The Initiative on Rare and Undiagnosed Diseases (IRUD) has established a unified all-Japan diagnostic and research scheme for rare and undiagnosed diseases covering the entire geographic areas and specialty/subspecialty fields. The fundamental IRUD scheme consists of six components: coordinating center (IRUD-CC), clinical center (IRUD-CL), clinical specialty subgroup (IRUD-CSS), analysis center (IRUD-AC), data center (IRUD-DC), and resource center (IRUD-RC). IRUD has registered many pedigrees with undiagnosed diseases, established their diagnoses with high diagnostic rate, identified novel causative genes and new disease entities, and promoted extensive data sharing and international collaboration. IRUD plays an important role in the national medical support network for rare and intractable diseases together with academic societies and national centers. Promotion of IRUD would be essential in elucidating causes and ultimately providing cures for rare and undiagnosed diseases. Even in diseases with known causative genes, it is often the case that the diseases are so rare and the clinical manifestations are so complicated that even exhaustive sets of ordinary diagnostic tests have never reached accurate diagnosis. These patients inevitably wander from hospitals to hospitals seeking correct diagnosis but eventually remain undiagnosed and untreated, which is the so-called “diagnostic odyssey.” Two surveys conducted by the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED) have shown that there are more than 37,000 such cases, illustrating that diagnosing patients with such rare and undiagnosed diseases is still a major issue (1). In Japan, considerable achievements have been made in the research and countermeasures for intractable diseases, designated as “Nan-byo,” by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare in Japan, which started in 1972 after the subacute myelo-optico neuropathy (SMON) pandemic in Japan. In 2015, the new intractable disease law was enforced to expand “Nan-byo” from 56 to 333 diseases, mandating further improvement in diagnostic accuracy of rare diseases.With the recent progress of molecular genetics, causative genes of many diseases have been identified, and their therapeutic methods have been developed. However, there remain a substantial number of hereditary diseases whose causes are still unknown. According to Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM) (URL: (2). IRUD for pediatric patients, IRUD-P, was launched in July 2015, followed by IRUD for adult patients, IRUD-A, in October 2015. In 2017, the two were integrated into one research project, IRUD (URL: https://www.amed.go.jp/en/program/IRUD/), the second phase started in 2018, and it has been steadily developing.With this background, the Initiative on Rare and Undiagnosed Diseases (IRUD) was launched as a research and development project with the aim of establishing a medical system for systematically diagnosing patients with rare and undiagnosed diseases and developing a system for collecting, accumulating, and sharing patient information and resources (3) in the United States, Genomics England (4) in the United Kingdom, and Finding of Rare Genes in Canada (FORGE) (5) have achieved unprecedented outcome. Furthermore, the International Rare Disease Research Consortium (IRDiRC) (6) has built a broader cooperation system, which AMED joined in 2015. One of the characteristics of IRUD compared to these preceding projects is that it incorporates Japan’s insurance medical care system so that research can be promoted efficiently at a much lower cost.Research for rare and undiagnosed diseases has become a major international trend. Leading projects such as the Undiagnosed Diseases Project (UDP)/Undiagnosed Diseases Network (UDN) The inclusion criteria of “undiagnosed disease” in IRUD are as follows.1. The patient remains undiagnosed for six months or longer (not necessarily for infants), and the symptom(s) affects his/her daily life, AND2-1. There exist objective signs that cannot be reduced to a single organ; OR(2).2-2. There exists direct or indirect evidence of a genetic etiology as likely  found in the patient’s relatives) Here, an undiagnosed disease is clearly distinguished from an undetermined disease in which a clinical diagnosis has been made but the causative gene mutation has not been confirmed. For example, if spinocerebellar degeneration is clinically diagnosed but its causative gene has not been analyzed and the disease type has not been determined, then it is classified as an undetermined disease and excluded from IRUD.IRUD has successfully established a unified all-Japan diagnostic and research scheme for rare and undiagnosed diseases covering the entire geographic areas and specialty/subspecialty medical fields. The fundamental IRUD scheme consists of six components: coordinating center (IRUD-CC), clinical center (IRUD-CL), clinical specialty subgroup (IRUD-CSS), analysis center (IRUD-AC), data center (IRUD-DC), and resource center (IRUD-RC) .(1) IRUD Coordination Center (IRUD-CC): IRUD-CC administrates the whole system and strengthens governance by managing the IRUD Promotion Board (IRUD-PB), which is the highest decision-making organization. IRUD-CC also supervises and manages the progress of the entire research by conducting a regular survey twice a year. Furthermore, IRUD-CC manages a unified sample logistic system utilizing outsourcing contractors to facilitate the flow of samples and clinical information from IRUD-CLs to IRUD-ACs and simultaneously to centralize the information and sample repositories in IRUD-CC.(2) IRUD Clinical Center (IRUD-CL): IRUD-CLs operate diagnostic committees that take charge of the process from the decision for patient entry based on the criteria for the establishment of final diagnosis upon receiving the analysis results from IRUD-AC. The diagnostic committee is composed of pediatricians and adult physicians of various specialties/subspecialties, clinical geneticists, genetic counselors, data scientists, and representative physicians from local medical associations to promote regional cooperation. The IRUD diagnostic committee in each IRUD-CL plays a central role in the regional diagnostic network with IRUD cooperative hospitals and medical associations referring IRUD entry candidates to IRUD-CL. In addition, semiclinical centers serve similar functions without funding, including diagnostic committees, to fill the geographic gaps of IRUD-CLs.