other side of the peer reviewer process definitely gave me a new perspective. I understood better how we, as authors, can many times assume what our readers know or go too far in our conclusions. However, an external reader, an expert in the field with more distance to the manuscript, can easily detect gaps or assumptions and request more clarification and, if needed, experimental proof of a statement. I think being a reviewer has given me more perspective to write my own manuscripts and improved my way of approaching my own science. Thus, I guess I could say that being a peer reviewer made me a better scientist.Interviews were conducted by Associate Editor George Inglis.


Access Microbiology, to an open research platform. As part of this, we conducted a survey of our community to gauge current attitudes towards the platform and here we present some of these results. The majority of respondents (57 %) said they would always or sometimes want to remain anonymous on their peer review report, whilst 75 % of respondents said that as an author they would be happy to make the data underlying their research open. There was a clear desire for a range of research types that are often seen with sound science publications and rigorous research. An encouraging 94 % of respondents stated that the platform is somewhere they would consider publishing, demonstrating the enthusiasm in these respondents for a new publishing platform for their community. Given this data and that from our previous focus group research, the platform will launch as outlined in the original project proposal and adopt a transparent peer review model with an open data policy.Following the Microbiology Society’s successful bid for a Learned Society Curation Award from the Wellcome Trust and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Society is converting our sound science, open access journal,  As an author, this would make me more keen to submit to AM, but as a reviewer, I might be more likely to decline invites to review knowing my name would be associated with my comments.’‘The concept of a DOI-citable microbiology-specific pre-print platform is very appealing.’‘Avoid being just a dumping ground for papers rejected by other journals!’‘Refocus on the flagship journal and stop chasing fads. I agree with the ideals the new journal wants to achieve but better, well established alternatives already exist.’‘I reckon you need to be clearer about the vision.’‘Please consider special rate or free open access to countries of low income. Researchers work hard with limited budget and again face difficulty while publishing. This is not fair.’‘Is there a way of getting direct updates for certain specialties? For example, antimicrobial resistance… like a filter tool?’“It would be great to create major areas and their respective subareas where the submitted manuscripts could be assessed by the community. For instance, ‘Environmental Microbiology/Microbial Ecology’ with the subarea ‘Marine Microbiology’.”‘The platform should be user-friendly.’‘Make sure you clarify the term ‘open data’ -- slippery ground.’‘The cost of the papers shouldn't be a problem for research teams that have low funding .’‘Don't let the quality of the publications suffer in an effort to get people to engage.’The fact that 59% of respondents have never published on an open research platform , yet 94 A very high proportion of respondents (75 %) said that they would be happy to make the data underlying their research open, whether requiring assistance to do this or not, whilst 13 % could not or would not want to. Many of the reasons provided in ‘Other’ referred to funding or work restrictions, copyright and patent issues, and patient confidentiality. The H2020 Programme Guidelines on FAIR Data recognises that there are ‘good reasons to keep some or even all research data generated in a project closed’ and recommend that data should be ‘as open as possible and as closed as necessary’ . Many ofAccess Microbiology is no different. The risk of dramatically decreasing the reviewer pool and potentially increasing pressure on those who would continue to perform reviews is a risk to the platform’s sustainability.With such a high proportion of respondents indicating they would always or sometimes want to remain anonymous on their peer review report, imposing an open peer review model could alienate many potential reviewers. Even with the slightly surprising result that respondents across career stages had a similar willingness to provide names to reviews, there are evidently still genuine concerns about the repercussions of performing a critical review of a senior researcher or colleague. Difficulty securing reviewers is a publishing-industry-wide problem  and AcceGiven the interest in a wide range of article types, this suggests that those surveyed are knowledgeable on the importance of sound-science research and are eager to have a place to publish it. A unique workflow for Registered Reports will need to be established, so inclusion of this in the first launch phase should be considered. The suggestions of sound-science research (e.g. replication or negative data) or Outreach papers in the ‘Other response’ section suggests that there is confusion amongst some of the community as to what article types can be used for what research type, so this should be considered prior to launch.Finally, the open-ended feedback question provides additional insight into participants perspectives or concerns about the platform. There were numerous positive responses, showing many respondents are supportive of what the Microbiology Society is undertaking. However, there was a concern from multiple respondents regarding the cost of publishing. It will be completely free for authors to submit and publish for the first 12 months of the platform launch – this is because the Wellcome grant is funding the first year of running costs, so we can subsidize all costs for authors. However, once article processing charges (APCs) are introduced, the Society waives all open access fees