Major changes are afoot in the world of academic publishing, exemplified by innovations in publishing platforms, new approaches to metrics, improvements in our approach to peer review, and a focus on developing and encouraging open access to scientific literature and data.Findable, Accessible,Interoperable andReusable. In this opinion article, I explore the parallel view that we should take a collective stance on making the dissemination of scientific datafair in the conventional sense, by being mindful of equity and justice for patients, clinicians, academics, publishers, funders and academic institutions. The FAIR acronym recommends that authors and publishers should aim to make their output The views I represent are founded on oral and written dialogue with clinicians, academics and the publishing industry. Further progress is needed to improve collaboration and dialogue between these groups, to reduce misinterpretation of metrics, to minimise inequity that arises as a consequence of geographic setting, to improve economic sustainability, and to broaden the spectrum, scope, and diversity of scientific publication. Despite the improvements that are emerging, managing a piece of work from conception to publication can be a long and complicated journey, and elements of the process may often feel ‘unfair’.Substantial and positive changes are currently underway in academic publishing; we now have the important opportunity to explore the many potential benefits that can stem from new ways to disseminate scientific dataFindable,Accessible,Interoperable andReusable2. As well as endorsing these attributes, I here represent the view that we must also develop a collective responsibility to make data sharingfair in the conventional sense; the way we generate, represent, review, share and use data should be underpinned by justice.Advocates of data dissemination encourage aspiration to the principles enshrined in the ‘FAIR’ acronym; work should beRecent discussions around the dissemination of my own data led me to seek opinion from a cross-section of colleagues within academic medicine. To formalize this exercise, I used an online questionnaire and then followed this up with a parallel approach to seek feedback from the publishing industry. This piece is a representation of some of the key themes that arose as a result of the two-pronged questionnaire, presentations at publishing and data visualization meetings, and ongoing dialogue throughout. The opinion that I present here is my own, but is underpinned by this varied input, with the aims of prompting further discussion, building bridges between publishing and academia, and advancing constructive dialogue to inform future progress.https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/. The methods and entire datasets collected from the quantitative and qualitative input submitted by 102 academics and 37 representatives of the publishing industry, are available to view and download as PPT files fromhttps://doi.org/10.5287/bodleian:J5aekGAMy).Questionnaires were posted on-line atThis does not aspire to be a formal scientific study: the feedback I have collated represents individual opinion and the resulting work is my own personal synthesis of this dialogue and experience.5. Over 70% of academic survey respondents, agreed with the statement ‘I am frustrated by the length of time it takes to publish my work’3, and over 80% of publishers agreed that reducing the timelines involved in academic publication should be a ‘crucial priority’4. Such delays can stifle scientific progress in a variety of ways. Over the long time courses of publication, data frequently decay such that they are out of date before they go to press7. Delay also leads to academic paralysis: until their work is published, academics may refrain from presenting or discussing their data publicly, thereby limiting its impact, impeding developments and collaborations, and allowing flaws and discrepancies to go unchallenged. There is also personal paralysis, whereby delays limit the next phase of an existing body of work, reduce the likelihood of moving on to a new project, and impinge on recruiting a team, applying for academic jobs, or securing funding7.Conventional publication timelines commonly amount to weeks or months consumed by submission, peer-review, editorial decisions, potential corrections and resubmission4. In conventional models of publishing this may have been the case, but we should now strive to dismantle the view that long delays are an inevitable consequence of producing high quality output. Happily, this framework is shifting as a result of parallel improvements in allowing academics to post their own work online, and in new approaches to post-publication peer review, an approach that has been adopted as an inventive compromise to reduces delays and promote data sharing, without sacrificing a quality assurance framework 8. Reorganisation of the publication process has already contributed to reducing delays in other ways: authors now have the option of disseminating their work through pre-publication archives  or on data-sharing platforms .Reducing delays is an important aspiration but one that comes with practical caveats. One publisher says: ‘Timeliness is important. So is quality control. The latter negatively impacts the former’3. However, there is universal recognition of the potential pitfalls of such a process: a reviewer may not be impartial, may be less expert than the authors of the work for which they are providing critique, may not give the task the time that it deserves, and may – on occasion – just get it wrong9. There can also be concern, as stated by one academic, that ‘creativity is stifled in this process’. On these grounds, peer review has continued to be accepted only as the ‘least worst’ model9.Peer review is intended to provide quality assurance, a principle that is of universal importance to all stakeholders. Asked to respond to the statement ‘peer review functions equitably and contributes to improving the quality of my work’, 58% of academics agreed4. These include:However, many improvements to peer review are evolving, with support and enthusiasm from both academics and publishershttps://f1000research.com and PeerJ,https://peerj.com/), or providing double-blind peer review9;Making peer reviews open access ;Using structured formats or templates for critical review, and developing collaborative peer review so that a consensus opinion is provided by a team ;Promoting a model that seeks online feedback from the entire scientific community ;Asking reviewers to suggest additional experiments only when these are deemed essential to the work and can be conducted within an agreed time frame ;Ensuring that publishers and journals consistently apply a set of criteria to ensuring reviewers have appropriate expertise to critique an article , can be ranked and rated, are published with a DOI to make them accessible and citable, and can lead to the award of CME points11. Reviewers can now log this activity in a systematic way .Recognition for the substantial contribution made by reviewers is important, and strides forward are afoot in providing formal acknowledgement of the body of work undertaken by reviewers. Reviews themselves are becoming independently accredited pieces of scientific work that are a recognised part of a formal academic portfolio  or Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.com/), Altmetric , author-specific metrics such as h-index, and – most importantly - the application of common sense to viewing and interpreting all metrics in the right context14.‘The impact factor is broken’ stated one academic medic15. A reciprocal problem can also arise, whereby individuals are listed as authors despite not having made substantial contributions to a project. Many journals now try to address this by asking for specific details of the contributions made by each individual to the final piece of work.In clinical medicine, powering studies sufficiently to answer relevant questions often requires the recruitment and analysis of huge multicentre cohorts; similarly in scientific studies there are increasing examples of ‘team science’. Acknowledging each individual contributor can be challenging, but the crucial importance of this is highlighted in a report by the Academy of Medical Sciences16. In a traditional, non open access model, the fees required for access to a journal or individual manuscript are frequently prohibitive for individuals; access therefore depends on institutional subscriptions. In the open access model, in order to make the work freely accessible to their readers, the publisher passes the costs on to their authors. Both systems discriminate strongly against those in less affluent settings.Open access publication offers a system that should be inherently fair in promoting free access to published resources. However, a major challenge to equity here is an economic one17. So authors from wealthy institutions can potentially feed their own personal metrics by publishing their work in open access fora. In reality, the situation is more complicated, as the open access citation advantage is inconsistent between studies18, many publishing houses waive fees for authors from under-resourced settings, and there are now increasing options for free data sharing.Unsurprisingly, open access publication can influence article metrics, as those articles that are freely available may be more frequently cited3. Among publishers, a more diverse body of opinion is reflected between those who are in favour of relaxing (or unifying) formatting requirements and those who do not feel any change is required4. Online publication should progressively be providing an escape route from these constraints – albeit not one that has been consistently deployed or accepted.An academic manuscript usually has to be assembled into a standardised package that meets strict formatting requirements; this may help individual publishers or journals with quality control, and with preservation of a unique identity through a ‘house style’. However, academics often see the formatting process as a complicated and time-consuming array of obligations, demanded of them before the work has even been accepted for publication, and without any appreciable benefit to quality3.Another, broader, boundary is also in operation – that which governs so strictly the fundamental nature of a piece of work, that which inhibits (or even prohibits) publication of a