(3) IRUD Clinical Specialty/subspecialty Subgroup (IRUD-CSS): IRUD-CSSs are organized by assembling the members of diagnostic committees across the entire IRUD-CLs according to their specialties/subspecialties . The rolIRUD-CLs and IRUD-CSSs are integrated into IRUD Diagnostic Coordination that realizes a comprehensive diagnostic scheme covering the entire geographic areas and specialty/subspecialty fields, where patients with any disease residing in any region can get access to IRUD.(4) IRUD Analysis Center (IRUD-AC): IRUD-ACs receive clinical information and DNA samples from corresponding IRUD-CLs, conduct comprehensive genomic analysis centered on whole exome sequencing (WES), determine candidate causative mutations, and report to the IRUD-CLs. When causative mutations are undetermined, intensive research is conducted to identify novel causative genes/mutations by making full use of trio analysis, whole genome sequencing (WGS), multiomics analysis, and functional studies.(7) that complies with the international standard phenotypic description system Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO) (8) and can be linked with the international data-sharing system MatchMaker Exchange (9). IRUD-Exchange promotes data sharing within IRUD researchers and serves as a gateway to international collaboration. Phenotypic and genomic information have been accumulated to promote the establishment of new causative genes and disease concepts.(5) IRUD Data Center (IRUD-DC): IRUD-DC operates IRUD Exchange, a data-sharing platform designed by incorporating Patient Archive system (6) IRUD Resource Center (IRUD-RC): IRUD-RC establishes clinical information and DNA sample/cell line repositories and manages a utilization committee where application to utilize repositories are examined. IRUD-CC temporarily serves as the IRUD-RC.In March 2020, the IRUD diagnostic scheme was composed of a total of 487 institutions consisting of 37 IRUD-CLs, 15 semiclinical centers, and 435 cooperative hospitals. Five IRUD-CLs also serve as IRUD-ACs, and one of them is also in charge of IRUD-DC. The National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry serves as IRUD-CC as well as IRUD-CL and has held IRUD-PB monthly. In March 2020, 21 IRUD-CSSs were organized with a total number of 469 clinical specialists to support the diagnostic committees in IRUD-CLs. IRUD-RC established resource repositories, including 3753 genomic DNA samples and 2512 lymphoblastic cell lines. Phenotypes and genetic data of 5609 pedigrees have been registered in IRUD Exchange, among which 62 were subjected to international data sharing.In March 2020, 5359 pedigrees consisting of 15608 individuals were registered in IRUD. WES was completed in 4205 pedigrees, and final diagnosis was established in 1808 pedigrees (42.9%) . Thirty-“IRUD Beyond” has been launched as a pioneering research field for the purpose of further advancing the achievement of IRUD. “IRUD Beyond” consists of three conceptual frameworks: “beyond borders,” “beyond genotyping,” and “beyond diagnosis.” “Beyond borders” accelerates international data sharing of the research and development of IRUD more intensively. For this purpose, “Beyond borders” participated in Orphanet in 2017 and opened a website, Orphanet Japan Website, where five novel diseases or genes have been published as the achievement of IRUD. “Beyond genotyping” aims to further improve diagnostic accuracy by conducting functional studies of candidate mutations identified in IRUD, particularly utilizing small model animals such as nematodes, drosophila, and zebrafish so that mutant phenotypes can be obtained in a relatively short period. For this purpose, a model animal research coordinating network, Japan Rare Disease Models and Mechanisms Network (J-RDMM), was established in 2017, where a coordinating facility conducts matching between the candidate gene database and researcher registry database to find suitable researchers for the functional studies. “Beyond diagnosis” targets the development of innovative drug seeds based on pathogenic mutations identified in IRUD by adopting genome editing or induced pluripotent stem cells.IRUD has established an all-Japan comprehensive diagnostic system for rare and undiagnosed diseases covering the entire geographic areas and clinical specialties/subspecialties. IRUD plays an important role in the national medical support network for intractable diseases together with academic societies and national centers.The network serves as an advisory organization in the diagnosis of and therapeutics for intractable diseases in prefectural intractable disease network hospitals, which are designated by prefectural governments and function as medical centers for intractable diseases. Most IRUD-CLs are also designated as prefectural intractable disease network hospitals, and the foundation for mutual cooperation has already been established. By effectively utilizing this IRUD diagnosis system, it is expected that the effectiveness of the intractable disease medical support network will be further enhanced and that it will contribute in improving the diagnosis accuracy of rare intractable diseases, elucidating the pathophysiology, and developing therapeutic methods. The IRUD diagnostic committee at each IRUD-C has established collaboration between pediatrician and adult physician of various specialties/subspecialties, which will contribute to the realization of transition medicine. In fact, undiagnosed diseases experienced by adult physicians often developed in childhood, and it is considered that the accuracy of the diagnosis will be further improved by cooperation between pediatricians and physicians for adults.IRUD Exchange serves as a formatted phenotype/genotype database of rare diseases and potentially provides epidemiological evidence, including prevalence data, which is highly valuable for physicians, policy makers, and pharmaceuticals. Physicians can refer to the data in the daily clinical practice as a catalog of rare diseases in Japan. Policy makers can utilize the data to contrive the optimal solution to the supporting care systems covered by the health care insurance system for patients with rare and undiagnosed diseases. Pharmaceuticals have growing