for corresponding authors from both A and B Hinari countries, as well as providing fee-free open access through Publish and Read agreements. Therefore this free-to-publish launch period and our other policies must be communicated clearly to authors considering submitting to the open research platform.Recommendations:Adopt a transparent peer review model. Provide explanation on our website of the advantages of this model and how it works on our platform. Consider surveying reviewers who decline to provide their name to their review to understand their concerns and attempt to address these.Adopt an open data policy, with an underlying principle of ‘as open as possible, as closed as necessary’. Provide a clear explanation on our website of why we have adopted this policy, what it means and why it benefits authors and the wider community. Provide guidance on the website on best practices, recommended repositories and help in depositing their data in our Figshare portal.Launch with most article types listed in the survey, but investigate possibility of including Registered Reports. Provide clear guidance on our website and in communications about which article types encompass the various types of research output, and to encourage authors to contact us if unsure.Communicate that it will be free to publish for the first 12-months after launch and eligibility for fee-free open access publishing to those authors who qualify. Provide clear guidance on our website and in communications to encourage those authors to submit.This box provides a full list of the questions present in the survey. If applicable, multiple-choice answers have been given as bullet points below the question.  1. To increase transparency during the peer review process, the platform will publish peer review reports for each version of an article, preferably with the reviewer name(s) alongside. Knowing this, how would you feel about providing your name to your review?    •I would always be happy for my name to be published with my review.    •I would be happy for my name to be published sometimes but there are times I would want to remain anonymous.    •I would always want to remain anonymous and would decline to review if it is mandatory to include my name.  2. What would the reasons be for your answer? (I would be happy for my name to be published sometimes but there are times I would want to remain anonymous.)  3. What would the reasons be for your answer?   4. The open research platform aims to ensure that, where possible, all raw data underlying the results is deposited and made available, so that others can analyse, replicate and reuse your work. As an author, how would you feel about being asked to make all of the data associated with your article open? This would include, as examples, all sequencing data and/or software source code.    • I would be happy to do this. I would be happy to do this but I would need help.    • I wouldn’t want to do this, it is too much work.    • I couldn’t do this, my funding and/or work situation prevents me from doing so.    • Other (please state).  5. What type of research would you like the open research platform to publish?     • Research Articles    • Methods    • Study Protocols    • Case Reports    • Registered Reports    • Software Tool Article    • Pedagogy articles    • Data papers    •Other (please state)Access Microbiology?  6. Have you previously submitted to     •Yes    •No  7. What type of article did you submit your work as?    •Research Article    •Short Communication    •Methods    •Case Report    •Review    •Pedagogy  8. Have you ever submitted to an open research platform before?    •Yes    •NoAccess Microbiology’s open research platform somewhere you would consider publishing?  9. Is     •Yes    •No    •If no, please explain the main reason(s) why you wouldn’t consider publishing  10. What career stage are you currently at?    •Career break    •Undergraduate student    •Postgraduate student    •Early career    •Mid-career    •Established career    •Retired    •Prefer not to say    •Other (please describe)  11. What area of work do you work in?    •Research institution/university    •Industry    •Hospital or clinical setting    •Other (please state)Access Microbiology’s open research platform?12. Do you have any other feedback or suggestions about


As chemical information evolves, impacting many chemistry areas, effective ways to disseminate results by the scientific community are also changing. Thus, publication schemes adapt to meet the needs of researchers across disciplines to share high-quality data, information, and knowledge. Since 2015, the F1000Research Chemical Information Science (CIS) gateway has offered an open and unique model to disseminate science at the interface of chemoinformatics, bioinformatics, and several other informatic-related disciplines. In response to the evolution of chemical information science, the F1000Research CIS gateway has incorporated new members to the advisory board. It is also reinforcing and expanding the gateway areas with a particular focus on machine learning and metabolomics. The range of available article types, availability of data, exposure within complementary multidisciplinary F1000Research gateways, and indexing in major bibliographic databases increases the visibility of all contributions. As part of progressing open science in this field, we look forward to your high-quality contributions to the CIS gateway. These new advisors will help to deepen the range of scientific interests, backgrounds, and experiences which are shaping this exciting body of research, as well as ultimately widening the gateway’s audience to further increase the dissemination of the work within it.Since the previous update of the F1000Reseach Chemical Information Science (CIS) gateway,4 Authors are encouraged to respond openly to the peer review reports, which are published with the article, and can publish revised versions of their article at no further cost, if they wish. An article remains published regardless of the