The rigor and integrity of the published research in nutrition studies has come into serious question in recent years. Concerns focus on the use of flexible data analysis practices and selective reporting and the failure of peer review journals to identify and correct these practices. In response, it has been proposed that journals employ editorial procedures designed to improve the transparency of published research.The present study examines the adoption of editorial procedures designed to improve the reporting of empirical studies in the field of nutrition and dietetics research.Nutrition and Dietetics were reviewed. For journals that published original research, conflict of interest disclosure, recommendation of reporting guidelines, registration of clinical trials, registration of other types of studies, encouraging data sharing, and use of the Registered Reports were assessed. For journals that only published reviews, all of the procedures except clinical trial registration were assessed.The instructions for authors of 43 journals included in Quartiles 1 and 2 of the Clarivate Analytics’ 2018 Journal Citation Report category Thirty-three journals published original research and 10 published only reviews. Conflict of interest disclosure was required by all 33 original research journals. Use of guidelines, trial registration and encouragement of data sharing were mentioned by 30, 27 and 25 journals, respectively. Registration of other studies was required by eight and none offered Registered Reports as a publication option at the time of the review. All 10 review journals required conflict of interest disclosure, four recommended data sharing and three the use of guidelines. None mentioned the other two procedures.While nutrition journals have adopted a number of procedures designed to improve the reporting of research findings, their limited effects likely result from the mechanisms through which they influence analytic flexibility and selective reporting and the extent to which they are properly implemented and enforced by journals. The rigor and integrity of the published research literature in the field of nutrition studies has come into serious question in recent years. One reason for this is the publicity surrounding the retraction of more than a dozen papers produced by researchers at a major nutrition laboratory at one of the top universities in the United States , 2. SuchIn addition, some nutrition researchers have begun to question the quality of published research both within the discipline as a whole and within specific areas of specialization. A report from an American Society for Nutrition advisory committee highlighted the threats to research integrity that arise from competing interests among researchers, specifically the type of selective statistical analyses that are conducted and reported and the conclusions investigators draw from these  . In a moIn the field of nutritional epidemiology, Ioannidis contends that “good scientific principles” are lacking, with investigators being free to report selective results from multiple analyses they have conducted, very few of which will have been prespecified . In a stThe concerns raised regarding the quality and integrity of research published in the field of nutrition research reflect those that have arisen within many academic disciplines over the past decade, and that have been described in terms of a “credibility crisis” , 12. TheSix studies have examined journal adoption of three editorial procedures designed to improve the quality of published research in the fields of pediatric research , 19, surTo our knowledge, no existing study has assessed the adoption of editorial procedures designed to improve the reporting of empirical studies in the field of nutrition research. The current study is intended to fill this gap in existing knowledge. It is an exploratory and descriptive study in which no hypotheses were prespecified or tested.Nutrition and Dietetics were selected [h) published by the journal that have received at least h citations [In line with previous studies of journal editorial procedures , 20–23, selected . The impselected , the Sciitations .The instructions for authors of each of the 43 journals was located on the journal webpage on the Internet. In addition, if a journal’s instructions for authors cited additional documents that prospective authors were required to consult , these too were located. Instructions for authors and related documents that were available as a Portable Document Format (PDF) were downloaded. If the author instructions and related documents on webpages were unavailable as a PDF, they were copied and pasted into a Word document. All the material reviewed was downloaded between April 3 and October 14, 2019. The downloaded instructions for authors of each journal, along with any relevant additional materials cited in these, were reviewed separately by each of the two authors and mention of each publication procedure was recorded. The two reviewers met to discuss their ratings and any discrepancies were resolved. Specifically, where there was disagreement about the presence or absence of requirements and recommendations in a particular set of instructions for authors, they re-reviewed these during the meeting and came to agreement as to whether the procedure was or was not described in the documents. The Center for Open Science list of journals that have adopted the Registered Reports publication format was also reviewed for the inclusion of any of the 43 nutrition and dietetics journals on December 19, 2019 .Trials.gov [. For journals that exclusively published systematic reviews and meta-analyses, five of the six procedures were considered relevant, the exception being clinical trial registration. In addition, in the case of two of the remaining five, it was anticipated that fewer guidelines would be relevant to journals that only publish reviews  [For journals that published both original research and systematic reviews the following six procedures were assessed: (i) conflict of interest disclosure, (ii) recommendation of specific reporting guidelines when writing-up the results of studies for publication  or reference to the EQUATOR Network or FAIRshare repositories of guidelines , 29,  regials.gov , (v) encials.gov . For jou (MOOSE) ) and tha (MOOSE) –23, as w (MOOSE) –35.The analyses presented are descriptive data pertaining to the number of publication procedures mentioned in journal instructions to authors.Nutrition and Dietetics category. Ten of the journals were judged to be exclusively focused on review articles from the aims described in their instructions for authors, and these were reviewed separately from the 33 journals that focused on original research (in addition to reviews).Table Table Table Journal of Nutrition) required registration of observational studies, but did not specify a particular registry.All of the 33 journals required authors to disclose conflicts of interest. The second most widely recommended publication procedure was use of guidelines when writing-up results from empirical studies, with 30 of the 33 journals mentioning at least one specific set of guidelines and one mentioning the EQUATOR Network in their instructions to authors or related documents. Registration of clinical trials was also common, with 27 journals requiring this of investigators. Compared to clinical trials, registration of research using other study designs was much less common, with just eight journals requiring this of investigators. Of these, seven required registration of systematic reviews in PROSPERO and one  has subsequently introduced Registered Reports as an option for authors. Fourth, the study presents no data as to whether the procedures examined were actually enforced by the journals that adopted them and adhered to by the authors that publish in these journals. As noted above, adherence and enforcement are essential to the effective operation of editorial policies in improving research transparency and quality.There are a number of limitations of this study that should be noted. First, not all nutrition and dietetics journals were included and it is possible that other journals, such as those included in Quartiles 3 and 4 of the JCR, used more or less of any one of the particular publication procedures that were examined. Second, the instructions for authors and related materials were reviewed by just two individuals who may each have failed to identify a publication procedure in the course of their review. Third, the paper presents a snap-shot of the state of the discipline, and journals may have subsequently adopted one or more of the publication procedures assessed since the time the review was conducted. For example, we are aware that one of the journals included in our sample  was not used by any of the nutrition and dietetics journals reviewed and the other (registration) was rarely required outside of clinical trials. None of the journals that published only reviews and meta-analyses required that these be preregistered.We recommend that all nutrition and dietetics journals adopt one or both of the procedures that lock-in data analyses and allow differentiation of genuine confirmatory hypothesis testing from other types of research. Journals could then clearly distinguish (either by having separate sections or including some indicator on the title page of each paper) confirmatory research from research that purports to be but cannot demonstrate that the hypotheses tested were pre-specified. A third category of genuine exploratory research could also be included. The journal instructions for authors could clearly specify the types of claims that can be made for studies within each of these categories. This simple procedure would prevent investigators who employ flexible data analysis practices and selective reporting from presenting the results of these as genuine hypothesis testing . The goa


Tumor Biology [With the rapid development of interdisciplinary studies in recent decades, science and technology has achieved both greater breadth and greater specialization, and the number of manuscripts published annually has increased year on year . Studies Biology . Springe Biology .One reason for the aforementioned mass retractions was that a third-party agency authorized by the authors submitted the papers to journals for consideration for publication . That thForensic Sciences Research (FSR) has conducted a rigorous quality control assessment of the peer-review process it has utilised since the journal’s establishment approximately 3 years ago. The focus of the assessment was the potentially fake reviews/reviewers. During this assessment the FSR Editorial Office evaluated all peer reviewers of papers accepted and rejected from 12 December 2016 to 14 November 2019.FSR received 352 submissions from the date of the journal’s establishment on 12 December 2016 to 14 November 2019, and to date final decisions (acceptance or rejection) have been made with regard to 291 of these manuscripts. For these 291 papers, 378 experts have completed 890 reviews and submitted their decisions, which include provisional acceptance pending revision, acceptance, or rejection. Of these experts, 39% were situated in Europe, 28% were situated in North America and the remainder were situated elsewhere  used institutional email addresses and the remaining 95 (25%) used non-institutional email addresses. The 95 non-institutional email addresses were all checked individually by using them to search for publications in which they were provided as corresponding author email addresses. At least one publication for each of these reviewers was located in this way, indicating that those email addresses were legitimately held by those reviewers.The funding information included in all manuscripts published during the aforementioned ∼3-year period was also reviewed. Of 139 published manuscripts, 71 (51%) alluded to funding from the authors’ own affiliated institutions. To an extent, this result is indicative of the academic reliability of these papers.FSR processes, from 2016 to 2019 all peer reviewers were selected by FSR editors. Notably, for some invited papers in special issues some reviewers were recommended by guest editors because of their specific knowledge in a certain field. Nonetheless, all choices were based on the principle of double-blind peer review and were made by the editors after a strict verification process.In accordance with standard In view of the above-described potential pitfalls of the peer-review process in the era of digital academic communication, FSR since the journal’s establishment were not affected by any fake review/reviewers scams. The investigation yielded positive results, which foster our confidence in the integrity of FSR’s peer-review process. FSR and its editorial staff will continue to publish timely, innovative and high-quality papers and maintain the highest standards of peer review for every manuscript submitted to the journal.In summary, the above-described investigation indicated that the peer reviews conducted for Editorial Office of Forensic Sciences Research, Key Laboratory of Forensic Medicine, Shanghai Forensic Service Platform, Academy of Forensic Science, Shanghai, Chinalisy@ssfjd.cn Received 21 November 2019; accepted 2 December 2019Shiying Li