interest to obtain prevalence data of rare diseases to design strategic plans to develop orphan drugs. Thus, IRUD Exchange is considered a highly useful database for pharmaceutical companies aiming to develop therapeutic agents for rare and intractable diseases.Identification of novel causative genes for rare and undiagnosed diseases and establishment of new disease entities do not merely have clinical significance of improving diagnostic accuracy. Obviously, the disease-causative genes define the most reliable and powerful pathogenic molecules. The identification of the novel causative genes is equivalent to the elucidation of the missing link between human genes and phenotypes in general. Without a thorough solution of the 3308 hereditary diseases classified as phenotypes with unknown causative genes based on OMIM database , complete understanding of human health and disease would be far from realization. More than 200 pedigrees in IRUD have individual candidate genes awaiting identification of additional pedigrees, offering an enormous opportunity for approaching toward this ultimate goal. Considering the characteristics of diseases with IRUD entry that present with multiple organ involvement, identification of the causative genes leads to elucidation of a common molecular mechanism in the formation, function, and maintenance of different organs. By identifying the “hub” of such molecular networks, it is expected that the hidden relationship in the organ-organ association in the normal function or disease state will be uncovered, allowing the development of innovative research by merging organ-specific findings.(11). Proteomics or metabolomics analysis would reveal key mechanisms underlying the diseases suggesting the involvement of particular sets of genes (12). For such purposes, a lymphoblast cell line repository in IRUD is considered highly valuable and has already been vigorously utilized. This integrative multiomics approach would break through to the next level of genomic medicine for rare and undiagnosed diseases.Despite these spectacular accomplishments, there still remain more than 2000 pedigrees with undetermined causes. For further enhancement of diagnostic rate, IRUD has started to adopt the following cutting-edge strategies. Whole genome sequence analysis (WGS) would reveal intronic mutations such as noncoding repeat expansions or complex structural variations. RNA sequencing would identify aberrant splicing, transcriptional repression, exon skipping, or intron inclusion IRUD has realized a nationwide comprehensive genetic diagnosis scheme for rare and undiagnosed diseases and succeeded in establishing diagnosis and identifying novel causative genes and new disease entities. The high diagnostic rate in IRUD has testified that genetic examination plays a pivotal role in the medical services of rare and undiagnosed diseases. Further promoting IRUD with extensive international collaboration would be essential in elucidating causes, improving quality of life, and ultimately providing cures for patients with rare and undiagnosed diseases.None


Royal Society Open Science as the second postholder as the Editor-in-Chief for the journal, and I would like to start not only by thanking my predecessor Prof. Jeremy Sanders CBE FRS and the members of the Editorial Board for their hard work to this point but also congratulating them on developing such an interesting journal. I was delighted when the Royal Society launched Royal Society Open Science in 2014 and have closely followed its progress since then in my role as Chair of the Publications Board. The journal has established itself as a high-quality open access publication, and a venue allowing the Society to experiment with open peer review , pre-registration of studies (in the form of Registered Reports), Replication studies and last year—under the difficult circumstances with which we are all familiar—it launched a new section ‘Science, Society and Policy’, an exciting innovation and one I look forward to developing further.I join Royal Society Open Science is an avowedly cross-disciplinary journal and this is a further source of interest for me. I see a lot of opportunities to encourage more cross-disciplinary work, and the journal aims to publish a special collection later this year that showcases ground-breaking research and high-quality reviews and perspectives that explore artificial intelligence from a cross-disciplinary perspective. This collection has been jointly commissioned by a number of the Subject Editors and I am looking forward to reading content in this collection. The journal has also previously published ‘New talent’ collections of work commissioned from holders of Royal Society grants (such as University Research Fellows and Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship holders), an initiative that I would like to continue in other areas of the journal, particularly those that have historically not been as well represented in terms of submitted manuscripts as might be expected.My research interests lie in computer science, but span several disciplinary boundaries, including governance and policy with respect to artificial intelligence and data governance and the Internet—both areas that will have huge significance for society and science in future. Royal Society Open Science.On the subject of representation, I have long been interested in broadening access to science, not only in terms of open access and open data but in encouraging greater diversity in the publishing (and wider scientific) landscape. My new role will allow me to do more in the journal space to encourage diversity, and I will be working closely with the journal administrative office and Royal Society to improve diverse representation in our author base, our reviewers and our Editorial Board. I'm particularly pleased that Prof Sanders has taken on the Chair for the Society's Diversity Committee, and I plan to seek his guidance on how to further support under-represented groups in Royal Society Open Science is certainly a successful journal, and with the strong foundations laid by my predecessor and our colleagues on the Editorial Board (working the Society's in-house teams), I am looking forward to taking the journal to greater heights and future successes. I hope you will work with and join me on this exciting journey.