reviewers’ reports and findable via Google Scholar. Articles that pass peer review are then indexed in Scopus (receiving a Citation Score), PubMed, Chemical Abstracts Service, and other bibliographic databases. The advantages of the F1000Research publishing model have been highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic which has shown the increasing importance of data availability and rapid dissemination of research. In chemical information science, for example, the drug discovery process can be accelerated by the early sharing of results, allowing others access to the work while expert reviewers assess it. This contrasts with the closed review process in traditional journals, which can take several months to complete. In chemical information, it is frequently desirable to share, for instance, full data, open-source code, or free servers that can have a significant impact in the community and represent advances in the field. Readers can also benefit from the reviewers’ comments and opinions that are valuable in many cases but are lost or hidden from the public in traditional publishing; professionals, educators, and students will also certainly benefit from reading the open peer review and discussion of the contributions. Furthermore, since chemical information is moving so rapidly, as illustrated by the impressive advancements within, for instance, artificial intelligence,5,6 waiting several months to publish the paper after peer review can jeopardize the research impact and novelty.The F1000Research publishing model is designed to speed up the sharing of research, improve transparency and reproducibility, and reduce editorial barriers to publishing. Articles are published rapidly as soon as they are accepted after passing a series of rigorous but expedited prepublication checks to assess originality, readability, availability of FAIR data, and compliance with policies and ethical guidelines. This rapid dissemination of research removes the delay in others’ ability to benefit from accessing the work during the reviewing period. Peer review by independent invited experts, suggested by the authors, takes place openly after publication. Transparent peer review helps to address potential biases in the process, adds value to the article in question, provides reviewers with credit for their work, and can provide better written and more constructive feedback than anonymous peer review, as shown in randomized clinical trials.A key objective for the CIS gateway moving forward will be to encourage a broad range of contributions that benefit researchers and add value to the community. These can be in the form of original research and review articles but also includes articles for which authors may have struggled to find a ‘home’ for via other traditional journal publication venues. The publication of null or negative results is one such example; for instance, studies showing why a computational method was not capable of solving a particular problem. This approach will allow researchers credit for a wider range of the outputs they are producing, reduce research waste, and bring increased visibility of valuable information for the community. Furthermore, the wide range of article types offered by F1000Research, such as Data Notes, Software Tools, and Method Articles, will also be important as we advance the gateway. These article types provide an ideal format for the dissemination of research specific to chemical information science, and we are eager to see researchers in the field take advantage. Researchers can present new or updated open-source, free applications, or implementations in web servers, for example. Readers that include expert practitioners or newcomers to the chemical information field, students, and professionals in related areas will also be able to keep up to date with developments and applications in chemical information science. Article types such as Data Notes, Software Tools, and Methods will disseminate useful resources that can be put into practice immediately in research projects.Since the initial launch of the CIS gateway, several other gateways and collections have been created on F1000Research, which complement the subject matter and methodologies used within chemical information science. For instance, the Python collection was an ideal candidate for coordination with the CIS gateway, and in 2020 we launched a successful joint call for papers which resulted in the publication of several Software Tool articles. A range of other gateways, such as RPackage, Bioconductor, and the International Society for Computational Biology Community Journal, provide excellent opportunities for collaboration in the future. The ability to publish across different gateways and collections is an offering unique to F1000Research. These articles benefit from additional visibility in the form of increased views, downloads, and potentially, citations. Sharing materials and data across communities also acknowledges the interdisciplinary nature of research and presents exciting opportunities for future collaboration.2,3,7,8 we are now pleased to announce the launch of two new gateway areas. These new areas will focus on machine learning and metabolomics, aiming to contribute to the broader literature while also exploring the current application areas. Machine learning is now reshaping the development and applications of chemical information in inter- and multi-disciplinary areas.9 Clear examples are, but are not limited to, drug discovery and environmental chemistry, both of which have a significant impact on human health.10 Similarly, chemical information can make a significant contribution to advances in metabolomics.11 We look forward to your submissions to the F1000Research CIS gateway to further advance the chemical information sciences.In addition to the broad applications of chemical information in research areas such as organic, analytical, food, and natural products chemistry, as well as material and environmental sciences,No data are associated with this study.