work-in-progress, or an unproved hypothesis, or results that are negative, unexplained or in conflict with previous data. Only 9% of academics agreed with the statement ‘the process of publication is flexible, supports innovation, and allows me to creative’, and none strongly agreed20. Furthermore, when innovation underpins so much true scientific progress, why are such tight restraints imposed on the nature, style, content and substance of academic output? We should move towards a system that welcomes diversity: there is much for us all to gain from encouraging dissemination of a wider body of work. This might include new concepts, methods and strategies, diverse commentary and critique, approaches that have been tried and failed, negative results, unfinished projects, protocols and registries for clinical trials, and live datasets that evolve over time.This should be of significant concern as there is increasing recognition of the risks and costs associated with the suppression of negative resultshttps://wellcomeopenresearch.org/)21, making it possible for this data resource to be updated and refined over time.The traditional publication of an academic ‘paper’ makes it impossible to add incremental advances or updates, and the only way to correct inconsistencies that emerge post-publication is to submit and publish a formal erratum. This is a substantial missed opportunity for quality improvement. The version control option offered by newer publishing platforms allows authors to update their work to maintain it in its optimum form, while still preserving records of the original submission. This is the approach I have been ultimately been able to pursue for my own data, via the Wellcome Open Research platform  wedded to the idea of a journal based impact factor and to blind peer review. Some authors also express anxiety arising from the potential conflict between wanting to share their output yet needing to retain ownership of the work. Substantial power is still held by a small subset of traditional journals and editorial boards who are keen to maintain thestatus quo, exerting an influence that – at times – can be ‘toxic’25.New approaches to data sharing can be met with suspicion or opposition26 that often send unsolicited emails trying to entice authors with offers including rapid and open access publication, but that quote flawed or misleading metrics, have an unskilled editorial board, fail to provide suitable peer review, and/or publish the work only on receipt of a substantial fee27. An apparent explosion in the numbers of such enterprises is a threat tobona fide publishers, exploits authors and funders, and diminishes the quality of published science. All publishing stakeholders should seek to avoid interaction with these unscrupulous publishers and remove them from the academic record24.Vigilance is required for so-called ‘predatory’ journalsI have not set out to include detailed discussion of economic cost, but it is clear that financial investment is crucial to support innovative approaches to publishing. Academia has to be willing to accept and underwrite these costs, and the publishing industry to develop a system that is lean and competitive, and that offers value for money.3 and from an even smaller slice of the publishing fraternity4. Taking the opportunity to share feedback from academic clinicians does not mean that I represent all academic clinicians, or that the views of other sectors of academia are congruent.The discussions represented here took place over a short time frame and are based on opinions collected from a small section of academiaWe are in an era in which the process of disseminating scientific work is evolving fast and undoubtedly for the better. Working towards improvements, and finding solutions to problems, is a dynamic process that evolves over time as a consequence of input and innovation from a wide number of sources, both within academia and publishing.fair and underpinned by open and collaborative discussion at all stages of the process. There are wide-reaching benefits of fairness in publishing, which are pertinent to all the key stakeholders , for authors and publishers and addresses FAIRNESS on equity and justice for patients, clinicians, academics, publishers, funders and academic institutions. This is an opinion and not an "opinionated" paper. It is backed by a succinct and balanced analysis of responses to distributed questionnaire and discussions with stakeholders in publishing The conclusions are balanced and justified on the basis of the results.here. I have also made some additional comments to the manuscript. To see this, please clickI have read this submission. I believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard. General description.fair in the conventional sense, by being mindful of equity and justice for patients, clinicians, academics, publishers, funders and academic institutions.” The views are based on oral and written dialogue  with clinicians, academics and the publishing industry. Parts of the work were presented earlier at 2 meetings. It is concluded that further progress is needed to improve collaboration and dialogue between these groups, to reduce misinterpretation of metrics, to reduce inequity that arises as a consequence of geographic setting, to improve economic sustainability, and to broaden the spectrum, scope, and diversity of scientific publication. This is a well written “opinion” article where the author examined the parallel view that “we should take a collective stance on making the dissemination of scientific dataMajor comments.   This is in some way a relatively “short” text, mostly presented as a letter or a superficial comment, yet as such it appears to be quite long. There is no precise analysis of the announced results of the 2 online questionnaires, with 102 academics and 37 representatives of the publishing industry. The text remains to be just, as indeed announced, an opinion.   It looks to me that the text could be much shorter and much more focused on the acute problems, like expertise of the peer reviewers, negligence of the editors and the editorial boards of the journals, co-authorship and commercialization of the open access journals . Probably also the last paragraphs  could be substantially shortened. Or, if the questionnaires were appropriate, it would be possible to develop much more relevant and informed study. It is hard to see what how the study would look like since the questionnaires are not available. The explosion of the number of the journals worldwide in the last decade or so was not discussed and there is no mention of the problem with the printed journals that are facing their slow disappearance. The discussion does not reach deep enough to provide more concrete solutions to the problems that are presented in the paper.Minor comments Peer review   Insisting on the expertise of the reviewers is justified, although the existing methods - some are mentioned in the text, do not guarantee it. It should be mentioned that the journals should have some more secure methods to choose the relevant experts for the peer review. May be the reviewers should supply some evidence what kind of the expertise they have in the relation to the paper that they give an opinion and the journals should be obliged to respect it.Metrics Problem of co-authorship and possible unjustified benefits for the co-authors was not mentioned.Open access Problem of commercialization  could be more elaborated.Formatting requirements Probably some negative comments are not fully justified. I personally find impossible to review an article that, even if well written, is badly formatted. Badly presented text, even if it is of high quality, inevitably loses its impact. Please revise if you agree that your judgment was not carefully measured.I have read this submission. I believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard, however I have significant reservations, as outlined above. This paper is an opinion article, which discusses several areas where unresolved questions exist in the transition to more open scientific publication practices. The discussion is underpinned by survey data, although a full description of the survey and its results are not within the scope of the paper. Areas covered in this paper are publication delays in scientific publishing, peer review, communication between scientists and publishers, metrics such as the impact factor, models for open access publication, journals' formatting requirement, and boundaries imposed by traditional publishing on paper, which need not persist in a time with online publishing, but still do. The paper provides a timely discussion, based on survey data, and on relevant and valid arguments. The abstract promises to explore the notion of fairness from the points of view of many different stakeholders. This point of departure lacks clear justification. In particular, it is not obvious why changes in scientific publishing should need to be perceived as fair by publishers. Also, not all of the stakeholder perspectives are explicitly addressed in the main text. The survey data are available in two linked slide presentations. I recommend that the data be made available as a data frame in a non-proprietary file format. This will facilitate re-use and further exploration of the data set. Best practice is to use a repository that provides access to data in a format that is time-stamped, immutable, and permanent, and with a persistent identifier and an open licence. Documentation including metadata that describes how the survey was performed can be provided with the data or in this paper. In the current movement towards more open publication practices, it is important to find out how scientists and other stakeholders perceive barriers and possibilities. This paper makes a valuable contribution in gathering scientists' views and arguments surrounding publication practices. I am happy to approve it with a reservation about the format of openly published survey data.I have read this submission. I believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard, however I have significant reservations, as outlined above. Thank you Dr Nilsonne for the positive feedback and helpful critique.https://doi.org/10.5287/bodleian:J5aekGAMy. I have uploaded the metadata to Oxford University Research Archive; this record can be accessed using the following link:  I will address the other suggestions in more detail in a revised version of the article.