Transparency in reporting benefits scientific communication on many levels. While specific needs and expectations vary across fields, the effective interpretation and use of research findings relies on the availability of core information about research materials, study design, data, and experimental and analytical methods. For preclinical research, transparency in reporting is a key focus in response to concerns of replication failure. The inconsistent reporting of key elements of experimental and analytical design, alongside ambiguous description of reagents and lack of access to underlying data and code, has been shown to impair replication  and rais48Reproducibility and Replicability in Science  workshop provided a valuable opportunity for broader consultation across relevant stakeholder groups . We incoSI Appendix—MDAR Elaboration for a complete list of baseline reference material). We had a strong focus on straightforward and pragmatic approaches to implementation and on balancing the demands of research users for improved reporting with reasonable expectations for authors, reviewers, and editors. Therefore, we have not attempted to make the Framework comprehensive, but we have consulted broadly to include the elements that, considering current practice, could bring the most notable improvements across a large number of journals.In devising this Framework, we drew not only on the collective experience of journal initiatives, including existing checklists, but also on the results of recent meta-research studying the efficacy of such interventions –19, exisThe scope of the MDAR Framework was the life sciences, and within this our project had a strong focus on information that is relevant for exploratory laboratory research; MDAR is therefore likely to be more useful for some disciplines than for others. We also recognize the added value of many community-endorsed specialized guidelines that go further in their more focused expectations of more specific research areas. The MDAR Framework is not comprehensive and should not supersede any existing reporting standards. It is a generalist framework intended to be broadly applicable to research in the life sciences and to lift minimum expectations in a concerted way. MDAR is meant to be not only compatible with but also to be enhanced by existing specialist standards and guidelines .The organizing principles of the MDAR Framework centered around three types of information: accessibility, identification, and characterization. Accessibility refers to the disclosure of whether and how a specific Framework element  is accessible, including any restrictions to that access. Identification refers to the information necessary for unique and unambiguous designation and provenance of each element . Characterization refers to the minimum description of the item which is relevant for interpretation and replication.For each element of the Framework, we have identified a basic minimum requirement as well as an aspirational set of best practices that provide directional guidance for the future evolution of the requirements. With time we expect that elements currently identified as “best practice” will instead be identified as a “basic minimum requirement” as reporting performance improves.New approaches to improving reproducibility and replicability bring with them costs of adoption and implementation. If the costs to journals outweigh the benefits they will stop using the MDAR Framework, but it is more difficult to account for the additional burden placed on authors. Authors do recognize that checklists can improve reporting quality , and thi17BMC Microbiology and Ecology and Evolution, eLife, EMBO journals, Epigenetics, F1000R, Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, MicrobiologyOpen, PeerJ, PLOS Biology, PNAS, Science, and Scientific Reports. As a proxy for testing the MDAR Framework, we tested its main implementation tool, the MDAR Checklist, a series of questions designed to determine whether a study adheres to the minimum requirements in the MDAR Framework. The participants were also given the MDAR Elaboration Document as a further guide to clarify expectations.Previous experience highlighted the benefits not only of broad stakeholder consultation but also of testing interventions in “real-life” situations before implementation. We therefore reached out to the publishing community to recruit volunteer journals for a pilot study. Thirteen journals and publishing platforms participated: The pilot sought, first, to understand whether the MDAR Checklist described each reporting standard with sufficient clarity to guide the assessment of submitted manuscripts and, second, whether the Checklist was useful to authors seeking to meet journal policy expectations and to editors assessing manuscripts against those requirements.Participating journal teams screened 289 manuscripts using the checklist; 89 of these were assessed twice, by independent journal assessors blinded to each other’s assessment, to determine interassessor agreement. We interpreted poor (no better than expected by chance) interobserver agreement as an indication of insufficient clarity and revisited the description of affected items in the Checklist and Elaboration document to clarify them. Specifically, there had been poor agreement around the provenance of cell lines, primary cultures, and microbes, in details of ethical approvals, and on whether criteria for exclusion had been determined prior to data collection. We suggest that implementing journals may wish to give particular attention to these items in the training of editorial staff. Only 15 of 42 items were considered relevant to more than half of the 289 manuscripts considered. To address