FEBS Open Bio since its inception, and his expertise, dedication, and support have been invaluable for the journal’s growth and success. Stuart Ferguson received his doctorate in biochemistry from the University of Oxford, before taking up a faculty position at the University of Birmingham and later returning to Oxford, where he is currently Emeritus Fellow at St Edmund Hall but still teaching and pursuing his research interests. Stuart is also a long‐term member of the Editorial Board of our fellow FEBS Press journal, FEBS Letters. Stuart has kindly volunteered to be the second member of our Editorial Board to be interviewed, in celebration of the journal’s upcoming 10th anniversary.Stuart Ferguson has been on the Editorial Board of  FEBS Open Bio approaches its 10th anniversary, we have decided it is an ideal time to give the members of our prestigious Editorial Board an opportunity to discuss their research, publishing, and the activities of FEBS in the virtual pages of the journal. Our second interview is with Professor Stuart Ferguson, who has been on the Editorial Board of FEBS Open Bio since its inception, and whose expertise, dedication, and support have been invaluable for the journal’s growth and success.As  Most of the focus in recent years has been on how cytochromes are assembled, in particular, the c‐types where the heme is covalently attached by, surprisingly, three different post‐translational sets of apparatus found distributed amongst various prokaryotes and eukaryotes. There are interesting evolutionary dimensions to this question. In addition, we have made contributions to the manner of synthesizing a specialized heme, d1 of bacterial nitrite reductase, which turned out to share steps with a previously unknown route to heme synthesis that operates in some organisms. In addition, I have had a long‐standing interest in bioenergetics in general, exemplified by the book Bioenergetics (4th edition) that I wrote with David Nicholls [In the very immediate area, the whole question of how heme is handled/ delivered in cells is an unknown. Given the various chemical properties of heme, it is intuitively uncomfortable to accept that it finds its own way from its site of synthesis to its end locations whether they be mitochondrial cytochromes or cytoplasmic hemoproteins. Similarly in prokaryotes, some heme has to reach the external surface of the cytoplasmic membrane. There are scarcely any clues from mutants for protein‐mediated heme transport and delivery, but negative evidence of that kind can never close the question. Elsewhere, lots of proton motive force generators, for example, Complex1 of the mitochondrial and some bacterial respiratory chains, offer difficult questions, as do many proton motive force consumers such as the Tat system for moving folded proteins, along with processes in the outer membranes of bacteria that rely on the proton motive force across the adjoining cytoplasmic membrane.FEBS Open Bio was set up to attract.The simplest answer is that the journal has grown fairly rapidly and at the same time has acquired, for the moment, a highly satisfactory impact factor, thus demonstrating that there is a need for a publication vehicle for the sorts of papers that —rubbish will sink ignored—but then how would we know about papers hosted only on an institutional website? Overall, I am inclined to think the traditional model had much to recommend it and it is not clear to me how the scientific community can stop profit‐driven commercial publishing, an original aim of open access, other than boycotting of certain journals.I start with the observation that there was not one traditional publishing model. On the one hand, there are commercial publishers such as Elsevier but also Nature, Cell Press, etc., who published a whole range of journals from the very prestigious to the not so prominent and made their money by charging often high fees to libraries and in some cases individual subscribers. These attracted increasing disapproval because they were publishing work that had been funded by public bodies and/or charities who were interested in discoveries and not publications/publishers’ profits. On the other hand, there are journals published by learned societies such as the Biochemical Journal (UK) and the Journal of Biological Chemistry. Here, the income, again mainly from libraries, was used to support the scholarly activities of the sponsoring societies, but even here there was variation; some journals such as the Journal of Biological Chemistry charged their authors’ page charges, whereas others, such as the Biochemical Journal, did not. In general, those that did not impose page charges charged higher prices to libraries. A third model was that of FEBS who have always worked with commercial publishers to generate revenue for FEBS from their journals. All these journals made additional money from the sale of reprints. Most of the content of these journals was available only to subscribers, of which the majority were affiliated to institutional or company