FEBS Open Bio in 2020 and outlines his plans for the journal in 2021.In this Editorial, the Editor‐in‐Chief Professor Miguel A. De la Rosa discusses the performance and development of  Any summary of 2020 will necessarily focus on the devastating effects of the coronavirus pandemic and the effects of lockdowns worldwide. The pandemic and the response have created a whole host of challenges, which have affected the research landscape in a myriad of ways – researchers have found themselves unable to enter their laboratories, preventing them from completing critical experiments. Students have found their graduation plans postponed, careers have been put on hold, and many people have had to juggle work commitments and childcare as schools and nurseries closed. More widely, healthcare workers and health services have been put under enormous strain, and the effects of lockdowns on industry, the economy, and physical and mental health are likely to be considerable.FEBS Open Bio has been able to continue operations, but has still experienced substantial challenges. Our Editorial Office in Cambridge was closed, and our staff have had to adapt to working from home. Many members of our Editorial Board had to transition to online teaching at short notice, which took up all available time. The clinicians on the board had to focus on treating patients, making them unavailable to handle manuscripts. Likewise, it became increasingly difficult to find willing reviewers for our submissions as researchers had to prioritise their own work. The 45th FEBS Congress, to be held in Ljubljana, was postponed to 2021, delaying plans for cross‐promotion between FEBS Open Bio and the Congress. Furthermore, the journal's first ever Editorial Board meeting had to become an online‐only event.As an online‐only journal, FEBS Open Bio had already been increasing year on year long before the pandemic began and may be a result of increased awareness of the journal, our prestigious Editorial Board and our reputation for publishing sound science across biochemistry and the molecular life sciences.The challenges above were complicated further by the phenomenal growth the journal experienced in 2020 – by the end of November, our submissions had increased by an amazing 72% as compared to the same period in 2019. In addition, our accepted manuscripts increased by 60% in the same period. In the face of such a large increase in submissions and acceptances, our Editorial Office staff and Editorial Board worked tirelessly to ensure that we continued to process manuscripts and address author queries in a timely manner. I discuss the measures taken to facilitate the discovery of willing reviewers and reduce the time taken to decision below. While the increase in submissions may partially be driven by laboratory closures leaving researchers little to do but write up completed work, submissions to Vessela KristensenIn October 2020, we welcomed Vessela N. Kristensen as the 39th member of our Editorial Board.The scientific career of Vessela N. Kristensen started in the field of toxicology. Her PhD thesis encompassed the functional characterisation of polymorphic CYP at the Karolinska Institutet to elucidate the effect of genetic polymorphisms and their relevance to environmentally induced cancers. During her postdoctoral work, Kristensen studied aromatase (CYP19) in the laboratory of Dr. Nobuhiro Harada in Japan. Later technology allowed her to expand her studies of how genetic variation affects the occurrence of somatic alterations, gene expression patterns and genome‐wide copy number alterations in human breast at a whole‐genome scale. As a professor at the Faculty of Medicine, her projects have become translational in nature. Kristensen has been guest professor at the NCI, NIH in 2003 and Princeton University in 2012. As Director of Research at the Department of Medical Genetics at Oslo University Hospital, Kristensen's research interests have expanded to the genetic basis of other diseases and have turned to the functional effects of disease‐causing mutations. Vessela Kristensen leads large international networks in the framework of EU ERA CoSysMedicine and Horizon 2020. For this overall contribution to cancer research, she has received the Mørk legat prize in 2012 and the King Olav's award for cancer research in 2018. In 2020, she became a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science.Vessela Kristensen joins Cornelia de Moor, Irene Díaz‐Moreno, María Fabiana Drincovich, Alexander Gabibov, Sergio Grinstein, Gabor Juhasz, Alicia Kowaltowski, In Hye Lee, Marcelo López‐Lastra, Ivana Novak, Rafael Radi, Josep Rizo, Lena Ruiz‐Azuara and Guangbiao Zhou as the 15th member of the Editorial Board appointed in 2020. Biosketches of all of them were published in a couple of former editorials in 2020.Moreover, Beáta G. Vértessy, who has served on the Board since 2013, has been promoted to Senior Editor. I would like to offer a warm welcome to Vessela and congratulate Beáta on her promotion. I am especially thankful to all our formerly appointed senior and associate editors, many of whom have served on the board since the journal launched in 2011.In addition, 2020 saw the introduction of our Editorial Advisory Board, which at present has 27 members. The Editorial Advisory Board are committed to providing peer review for manuscripts in their field of expertise, thereby ensuring that the journal is well‐positioned to review submissions in a thorough and timely manner. The 12 inaugural members were swiftly joined by Janesh Kumar  and Chongde Sun  in April, and since then, we have appointed another 13 members. I am pleased to announce the appointment of the following members of our Editorial Advisory Board and welcome them to the journal:Alexandre E. BenedettoDivision of Biomedical and Life Sciences, Lancaster University Faculty of Health and Medicine, United KingdomUsa BoonyuenFaculty of Tropical Medicine, Mahidol University, ThailandVicki CliftonMater Research Institute, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, AustraliaFabiana GeraciDepartment of Biological, Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences and Technologies (STEBICEF), University of Palermo, Palermo, ItalyRamon GrimaUniversity of Edinburgh, UKBernadett KalmarUniversity College London (UCL), Queen Square Institute of Neurology, London, UKG.W. Gant LuxtonUniversity of California‐Davis, USAJonathan Martinez‐FabregasCell Signalling and Immunology, School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee, Dundee, UKHeinz Peter NasheuerSchool of Natural Sciences Centre for Chromosome Biology, NUI Galway, Galway, IrelandSandra Romero‐CórdobaNational Institute of Medical Science and Nutrition SZ (INCMNSZ), Mexico City, MexicoConstantine A. SimintirasInterdisciplinary Reproduction and Health Group, University of Missouri, Columbia, USASuman ThakurCentre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, IndiaYueh‐Hsun Kevin YangThe City University of New York ‐ The City College, USAFEBS Open Bio this year includes a report of alterations in neuronal development in a mouse model of Timothy syndrome [As noted in the Introduction, submissions and acceptances increased dramatically in 2020 as compared to 2019. This is fantastic news, and I am pleased that so many authors are considering our journal for the publication of their work. We have published several excellent papers this year, including a characterisation of a novel cold‐adapted transglutaminase from Atlantic cod, which may have implications for food processing [syndrome , the crysyndrome , engineesyndrome , the dissyndrome  and the syndrome . These ain silico studies demonstrate the value of large datasets for rapid identification of potential drugs and gene targets for disease treatment.The research topic of single greatest interest this year is without question the SARS‐CoV‐2 pandemic. It is therefore perhaps unsurprising that our most downloaded and most cited article published in 2020 reports on a structure‐based virtual screen that identified 28 bioactive compounds that may have potential for the development into anti‐SARS‐CoV‐2 targets . These tThe journal's Education section, introduced in 2017 under the helm of Angel Herráez and Luciane V. Mello, also continues to go from strength to strength. In 2020, we published five Education articles, on subjects as diverse as how to provide good written feedback to students , a studyFEBS Open Bio is a signatory of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and uses a range of metrics to evaluate both its own performance and the individual impact of the articles it publishes. Journal performance improved in 2020 based on several metrics. Our median times to first and final decision have decreased in 2020 as compared to 2019 (as discussed further below), in line with our commitment to providing rapid and thorough peer review. Furthermore, downloads of our articles continue to rise dramatically: in addition to the articles mentioned above, other well‐downloaded articles this year include a report that the histone demethylase KDM3B protects against ferroptosis via SLC7A11 [FEBS Open Bio. This is an important benefit of the open‐access publishing model for authors. Several of our articles received considerable attention online, which is quantified as an Altmetric Attention Score. Unsurprisingly, our two articles on SARS‐CoV‐2 saw the most engagement online [ SLC7A11  and a st SLC7A11 . The autt online , 9. Our t online , 11, 12,t online  and potet online . Severalt online .FEBS Open Bio in Seville in late 2020. Preparations began in early 2020 as we explored possible venues and consulted with our editors to determine the optimal date. As the coronavirus spread and travel restrictions began, it became apparent that we needed a backup plan in the unlikely (as it seemed at that time) case it would be impossible to hold a physical meeting in the autumn. As the months passed, it became increasingly clear that 2020 was not going to be a year for travel, and the decision was made to make the meeting a virtual event.To mark the beginning of my tenure as Editor‐in‐Chief, it was agreed in 2019 that we would host the first Editorial Board meeting for This may have been a blessing in disguise, however, because many editors who were unable to attend the physical meeting were able to log on to the virtual event, making for a very fruitful and active discussion. The meeting covered a range of topics and featured talks by the Chair of the FEBS Publications Committee László Fésüs, the Image Integrity Analyst Jana Christopher, the journal's Editorial Manager Duncan Wright and me. The meeting was also attended by Mary Purton, the FEBS Press Publisher, and Jackie Jones, publisher at Wiley, our publishing partner. Jackie Jones answered our editors' questions on developments in open access and the implications for authors in low‐income countries. The journal's history and recent