this, a common suggestion from study participants was to organize the checklist in a nested way to allow users to easily skip over sections that are not relevant. While this is an excellent suggestion, we concluded that the best organization may be journal-specific and left this as an implementation decision for the journals electing to use a checklist.Across all participating journals we sought feedback from a corresponding author of these 289 manuscripts (some manuscripts had more than one corresponding author), and from editorial staff members handing those manuscripts. Eighty percent of 211 corresponding authors who responded, and 84% of 33 editorial staff, found the checklist “very” or “somewhat” helpful.We also obtained further feedback on the MDAR Framework, Elaboration document, and Checklist from 42 experts with experience in various aspects of reproducibility and replicability, including using and developing checklists to improve reporting standards. While incorporating this feedback and refining the Framework and associated outputs further we added and strengthened some requirements but we were careful to ensure that the minimum requirements remained reasonable and pragmatic to avoid undue burden on authors, given current practice.We developed the MDAR Framework as an adaptable system allowing flexible adoption to meet the different needs of specific disciplines, community norms, and resource constraints. We envision that by endorsing the MDAR Framework journal signatories will express their support for transparent reporting principles outlined by the MDAR Framework and commit to taking steps to incorporate the MDAR guidelines into their journal practices.Having endorsed the MDAR Framework, journals can choose from three increasingly stringent levels of implementation to give signatories flexibility, allowing a lower threshold for entry but nevertheless providing a clear path to improving standards .The MDAR Checklist is available as an optional resource, or tool, to help drive implementation of the Framework, but the Framework itself is purposely designed to be compatible with other modes of implementation including through structured queries in journal peer-review systems, integration within journal-specific guidelines or checklists, or automated or semiautomated manuscript processing systems.Some journals already have policies that go beyond the minimum set of requirements and are aligned with the aspirational best practices described in the MDAR Framework. We expect that these journals will continue to implement their best practices while endorsing the Framework. Their experience will be central to inform future evolution of the minimum set of requirements in the MDAR Framework.Some journals may wish to endorse the MDAR Framework but may be concerned about the burden on editorial resources. It is important to note that during the pilot in which editorial staff used the checklist to evaluate MDAR compliance the average time was 24 min (median 15 min). The assessment was largely carried out by internal journal staff and we did not test the checklist with volunteer reviewers or editors. However, as outlined in The Center for Open Science (COS), which has been a partner in developing the MDAR Framework, will be responsible for stewardship, as a community resource, of the MDAR Framework and associated outputs including the Elaboration document and Checklist. COS will maintain a webpage to curate the checklist, Elaboration document, and any policy recommendations. These will be housed in a repository on the Metascience Collection on the Open Science Framework, which is developed and maintained by COS. The Metascience Collection contains data, materials, and research outputs relevant to the scientific community and enables resources such as the MDAR outputs to be maintained in version-controlled documents with persistent, unique identifiers. We hope to see widespread adoption of the MDAR Framework, and we ask journals and platforms to share details on this platform when they start to use the MDAR Framework.Alignment around MDAR as a common standard for life-science papers will hopefully pave the way for the development of automated—and semiautomated—assessment tools that can determine manuscript adherence to reporting standards, potentially reducing barriers to wider uptake of the Framework . As the While journals are a key target audience, the MDAR Framework could be used by multiple stakeholders at different points in the research life cycle: by researchers during the design, conduct, analysis, and reporting of research studies; by institutions as a pedagogical tool to teach best practice in responsible conduct of research; and by funders and others involved in research assessment to help evaluate rigor and reporting transparency in grant applications, preprints, or research articles. With the growth in preprints in recent years, preprint servers are uniquely placed to collect (and post) an author-completed MDAR checklist, which could then travel with the manuscript when submitted to a journal. In all implementations it will be desirable to make the process of engagement with the MDAR Framework as straightforward for authors as possible.Improved consistency in expectations for reporting across publishers has the potential to ease adoption of transparent reporting practices for authors, researchers, and journals and lead to improved quality of reporting in published papers. In addition, alignment on these expectations among funders could further help drive adoption and incorporation of best-practice recommendations early, into study design, data collection, and analysis. Ultimately the goal of transparent reporting is to improve research practice.