subscribers. The idea that all publicly funded knowledge should be available to all was given impetus by the move to online publication when it became feasible for an individual, almost anywhere in the world and without institutional or company connection, to gain access to all publications provided there was no paywall. I have always questioned how many such individuals exist, but to make publications truly open access, the costs of publication have had to shift to investigators and their institutions. At my own institution, the large sums allocated for this purpose were exhausted before the financial year was complete, thus leading to delays in publication. It is now understood that spending large sums of money this way instead of on research is unsustainable. The dream, of course, is deposition of papers on the internet at close to zero cost, but then who would organize review and proper presentation? Some will argue that we don’t need reviewProbably, the biggest change has been the use of PowerPoint in lectures and the onset of demand for lectures to be recorded. I have the feeling that this is leading to more rote learning and less acquisition of proper understanding. I have heard of students reviewing a lecture 100 times in belief that they will ‘star’ by showing that they can reproduce an entire lecture verbatim. PowerPoint lectures often rely on slides downloaded from textbooks and reviews without recognizing that different slides then have different abbreviations and conventions for topology of membranes etc. Not to mention mistakes such as showing penicillin acting in the cytoplasm of a bacterium with an active transport system to take it in there, completely the opposite of what the lecturer said! PowerPoint slides also tend to make lectures more like research presentations. Students are often left confused, although when used properly with purpose made slides, PowerPoint offers many positives.I have done a large number of one‐hour tutorial sessions. Not too bad, but I always preferred to sketch out problems on pieces of paper and get students to respond. It's more difficult and slower to do this online. But you can keep an eye on the clock effortlessly online!Before you start a PhD, take lots of advice. The apparently ‘best’ laboratory may be geographically unsuitable for you; what do you want to do afterwards? Many prospective PhD students are very naïve about job prospects for academics. In general, join an established laboratory that is on the ‘up’ and can give you an entrée to having new techniques/problems in your portfolio. The trouble with this advice is that, if followed, nobody would join a new group or work on currently unfashionable topics.It will substantially reduce the number of EU staff and postdocs, which is likely to have a negative effect, although members of the general public will ask why UK citizens don’t want/are not good enough to gain such employment. It will also put an end, presumably, to the annual arrival of EU undergraduates and postgraduates owing to the fees being raised to match those charged to all other non‐UK citizens. At the undergraduate level, in my own experience, this will mainly affect students from Poland and Romania, where they produce school leavers sufficiently fluent in English to join UK undergraduate courses. Top end UK universities will lose some outstanding students, many of whom would have entered the UK employment market.Yes. I suspect that institutions within the EU will be wary and visa requirements for any work visits, however short, will prove an impediment. I suspect that many in the governing party would be happy if we had not remained associated with Horizon, reflecting the delight many have expressed that we have left the Erasmus scheme. So if the present Government wins the next election, I would not be surprised if involvement with Horizon were ended as it does not fit well with ‘Global Britain’.Obviously, I have to say yes. Matthew Arnold wrote many years ago that ‘Oxford is the home of lost causes and steeped in a romantic vision of a lost past.’ And it is the case that in the UK, Oxford has been seen as a humanities rather than as a science University. This is several years out of date, even if Oxford has one of the largest groups anywhere of students studying classics (Latin and ancient Greek). In recent years, John Goodenough was awarded a Nobel prize for lithium batteries, the seminal work he started while at Oxford, and Peter Radcliffe, still at Oxford, won the 2019 Nobel prize for discovering the molecular basis through which animals sense oxygen. The vaccine work is an interesting example of the value of maintaining expertise in an area that was not seen as particularly ‘hot’ pre‐COVID. So Oxford has been the location of great science (Nobel prizes for chemistry before the Second World War) for many years and I would say is ‘on the up’ compared with competitors. In some ways, this is remarkable given the much greater attention to undergraduate teaching than in many competitors in the UK and overseas.