performance were described by Duncan Wright and me, and an overview of FEBS and its publishing history was presented by László Fésüs.FEBS Open Bio and the other three FEBS Press journals take image integrity and the issue of paper mills very seriously , anFEBS Open Bio's core mission of considering sound science, we now expect that all submissions will represent a minimum contribution to the relevant field, so as to filter out offerings from paper mills  manuscripts based on minor derivations of published work) and cases of extreme ‘salami slicing’, where the work is very simple/preliminary. We hope that this decision will allow us to continue to serve the community by providing a home for sound science while protecting the reputation of the journal and the integrity of the scientific record [Several key conclusions were reached during the meeting. We have decided that, henceforth, the authors will be required to recommend at least three and up to five reviewers at the time of submission. Formerly, this was optional, but in the face of increasing difficulties in finding reviewers, we have decided to make it compulsory. There was spirited discussion on the journal's minimum standards for peer review; while we will remain true to c record .Several editors voiced the hope that we could hold annual online Editorial Board meetings, such was the appreciation of the merits of the format. I consider the meeting a great success, and now that we are used to the technology, anticipate that we will be able to hold even smoother and more interactive meetings online in future. I am grateful to our presenters, our Editorial Board and Mary Purton for hosting the meeting, Duncan Wright for arranging it and preparing the minutes, and Jacob Weller for excellent technical support and for monitoring the chat.FEBS Open Bio, which considers diverse submissions across the molecular and cellular life sciences, this problem is particularly acute. Moreover, the pressures on researchers caused by the coronavirus pandemic have exacerbated this problem even further.With the increase in global research output, many journals are experiencing increasing difficulties in finding willing reviewers. For a growing mega journal like To ensure that we can better fulfil our goal of facilitating rapid peer review of submissions, we have introduced a number of new initiatives. The journal has a large pool of volunteer reviewers, which we have sought to strengthen and consolidate by contacting all reviewers to ensure they remain active and committed to reviewing manuscripts for the journal, and by ensuring that all volunteers have up‐to‐date research keywords in our peer‐review system. Moreover, 2020 saw the introduction of the journal's Editorial Advisory Board, which has 27 members on hand to assist editors with reviewing manuscripts where needed. Finally, to reduce the burden on overwhelmed editors and also reduce the time to decision for authors, we are now swift to reassign manuscripts if editors are unable to act within 10 days.thorough peer review – ultimately, we work hard to ensure that authors receive careful, comprehensive and constructive comments with which to improve their work for publication. Quality will not be sacrificed for speed.These initiatives appear to be paying dividends, with median time to first decision dropping from 37 days in 2019 to 33 days in 2020, median time to final decision from 69 to 63 days and median time to acceptance from 98 to 94 days. While reducing time to decision is important in an age of rapid research advances, it remains a secondary to FEBS Open Bio called ‘In the Limelight’. This section will feature a small number of review articles on an exciting research area. In 2021, we will publish two such sections, one on bioplastics with Guest Editor Raffaele Porta. This section will accompany the ‘Plastics: revolution, pollution and substitution’ special section to be held at the 2021 FEBS Congress . The second ‘In the Limelight’ section will focus on membrane‐less organelles with Guest Editor Irene Díaz‐Moreno, to accompany the International Symposium on Membrane‐Less Organelles in Cell Life and Disease , which has been rescheduled to this year. Look out for these sections in an upcoming issue.Last year saw a number of new developments for the journal, but we still have several new plans in the pipeline. I am pleased to announce the creation of a new section for We intend to promote the journal and its prestigious Editorial Board through a series of interview articles with our editors. This series is being managed by our new Senior Editor Beáta G. Vértessy with support from Editorial Manager Duncan Wright. Beáta will be the subject of the first article, which will be published in a future issue. In addition, we hope to promote articles of especial interest through one of two new article types: commentaries, to be commissioned for articles that demonstrate a significant advance in the field, and lay summaries for articles with implications for the general public; these latter articles will be written by postdoctoral researchers under the supervision of our Editor Cornelia de Moor.FEBS Open Bio plays an important role in giving back to the scientific community. As part of this mission, I consider that the journal should support the annual FEBS Congress. The abstracts book has been published as a supplement in FEBS Open Bio for the last two congresses, and we look forward to continuing to serve the Congress in this capacity. In addition, we will present two different awards at the next Congress, to be held this year in Ljubljana. First, the FEBS Open Bio Article Prize will be awarded to an early‐career researcher  who is the first author of a paper of especial interest and importance published in the journal in the preceding year, as decided by the Editorial Board. The prize consists of a bursary for registration, travel and accommodation to allow the winner to attend the FEBS Congress. Second, we will present prizes to the presenters of two outstanding speed talks at the FEBS Congress. A panel of jurors from the journal's Editorial Board will attend each shortlisted speed talk and judge it based on the interest and novelty of the work and the quality of the presentation. Each winner will receive €200, to be presented at the Congress Closing Ceremony.As a not‐for‐profit journal owned by the charity FEBS, FEBS Open Bio in style with a special issue towards the end of the year. This issue will focus on the history and future direction of the journal and will feature articles from editors and authors of highly cited articles published in FEBS Open Bio over the last ten years.Finally, we hope to mark the 10th anniversary of FEBS Open Bio, with many successes and challenges. We have accomplished a lot this year, and I hope we can build on this success in 2021. None of this would be possible without the hard work of everyone on the journal. I extend my gratitude to our Editorial Board, all of whom have generously provided their time and expertise to handle so many submissions. I appreciate this was no small task for our editors, all of whom will have had many other urgent matters to attend to at this chaotic time. I would also like to thank our Editorial Manager Duncan Wright and Editorial Assistant Jacob Weller for their hard work and dedication to keeping the journal running smoothly at this tumultuous time of growth and disruption. I am indebted to Mary Purton, FEBS Press Publisher and formerly Executive Editor of FEBS Open Bio, who has continued to provide expert advice and guidance. I am also thankful for the great efforts of the nascent Editorial Advisory Board and all of our volunteer reviewers, whose hard work has enabled us to review so many submissions in 2020. I am very grateful to our Image Integrity Analyst Jana Christopher, whose immense powers of perception were really put to the test in this busy year. I extend my gratitude to Jackie Jones and all of our contacts at Wiley, who have provided excellent and considerate support all year. I would also like to offer my special thanks to Felix Wieland, the Managing Editor of FEBS Letters and Senior Editor of FEBS Open Bio since its launch. Felix will step down as Managing Editor this year, and I would like to congratulate him on his long‐standing and excellent service. I am also very grateful for the support and guidance of László Fésüs, who finished his nine‐year term as Chair of the Publications Committee at the end of 2020. László has worked tirelessly for FEBS Press, demonstrating strong commitment and leadership in the face of many challenges to the industry. I would like to warmly welcome Johannes Buchner as the incoming Chair of the Publication Committee, and I look forward to working with him to further improve the journal.This has truly been an eventful year for FEBS Open Bio will continue to be among your journals of choice for publication and that we can work together as a community to ensure that sound science gets reviewed, published and promoted. I wish all of you and your friends, families and colleagues the very best for 2021 and would like to encourage you to submit your latest work to FEBS Open Bio in our 11th year of publication.Last but certainly not least, I would like to thank all of our authors, reviewers and readers, without whom none of this would have been possible. I hope that


This cross-sectional study of 1700 medical journal websites assesses the prevalence of journals denying access to website users who blocked browser cookies. For-profit companies use website tracking tools to capture information about individuals based on their online activity. These tools raise privacy concerns when they are used on health-related websites where users’ browsing behavior may reveal sensitive information.6Medical journal publishers have recently taken steps to improve public access to research findings.One step patients can take to protect their privacy when accessing research findings is to adjust their browser settings to block cookies, the data stored on a user’s computer that may be used to identify and track users across multiple websites. However, websites may deny access to users who block cookies, forcing users to choose between accepting privacy risks or foregoing access to content. If medical journal websites employ such practices, it may undermine efforts to improve public access to research findings. We investigated medical journal websites to assess the prevalence of and factors associated with access denial to users blocking browser cookies.STROBE) reporting guideline for cross-sectional studies.This study investigated public websites and therefore was not subject to institutional review board approval because it did not meet the Common Rule’s definition of human subjects research. The study was preregistered on the AsPredicted platform (submission 33300) and followed the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology  as the dependent variable. Independent variables included open access status, impact factor, publisher, and a categorical variable for publisher size. All hypothesis tests were 2-sided with α = .05. See eMethods in the Overall, 699 of 1700 journals  included in the study denied access to users blocking cookies, exceeding our hypothesis . Access P = .006) more likely to deny access  than open access journals (48 of 246 [19.5%]). After adjustment, non–open access journals were 22.7% (95% CI, 6.3%-39.1%; y access . Access This study found that a substantial portion of medical journal websites denied access to users blocking cookies. These findings are noteworthy because they show that taking basic measures to protect one’s online privacy reduces access to research findings. Our study did have limitations, because our search was limited to medical journal websites and did not assess barriers to other online sources of health information.Many journal websites allow full access regardless of users’ privacy choices. Our findings suggest that journal publishers that currently deny access to users blocking cookies could feasibly modify their websites to allow full access to privacy-conscious users.