If you are reading this editorial, it is highly likely that you have also read several peer-reviewed publications in the past few weeks. Reading the literature is part of the daily routine for most research scientists. What is rarely uppermost in our thoughts at such times is how these papers transitioned from being a good idea, or a logical extension of previous work, into the final, published product. However, one thing that most scientists do agree on is that much of what we read has been improved enormously by thoughtful and critical peer review. Peer reviewers make an invaluable contribution to manuscripts that are under consideration for publication by journals. This is especially true in the case of submissions that clearly have merit but are incomplete or poorly focused. A high-quality peer reviewer often helps turn these manuscripts into compelling publications that attract the attention of readers. Advances in science also require rigorous validation, and peer reviewers play a vital role in this process.Excellence in peer review is something that does not come naturally to most of us. It takes a lot of experience to be able to provide authors with succinct and balanced feedback that, if implemented, will significantly improve the quality of a manuscript. Good reviewers unerringly identify gaps and inconsistencies in manuscripts and offer constructive solutions for their resolution. As the reputations of these highly valued reviewers grow, they often find themselves receiving many more requests than they can reasonably be expected to handle, forcing editors to seek out alternate but equally competent reviewers. Building communities of dedicated, expert peer reviewers at all career stages is the key to solving this dilemma and to ensuring a pipeline of quality editorial board members.Journal of Biological Chemistry, Journal of Lipid Research, and Molecular and Cellular Proteomics— collectively published a total of 1775 peer-reviewed, original research articles in 2020. Assuming that at least two independent reviewers evaluated each of these articles, it follows that a minimum of 3550 volunteer peer reviewers provided input into these publications. As these numbers do not account for submissions that were peer reviewed and not accepted for publication or were re-reviews of revised manuscripts, it is clear we owe an enormous debt of gratitude to our peer reviewer community.We, as editors of the ASBMB journals, are acutely aware of our dependence on the volunteer peer review community for ensuring that we publish quality science. Most manuscripts that are accepted for publication have had input from at least two peer reviewers. An insight into the scale of this effort can be obtained by considering that the three ASBMB journals—These rather sobering statistics highlight the importance of Peer Review Week, which gives us the opportunity to say a huge thank you to all reviewers who have contributed their time and expertise to evaluating submissions for our journals. Their input ensures that the quality of the science we publish is exceptional and enables us to provide the scientific community with access to reproducible, groundbreaking studies.In addition to recruiting the best reviewers for the submissions we receive, we have made a concerted effort over the last 2 to 3 years to improve the inclusivity of our peer reviewer community. Strategies we have adopted include inviting outstanding junior researchers to join our editorial boards as early career reviewers. These early career reviewers are mentored by experienced associate editors, giving them the opportunity to develop their reviewing skills. We regard this initiative as a critically important investment in the future of all ASBMB journals, ensuring that we will continue to publish quality and transformative science for the foreseeable future.We are also evaluating additional strategies for improving the equity, diversity, and inclusivity of our peer review communities, a topic that is directly aligned with the focus of this year's Peer Review Week. Bias in peer review has attracted increased attention in recent years. It is pervasive, goes largely undetected, and has only recently been openly acknowledged as a significant issue . ReducinThis is also the case for ASBMB journals. How do we, as editors, address this? In the first instance, we will be regularly reminding the editorial teams about the potential for bias. As a first step the JLR editors-in-chief have decided to provide all associate editors with regular, individualized, geographical and gender distribution summaries of the peer reviewers they are using. We will also be focusing on increasing inclusion of underrepresented minority groups in the peer review community. The JLR has already gone some way toward addressing this with the appointment of members of underrepresented minorities as junior associate editors.While we believe that these actions will help reduce peer reviewer bias in ASBMB journals, we realize that they fall short of resolving it. Going forward, we will be regularly reviewing demographic and other data that relate to our peer review communities and continue to work toward reducing all aspects of bias. It is especially important that these changes are implemented in ways that do not compromise the quality of the science we publish. Although there is no doubt that some of these changes will create challenges, their implementation has the potential to bring major benefits to all ASBMB journals and promote the development of a large, highly diverse, and insightful peer review ecosystem that should serve as a role model for peer review across the broader scientific community.


This presentation will review the most common issues that affect how reviewers see a manuscript submission. These include clarity, use of figures, and attention to existing research, especially establishing the significance and novelty of the work, and how to frame a narrative. I will also address responding to peer review. The focus will be on the biological science perspective , but these issues are relevant to all submissions to GSA journals.