It constitutes an act of solidarity and sodality, and polarises the subject around it’  cover, has published hundreds of high-quality original contributions, editorials, commentaries and special articles, and from January 2020 has moved to an open access format. It continues to strive to promote the use of epidemiology to advance knowledge in mental health. Our vision is that epidemiology represents a unique opportunity for describing and understanding reality, and for monitoring and critically evaluating the actions and initiatives aimed at improving mental health in the real world.promotion. Mental health promotion involves actions that support people to adopt and maintain healthy lifestyles and which may create supportive living conditions or environments for mental health. It includes advocacy and policy actions ; 2) authors will have the opportunity to apply for discretionary waivers and 3) authors of invited materials, including editorials and special articles, will not be asked to pay the article processing charge, meaning that the journal Editors will continue to be free to implement a very well-oriented editorial agenda, in line with the themes briefly mentioned in this Editorial, always attempting to shed light on important and controversial topics that do not receive enough attention globally.The new open access format of the Journal has both advantages and drawbacks. The main advantage is that readers, anywhere in the world, will be able to access any type of published contribution without a subscription. This is a major development, fully in line with current policies on open science and data sharing (Barbui Based on these premises, our intention for the future is that the new open access version of Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences will be able to fulfil its role more powerfully, energising and consolidating the discipline of epidemiological psychiatry around its scientific community, being responsive and open to the needs of its exponents, including professionals, policy makers, politicians, service users and their families and the wider society.


Open Journal of Engineering in Medicine and Biology (OJEMB) and you are wondering if the scientific community truly needed another open-access journal, you are not alone. I asked myself the same question when I was approached to serve as the Founding Editor-in-Chief of IEEE OJEMB. In fact, over the past two decades, we have witnessed the launch of a multitude of open-access journals, often lacking a well-defined scope and focus on publishing high-quality manuscripts.If you are looking at the first papers published in the IEEE Do not get me wrong, I am an enthusiastic supporter of gold open-access journals, but only of those that are meant to address an unmet need of the scientific community and that prioritize quality over collecting article processing charges. Unfortunately, that has not been the case for too many open-access journals. So, when I was asked to consider the opportunity to serve as the Founding Editor-in-Chief of IEEE OJEMB, I asked myself if there was an emerging community of researchers who needed a new open-access journal. Clearly my answer was that such community does exist and that it deserves to have a new journal as its “home.”Results section is presented immediately after the Introduction of the manuscript. Another portion of this community is accustomed to publishing in IEEE journals and the like. These journals use a format that puts emphasis on a detailed description of the technology developed by the investigators, which can be found in the Materials and Methods section immediately following the Introduction of the manuscript.This community is made up of scientists, engineers, and clinicians who work at the intersection of biology and technology with the objective of advancing the field of medicine. A portion of this community publishes primarily in journals such as Science and Nature. These journals have primary focus on scientific discoveries and hence use a format in which the Science and Nature and researchers who typically publish their work in IEEE journals and the like, we decided to offer what we refer to as a “dual format.” Accordingly, authors can use the Science Manuscript template or the Technology Manuscript template for their submissions. The Science Manuscript template allows the authors to focus primarily on their scientific discoveries. The Technology Manuscript template puts more emphasis on the development of the technology. Both formats are relatively short in length . However, authors can provide readers with additional information in the Supplementary Materials section, which is limited to 4,000 words but can include up to 10 additional display items .To facilitate bringing together researchers who typically publish their work in The scientific community we seek to serve demands a journal that provides a rapid review process. Too many times, because of a lengthy review process, our manuscripts can be accessed by our colleagues only months and months after we have finalized the preparation of the material. To address this problem, we have assembled a group of nearly 150 individuals who contribute to IEEE OJEMB as members of the Advisory Board, as Associate Editors, and as members of the Editorial Board. The role of the Advisory Board is to