PLOS Biology pioneered open access publishing in the life sciences at a time when most of the literature remained locked behind paywalls. As we look to the future, we reinvigorate our mission to act as a catalyst for open science and accelerate change in scientific communication for the benefit of science and scientists.Established over 15 years ago, PLOS Biology, as the flagship PLOS journal in the life sciences, is a selective journal that aims to give voice to significant advances that will be widely read, built upon and drive future discovery. With the increasing volume of scientific literature and increasing time demands on researchers, the role of selective journals as a means to access the most important advances remains crucial. What constitutes a significant advance, however, is a matter of debate. At PLOS Biology, we consider that significant advances are those that push science forward in a sizeable, meaningful way, also when they report, for example, exciting but preliminary findings, null or negative results. Scientific discovery begins with interesting research questions and scientific publication should reflect this process. We will thus shift the focus of our initial editorial assessment from the perceived importance of the final results, to increase the emphasis on the research question being asked, the approach undertaken and the quality of execution, regardless of outcome. This will help give visibility to null or negative results, which can provide as much advance as studies more traditionally considered for publication. Not all negative or null results are equally insightful or provide the same degree of conceptual advance, and our criteria for publication will continue to be selective. However, these types of studies are often undervalued in the publication process and with this redefinition of our selectivity criteria we hope to redress this bias.Publication should be an integral part of the research process, rather than something that interrupts and may even be seen to hinder discovery. In addition to our more traditional article types, we will provide researchers with options to publish their research as it unfolds by introducing Preregistered Research Articles (PRAs) and linked Discovery Reports and Update Articles. PRAs, also known as registered reports, undergo peer review immediately after the study design stage, before experiments are conducted. If a study is invited, results and discussion are subsequently added to create a single, fully integrated article. Peer review then focuses on adherence to the approved approach, the appropriateness of any deviations, and the accuracy of the conclusions, but not on the nature of the results obtained. This approach, especially useful for hypothesis-driven research, prevents publication bias and helps ensure the best possible study design at a time when modifications are still possible. Linked Discovery Reports and Update Articles give researchers the flexibility of publishing their initial findings as a first step, thereby helping the field move forward earlier, providing credit earlier, and alleviating the “full story tyranny” or pressure of having to wait to fully develop a story before publication. Discovery Reports describe novel and intriguing initial findings, confirmed by independent methods, that have the potential to lead to a significant new result for the field. As the community builds on this finding, the original authors or other research groups can augment the initial report with linked Update Articles that add mechanistic understanding, physiological relevance or other new insights. Several Update Articles can be linked to the same Discovery Report, allowing for a series of interconnected findings and resulting in scientific communication that more closely mirrors the research process.Since our launch in 2003, we have built strong connections with many communities, and we will now focus on expanding our reach to areas that are less well represented at the journal. As an open and inclusive journal, we aim to provide a home for exciting advances in all areas of the life sciences. No field is out of our scope or interest and we will actively work towards extending our reach, including by expanding our Editorial Board and advocacy in less represented areas. If you have work that significantly advances its field or is at the crossroads between biology and related fields, regardless of the biological discipline, we would love to hear from you.PLOS Biology, is our commitment to Open Science. We will continue to work with the communities we serve towards furthering our initiatives in this regard by exploring, for example, changes to our code and materials deposition policies. Excellent author service has been and will continue to be an important priority for PLOS Biology, with its unique symbiosis of academic and professional editors that ensure expertise, fairness and efficiency. Providing authors with timely and detailed decisions is our priority, as is easing the publication process with, for example, our format-free submission, scooping protection, transparent review and direct preprint-to-submission policies. We believe that transparency, accountability and approachability are essential in the publication process, and authors should feel free to approach us at any stage. As part of our service to authors, we will strengthen our transfer process to other PLOS journals, to ease author experience and facilitate quick decisions at other relevant titles.A defining characteristic of PLOS, and indeed of The drive behind everything we do is to serve the life science community and help you advance discovery, not only by publishing excellent work but also by driving and advocating for positive change in publishing. We very much look forward to the future!


The results and its implications suggest that Vietnamese policymakers and university director boards should facilitate as well as control the quality of the scientific publishing and the OA movement.Open Access (OA) publishing, with ambitious movements such as Plan S, is engendering radical changes among academic publishers. Emerging countries need to keep publishing as well as adopt open access to catch up with the changes. Using exclusive data from the Social Sciences & Humanities Peer Awards (SSHPA) database, the study employed both descriptive statistics and a Bayesian linear regression model to examine the journals and publishers in which Vietnamese social scientists published during the period 2008–2019, and the potential of pursuing the OA movement in Vietnam. We found an increasing diversification in the publishing sources of Vietnamese social science researchers with growth rates of 9.8% and 14.1% per annum in the number of publishers and journals, respectively. Given that the proportion of Gold OA articles had a fourfold increase over the examined period, it seems that the Vietnamese academic community is adopting OA. Furthermore, Bayesian analysis results hint at positive associations of internal and external collaborative power  with the decision to publish in OA ( Social science; Information science; Open access; Scientific publishing; Social sciences and humanities; Vietnam The launch of Plan S initiative in September 2018, which is promoted by cOAlition S, marked a milestone in achieving OA science . It setsNonetheless, this goal is relatively ambitious for researchers and publishers to adopt . As a reBesides adopting the OA publishing framework, proactive government initiatives would be required to create a “publish or perish” culture in emerging countries, for the sake of meeting global publishing standards . In the 2Compared to decades ago, when emerging countries had a relatively high rate of studies published in domestic journals to those published in internationally indexed journals, academia has become globalized along with the world economy . VietnamWithin this conjecture, after a long period of low scientific productivity and output, the fields of Social Sciences and Humanities (SS&H) have also witnessed phenomenal growth, largely thanks to the financial support from governmental and private organizations as well as policies promoting international collaboration and adoption of international publishing standard , 2020a.Previously, there was no requirement for international publications from Vietnamese authorities. Nevertheless, the introduction of Circular 37/2014/TT-BKHCN in 2014, which requires all national projects to result in ISI/Scopus publications, and Circular 08/2017/TT-BGDĐT in 2017, which requires doctoral candidates to publish at least two articles in ISI/Scopus journals, has imposed enormous pressure on international publishing . As a reJournal of Asian Business and Economics Studies, and Journal of Economics and Development are currently published by Emerald, tracking to become ISI/Scopus-indexed journals , which cut down the publishing cost for authors from certain countries. Similarly, PLOS—one of the biggest Open Access publishers—also offers a similar program named PLOS Global Participation Initiative (https://plos.org/publish/fees/). Furthermore, Open Access publishers, such as MDPI, also provide Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP), which discounts the APC for researchers from partner institutions.In the pursuit of the Open Access movement in emerging countries, paying for APC is costly, which can hinder the adoption of OA publishing. According to , facultyFor that reason, we propose new models examining the determinants of domestic and international collaborative network expansions on scientific impact, measured by JIF, and the decision to publish in Open Access journal. The size of such collaborative networks is assumed to be a force, both internal and external, to foster improvement in output quality as well as the Open Access movement.1.What is the OA publication patterns of Vietnamese social scientists during the 2008–2019 period?2.Do internal and external collaborative power  affect the decision to submit to OA journals?Accordingly, to assess the quality of studies and OA publishing trend as well as examine the impact of internal and external collaborative power on scientific quality and OA decision in Vietnam SS&H, our paper aims to investigate the following research questions:33.1https://sshpa.com/). The database is a part of a national project, which aims to create a semi-automatic system to record the scientific output of Vietnamese researchers in the field of Social Sciences and Humanities since 2008. Since each data point corresponds to a publication and includes information regarding its journal and publishers, we are able to extract the information. The database's logical structure, the data collection process, and the data validation process were peer-reviewed and published in the article by To examine where Vietnamese SS&H scholars publish their work, we use the Social Sciences & Humanities Peer Awards (SSHPA) database  . Moreovehttps://osf.io/4mwqr/). Specifically, the following information was extracted from the dataset:•Publisher, which refers to the agency that is listed as the publisher of journals, books, edited books, or conference proceedings, including commercial publishers, university publishers, society publishers, or even a conference organizer who publishes conference proceedings.•Source, which refers to journals, books, edited books, or conference proceedings.•Articles refer to journal articles, book chapters, or conference papers.A comprehensive dataset of Vietnam SSH in the 2008–2019 period was extracted from the database. The final dataset is available in OSF  and Chrome's browser extensions to verify whether an article is open-access or not. Moreover, as Unpaywall covers articles with DOIs only, we manually searched for articles without DOIs on journals' websites and official repositories to identify their state of publications. Through answering these questions, we can assign the OA status accordingly:•Is the article closed or open?•Where is it hosted?•Is it published in a fully OA source?