Palliative Medicine Reports (PMR) to the palliative care community. PMR is an open-access companion to the Journal of Palliative Medicine (JPM) that gives authors in palliative care and related fields from around the globe a forum to disseminate their work.It is with great excitement that we release the first articles from As palliative care has grown from a niche specialty to one that is integrated into most every facet of medical care, our workforce and literature base have also grown. What has expanded more slowly, though, are high-quality, reputable journals with thoughtful peer review that enable the sharing of the breadth of clinical research, case series, humanistic reflections, and opinion pieces in palliative care.Journal of Palliative Medicine receives almost 700 submissions per year but, as a paper journal, it lacks the space needed to print many articles worthy of publication. Unfortunately, this unmet need for avenues of scientific dissemination has led to an increase in predatory journals. Often lacking editorial boards and peer review, predatory journals have grown in number in the last decade and can trap authors' manuscripts and copyright until extortive fees are paid.1The It is our hope that PMR is well positioned to meet many of the currently unmet needs. An online-only publication, PMR is able to publish any well-done article that will interest those in our field. PMR will ensure the manuscripts published are of high quality and meet the peer- review standards of the shared group of JPM/PMR peer reviewers. Deeply appreciative of ongoing support and mentorship from the JPM Editorial Board and Managing Editor, PMR has begun to set its own course by assembling a cadre of enthusiastic Associate Editors from Duke University, the University of Nebraska, Penn State College of Medicine, Seattle Children's Hospital, the University of Rochester, Moffit Cancer Center, the University of Pennsylvania, and others. This group will work to promote PMR and support authors, guiding PMR toward its own niche in palliative care.2A major difference between PMR and most other academic journals centers around the publishing model. Most academic publications are free to authors at the point of publication but the resulting science is housed behind paywalls and copyright for articles is held by the publisher. The costs of publication are paid by readers, either by individual subscription, as a per-article charge, or by libraries and institutions with annual subscriptions. For those without access, especially true in resource-limited countries, accessing articles published in traditional journals can be impossible. PMR, by contrast, has adopted the “open access” model. After rigorous peer review and revision, accepted manuscripts will be assigned a Creative Commons CC-BY license to enable public sharing. Articles will be freely available because the cost of publishing is paid by authors on a sliding scale depending on the socio-economic status of the authors' country of origin. Many organizations that fund research, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, and nearly two dozen European funders, have come together to support “Plan S,” which “mandate[s] that access to research publications that are generated through research grants that they allocate must be fully and immediately open.”Palliative Medicine Reports is proud to be at the vanguard of this movement. We at PMR are excited to support authors with clinical research, cases, position papers, reflections, and opinions to share as we make quality information in palliative care and related fields accessible to the world.While different from the model many Americans are accustomed to, high-quality, peer-reviewed, open-access publishing is likely an important part of the future of academic publishing worldwide.


ASLIB Journal of Information Management, Journal of Documentation, Journal of Informetrics, Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, Online Information Review, and Scientometrics are analysed in terms of time to publication (from submission to decision). Our results show that publication time is significantly shorter when an editorial board member or a productive author of a given journal is one of the authors, in compare with the articles. submitted by other authors. The number of authors has a time-prolonging effect on publication time, as expected. On the other hand, publications with more citations were accepted in a shorter time. The papers with authors from central countries and high-income countries have an advantage of shorter publication time. Thus, this study shows that researchers who publish papers with popular and successful researchers from central countries have the advantage of the speed of publication which may have substantial effects on the future academic work, especially of early career researchers.Publication speed is one of the important aspects of scholarly communication since various research performance evaluation systems are based mostly on published papers. This study aims to reveal the factors affecting the publication speed of journals. In this context, six information science journals:  Scholarly communication is defined as the “system through which research and other scholarly writings are created, evaluated for quality, disseminated to the scholarly community, and preserved for future use” ACRL, . As the Today, there is a publishing ecosystem that is growing much faster than anticipated. Many more publications are expected in the future Taşkın, , 2021b. Various studies on scholarly communication points out that not all the papers have equal opportunities in terms of time to publication. There are underrepresented groups of researchers that have disadvantages   in the IS field and others?Does the number of authors affect the time to publication?How do the authors’ countries and their income levels affect time to publication?Is there a significant relationship between time to publication and the number of citations after the publication?The main aim of this paper is to reveal factors affecting the time to publication for information science (IS) journals. Thus, the research questions are:When the articles in Web of Science on publication time were investigated in terms of author keywords, this subject has been examined in many different dimensions from peer-review to publication bias see Fig. .1 The coThe main purpose of many studies investigating peer-review time in the literature has been to reveal why some articles are accepted very quickly, while others have very long processes  Using new generation peer-review models such as real-time comments and post-publication peer-review  in JASIST, 10% in JDOC (381), JOI (375), and OIR (367), and 5% (225) in ASLIB. The main limitation of our study is the volume and subject differences between selected