Open Access Week, starting 24 October 2016, is a worldwide event established to promote the potential benefits of open access and to foster wider participation in helping to make open access the norm in research and information sharing.In its eighth year, Open Access Week presents an opportunity for funding bodies, universities and others to use the context to advance policy changes in favour of open access on a local level, thereby adding to the global momentum.hereRead more about Open Access Week


Zoological Research (ZR) in 2017. We are very grateful to all our readers and authors for your dedication and continued support of ZR. Your ideas, input, and enthusiasm have been of immense value in helping us to improve the journal. Here, we would like to share a few memorable events and people of the past year. At the beginning of a wonderful new year, we look back at ZR, and joined our editorial board in 2014. He fulfilled his duties with dedication and diligence, and shared his outstanding expertise with opinions and constructive suggestions on many submissions to the journal. Despite his poor health, he continued to contribute to the journal  and CiteScore of 0.84 . We have also been fortunate with the addition of eleven outstanding experts who recently joined ZR as editorial members, including Yu-Hai Bi , China), Peng-Fei Fan , Patrick Giraudoux , Cyril C. Grueter , Wei-Zhi Ji , Shu-Qiang Li , Wen-Jun Liu , Julian Kerbis Peterhans , Xiang-Guo Qiu , Rui-Chang Quan , and Christian Roos . These remarkable specialists will bring new ideas and expertise to help reshape the journal. We are confident that our excellent editorial board will further facilitate the pivotal and active role of ZR in the field of science and publishing. We have also been inspired in the past year by the continued improvement in academic quality, total citations, and general influence of each of our publications. ZR. With great effort from all editors and staff from the editorial office, ZR has been ranked among the top 300 “Outstanding S&T Journals of China”. Moreover, with the successive release of special issues focusing on academic topics of current interest, ZR has evolved into a vibrant journal with appreciable readability. In 2017, the “Project for Enhancing International Impact of China STM Journals” (PIIJ) (Class B) (2016–2018), the most extensive and influential journal fostering project in China, continued its support of ZR successfully hosted the “2017 Frontiers in Zoology Symposium” with the theme of “Animal Genomics and Ecological Protection”. We hope to replicate this success with the “2018 Frontiers in Zoology Symposium”, which will focus on “Comprehensive Scientific Investigation of Animals on the Tibetan Plateau and East Asia” (please find details at www.zoores.ac.cn). As such, we hope to see you in Kunming this coming spring. ZR also co-hosted the 2017 Annual Conference of the Chinese Herpetology Society. Such events are wonderful ways in which to meet up the old friends and colleagues as well as establish new contacts and share achievements and opinions.In February 2017, ZR is not only increasing its academic value, but also consistently reinforcing the ethical integrity accompanying academic publications. In 2016, ZR published an editorial (http://www.zoores.ac.cn/EN/abstract/abstract3772.shtml) regarding proper authorship. Publishing is of importance in almost every stage of a researcher’s career  over a 10-year period, and found that such papers increased significantly from 2002 to 2011 . The Journal of Genetics & Genomics published 124 and 85 original articles in 2007 and 2016, respectively, with co-first or co-corresponding author papers accounting for 16% (20/124) and 41.1% (35/85), respectively. In Cell Stem Cell, the percentage of co-first and co-corresponding author articles increased from 20.5% (18/88) in 2007 to 37.6% (77/205) in 2016. This trend reinforces collaborations and data sharing. For ZR, in 2007, approximately 9% (9/108) of the original research articles published were by two corresponding or co-first authors; by 2016, this increased to 33% (12/36). To facilitate scientific communication and promote subject development, ditorial , letter ditorial , and stas career . Nowadays career  studied American Journal of Human Genetics states that “unrestricted joint authorship is allowed” and “a maximum of two corresponding authors is allowed” (http://www.cell.com/ajhg/authors). Neuron merely restricts the number of lead contacts  to only one, but not other authors (http://www.cell.com/neuron/authors#policies). The Journal of Neurosciences does not restrict co-authors numbers, but states “honorary authorship” to be a “misrepresentation” . Scientific Reports allows up to six co-authors, with corresponding authors usually limited to three.For most academic journals there are no universal rules regarding shared authorship, with different journals usually having their own specific regulations. For example, the ZR has an explicit attitude and firm stance to proper authorship and resolutely complies with the criteria of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors  authors usually receiving most recognition, unless shared authors are clearly listed in alphabetical order. The addition of equally contributing authors can dilute the credit allocated to each author. These actions obviously deviate from the original intention for properly sharing credit.  Editors . AccordiZR encourages every author of a paper to read the authorship guidelines thoroughly and carefully before submission, we have not previously insisted upon an author-contribution statement. However, we believe it is important to increase transparency and enhance authorship integrity. Thus, for submissions to ZR after 1 January 2018, an author-contribution statement will be compulsory. The statement is not required in uniform format, but the contribution of every person in the author list must be specifically described. Moreover, for collaborative studies, ZR requires that every person involved in the paper agrees with the author list and sharing of the credit. Although ZR will remain a respectable platform for scientific communication.Whether these measures will make a substantial difference in eliminating unethical authorship remains to be seen. However, we believe such ambitions are worth attempting simply because transparency and fairness are always worthy of pursuit. With your support and positive contributions, Again, thank you all. May your new year hold all the excitement, promise, and good wishes we have shared in 2017.Sincerely,Yong-Gang Yao, Editor-in-ChiefKunming Institute of Zoology,Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming Yunnan 650223, ChinaXue-Long Jiang, Executive Editor-in-ChiefKunming Institute of Zoology,Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming Yunnan 650223, China


Microorganisms, a new open access journal, which is dedicated to microorganisms in all their forms and via any approach to their study.It is my great pleasure to welcome you to Our present gene and genome-informed understanding of the Tree of Life has revealed the immense significance of cellular microorganisms, an insight initiated by the late Carl Woese, founder of the modern study of the evolutionary relationships of such microorganisms in their widest sense. This is especially so when we appreciate that of the three cellular Domains of life, Archaea, Bacteria and Eucarya, the first two of these are completely microbial. Even within the Eucarya, members of which are commonly referred to as eukaryotes, most phyla are predominantly unicellular or microscopically mycelial microorganisms, leaving only the rather fragile twigs of animals and plants at one extreme tip of the tree consisting of species living only a multicellular lifestyle mostly visible at macroscopic scale . Even soMicroorganisms aims to provide that broad and inclusive venue. A journal fully recognizing the broadly diverse yet connected nature of microorganisms in all their manifestations is more than ever needed for scientific progress, for the insights that only full appreciation of the breadth of the microbial spectrum can yield. Further, these microorganisms must be considered in both pure and applied aspects, whether giving benefits to us or causing disease, and concerning their place in nature via the wondrous tools of contemporary microbial ecology, as well as their experimental understanding via the laboratory and laboratory model organisms. Phenotypic properties including microbial physiology, proteomics, metabolomics and the insights of microbial cell biology and systems biology must be considered as well as genomics and phylogenomics. The biology and behaviour of microorganisms used in or relevant to biotechnology, food microbiology and industrial microbiology must also be encompassed. This inclusiveness may lead to insights into the evolutionary cell biology of the diverse phyla of life and their evolutionary relationships, answering some of the major questions posed for contemporary biology. Microorganisms has been launched to provide an advanced publishing forum for original peer-reviewed articles from scientists involved in high-quality pure and applied research on any prokaryotic or eukaryotic microorganism or other non-cellular transmissible agent—bacterium, archaeon, fungus, protist, alga, virus or prion. It publishes reviews, research papers and communications. The scope of the journal encompasses any first-class research in microbial physiology, microbial ecology, microbial genetics, evolutionary microbiology, systems microbiology, medical microbiology, pharmaceutical microbiology and anti-microbial agents, industrial microbiology, agricultural microbiology, microbial biotechnology, food microbiology and environmental microbiology; and, of course, in evolutionary cell biology and evolutionary microbiology, the deep organizing principles of microbial biology. The new online, open-access journal


Scientific Reports 10.1038/s41598-018-21401-1, published online 16 February 2018Correction to: In this Article, the authors neglected to include some potential conflicts of interest. The Competing Interests section should read:“This paper uses bird data from 61 coffee farms collected in 2013–2014 and supported by the NSF project to Dr. Robbins, Karanth and Chhatre. In 2017 Dr. Karanth co-founded Wild Kaapi, a wildlife friendly coffee company sources coffee and independently audits for birds, butterflies, trees, mammals and amphibians. Dr’s Paul Robbins and Charlotte Chang are not associated with Wild Kaapi.”Additionally, this Article contains typographical errors in the Acknowledgements section.“Funding for this project was provided by US NSF Grant Number 1265223 , Oracle (KKK), the US NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (CHC) and Graduate Research Opportunities Worldwide with USAID program (CHC).”should read:“Funding for this project was provided by US NSF Grant Number 1265223 , Oracle (KKK), the US NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (CHC) and Graduate Research Opportunities Worldwide with USAID program (CHC).”“We thank Vishnupriya Sankararaman and Shashank Dalvi for leading the field efforts, and volunteers who data.”should read:“We thank Vishnupriya Sankararaman and Shashank Dalvi for leading the field efforts, and volunteers who collected data.”