•Is it published under an open license?We used the Unpaywall's Simple Query Tool .Sustainability, PLOS One, Journal of Development Studies, Asian Social Sciences, Culture, and Health & Sexuality), three journals were about health and medicine sciences , and three journals were about Economics and Business . Subfields such as Health Economics and Public Health have both characteristics of social sciences and health sciences. Thus, they are included in the database as their contribution is significant.The sign of OA adoption in Vietnamese SSH is observable. Seven out of ten sources were OA journals, while the other three journals' publishing model was hybrid. In addition to that, one of the two publishers with the most journals on the list (MDPI) was a purely OA publisher. The top four journals, which were open access, had relatively high ranking compared to others on the list (Q1 and Q2).4.1.2During the 2008–2019 period, the database recorded 3,122 publications that were published under five different types of Open Access: Gold, Green, Bronze, Hybrid, and Closed See . Althoug4.24.2.1bayesvl package is available in the Supplementary.For examining the influence of the number of Vietnamese and international authors on the OA status of the publication, we construct the model as shown in The simulated results are shown in Both the number of Vietnamese and international authors  obtain a positive prediction of Open Access publishing outcome  and the likelihood of OA decision.5.1(i)at least two journal articles, one of them must be indexed by ISI Web of Science and/or Scopus; or(ii)two reports at international peer-reviewed conferences; or(iii)two articles in international peer-reviewed journals, for their dissertations, to qualify for the defense.Our finding indicated a surge in the number of sources and publishers in which Vietnamese social scientists published during 2008 and 2019. The surge can be explained by the top-down reform that requires not only natural sciences but also SS&H researchers to increase their scientific productivity and quality , which rPreviously, there was no requirement for international publications from Vietnamese authorities. Meanwhile, publications in domestic journals have been tainted by a personal relationship, plagiarism, or grey transactions . ConsequOn the bright side, this policy is a necessary move to let young scholars experience and practice their skills in a peer-viewed process. Under certain circumstances, productivity is needed to raise quality because it increases the chance for good ideas to be created and executed .In addition to the policy reform, financial incentives granted by the government also played a major role in urging scientists to publish internationally. In 2008, the Vietnamese government initiated its first national scientific funding agency - the National Foundation for Science and Technology (NAFOSTED), which financially incentivizes and supports scientific projects. Six years later, the government issued Circular no. 23/2014/ND-CP to ensure that all scientific projects funded and sponsored by the Foundation complied with international standards . Given tAlthough the trend to diversify journals is evident, not many Vietnamese authors challenge themselves with other types of publications than scientific articles. There are only 18 books, 141 edited books, and 20 conference proceedings published in a decade. Given the role of scholarly books in SS&H, policies encouraging researchers to write books is necessary, especially when book publications are suitable for SSH scholars whose explanations are usually long .5.2Sustainability and International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. Both journals are also indexed in many reputable databases, namely: Social Science Citation Index, MEDLINE, Scopus, EconPapers, IDEAS, and Chemical Abstracts, etc.The adoption of the OA publishing framework by the Vietnamese scientific community is a probable scenario. Effectively, we have found that seven out of ten journals that most frequently publish Vietnamese scientists' works during the period 2008–2019 were OA journals. Moreover, we also observe a rising proportion of gold OA articles in the examined period: from only 9.09% in 2008 to 41% in 2019. These impressive findings might result from the many benefits of publishing in an OA journal for scientists from emerging countries, like Vietnam. OA publishing is an opportunity for researchers from emerging countries to proliferate their scientific records due to the rapid processing time, higher recognition and rapid dissemination of research findings . For exaSustainability, authors need to pay around $1,800 of APC, while the amount to publish in PLOS One is $1,595 of APC. Even though these journals and publishers often offer special programs to help authors from developing countries, the discount cost, which is around $500 per article, is still a considerable amount. Currently, no specific policy or regulation is enacted to financially support OA publishing, which currently hinders the OA movement in Vietnam by lifting the cost of doing science  that is not affordable to many researchers in developing countries or ECRs. In particular, to publish an article in  science .https://doaj.org/), Cabells' list (https://www2.cabells.com/about-predatory), or to a certain degree, Beall's list  are valuable resources for researchers to cross-check the validity of a publisher or a journal. However, these lists have faced several criticisms, such as the case of Beall's list .This work was supported by The authors declare no conflict of interest.No additional information is available for this paper.


Neurophotonics Editor in Chief Anna Devor outlines a vision for the journal. Dear Friend,Neurophotonics with the goal to make it your preferred journal. I assume this role with a strong sense of responsibility and deep appreciation and gratitude to the founding editor Dr. David Boas, all those who serve the journal, the SPIE publications team, and our past and present members of the editorial board.With this issue I formally begin my tenure as the editor of Neurophotonics was launched in 2014 coinciding with the launch of the BRAIN Initiative focused on the development of technologies for advancement of neuroscience. For the last six years, Neurophotonics’ agenda has been well aligned with this focus on neurotechnologies featuring new optical methods and tools applicable to brain studies. Nowadays, the BRAIN Initiative 2.0 is pivoting towards applications of these novel tools in the quest to understand the brain. At Neurophotonics, we see this as an opportunity for growth and expansion. While the focus on optical methods remains at the heart of our agenda, we welcome research that applies these methods to address specific neuroscience hypotheses and questions. Our interest in neuroscience applications spans across the spatiotemporal scales, species, and includes basic research as well as understanding of brain disease.Primers, Protocols and Data Papers. Primers will provide a conceptual overview of a current or emerging optical tool or technology. Our Primers will cover basic technical background, current applications, and an outlook on the future impact of these tools and technologies. Protocols will describe an original method (or its latest version) that the authors used to generate results published in a peer-reviewed journal. Data Papers will describe research datasets. These datasets would have to be deposited in a public repository and made publicly available upon publication.We have ambitious plans for further improving the quality of the journal to be operationalized through publication of the best science, promoting the interdisciplinary neurophotonics community, dissemination of neurophotonics technologies and experimental data, serving as an educational resource for neurophotonics students, and more. We are happy to introduce new paper types: our reviewers who have provided thoughtful, critical and supportive feedback to our authors in the past and hope that they will continue to do so in the future. It takes a village to raise a journal, and our goal is to make Neurophotonics the one you enjoy reading and find the most useful, illuminating, and informative.We look forward to expanding our editorial board and welcoming newly appointed members. We will make all efforts to further improve our peer review to be conducted in a fair and swift manner. We would like to thank Neurophotonics we see ourselves not only as a publishing platform but as a diverse and vibrant international community that includes our authors, reviewers and readers. At this challenging time, our message to those of you who find themselves deprived and isolated is: you are not alone! You are a part of our community. Stay driven, stay creative, believe in yourself and support those around you. We will overcome this challenge and emerge on the other side of this calamity stronger than ever.Finally, as am writing these words, the COVID-19 pandemic has claimed over 500,000 lives in the US alone, and many more around the world. This is an unimaginable suffering and loss of human life that has affected all of us. Despite this ongoing struggle, academic research and exchange of knowledge and ideas remain strong. At neurophotonics@spie.org. We look forward to hearing from you and invite you to send your best work to Neurophotonics!If you have thoughts about specific formats and rubrics that you would like to see in our journal, please let us know by emailing


Mediterranean Journal of Rheumatology (MJR) has recently achieved a major milestone for any “young” scholarly journal: it has been accepted for indexing by PubMed and archiving by PubMed Central (PMC). This is a major achievement that could not have been realized without the dedicated effort, hard work and support of our editorial team, reviewers, authors, and, of course, the vision and continuing support of the Greek Rheumatology Society and Professional Association of Rheumatologists. Journal editorial strategies require regular updates in view of the fast-changing global publishing trends, quality of journal submissions, and readership preferences. To successfully compete with numerous publication outlets in the field and better serve professional communities, journal editors should prioritize the quality and integrity of published contents that influence research, education, and practice. In the era of digitization and Open Access, registering journals with freely accessible scholarly platforms and permanently archiving on reliable repositories are becoming prerequisites of responsible and impactful publishing.1The 2 There are concerns that authors in developing countries and those lacking research funds are disadvantaged by Plan S and cut out of quality gold open-access journals.3 The latter, however, is largely compensated by the availability of platinum open-access journals, such as the MJR, where publishing and archiving charges are covered by professional societies, easing the authors’ and readers’ financial burden.4In the field of biomedicine, PMC archiving is a major step towards global visibility and influence for journals and their contributors. Launched in 2000 by the US National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM), PMC has become the most prestigious free repository of biomedical and life sciences journals that employ various open-access models. PMC as a reliable and freely accessible scholarly hub is gaining momentum in view of Plan S that will be enacted in 2021 to mandate immediate and free access to all publicly funded research.