determine the journal's path forward. In contrast, the Associate Editors and the Members of the Editorial Board are solely focused on assuring a rapid review process. So far, the time from submission to first decision has been on average 20 days. As we move forward, we will strive to continue to ensure a rapid review process to make high-quality papers available to the scientific community in a timely manner.We are also aware of the fact that our community does not need just more papers; it needs more high-quality papers. Hence, we plan to publish only manuscripts that are exceptionally innovative and that are expected to have a major impact in the field. We anticipate that this choice will result in a high rejection rate. To be fair to the authors, we have adopted a two-step review process. First, we perform a preliminary review to establish if the material appears to have the above-stated characteristics. If not, the manuscript is immediately rejected . If the submitted manuscript passes this first preliminary review, then a detailed review is carried out over the following two to three weeks.The first papers published in this inaugural issue of IEEE OJEMB provide a sample that well represents the broad spectrum of scientific areas that we intend to cover in IEEE OJEMB. It also well represents the high scientific quality that we expect to distinguish manuscripts published in this journal. These papers span topics such as cancer therapy, new ultrasound technology, sensing technology to identify motor phenotypes in Parkinson's disease, and soft robotics. These manuscripts are all marked by highly innovative ideas and the potential for achieving a major impact in the field.I would like to take the opportunity to thank Shankar Subramaniam, Nigel Lovell, and Metin Akay, who serve as President, Past-President, and President-Elect of IEEE EMBS, respectively. Their suggestions and constant advice were key in the process of launching IEEE OJEMB. I am also in debt to individuals such as Don Ingber, Gilda Barabino, Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic, Jim Collins, Lynn Rochester, Michael Miller, Nicholas Peppas, and Robert Langer who were among the first members of the IEEE OJEMB Advisory Board. Their unconditional support and encouragement to work toward establishing IEEE OJEMB as a highly selective, top-notch journal at the intersection of biology, technology, and medicine made it possible to launch the journal with an outstanding group of papers.I look forward to working with all of you who strive to advance the field of medicine by pursuing research at the intersection of biology and technology, research that leads to new solutions to challenging clinical problems. IEEE OJEMB is your home!!Ph.D.Paolo Bonato, , Editor-in-Chief


These metrics are primarily established at the journal level , the article-level , and the author level  First, a significant barrier to greater engagement among scientists and researchers with stakeholders and community members is the persistent academic standard that productivity and impact be judged primarily by their productions of journal articles. Incentives for researchers to share their findings more broadly to policymakers, industry or to involve society in the process of research are generally quite limited and often not provided by funding agencies. There are funding programs whose evaluation criteria include dissemination, some do not. There is a strong reason for this difference: not all frontier science is easily accessible (or immediately relevant) to the public.(ii) For science communication to be successful, professionals are required. Often it would be too much (if not impossible) to ask fundamental science researchers to engage in science communication—at least with a significant level of success. One could ask whether the role of science communicators deserves to become more established, but who should be in charge of such coordination and funding?(iii) Funding agencies do some communication activities but not in a structured manner as to follow regular updates on specific topics . This lack of a clear dissemination strategy results in many research findings and data remaining undelivered and untranslated and therefore inaccessible to policymakers, stakeholders, and the general public  Time effort and costs of publishing datasets, engaging the public, and communicating findings are proportionally greater for small projects, institutions, or research teams, putting even greater demands on these groups to achieve integrated, open, and networked science.https://responsiblemetrics.org/the-metric-tide/) make some proposals for alternatives to the impact factor.(v) A solution to this would be the use of alternative metrics . Room is now being created for academics to include what they feel their strengths are and to focus on what matters most in their field. Academics will be given more opportunity to present their quality, content, academic integrity, creativity, and contributions to society .