Five years after eLife published its first papers, we reflect on our consultative approach to peer review, the challenges of reproducibility, and the need to reform how published research is assessed. From the outset, our goal at eLife has been to build a selective, open-access journal where the work of researchers in the life and biomedical sciences would be evaluated by other active researchers. Moreover, funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society and the Wellcome Trust, we wanted to make the peer-review process itself fairer and more constructive. We also wanted to start a debate about how published research was assessed, which meant eschewing the use of the journal impact factor as a proxy for the importance or significance of a particular paper. Our position is that we are not in the business of selling magazines and that we publish papers because our editors think they contain science that is both rigorous and outstanding, not because we think they will attract lots of citations and improve our impact factor.In the years before eLife was launched it had become clear that there was an appetite among researchers for an alternative to the sometimes combative style of peer review that appeared to be the norm at the most selective journals. Part of the problem, we felt, was that reviewers remained anonymous to each other and to the author, so we decided to use a consultative approach in which each reviewer knew who the other reviewers were and, once the final review had been submitted, the reviewers could discuss their thoughts on the manuscript and the other reviews. Our aim was to create a forum for reviewers to judge work together as peers, as happens when research is presented at scientific meetings or when grants are reviewed by panels or study groups.For those manuscripts where the reviews are favorable, the Reviewing Editor drafts a decision letter that contains a consolidated list of the revisions the authors will need to make in order to have their manuscript accepted for publication. We feel that this consultative approach to peer review has worked well: in particular, when there is a difference of opinion among the reviewers, the consultation process often results in a measured and constructive resolution of these differences. The published version of the paper includes the decision letter and the authors' response to it. Several other journals have adopted all or parts of our consultative review process .Insights) and the general public  have also been well received.Although the consultation requires a bit more work than the traditional approach to peer review, many reviewers feel that they are taking a more active role in reaching a decision about the manuscript. Many of our new reviewers find this approach to be refreshing and they often wonder why it has not been adopted more widely. We also find that students appreciate the insights into the peer-review process provided by the publication of the decision letter and the author response. Our efforts to make the work published in eLife of interest to the wider research community  and Science Exchange on an initiative to independently replicate selected results from a number of high-profile papers in the field of cancer biology. The rce data .There is room for an alternative where active researchers make all the key decisions about manuscripts and share their views in a constructive review processOne feature of the past five years has been growth -- in submissions , research papers published (983 for the same period), and the number of Senior Editors and Reviewing Editors making decisions for the journal (currently 40 and 329 respectively). It is particularly important to note that, as an online journal, eLife does not have a page budget: this means that we are able to publish all the articles that reach the standards set by our editors. One consequence of growth is that we decided to implement a publication fee of $2500 per article at the start of 2017 . This feDORA). Three overarching themes run through the DORA recommendations: the need to eliminate the use of journal-based metrics, such as journal impact factors, in decisions about funding, appointments and promotions; the need to assess research on its own merits, not the journal in which it is published; and the need to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by online publication . It is comforting to note that the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which publishes Science, was one of the original signatories of DORA, and that Nature Research recently signed the declaration.Regarding the need to rethink how published research is evaluated by funding agencies, academic institutions and other parties, we have embraced the Declaration on Research Assessment (At this point I measure success not by some crude metric, but by the support of our editorial board and the authors who send us their outstanding work. Our goal is not to supplant any of the traditional 'high-impact' journals that are so dominant in the life and biomedical sciences: rather I believe there is room at the top for an alternative where active researchers make all the key decisions about manuscripts and share their views in a constructive review process. If you have not already experienced this approach, please give us a try!


Nursing Open was successfully published in 2014, and early in 2015, we are pleased to introduce this second issue. The copy flow is good and Nursing Open is clearly being recognized as a reputable place to publish. Of course, we have the support of an excellent publishing house, a distinguished team of associate editors and a prestigious international editorial board. We are also growing our team of reviewers and hope to maintain a good turnaround time for manuscripts.The first issue of Journal of Advanced Nursing in two editorials titled, respectively, ‘Open access a new frontier’ (Watson et al. et al. Nurse Author & Editor where Owens (I emphasize reputation and the nature of our team as these are some of the hallmarks of any good journal; in these days of the exponential growth of online open access journals, reputation is crucial. As I mentioned in my first editorial Watson , we all re Owens  publisheNursing Open meets these minimal criteria and is applying to be listed.If you have any worries about online open access publishing then all of the above are worth reading. Also, there is a Directory of Open Access Journals which outlines the basic standards to be met before being listed. Nursing Open. For those who would like to know more about Open Access policies, including funder mandates, article publication charges, waivers and discounts, and institutions with funder accounts, information and resources are available at Wiley Open Access.Globally, the pressure to publish online open access is increasing. For example, in the UK, the Higher Education Funding Council for England  and its Nursing Open and that you find the latest articles interesting and useful. I highlight all of the articles in the Nursing Open blog where you can read the latest entries on Why do Chinese nurses leave practice? (Zhu et al. et al. I hope you enjoy this second issue of


Like the revolution in scientific communication that took place in the nineteenth century, today's information revolution is driven by new technology and a sharp decrease in the costs of the distribution of scientific knowledge. Digital media and networked communications, the analogues of cheap printing and better transport infrastructure in the nineteenth century, have unleashed tremendous potential for improved and more effective communication.One of the most striking differences, however, is that the current transformation is taking place against the backdrop of an existing large and commercially highly profitable publishing industry. Coupled with an incentive system in science that places heavy emphasis on publication in established journals, the incumbent publishing system has tended to maintain the status quo at the expense of new approaches.Set against these brakes on innovation are some drivers for change, some of which find parallels with the situation two centuries ago. For example, the struggle that scientists have with the volume of information is not new. In the modern day this information comprises a vast peer-reviewed journal literature, where not only are there more articles to read but there is also a tendency for articles to contain an ever-increasing amount of data. New channels of communication dedicated to different kinds of research output have emerged to deal with the growth in the numbers of researchers and the scale and variety of the products of their work.More effective methods for sharing and using research findings mean that new audiences can be connected with scholarship, and an entirely different and very potent type of ‘reader’ is the computer itself. Computational tools are being developed that will assist, for example, with the information overload problem by helping scientists and others to navigate and interrogate the literature. Through text mining approaches, scholars could be guided towards findings that are of most interest to them. The effectiveness of such approaches is tightly linked with the extent to which the literature is freely available without limitation on reuse—the vision of open access and an important part of the revolution that is now underway.Perhaps the central challenge that needs to be addressed, however, in the context of research communication is the incentive system in science. The belief that a successful career depends on publication in specific journals, rather than on the quality of the work that is conducted, has led to a level of competition to publish in these journals that many now feel is unhealthy to the scientific enterprise, for example, by undermining the reliability and reproducibility of science.One way to tackle this concern is to reform practices of research assessment. Instead of focusing on the names of the journals in which work is published, evaluation processes should focus on the specific scientific contributions that have been made. Such reform could also place greater emphasis on core scientific values such as openness, objectivity, cooperation and collaboration.The reinvention of scientific incentives is largely a cultural challenge, but new technology can help. There are now tools to monitor the online reception and usage of a new scientific article. The evidence of influence can be both quantitative  and qualitative (such as how a study has influenced policy or practice). Importantly, these approaches can also be applied to research outputs other than research publications, including data, code, protocols and other resources.As demonstrated by the inexorable increase in the extent of open access literature across all of scholarship, the adoption of new and better approaches for research evaluation will increase. Rather than the narrow focus on traditional research articles as the currency of scholarship, we should see greater attention paid to other forms of research output, possibly coupled with a (welcome) reduction in the volume of traditional articles.In the nineteenth century the number of science journals increased from about 100 to about 10 000 journals. Perhaps one aspect of the digital revolution in scholarship will be a reversal in the earlier trend—from 10 000 to 100 ‘journals’. A smaller number of very large and open channels of communication, each specializing in a different type of output or content might be a very effective foundation upon which new tools and services are provided to support the work of research communities and the scientific enterprise as a whole.


The WHO Collaborating Center at the University of Pittsburgh, USA partnering with Nazarbayev University, developed the Central Asian Journal of Global Health  in order to increase scientific productivity in Kazakhstan and Central Asia. Scientists in this region often have difficulty publishing in upper tier English language scientific journals due to language barriers, high publication fees, and a lack of access to mentoring services. CAJGH seeks to help scientists overcome these challenges by providing peer-reviewed publication free of change with English and research mentoring services available to selected authors.www.pitt.edu/~super1) in the Central Asian region in order to rapidly disseminate educational materials. The network began with approximately 60 individuals in five Central Asian countries and has grown to over 1,300 in a few short years. The CAJGH website receives nearly 900 visits per month.CAJGH began as a way to expand the Supercourse scientific network  and Pittsburgh (WHO Collaborating Center). Both are comprised of leading scientists and expert staff who work together throughout the review and publication process. Two complete issues have been published since 2012 and a third is now underway. Even though CAJGH is a new journal, the editorial board uses a rigorous review process; fewer than 50% of all submitted articles are forwarded to peer review or accepted for publication. Furthermore, in 2014, CAJGH will apply to be cross referenced in PubMed and Scopes.CAJGH is one of the first English language journals in the Central Asian region that reaches a large number of scientists. This journal fills a unique niche that will assist scientists in Kazakhstan and Central Asia publish their research findings and share their knowledge with others around the region and the world.