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/), which are selected after thorough scientific and technical evaluations. Being accepted for archiving is a mark of academic recognition and a credit, both requiring continuing efforts to fulfil the accepted obligations towards the global scholarly community. Journal editors and publishers should be aware that not all PMC-archived journals retain their status over time due to failing scientific standards. PMC articles are retrievable along with MEDLINE-indexed and NIH-funded items through the same PubMed platform that is arguably the main search point for the absolute majority of biomedical researchers, practitioners, and authors. The functionality of the PubMed platform allows recommending it for systematic syntheses of biomedical literature.5Currently, PMC archives more than 2,200 fully participating journals  copyrights and distribution licenses, assigning Digital Object Identifiers (DOI), formatting by Journal Article Tag Suite (JATS) eXtensible Markup Language (XML), and other essential adjustments for optimal open access can be supportive towards PMC archiving. Publishing articles in well-edited English is yet another requirement, which is particularly important for journals from non-Anglophone countries. Investing in substantive editing services may open up the PMC gates for a large number of such journals. Finally, validating article references and requesting relevant updates are also useful tactics given the fact that the PMC platform facilitates easy navigation to cross-linked references from PMC and MEDLINE-indexed articles.To get archived and maintain their status, biomedical journals should regularly revise and upgrade their author instructions and publication ethics statements.10 Open-access journals with social media accounts are especially advantageous in that they can improve their immediate societal implications and build up on activities of their followers by regularly disseminating posts with open links to their articles.11 Journal editors concerned with post-publication promotion can benefit from PMC archiving by guiding their contributors how to actively share comments with open links and expand their social media networks.12Although PMC tracks citations, related metrics do not play a role for archiving. The citation tracking merely eases the online navigation within the PMC platform. At the same time, PMC archiving widens prospects of boosting article and journal traditional (citation) and alternative metrics. PubMed and PMC platforms are equipped with plug-ins for post-publication promotion through social media channels, such as Twitter and Facebook. Publicly available tweets and Facebook mentions expand the openness and implications of scholarly communications.Importantly, the appearance of PMC articles on the PubMed platform reveals cross-links to semantically similar items, which may help the authors widen their collaboration prospects and guide the journal editors over the overlapping topics and redundancies.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog/?term=journalspmcjournalspmc). Of these, 16 are in the field of rheumatology . The list includes flagship gold open-access periodicals of the American and European rheumatology associations – ACR Open Rheumatology and RMD Open. The rest of the archived journals also predominantly employ a gold open access model, publishing articles with research funding and open-access fees. Only a few journals in the field, supported by regional societies, afford platinum open access – MJR has also achieved this with the continuing support of the Greek Rheumatology Society. These journals can be primarily targeted by researchers who lack research funds and archiving fees; the researchers can benefit from making their research and reviews discoverable and permanently archived.Currently, the number of PMC journals listed by the NLM catalogue stands at 2,823 (13Although PMC archiving is a major milestone for all successful rheumatology and allied journals, there remains a lot of work to do for journals, such as ours, that are still not indexed by major bibliographic databases, such as MEDLINE, Scopus and Science Citation Index Expanded. Merely opening access and archiving cannot secure journal quality and citability. As journal editors, we will continue to strive to get endorsements and supply of quality articles from related professional societies, to constantly improve the quality, transparency, and crediting of the peer review, and try and expand the geography of our authorship, so that we can claim that we deserve ‘whitelisting’ by concerned academic and research evaluation institutions.


Triggered by a series of controversies and diversifying expectations of editorial practices, several innovative peer review procedures and supporting technologies have been proposed. However, adoption of these new initiatives seems slow. This raises questions about the wider conditions for peer review change and about the considerations that inform decisions to innovate. We set out to study the structure of commercial publishers’ editorial process, to reveal how the benefits of peer review innovations are understood, and to describe the considerations that inform the implementation of innovations.We carried out field visits to the editorial office of two large academic publishers housing the editorial staff of several hundreds of journals, to study their editorial process, and interviewed editors not affiliated with large publishers. Field notes were transcribed and analysed using coding software.At the publishers we analysed, the decision-making structure seems to show both clear patterns of hierarchy and layering of the different editorial practices. While information about new initiatives circulates widely, their implementation depends on assessment of stakeholder’s wishes, impact on reputation, efficiency and implementation costs, with final decisions left to managers at the top of the internal hierarchy. Main tensions arise between commercial and substantial arguments. The editorial process is closely connected to commercial practices of creating business value, and the very specific terms in which business value is understood, such as reputation considerations and the urge to increase efficiency. Journals independent of large commercial publishers tend to have less hierarchically structured processes, report more flexibility to implement innovations, and to a greater extent decouple commercial and editorial perspectives.Our study demonstrates that peer review innovations are partly to be understood in light of commercial considerations related to reputation, efficiency and implementations costs. These arguments extend beyond previously studied topics in publishing economics, including publishers’ choice for business or publication models and reach into the very heart of the editorial and peer review process. Academic peer review plays a crucial role in many of research’s core processes, including grant and career reviews, but especially in the editorial assessment of papers by research journals. The journal peer review system and the editorial process in which it is embedded are gatekeepers for the dissemination of research findings, act as an internal self-regulating mechanism, and, by acting as a selection mechanism, play a key role in the academic reward system –3.Following a series of scandals and controversies over the ability of peer review to guard research quality or integrity, several innovative peer review procedures and supporting technologies have been proposed by a host of enthusiastic innovators, each motivated by specific concerns over dominant approaches , 5. ThesDespite the many suggestions and innovations that promise to improve the peer review system, adoption of these new initiatives seems slow , 8. On aThis raises questions about the wider conditions for peer review and editorial change and about the considerations that inform decisions to innovate. Many of the newly suggested procedures claim to improve the quality of published research or the fairness of the review process, but these are not the only considerations informing journal policies. Claims about how novel review formats improve quality, transparency or scrutiny of the published record – and ultimately might benefit research in its endeavour to produce and disseminate knowledge – are omnipresent in discussions on peer review e.g. , 9). The. The9]).From the perspective of a Science and Technology Studies (STS) understanding of innovations, it is not so strange that innovations fail to convince users by arguments of superior ‘quality’ alone. Apart from their meaning and specific performance, innovations require integration in existing practices and wider socio-technical configurations, with active involvement of users in light of practical concerns and relations to other actors. In the case of journal peer review and journal’s editorial process, this comprises several user perspectives, including opinions about varying peer review procedures in research communities, the willingness of authors and reviewers to participate in innovative formats, but especially how peer review innovations relate to existing editorial practices and policies. Hence some of the currently proposed peer review innovations may be more than just marginal improvements, and are rather suggestions that require transformative change, affecting not only peer review, but also publishing strategies and economics. It may also go beyond the realm of individual publishers and actors, affecting systemic aspects such as reviewer recognition and incentive structures . UnderstIn this study, we set out to research editorial practices to reveal how these might benefit from peer review innovation, and to describe the considerations that inform such decisions. We carried out field visits and in situ interviews at the editorial office of two large academic publishers to study the editorial process in close detail and better understand the day-to-day practices and concerns of their employees at all levels. In addition, we interviewed editors of journals that are not closely related to large publishers. Specifically, we were interested in understanding the considerations that inform editorial transformation, guided by questions such as: what does the process of transformation look like? Who makes decisions about such changes? And on what basis are changes made? We hence mainly focus on intended, deliberately planned instances of transformation.carriers of practices and hence ‘know-how, meanings and purposes’ are not taken to be personal attributes, but rather ‘elements and qualities of a practices in which the single individual participates’ , who was on [another journal] and now joined our team. He took the idea with him. He made people aware of the project” (editor team leader). With people switching jobs between publishers, not only knowledge concerning (new) editorial practices is exchanged, but also competences required to perform such practices, hence allowing practices to spread. Other ideas might reach the team via professional contacts, such as software developers or academics, e.g.: “I got to know the people who are involved in establishing the platform” (executive editor). Similarly, editorial board members might suggest new approaches, or they might indicate issues with the current approach, thereby triggering discussion about how to solve such issues. This is one of the main information routes for suggestions to publishers from their community and the editorial board keeps the journal in touch with the community. Another editor mentioned the value of social media: “The main source would be Twitter, actually”, referring to online discussions and fast circulation of ideas on these platforms. Another occasion for new procedures or practices occurs when “the electronic management systems that we are using, enables something new. That is a major breakthrough for us” (publisher). Such software innovations give publishers the opportunity to quite easily implement something new, but they also show that other publishers are working on similar initiatives, creating pressure to keep up with competitors. What we thus see is that personal networks of people working for the publisher are important, especially for those working close the community of authors and reviewers. However, also publishing technology can be a conduit for innovations and can be crucial to their introduction to work processes.In this discussion it is important to distinguish between larger and smaller projects, the larger projects being those either rolled out over many journals or those requiring large investments. Smaller projects may find their way to the project team via the above mentioned formal and informal networks. In contrast, larger initiatives will come “from very high up” (team leader of editors), referring to the top management of the company. One of the team members initiating many of the large new projects explained that projects arrive at their desk mainly in two ways: either the head of an innovation department suggests new initiatives after consulting with technology companies, which demonstrate novel opportunities, or “management makes contractual deals with other companies.” This might include external partners, usually commercial providers of automated tools or review services, which can assist in review and collaborate through large deals. A journal portfolio’s publisher added that, for the larger innovations: “We will take the same approach as any other company might take, by looking at the market and seeing where gaps appear. […] We will look at spots where growth may be realised […] or where we see an opportunity” . Therefore, information channels do not just pertain to knowledge about academic benefits of innovations, but also about business economics, in particular for larger