(vi) Aside to those challenges mentioned above, another critically important, yet often disregarded factor, is the need for diversity in team composition. Representation among different genders, backgrounds, nationalities, and career stages can expand perspectives in a project  also limits the collaboration and effectiveness of research development. But beyond this, it highlighted the crucial importance of fast knowledge dissemination (sometimes at the risk of misinterpreting) and community provided peer-review outside of traditional publishing and reviewing models; none of which are usually rewarded or considered by traditional scientific evaluation paradigm , the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment , or proposals to replace Journal Impact Factor. To date (March 2nd 2022), 21,303 individuals and organizations from 156 countries have signed DORA. Despite the strong campaign by Open Science advocates, the monitoring of the institutions which sign up for the manifestos would be difficult because Leiden Manifesto and DORA are based on self-assessment. Especially in some countries where the rate of institutional endorsement is low, there have been several high-level debates over which path to choose for national-level research assessments. As signatories of DORA ourselves, we advocate for removing journal impact factors in research assessment  for the society, i.e., The Leiden Manifesto  provides an overview of Danish research production. The BFI was introduced in 2009 to report the number of peer reviewed publications of each type that universities have produced  open access to the files (uploading them to a public repository) and (ii) open access to the contents (including language). Until we decide to move away from profit-driven journal-based criteria to evaluate researchers, it is likely that high author-levied publication costs will continue to maintain inequities to the disadvantage of researchers from non-English speaking and least developed countries. As quoted from Bernard Rentier, “the universal consensus should focus on the research itself, not where it was published.”OP: conceptualization, writing—original draft, writing—review, and editing. DEI: visualization, writing—original draft, writing—review, and editing. NS, EMvR, and LB: writing—original draft, writing—review, and editing. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.This research was partly funded by the Science & Impacts grant awarded to the project Open Science in Earth Sciences by Ambassade de France en Indonésie.The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.


Health and Quality of Life Outcomes has undergone a change in leadership with Mark Oremus  and Oliver Rivero-Arias  being named Editors-in-Chief.Over the last few months, Our overall mission as Editors-in-Chief is to raise the scientific profile of the journal and improve the quality of accepted submissions through the implementation of a streamlined editorial process for authors, associate editors, and peer reviewers. This will allow published articles to have a higher impact on policy, practice, and patient outcomes.We are taking the following steps to achieve our mission: (1) revising the journal’s aims and scope to clarify the types of manuscripts that will be considered for publication moving forward; (2) expanding the editorial board with expertise to align with the revised aims and scope of the journal; (3) introducing a triage process after initial submission, at the editor-in-chief level, to identify suitable manuscripts, thereby giving associate editors more quality time to spend on the peer review process; and (4) clarifying the instructions to authors and mandating the use of article reporting guidelines to promote transparency in research. We are hoping these steps will also improve the time between manuscript submission and final publication. Over the next few months, readers will see these changes coming into effect.Health and Quality of Life Outcomes becomes the journal of choice for a narrower range of articles focused on HRQOL.The biggest change will be a sharper focus on the publication of manuscripts that directly pertain to health-related quality of life, or HRQOL. We believe the value of the journal, and the scientific impact of the manuscripts published therein, will improve considerably if To encourage the submission of high-quality work, all manuscripts submitted to the journal should conform to the relevant reporting guidelines . Systematic reviews/meta-analyses and randomized controlled trials will only be considered for publication if they are preceded by a registry listing  or a published study protocol.As the editorial board implements the new aims and scope, readers may notice the publication of articles that fall outside of the new requirements. These ‘legacy’ manuscripts are being published because the editors-in-chief did not want to adversely affect submissions that were already in peer review at the time of the change in focus.Health and Quality of Life Outcomes will discourage authors from submitting manuscripts describing the validation of existing instruments in populations from highly-specific settings/contexts.The editorial board recognizes the international nature of research and encourages the submission of manuscripts from around the globe. However, to improve the peer review process and promote the timely disposition of manuscripts, We believe the changes described above will produce a vigorous journal that is destined to have a strong impact on the scientific discourse about HRQOL for years to come.Mark Oremus, PhDOliver Rivero-Arias, DPhilEditors-in-Chief, Health and Quality of Life Outcomes