The aim of this survey was to determine the level of awareness and understanding of peer review and peer review models amongst junior hospital doctors and whether this influences clinical decision-making.A 30-question online anonymous survey was developed aimed at determining awareness of peer review models and the purpose of peer review, perceived trustworthiness of different peer review models and the role of peer review in clinical decision-making. It was sent to 800 trainee doctors in medical specialties on the University College London Partners trainee database.The NEJM, Lancet and The BMJ were deemed to have most trustworthy peer review, 137/178 (77%), 129/178 (72%) and 115/178 (65%), respectively. That peer review had taken place was important for a journal content to be used for clinical decision-making 152/178 (85%), but the ability to see peer review reports was not as important 22/178 (12%). Most felt there was a need for peer review training and that this should be at the specialist registrar stage of training.The response rate was (178/800) 22%. Most respondents were specialist registrars. Checking that research is conducted correctly  and the data interpreted correctly  were viewed as the most important purposes of peer review. Most respondents were aware of open , double-blind  and single-blind peer review . 101/178 (57%) had heard of collaborative, 87/178 (49%) of post publication and 29/178 (16%) of decoupled peer review. Of those who were aware of double-blind, single-blind open and collaborative peer review, 85 (68%), 82 (68%), 74 (56%) and 24 (24%), respectively, understood how they worked. Junior hospital doctors view peer review to be important as a means of quality control, but do not value the ability to scrutinize peer review themselves. The unquestioning acceptance of peer review as final validation in the field of medicine emphasises not only the responsibility held by medical journals to ensure peer review is done well but also the need to raise awareness amongst the medical community of the limitations of the current peer review process.The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s41073-017-0029-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. The underlying principle of peer review, the process of scrutiny of a piece of work by independent experts in the same field , is acceafter publication of the article [While researchers view peer review as an essential part of scientific communication and a means of quality control , it has  article  and inde article , 13.Although developed to provide fast and more efficient peer review, these innovations have yet to be evaluated for effectiveness and do not address the quality of peer review.Furthermore, there is no objective evidence that peer review achieves the perceived aim of validating research . The numTo our knowledge, there is no research on doctors’ awareness or understanding of different peer review models or processes or whether peer review per se is a consideration when applying findings from the literature to answer specific clinical questions. We speculate that peer review is viewed as a standardized process that is the same from journal to journal and that there is little awareness or understanding amongst junior hospital doctors, defined as doctors at any stage of training between full registration with the General Medical Council and consultant level, of how different peer review models work.How aware junior doctors are of currently used peer review models.Whether different models of peer review influence junior doctors’ perception of trustworthiness of a published article.Whether a published article that has undergone peer review per se and knowledge of the model of peer review used influences clinical decision-making.Whether there is a perceived need for and desire to undergo peer review training.The aims of this study were to determine:A 30-question survey was developed aimed at determining the demographic characteristics of the respondents, their academic activity, experience of peer review, views on the purpose of peer review, awareness of different peer review models and views about their trustworthiness and the role of peer review in clinical decision-making amongst the survey respondents [Additional file The survey was piloted by sending it to five test subjects who were not included in the final study. They provided feedback on the time to complete the survey, the clarity of the survey, how easy the questions were to understand and difficulties in completing the survey.The survey was revised in response to their comments and created in electronic form using the commercially available service for creating online questionnaires, SurveyMonkey. It was sent by email to 800 trainee doctors in medical specialties on the University College London Partners trainee database. The email contained a link to the SurveyMonkey questionnaire which respondents completed anonymously. The researchers did not have access to information about who had completed the questionnaire. Two weeks later, a follow-up reminder email was sent to all trainees followed by three further emails each a week apart.The Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine)Closed peer review, where the peer reviewers remain entirely anonymous Open peer review, where the identity of the peer reviewers is known to the authors and peer review reports are published (F1000Research).Post publication peer review where peer review takes place after the article is published  and the key journal in their field were the most frequent regularly read journals  had not received formal training on peer review, although the majority had some experience of peer review; either peer review of their own work by others or peer reviewing others’ work themselves Fig. .Respondents were asked to select one or more important purposes of peer review. The most frequently selected purpose was ‘to check the research has been conducted correctly’ 152/178 (85%) followed by ‘to check the data have been interpreted correctly’ 148/178 83%)  and 81/178 (46%) respondents, respectively. ‘To improve the quality of how the research is reported’ was most important for 42/178 (24%) respondents. 34/178 (19%) ranked ‘to assess the importance and novelty of the research’ as the most important purpose of peer review, while 30/178 (17%) and 16/178 (9%) ranked ‘to detect fraud’ and ‘to help the editor in their decision-making’ as most important.There was most awareness of open peer review, double-blind peer review and single-blind peer review, 133/178 (75%), 125/178 (70%) and 121/178 (68%), respectively. Of those who were aware of double-blind and single-blind peer review, a similar proportion understood how they worked, 85/125 (68%) and 82/121 (68%), respectively, while 74/133 (56%) of those who were aware of open peer review understood how it worked , The Lancet (single-blind peer review) and The BMJ (open peer review) received the most ‘I trust peer review in this journal’ responses, 137/178 (77%), 129/178 (72%) and 115/178 (65%), respectively, while F1000 Research received the most ‘I have never heard of this journal’ responses, 109/178 (61%). Interestingly, ‘the key journal in your field’ received the most ‘I have some concerns about peer review in this journal’, 39/178 (22%) [Additional file Respondents were then given a brief description of single-blind, double-blind, open, collaborative and decoupled peer review. They were asked how far they trusted each compared to single-blind peer review. Double-blind peer review was most frequently rated as more trustworthy than single-blind peer review  while post publication and open peer review were rated by more as ‘I trust this type of peer review less than single-blind peer review’, 89/178 50%) and 75/178 (42%). Decoupled and collaborative peer review, each received a majority of ‘I would not change my trust in the article either way’ responses, 84/178 (47%) and 76/178 (43%), respectively,  responded ‘yes’. When asked ‘When making a clinical decision, do you ever consider the type of peer review beyond whether an article has been peer reviewed?’, only 22/178 (12%) responded yes.When asked ‘How often do you look up information in scientific journals to aid your clinical decision making?’, 74/178 (42%) responded that they do so at least once a week. When looking at an article to inform a clinical decision, 117/178 (66%) responded that they ‘Only consider articles published in journals where I trust peer review’. 44/178 (25%) responded that they never consider the type of peer review when making a clinical decision while only 3/178 (0.02%) responded that they only consider articles where they can see the peer reviewers’ reports.Respondents were asked whether they felt there was a need for peer review training during medical training and then, in a separate question, whether they would like to receive such training themselves. The majority  responded that they felt there was a need for peer review training. 24/178 (13%) did not feel there was a need for training, while 13/178 (0.1%) did not answer the questions. In response to whether they would like to receive training, the responses were similar: ‘yes’, 141/178 (79%); ‘no’, 24/178 (13%) and no answer, 13/178 (0.1%). However, 9 of those who responded that there was a need for peer review training responded that they would not like to receive such training themselves, while 9 different respondents who answered that there was no need for peer review training during medical training responded that they would like to receive peer review training themselves. When asked at what stage peer review training should be delivered, the responses were specialist registrar training 104, core medical training 80, medical school 77 and foundation years 48 (respondents were able to choose more than one option).Additional file Additional file This is a small observational study aimed at a specific group of junior doctors in training. The 22% response rate is very small. However, there have been response rates ranging from 2.7 to 10% in similar, albeit much larger, surveys on peer review , 20, 21.There were three responses from consultants which suggest that although some doctors were in training when the database was compiled, by the time we sent the questionnaire out, they had been appointed to consultant posts or that the survey was forwarded beyond the original cohort of 800 trainee junior doctors for whom it was intended. Because of the decision to distribute the survey using an online method, it was not possible to collect data on all potential responders who had the opportunity to complete the questionnaire and to compare the responders with the non-responders to this survey. Had we been able to identify the non-responders, we might have been able to use different approaches to increase the response rate, by for example, sending them personalized electronic or paper questionnaires or by telephoning to ask them to complete the questionnaire.Due to the high level of competition for jobs in London and a national selection process that credits research and other academic activities as well as clinical skills, it might be expected that our sample included a greater proportion with experience of scientific research and other academic activities than a country wide sample of junior doctors and may not be a representative sample of junior hospital doctors in the UK.This survey did not aim to further explore the responses provided by the participants, for example, it did not seek explanations from participants the reasons for their preference or otherwise of certain journals or models of peer review.There is no comparative analysis because the subgroups were too small to obtain meaningful results in a comparative analysis.Given the small size of this survey, low response rate and selected group of the respondents, it would be unwise to generalize our findings to the wider population of junior hospital doctors in the UK.To the best of our knowledge, this is the first survey of awareness of peer review models and its influence on clinical