innovations.The same factors mentioned earlier, the companies’ internal hierarchy and the distinction between smaller and larger projects, become evident when we observed who can decide to start, continue or terminate new initiatives. Commonly, when ideas reach a publisher’s management team, they will first be implemented on a small number of journals, during pilot phases, before deciding to roll them out over a wider set of journals. Publishers hence opt for rather gradual transformation of the editorial practices, containing risks and creating learning opportunities. Currently, several trials involving smaller or larger modifications to the publication process are executed in journals managed by the publishers. These include the introduction of new checks carried out by the assistant editors, or more extensive modifications, such as offering pre-print possibilities to authors; implementing some form of Registered Reports, in which research protocols or plans are reviewed before results or conclusions are known; and the introduction of variants of open peer review, in which peer review reports are published alongside the articles.In the discussions about who can decide to implement innovations, the publisher’s internal hierarchy becomes very visible. Speaking to several members at the office, the phrase ‘people higher up’ was very common to describe where decision-making power lies: “These decisions come from many levels above me” (senior member of product development team). “But I am not the one making the decisions about this. That will happen higher up” (team leader of editors). This is mainly the case when decisions about larger projects have to be made: “The decisions about such large projects will be made on the very top level of the chief publishing director. In general, decisions about such large projects, enrolled [publisher]-wide, will be on this level. Smaller projects might be handled at a lower level. It depends on the potential impact that the project has, in terms of investment, required structural changes and potential of improvement” (publisher executive).However, even in decisions about smaller projects, the hierarchical structure of large publishers’ organisation becomes evident: “[…] in this case it was the chief editor who decided it, but she had to get permission from her manager” (executive editor). Or similarly: “Management would then decide whether this is a good thing to do from a business perspective. If they decide to go for it, we would just do the implementation right away” (associate in policy team). In practice, decisions are made by managers  and people above them in the hierarchy.The situation is more nuanced for society journals, i.e. journals owned by professional or learned societies in which the publisher has a mainly supporting role. These journals are largely autonomous and the publishers have only limited involvement with their editorial policies and processes. Hence, decisions about how to organise the editorial and peer review process are largely made by these societies and their editorial managers, thereby creating additional layers next to the publisher’s internal hierarchy. Societies can frequently lead the way in particular community developments and be a source of inspiration for the publisher. Conversely, if decisions involve discussions over a longer time period it may be more quickly implemented in journals entirely owned by the publisher.Summarising, at the publishers we analysed, the decision-making structure seems to show both clear patterns of hierarchy and layering of the different editorial practices. Larger projects travel top-down through the company, driven higher levels’ interpretations of what innovations mean for their concerns. What constitutes a convincing argument for change varies between different layers in the hierarchy. It is to these meanings and arguments for change that we will now turn our attention.that business interests play a role in innovation decisions, but how these business interests are understood.Observing editorial transformation processes or asking about past transformations to over 20 editorial office members, we analysed reasons that convince decision makers to enrol or implement new initiatives. Not surprisingly, the commercial aspect of the publisher plays a crucial role in these decisions, with typical expressions such as: “At the end of the day we’re still a business.” However, on closer analysis, this commercial argument manifests itself in quite specific ways, related to the publishers’ business model and corporate strategy. It is not just ‘I bring up that, because there are only relatively few integrity cases, it might not be worth a huge investment. She responds that: “One case can bring a lot of reputation damage” explaining that even though they have a lot of papers published and only relatively few of those contain issues, these still can cause major harm to the reputation of the publisher. I reply that hence, even though they might need to set up systems that take a lot of resources and may only catch a few cases, this may still be worth it, because it may prevent reputational damage: “Yes, absolutely”, she confirms. “There needs to be a lot of trust in the system.”’First, the publishers seem to be particularly keen on protecting or strengthening their reputation, even at the expense of additional resources. This becomes clear in the following excerpt from the field notes, from a conversation with a support staff member about new initiatives to detect misconduct cases:Another consideration for the publisher, that is related to commercial considerations, is how the publisher can add value for researchers. This usually comes in a drive to speed up the editorial process, improve handling of submissions, decreasing turnaround times etc. From conversations with a number of publishing colleagues - at all levels - it was clear that projects are introduced where the publisher believes they are doing the right thing by the community in upholding standards that the community supports and are not introducing changes or innovations that would not receive support from the community.A second way in which the commercial argument manifests itself, is through a continuous push to balance a need to speed up the editorial process, decreasing turnaround times and thereby decreasing costs, within the quality standards of the editorial process and consideration of the research community’s needs. An executive editor responds to my question of what would be convincing arguments for her manager: “A lot of it will be time: we obviously don’t do things that increase our turnaround times. Other factors include concerns about whether it is not too labour intensive, and we balance time and benefits” (executive editor). A member of the product development team explains: “The biggest cost for the publisher is the editorial process. […] And we do not want to undo any of the efforts that we made via other means in speeding up the process.” She claims that “this [the increased cost due to more time-consuming editorial processes] will form the major barrier to enrol the project on a wider scale” (senior member of product development team).A closely related third manifestation of the commercial argument concerns the number of submissions a journal expects. Short turnaround times are not only beneficial to reduced costs, they also indirectly lead to increased submissions and hence revenue potential: “Speeding up is required for authors, because they want quick turnaround times, and for the reputation of the journal” (executive editor). Another executive editor explains: “In general, when you want to convince people, you need to show that you have the backing of the field. […] In the end it all comes down to the number of submissions we get” (executive editor). Or a more direct claim: “We could never suggest anything to journals if it either makes the authors or the reviewers less likely to work with the journal” . Another senior staff member working alongside society owned journals, told me that: “We persuade people to get more and better content.” Referring directly to the business value and corporate strategy of the publisher by strengthening its reputation, an assistant editor team leader stated: “… we always think about how we can improve the turnaround time, since we may use that as a selling point.” However, this commercial logic has to be balanced with academic standards and this may involve measures that may conflict with individual researchers’ interests. As another staff member later commented: “We reject papers, we retract papers, we publish papers, and each of these might be an unhappy circumstance for an individual author or individual reviewer. But what we try to do is the right thing by the community, upholding the standards that the community supports (...).”SH: “So if I understand you correctly, there are two main pillars on which you base your decisions, being first of all the legal aspect: Are we allowed to do this? And secondly the commercial or business aspects: Can we actually make money out of this?”Interviewee: “Yes, yes, that is true. But usually we are not directly looking at how much money we can make with it, because obviously many of these projects, such as the […] project, are not directly making money. Instead, we usually ask how much money we can afford to put into this. Because it will just cost us money to build the system, but if reviewers like it, it will make the reviewers happier and they might be willing to review for us another time.”SH: “And that might then make the review process go faster and hence lead to a more cost-effective process?”Interviewee: “Yes, exactly. That is how it works” .A fourth argument also refers to adding business value, through responding to the needs of researchers in their various roles as editors, authors and reviewers. Factors here involve costs of introducing a new project while maintaining appropriate legal considerations and the perceived benefits to all parties of making a change. This becomes clear in a conversation with a publishing associate in the publishing policy and strategy team:Another indication of what arguments are convincing can be observed in the monitoring and evaluation indicators for new project pilot phases. Several members of the editorial board explained how they would measure: “Turnaround times, the number of reviewers engaging, and the rate of reviewers accepting to review” (publisher executive), and: “The usual thing we would measure is the uptake by authors” [i.e. the number of authors opting for a newly offered service] (member of product team). Such performance indicators closely articulate the business concerns in operational terms and translate them into terms directly relevant to editorial innovations. As we noted earlier, these feedback and monitoring mechanisms are crucial mechanisms to maintain or transform practices. Specifying monitoring criteria that operationalise speed and uptake will increase the endurance likelihood of practices that align with business strategy.This attempt to increase efficiency might have further consequences for specific scientific disciplines. As we noted earlier, there is an increasing desire to standardise editorial processes across journals within the same publisher, mainly driven by efficiency and economy-of-scale considerations. In this effort towards more standardisation, approaches are “commonly aligned with those of the largest set of journals that already use them or in which they naturally fit” (editor-in-chief). Hence approaches are typically modelled on disciplines in which the publisher holds most journals. This may decrease diversity in review procedures, potentially at the expense of approaches more suitable in other, smaller research fields in which the publisher holds only few journals.However, commercial arguments are not the sole factor facilitating or hindering innovation. In the complex hierarchy of tasks within the publisher, a single group of people is particularly involved with the academic aspects of the editorial process. This group, consisting of executive editors or editors-in-chief, is fairly distanced from direct financial and business considerations. It is this group that seems to be particularly keen on improving research and for whom a publisher is clearly distinct from ‘any other company’. One of them claimed: “We are a company, but we are not a manuscript accepting machine. […] I really want to do it well.” He was positive about his colleague editors thinking about it the same way. “It needs to go well” he claimed, “else I do not want to work for the journal any longer” (executive editor). Other members of the company acknowledged this role, describing the executive editors as “the guardians of quality” (in-house editor).Once again, we can hence observe how the meanings attached to editorial practices vary between different levels of the organisation. Whereas at the executive level, the practices are instrumental in facilitating company growth, fostering reputation or creating unique selling points, editors attach more academically informed meanings to the process, aiming to improve science and dissemination of scientific results. It is in the interplay of those layers and meanings that decisions about transformations of the editorial process are made.