decision-making amongst a group of junior doctors in training. It is the first survey to specifically explore understanding and perceived trustworthiness of different models of peer review in this group.The BMJ, NEJM and the Lancet were viewed to have trustworthy peer review by the majority of respondents. More respondents stated that they trusted peer review in these journals than stated that they understood the type of peer review conducted by these journals. There was little awareness of the type of peer review in specific journals that might allow doctors to critically appraise the peer review process themselves.The most notable finding from this survey is that respondents trust familiar established names. The two most highly rated purposes of peer review in the opinion of our cohort were to check that research is conducted correctly and the data interpreted correctly. These suggest that the majority of respondents appear to view peer review as a process of validation. Previous surveys have reported the view that peer review is the only means of control of scientific information  and haveOnce provided with an explanation of the models of peer review, double-blind peer review was deemed by most to be more trustworthy than single-blind. Double-blind peer review has been noted to be preferred by researchers , 20. HowParadoxically, even after receiving an explanation of each model, those peer review models that offer more opportunity for scrutiny, open and post publication peer review, were deemed by most to be less trustworthy than single-blind peer review. Only three responded that they only trust research published in journals where they can see the peer review reports. This suggests that this group of junior hospital doctors do not view the ability to scrutinize peer review themselves as important. What seems to be important is that it is scrutinized by someone else they deem to be trustworthy, such as the journal editor or group of peer reviewers. Openness per se does not seem to be valued. This is interesting because open peer review was pioneered in the field of clinical medicine for ethical reasons, the argument being that all involved in research that affects patient care should be accountable for their decisions and open to scrutiny .That research is peer reviewed is valued as important to clinical decision-making, but the type of peer review appears to be of much less importance. Half of respondents were not involved in academic research, peer review or weekly reading of academic journals. This study did not explore which sources of information junior doctors use for clinical decision-making, and it is possible that doctors do not view the published evidence as important in their day to day work because much of recommended best clinical practice is encompassed in resources such as the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines , guidancThe majority of respondents wanted training on how to peer review themselves and thought peer review training should be part of medical training. We speculate that doctors recognize the importance of peer review and may view it as an important skill to develop in their medical career when focusing on academic work, but consider it less important when making clinical decisions.This is the first study to specifically explore the views of a group of junior hospital doctors on peer review, peer review models and their influence on trust in journals. This group of doctors had little awareness of newer peer review models and appeared to put their trust in familiar journal names with little desire to scrutinize peer review themselves. It is not surprising that there is an expectation that peer review, regardless of the model used, will be done correctly and will not need further scrutiny. This faith in peer review may be misplaced in light of the concept of open science which, by encouraging openness and sharing of the scientific process and data, acknowledges that there is uncertainty in and a continuing need to verify published findings, even when they have been peer reviewed. The unquestioning acceptance of peer review as final validation in the field of medicine emphasises not only the responsibility held by medical journals to ensure peer review is done well but also the need to raise awareness amongst the medical community of the limitations of the current peer review process.Additional file 1:The questionnaire. (PDF 814 kb)Additional file 2:Responses to ‘the key journal in your field’. (DOCX 17 kb)Additional file 3:Responses to ‘Do you have any further comments or suggestions’. (DOCX 19 kb)Additional file 4:Survey responses according to gender, post graduate degree and recent experience of peer review. (PDF 437 kb)Additional file 5:Survey raw data. (XLSX 68 kb)


Peer review, one of the pillars of scholarly communication, has been undergoing a transition moment toward greater reliability, transparency and accountability.The saturation through which the current model of peer review is going through is a well-known fact to the academic community. The continuous increased amount of publications is not accompanied by the growing number of researchers who referee the submitted articles. As a result, the quality of the reviews has diminished and the time to obtain them, on the other hand, has increased considerably, causing unwarranted delays in the dissemination of knowledge and the advancement of science.,,Scientific societies, research institutions, funding agencies and researchers have been devoting themselves to studying the theme; conferences and workshops are organized around the world to discuss new proposals and the future of peer review,Peer review is an extremely specialized work which demands time and knowledge, for which the referee - at least until recently - does not receive credits in proportion to their efforts. Most of the time, this painstaking work is discarded after the manuscript is accepted for publication. On the other hand, there is also no adequate training to teach reviewers. Researchers often learn the work alone, or with the help of their mentors, peers, or supervisors throughout their careers. It is not surprising, therefore, the difficulty in obtaining good reviews within the time advocated by the journals’ editorial process.How to make the task of reviewing articles more appealing to researchers? An initiative created in New Zealand in 2012 by Andrew Preston and Daniel Johnston intends to answer this question. PublonsOperating the Publons portal is quite simple and consists of creating a login, by the researcher, who registers on their personal page their activity as a pre- or post-publication peer reviewer, informing the name of the journal, their area of expertise, the year the review was carried out, and whether the review was pre- or post-publication. The reviews themselves are not made available until the journal authorizes their publication in the blind , double blind  or open format. The author of a reviewed article registered on Publons may choose to make his review openly available only if both reviewers and the journal Besides recording the work of referees, Publons aims to contribute to increasing the reliability of science by combating fraud in peer review. It should be noted that the company was recently acquired by Clarivate Analytics - the company that owns Web of Science and other indexing, publishing, and science evaluation products. Thus, by associating citation data from authors with their reviewing records in Publons, it is possible to journal editors to spot potential fictitious referees who cheat the peer review process. In addition, Publons intends to contribute to the formation of peer reviewers through the Publons Academy:The future of peer review in scholarly communication most likely includes a strong component of technological innovation, preprint servers, and post-publication peer review. The saturation of the current pre-publication peer review model requires simple solutions - such as Publons, for example - and recognition by the evaluation mechanisms of academic performance to grant reviewers due credit.


Authors submitting a manuscript to eLife are encouraged to upload it to a recognized preprint server at the same time in order to make their results available as quickly and as widely as possible. We all know graduate students, postdocs and faculty members who have been devastated when a project that they have been working on for years is 'scooped' by another laboratory, especially when they did not know that the other group had been working on a similar project. And many of us know researchers who have rushed a study into publication before doing all the necessary controls because they were afraid of being scooped. Of course, healthy competition can be good for science, but the pressure to be first is often deleterious, not only to the way the science is conducted and the data are analyzed, but also for the messages it sends to our young scientists. Being first should never take priority over doing it right or the search for the truth.For these reasons, the editors at eLife have always taken the position that we should evaluate a paper, to the extent we can, on its own merits, and that we should not penalize a manuscript we are reviewing if a paper on a similar topic was published a few weeks or months earlier. In such cases it is clear that both groups would have been working on the projects during much of the same time, and it is not in anyone’s best interests to devalue one effort because another group ran a slightly faster race to the finish line . Indeed,eLife's policies on preprints and scoop protection are available on our website.) It is now possible to automatically submit a manuscript to the bioRxiv preprint server while submitting to eLife (and vice versa), and growing numbers of authors are taking advantage of this facility. Doing this ensures that the work moves into the public domain at the time the authors feel that it is 'done' and ready to be evaluated. We consider it a greater good to the world to make freely available the results of the research that has, largely, been conducted using public funds.While our policy of offering 'scoop protection' reduces the pressure on authors to be the first to publish, we are also eager to make new results available quickly, which is why we encourage authors to upload their manuscript to a recognized preprint server when they submit to us or another journal.  have recently published a paper that is similar in scope, authors should not be surprised if our reviewers and editors decide that a manuscript that is repeating work that has been in the literature for years or even decades is less worthy of publication. It is increasingly common that authors, in an effort to make their work appear more timely or novel, or because of lack of scholarship, omit citations to older work which is directly relevant. In some cases, authors do not cite papers that report the results of very similar experiments, in the hope that this will go unnoticed during review. Even if such strategies sometimes appear successful, most knowledgeable reviewers tend to become unsympathetic to work which overstates novelty, even if the work itself is very good. And, of course, we also have an obligation to teach younger scientists that good scholarship and correct attribution of past findings is an important feature of ethical publishing.The publishing process creates many challenges for authors, reviewers and editors. At eLife we want to publish outstanding new science at the forefront of knowledge, but it is not always easy for editors and referees to evaluate how much of a step forward a given study represents. So while it might be tempting for authors to oversell their work in order to convince others of its importance, we ask that they instead place their results in an appropriate conceptual context, one that is fair to past accomplishments and the state of the field. Taking the time to do this, and then submitting the resulting manuscript to a journal and a preprint server at the same time, will benefit everyone.