“Sometimes the reviewers have issues with that [new format of the review process], even though they accept to review in this way at the very start” (executive editor), implying that the instructions did not come across.“I hope to see it being implemented soon. This will require some changes to the [name of the electronic editorial system]. That is always complicated. It will take a while” (team leader of assistant editors).Apart from analysing convincing arguments to implement or introduce new initiatives, the analysis of what constitute major hurdles to editorial transformations provides another interesting lens. Besides the legal restrictions mentioned above , two main categories of impediments were foregrounded. These were explicitly articulated and summarised by one of our interviewees: “There are two main hurdles to innovation: People are very reluctant to change. In the end, we all want to keep things as they are. And there are the technical issues involved” (executive editor). Both impediments were expressed multiple times by members of the editorial team, which may indicate that either habits and conventions among certain actors, or the technical configuration of the electronic editorial system are indeed the main hurdles to innovation.Especially the technical hurdle is closely related to the material aspects of editorial practices, whereas routines are tied to the competence aspects of practices. The preference to either fix the technology or improve the competences can depend on the level of configuration that is possible within a manuscript management system and the costs involved. It may also be constrained by whether technical change and “automated solutions” are considered preferable, because they require less behavioural change than individuals involved in the processes.Hence some of the material and competence elements of (complexes of) practices, may provide barriers to transformation or innovation. As we discussed earlier, the infrastructural online manuscript management system plays a major role in connecting and coordinating the various editorial practices. However, while usually taken for granted and to some extent invisible, it gets foregrounded when transformations to the system have to be made. This aspect, common to, or even defining of, infrastructures , makes tCurrently, several potentially fundamental changes are taking place in scientific publishing. These changes include a move towards open access publishing, increasingly demanded by major funding agencies , which hIn addition, the rise of other publishing formats, such as pre-print servers that no longer require the direct involvement of publishers , raises “People say that we don’t need the publishers anymore, because they can just post research on their personal webpage or submit it to pre-print archives and have other people review it on these platforms. We therefore have to show the added value of publishing and our work [at the research integrity team] is a way of doing this.”Unsurprisingly, members of the offices we visited were well aware of this changing landscape and the potential implications for their work and products. The awareness of the publishers’ need to demonstrate added value manifests itself in several ways. At one of the publishers, research integrity plays an important role in this. In a conversation with a senior team member, she explained that there is currently a lot of outrage against publishers:She expected that, by demonstrating an effort to uphold integrity and publishing ethics, publishers can increase trust in the work they publish. “It conveys a message that we are taking this seriously. It shows people that they can trust the work we publish and thereby we show the added value of publishers” (staff member).In fact, such reputational considerations might even warrant deliberate financial losses: “Yes, I don’t think we are making any money on this journal. But it is our main open data sharing journal so we keep it because we want to seem like a publisher that supports open and transparent data” (member of product team). This is confirmed by a senior managing editor at the other large publisher: “there is no direct financial incentive for publishers to rock the boat to make a change. However, there is a long-term incentive to get involved. Publishers have to show that publishing is different from Wikipedia.”This is in line with the dominant view on the changing status of publishers, which requires the publishers to take considerable action. Part of this action, driven by the shift towards more open access publishing, consists of a changing focus on ‘what the community wants’. While previously librarians would be the main source and spokesmen of ‘what the community wants’, publishers are quickly shifting their attention towards needs and desires of researchers, either in their role as authors or as reviewers, as exemplified in initiatives such as Publons, the use of the Journal Impact Factor to advertise to authors, publisher-facilitated preprint servers, or the appearance of mega-journals. This aligns with the publishers’ business needs: in the subscription-model, librarians were involved in deciding which subscriptions to buy, but in the open access model researchers themselves are more directly involved in deciding where to publish and hence where to spend money on publishing.A stronger focus on transparency constitutes another trend among publishers that is fueled by external changes in the publishing landscape. By being more transparent about publishing work, for instance by showing how many reviewers had to be invited, publishers can demonstrate the effort that goes into the review process, thereby showing their added value: “We need to do a better job in showing how we have added value. Being open about review and the system is a way of doing this” (senior manager).We thus see the specific meanings attached to parts of the editorial process. The practices of upholding research integrity and publishing ethics or increasing transparency might genuinely contribute to better research, but they simultaneously serve a direct business need. By several members of the publishers, they are understood in a fairly instrumentalist way, as mechanisms to safeguard or strengthen the publisher’s reputation.In this respect, it is necessary to make a distinction between the meanings and values attached to specific practices by the publisher as a whole and by people in their individual capacities. In the conversations we had with employees we noticed a remarkable usage of the first person singular or plural. When referring to the company’s values and reputation, as well as their efforts to protect those, interviewees almost exclusively spoke in first person plural, e.g.: “We have to be very careful in order to protect the reputation of the publisher”, “We make sure we’re not getting sued” (assistant editor), and “we show the added value of publishers” (senior team leader). In contrast, when discussing more academic interest not as closely tied to the publisher’s commercial interest, interviewees were more common to speak in the first person singular: “I really want to do it well” (in-house editor) and “I dream about a world not so much focussed on indicators and turnaround times” (executive editor). This suggests subtle distinctions between personal or professional concerns and company concerns that attach a different meaning to innovations’ potential.This coupling between individual and professional concerns was arguably stronger for the interviewed editors not working for large publishers. At least, no differentiation between first-person singular and plural was used in these interviews as described above for the publishers’ case. Nonetheless, the difference between commercial and editorial perspectives are still acknowledged, although now less sharply distinct: “We have an advantage, or maybe it’s a disadvantage, that we are not owned by a publisher, we are independent and non-for profit. We look at things from an editorial/scientific perspective rather than from a business perspective” .In general, the editors of these more-or-less independent journals were also aware of the changing landscape that journals and publishers find themselves in. They likewise feel the need to respond to these changes, but perceive themselves as much more flexible to address these: “Many publishers only have 1 or 2 options. We are more flexible. We have more options to choose from and we can adapt quicker” .This study identified several factors that are important in transforming editorial practices of commercial publishers. To understand innovation considerations, we first note that the editorial process at large publishers is very hierarchically structured, with distinct tasks for distinct layers of the process and thereby a clear division of labour among these layers. Extensive training for in-house editors and elaborate guidelines and manuals maintain a highly standardised and routinized process. The many layers of the process clearly express the complexity and inter-relatedness of editorial practices, as a combination of many mundane, simple practices distributed over various people and places . TherebyAnalysing how editorial practices may be transformed, we conclude that, while information about new initiatives circulates widely, projects tend to be typically implemented only on a relatively small scale. For larger projects, managerial approval has to be obtained. Analysing the convincing arguments for management to make changes in editorial practices, we observe several recurring themes. The major factor encompasses a commercial interest, which is understood by these publishers as the importance to uphold reputation, shorten the editorial process and turnaround times, and increase willingness of researchers to be involved .However, different meanings are at stake here, attached to editorial practices by people in different position at the publishers. Some assess and support editorial practices or innovations for how they might improve research. For others, the main question is what editorial processes mean for the publisher’s business model. Because the latter meaning is more common among people in higher layers of the companies’ hierarchy, this meaning tends to prevail in decisions on large-scale innovation projects. Hitherto, these commercial considerations have mainly been discussed concerning publishers’ attitude towards open access publishing or concerning predatory journals e.g. , 36). Ho. Ho36]).Last, factors commonly impeding rapid or large-scale changes in the editorial process are often related to infrastructural aspects such as the electronic editorial system or habits and conventions of individuals involved. These impeding factors, usually comprising the material and competence parts of editorial practices, are all examples of instances where the publisher’s editorial practices connect to those of other publishers, organisations or the wider publishing community.This study relies on ethnographic data obtained through participant observations and in situ interviews with members of editorial offices. It is therefore affected by the inherent limitations of such methods . In partThe debate about new initiatives to develop or improve the editorial system or peer review system is usually centred on academic arguments: how the review system might improve the research enterprise. Arguments about the advantages of open peer review or similar innovations highlight advantages for the research process, obtaining knowledge and distributing it. As new ideas about how to organise the editorial process emerge, academic or societal considerations are therefore predominant . On a sm