Journal of Experimental Botany (JXB) has a long and prestigious history of publishing high-quality papers presenting new findings across a broad range of plant sciences. This year, 2017, marks the journal’s 68th year, and the coming two years leading up to our 70th anniversary will be a particularly exciting period. With a new Editor in Chief five years ago, it was an important point to reflect on scientific direction and the way JXB is perceived by our community. A new team of editors was established, and together we not only reviewed the aims and scope of JXB but also reaffirmed our commitment to the breadth of plant science underpinned by the experimental approach which is at the heart of the journal. The name, Journal of Experimental Botany, embodies this ethos as well now as it did in that first issue in 1950, with papers from such towering figures of 20th century plant biology as Irene Manton, Andrew Benson and Melvin Calvin  available.JXB’s new-look online home with the updated Oxford Journals platform. This is a significant development from the publisher, Oxford University Press, which will bring a host of benefits for readers. We hope that you find the new presentation unobtrusive and easy to navigate, but it is a work in progress and we will be continuing this development once the main functionality is in place so that it works fully for everyone who uses the journal. If you have any comments, these are very welcome – just email the editorial office at j.exp.bot@lancaster.ac.uk with any feedback and/or questions.You may well be reading this editorial from JXB authors that have recently been introduced include full integration of our submission system with Dryad Digital Repository, and this will soon also include the BioRxiv preprint server. JXB encourages all authors to deposit the data underlying the results and conclusions presented in a paper, as well as supplementary data, in any publicly accessible archive that guarantees access and preservation. This is another important step forward, and in order to support and encourage such practice we provide full financial support for up to 20 GB data storage in Dryad. In response to calls from authors, we now also accept papers in any reasonable format for initial review and it will shortly be possible to submit papers directly from BioRxiv at the click of a mouse.New services for JXB does not levy page charges on authors. Our unique open access publication policy is also free to anyone publishing original research in the journal who is a member of a subscribing library or institution. Colour print is also free if you become a member of the Society for Experimental Biology (SEB) – a great deal, and just one of the many benefits of the journal’s close connection with the society and dedication over many years to providing a responsible publishing outlet.We would like to take this opportunity to remind all potential authors that JXB interesting and enjoyable reading in 2017.We very much hope that you find


The debate on whether the peer-review system is in crisis has been heated recently. A variety of alternative systems have been proposed to improve the system and make it sustainable. However, we lack sufficient evidence and data related to these issues. Here we used a previously developed agent-based model of the scientific publication and peer-review system calibrated with empirical data to compare the efficiency of five alternative peer-review systems with the conventional system. We modelled two systems of immediate publication, with and without online reviews (crowdsourcing), a system with only one round of reviews and revisions allowed (re-review opt-out) and two review-sharing systems in which rejected manuscripts are resubmitted along with their past reviews to any other journal (portable) or to only those of the same publisher but of lower impact factor (cascade). The review-sharing systems outperformed or matched the performance of the conventional one in all peer-review efficiency, reviewer effort and scientific dissemination metrics we used. The systems especially showed a large decrease in total time of the peer-review process and total time devoted by reviewers to complete all reports in a year. The two systems with immediate publication released more scientific information than the conventional one but provided almost no other benefit. Re-review opt-out decreased the time reviewers devoted to peer review but had lower performance on screening papers that should not be published and relative increase in intrinsic quality of papers due to peer review than the conventional system. Sensitivity analyses showed consistent findings to those from our main simulations. We recommend prioritizing a system of review-sharing to create a sustainable scientific publication and peer-review system. The peer-review system is undeniably the gold standard of scientific publication. It serves a double purpose; to screen out bad science and to improve the quality of manuscripts before they are published. However, the scientific community is concerned about the sustainability of the system given the growing number of papers submitted for publication, which puts pressure on the system Bohannon .Much effort has been devoted to proposing alternative systems of peer review or interventions to improve it. However, little effort has focused on testing or evaluating the effectiveness of the alternative systems. Currently, BMC Biology has implemented re-review opt-out, whereby authors are allowed to opt out from a second round of peer review after major revisions to their paper. The journal of Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics has implemented immediate publication upon submission of an article, with online and invited reviews. Philica and F1000 research are also implementing a similar model. Pre-publication servers such as ArXiV or bioRxiv allow researchers to upload their papers before submitting them to a peer-reviewed journal. The Nature and JAMA groups give scientists the option to allow editors of journals within each respective group to discuss rejected manuscripts and to propose submission to another journal of the group , to describe the system. Because of multiple interactions of many heterogeneous and independent agents , this sort of systemic thinking and detailed microscopic modelling was necessary  and scientific level S(t). The scientific level was defined as S(t) = R(t) + Sb(t), where t the time step and Sb(t) the sum of all the rewards that a researcher can receive to determine scientific level. The resources represent all the means that researchers have at their disposal for conducting research. The scientific level expresses a researcher’s experience and capacity to conduct better research.We characterized Q score), which serves as a proxy for their intrinsic scientific value but also their disruptive, innovative, or controversial nature as well as quality of reporting. At each time step, Ns randomly selected researchers submitted their paper. At the time of submission (ts) of their paper, authors would lose an amount of resources Rinv associated with the conduct of the research reported in that paper with EQ defined as:Manuscripts were characterized by an intrinsic quality score  and by related rejection or acceptance thresholds, Q score, would try to obtain the most recognition from their work. Hence, the journal for the first submission was chosen at random among those with Tminj within the asymmetrical range We characterized Qe from a uniform distribution over Qe < Tminj, the manuscript could be rejected without external peer review. If Qe ≥ Tminj, the manuscript was sent for external peer review to 2 or 3 reviewers. The reviewers’ assessments were defined as r was a random error and c measured the competitiveness of the reviewer. We defined r = rr + rj − rQ, where rr is the reviewing error, rj the journal error and rQ the score error. With 65% probability, we set rt = 0.1; with 12%, rt = 0.05; and with 13%, rt = 0.01. We drew rj randomly from a uniform distribution over , where rj = 0 corresponded to the highest reputation journal and rj = 0.15 to the lowest. Finally, rQ = 0.05 × Q. We assumed that a competitive behavior would occur more often for journals with higher reputation. The probability of appearance ranged uniformly from 10 to 66%, where c was drawn randomly from a uniform distribution over .We drew the editor’s assessment of the manuscript Qr ≥ Tmax, the manuscript was accepted and if Qr ≤ Tmin, it was rejected. When Tmin ≤ Qr < Tmax, the author was asked to revise the manuscript before a second round of peer review. In the latter case, the author invested an extra amount of resources Q score as before. The manuscript was re-evaluated and accepted only if Pres after a rejection decreased with increasing number of resubmissions r, Pres = 0.88r−1. After the first rejection, the authors would target journals of lower reputation. Thus, they randomly selected journals in the  range Q is the initial score of the manuscript.We randomly selected one of the reviewers’ evaluations as a proxy of the editor’s opinion. If Resources and scientific level were updated at each time step. If an article is published, the author received a random reward j is the reputation value of the journal (j) that published it and QF is the Q score of the paper, after all revisions. Scientific information is a comparative variable and its purpose is to assess the effectiveness of a system in producing more papers of higher Q score and in disseminating them to the rest of the scientific community. The reputation value (IF) of a scientific journal is a proxy of the size of the community that will read the paper and the Q score a proxy of how much people who read the paper will benefit from it.We assumed that when a paper was published, it released scientific information to the community The intent of this system, currently implemented by BMC Biology, is to shorten the time of peer review by allowing authors to opt out from a second round of reviews. Thus, authors with a paper judged publishable with major revisions by the reviewers can choose whether they want their manuscript to be evaluated by the editor only or again by the reviewers after revising it (Robertson Qe) of the revised manuscript from a uniform distribution between 0.9 Qe ≥ Tmaxj, a paper was accepted; otherwise it was rejected. All other processes were handled as in the conventional system.We chose to model a maximum implementation of this intervention so that authors would always choose to opt out from a second round and therefore all decisions for every submission would be made after at most one peer-review round. For papers undergoing peer review, the authors always revised, and then the editor made an assessment  drawn from a normal distribution Qr).When a paper was rejected, the editor proposed that the author send it to journals of the same network but of lower reputation. We assumed that if authors decided to resubmit, then they never rejected this proposal. Then, one of the next five journals of lower reputation value (of the same network) was randomly selected and the manuscript was resubmitted to it, along with the last evaluation value (Qe is the editor’s assessment of the manuscript (drawn uniformly from between 0.9Q and 1.1Q). Then the editor re-assessed the paper and decided whether to accept or reject it. Papers rejected were more likely to be resubmitted in this system than in the conventional system; thus the probability of resubmission was modified as The new editor immediately accepted the resubmitted paper without asking for further reviews if In this system, the authors resubmit their rejected manuscripts along with the reviews they received from their last peer-reviewed submission (if any). In contrast to the cascade system, the journals were not organized in groups and thus the authors sent their previous reviews to any of the journals they would be resubmitting to as in the conventional system. Based on the same rule as in the cascade system, editors could choose to ask for new reviews or revisions before deciding on acceptance or rejection.Crowdsourcing online reviews is implemented in part by various journals such as F1000Research, Philica and the Semantic Web Journal. The purpose of this system is the immediate release of scientific information and the more accurate evaluation of papers because of any additional online comments or reviews. The journal of Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (ACP) is also a well-known example of the use of such a system. Papers submitted to ACP pass a quick editorial pre-screening and are almost immediately published, following their submission, in the journal’s website as “discussion papers”. A published paper is then assigned external peer reviewers. The peer reviewers start an online discussion with the authors and other interested members of the scientific community. After a fixed number of weeks, the discussion stops and the authors revise the paper and resubmit it for publication . We obtained Each manuscript that passed the conventional in-house review stage was immediately published, along with a call for online reviews/comments and the traditional invitation to two or three external reviewers selected by the journal’s editor. Every fresh submission released an initial amount of scientific information, The online commenters evaluated the paper in the same way as the normal reviewers. The editor averaged the scores of the online commenters  (each simulation week is 1 time-step). We ran the simulations for 10 years, with a burn-in period of 1 year for the initialization of the model. All main results were averaged over 100 simulation runs. Code is available at http://www.clinicalepidemio.fr/peerreview_alternative_systems/.We programmed the models by using MATLAB  with a total number of researchers Q score distributions of the published and unpublished papers and the relative improvement in average Q score for all papers after revision as compared to that for the first submission. We used the Hellinger distance as a quantifying measure of the overlap between two distributions: the higher the Hellinger distance, the less the overlap , median time to publication (6.7% less) and average weekly release of scientific information (2.6% higher). Finally, the crowdsourcing and immediate publication systems differed from the conventional only in terms of release of scientific information, which was 26.0% higher for both systems.The most beneficial systems were the cascade and portable peer-review systems. They both shortened the time to publication by about 47% and increased the average weekly release of scientific information by 36.6 and 10.2%, respectively. The average Q score distributions.We considered that a system could be more efficient than the conventional system only if it improved all types of outcome measures and beneficial if it improved at least one outcome without deteriorating peer-review efficiency. Among all alternatives, only the cascade system was more efficient than the conventional system. Moreover, the crowdsourcing and immediate-publication systems were beneficial in terms of scientific dissemination. The re-review opt-out, while advantageous in some of the measures, severely deteriorated peer-review efficiency. Finally, the portable peer review was advantageous in terms of almost all outcome measures but failed to match at least the performance of the conventional system in terms of separation of Pcas ≤ 0.80) and reviewer effort measures and all outperformed the system in median time to the final decision and release of scientific information. However, the number of published papers was lower for all alternative systems than the conventional system. The best-performing configuration was the one with α = 1.0, whereby the editors never asked for new reviews on resubmitted papers.Most of the different configurations of the cascade system surpassed or matched the performance of the conventional system in peer-review efficiency (apart from All the different configurations of the crowdsourcing system matched or over-performed the conventional system in terms of peer-review efficiency and weekly release of scientific information but without providing any advantage in reviewer effort and the other scientific dissemination measures.We implemented several structural modifications to an original ABM of the conventional scientific publication and peer-review system and modelled five alternative peer review systems to compare their performance and relative efficiency in terms of certain outcomes. In our simulations, cascade peer review was the only alternative more efficient than the conventional one. Cascade peer review is based on the trade-off between agreeing to submit and publish in journals of lower reputation and publishing faster than usual. Under our assumptions, the number of total annual publications slightly decreased by about 5.3%, but the total time reviewers devoted to peer review decreased by 62.9% and the total time from first submission to final decision decreased by 47.3%. These results came without deterioration in the peer-review efficiency measures and even with some improvement. Most notably, this system increased the average weekly release of scientific information by 36.6%, outperforming even the two systems with immediate publication.Q score of manuscripts. Still, the systems with immediate publication release fast new information, which is reallocated to the authors as a small bonus in scientific level. However, the fact that research can be communicated very fast is something that in reality can benefit the world way more than our simulations can portray.We did not reallocate the time researchers saved from peer review to more resources available for research, and thus we might have underestimated the advantages of both cascade and portable peer-review. For example, this reallocation of resources could lead to higher-quality review reports because reviewers are not overburdened with the task. This reallocation could also help reviewers in the re-review opt-out system raise their overall screening ability. Moreover, this time not spent on peer review could also be reallocated to more resources for research and thus raise the average Q score submitted in a journal network that did not include journals of very low standards would most of the time be rejected. However, cascading submissions provided some overall advantages by better separating the Q-score distributions because of the rejection of papers that would have been published in the portable system.From the similarities and differences between the results of the two review-sharing systems, we can see how their microscopic assumptions affect the macroscopic picture. First, only their review-sharing aspect led to results of the time metrics decreasing in comparison to the conventional system. Cascading submissions to journals of lower impact factor did not affect the speed of publication and did not provide any personal advantages to authors. This occurred in cascade peer review because any paper of low On further investigation of the configurations of the cascade system, its main configuration was not the only one providing these advantages. The best-performing configuration was the one in which the editors never asked for new reviews for any resubmitted paper. This configuration required 41% less time reviewers devoted to peer review than with the main configuration and one week less time to a final decision. This result is important because if papers were evaluated only once, they would require about 78% less time from reviewers than what they do now. However, in real life this rule could be potentially abused by reviewers with, for example, competitive motives resulting in manuscripts with unfair reviews carried forward along resubmissions. The passing of reviews should therefore not be implemented strictly and editors should always be able to ask for additional reviews if reviews appear overly negative. Moreover, we explored how the number of the journal groups affected the results. This kind of exploration essentially affected the gap in impact factor for journals between resubmissions of rejected manuscripts. The differences in number of groups of journals did not affect the results greatly, with the exception that for two or three groups, it took one week less to a final decision. To be more efficient than the conventional, the cascade system requires that the authors accept more than 90% of the time the editor’s proposal to send their paper to a journal of lower impact factor along with the reviews.Q score distributions of the published and unpublished papers is undesirable. The portable system, despite its small disadvantage in separation of Q score distributions, might be easier to implement in real-life because it provides authors with more freedom to resubmit.The system of portable peer review was modelled exactly as the cascade system, with the only exception that authors were not restricted by journal groups when resubmitting. Our results suggest that this system is also beneficial, almost as much as the cascade system. However, the 4.2% decrease in separation between the Q score distributions better than any other. However, when we randomly selected one review, the system matched the behaviour of the conventional system.The system of crowdsourcing online reviews was beneficial but not more efficient than the conventional system. Simply by implementing its immediate publication version, without online reviews, increased the release of scientific information by 25.7%. Then, introducing online reviews to the system increased both peer-review efficiency outcome measures because of more correct evaluation of papers due to the fact that editors obtain more reviews. Online reviews are rarely as detailed as those from invited reviewers and thus we assumed that the editor assigned them lower weight than the invited ones. Moreover, since the results for only one online review per paper are the same as those for 5 or 20, averaging all the online reviews did not affect our outputs. Finally, in the extreme case, in which all online reviews were as detailed as the invited ones and all would be equally averaged, the system clearly managed to separate the The system of re-review opt-out is conceptually easy to implement however failed to at least match the performance of the conventional system on the two peer-review efficiency measures but improved on almost all the remaining outcome measures. In our implementation, we substituted the second round of revisions by the reviewers with an editorial evaluation. Thus, a real-life experiment and extra modelling efforts are needed to validate whether we obtained these results for the two outcome measures due to our modelling assumptions, which give high importance to the second peer-review round, or because this system is really less efficient than the conventional one.Q score that can act as a proxy of their novelty and correctness, for instance, and information is disseminated when journals publish new papers. However, because we lack a universally agreed-upon method and variables that measures these values, we needed to create them to help inform our decisions. These assumptions can only be proven or disproven after real-life experiments.A limitation of our simulations is that to our best knowledge no data currently exists for any of the five implemented alternative peer-review systems. For this reason, we had to obtain results by comparing the alternatives with the conventional system. However, these alternatives are not yet fully implemented and much of the relevant data are not even generated to date. A second limitation is that our results are likely affected by our assumptions and choices, more than the general idea behind these alternative systems. In general, we tried to adopt the most reasonable implementations of these alternatives in our main simulations and to test their limits and our assumptions by further exploring the parameter space for the two most important systems. Finally, our outcome measures were based on variables that are abstract in how we measured them. In theory, papers have a We compared the efficiency of five alternative peer-review systems to the conventional system by using an ABM approach. Only the cascade system was more efficient than the conventional system in all three types of outcomes. The portable system closely matched the cascade system’s performance and was more efficient than the conventional system in all but one measure. Moreover, all the configurations of the crowdsourcing system were beneficial and managed to match or improve the peer-review efficiency and scientific information measures but without any important change in the other measures. Finally, we recommend prioritizing a system of review sharing to create a sustainable scientific publication and peer-review system.