journals. While SCIM publishes 12 issues and almost 350 articles per year, the average number of articles for other journals are 156 for JASIST, 76 for JDOC, 75 for JOI, 73 for OIR and 45 for ASLIB. Also, the selected journals serve different sub-fields of information science  field  were considered. Only articles and reviews were covered. If the tenth and eleventh authors had the same number of publications, two of them were added to the dataset. After finding the top-ten authors in Web of Science, the articles were classified accordingly.Number of authors were grouped in two different ways. Seven groups for general analysis  and four groups for journal-based analysis  because of the frequencies. Citations per year after publication/acceptance were classified into five groups  considering the citation frequencies of the publications. In addition, World Bank’s country and lending groups were used for the classification of affiliation countries of authors  and RCommander for statistical tests and descriptives; RCommander (with KMggplot2 plugin) and Flourish Studio for visualization.U test confirmed this similarity . On the other hand, significant differences were found between the journals’ publication time regardless of peer review type. According to the results of the Kruskal Wallis test, significant differences were found for the average publication time  = 151.477, p < 0.001, U = 75,011.500, Z = − 9.265, p < 0.001, The results show that there are significant differences in publication time for the papers from top-ten authors and others  = 146.897, p < 0.001, 147 (3.8%) of the articles were single-authored and written by central authors, while 748 (19.6%) of them had central co-authors. Central authors’ papers were published in a short time compared to the other authors’ papers. Kruskal Wallis test confirms this finding  did not differ by the number of authors whereas there was a significant difference for single-blind journals . The most evident difference is for JOI, in which the median time for single-author articles are 117 days, while it doubles for articles with 6 authors (233 days).The analysis showed that the number of authors affects the publication time. Generally, as the number of authors increases, so does the publication time  = 125.253, p < 0.001, H(8) = 90.152, p < 0.001, H(8) = 53.199, p < 0.001, More than half of the 3816 papers are Europe & Central Asia or North America addressed . One of every five papers is from East Asia & Pacific. In almost 16% of the papers have at least one author from Europe & Central Asia and/or North America and one author from other country groups. Whether there was an effect of having at least one Europe & Central Asia or North America address on the paper, the publication times were compared by country groups, and a statistically significant difference was found (H(6) = 44.249, p < 0.001, Similarly, country group income affects publication time  have more authors from different disciplines. Lastly, all the double-blind journals in our dataset  are published by the same publisher . It points to a limitation that some differences found between single- and double-blind reviews might be due to peculiarities of the publisher rather than the peer review model itself. All these factors make the comparison between journals harder. Therefore, more investigations are needed to understand all the factors affecting the publication time. On the other hand, the effect of Covid-19 pandemic to publication time and shorter review time of papers dealing with the issue of Covid-19 pandemic may be subject of another papers.The editorial board members and top-ten authors have high scientific levels and qualifications, and the outputs produced by these authors have a significant scientific level. Besides, the leading figures in the fields are usually invited as editorial board members to the journals. It is expected that the papers written by prestigious authors have good quality and so, their papers are published faster than the papers written by others. However, the focus of this paper is not the quality of the papers. It aims to reveal the current practices of journals and to present the publication time differences in scholarly communication processes of articles written by known and unknown authors. Furthermore, the paper is limited to only six journals in the LIS field, but, as indicated in the Methodology part, the volumes of the journals are not the same. It means the workloads of editors are not equal. On the other hand, the audiences of the journals vary. While some journals can be considered as traditional information science journals such as We also found that the number of authors of the articles affects the publication times. It can be an expected finding since the more authors, the more time needed to revise the papers. However, the significant difference between single- and double-blind reviews is worth noting. It is important to understand the reasons behind this difference in future studies.The other important finding is the significant difference between the number of citations and the publication times for single-blind peer-review. It can be commented that reviewers or editors tend to accept papers that have good citation potential. Future investigations are needed to understand the factors creating the relation between the number of citations and publication time.In addition to the time advantage of some researchers, this study also shows the importance of sharing the processing dates of research in detail by the publishers. One can calculate publication time from submission to decision using the information provided by publishers, however, it is also important to understand the reasons behind editorial delays. Are the delays related to editorial issues, peer-review delay, or author revision processes? The best way to understand is to provide detailed statistics for articles. Bilalli et al.  indicate


Despite being one of the most common gynecological procedures in the world, abortion care remains highly stigmatized. Internationally, providers have noted negative impacts related to their involvement in the services, and abortion care has been described as “dirty work.” Though much of the existing research focuses on the challenges of providing, many have also highlighted the positive aspects of working in abortion care. Despite the steadily increasing interest in this area over the past decade, however, no one has sought to systematically review the literature to date.The aim of this review is to systematically explore published studies on the experiences of abortion care providers to create a narrative review on the lived experience of providing abortion care, reflecting on what is already known and what areas require further exploration.This review will be conducted according to the framework outlined by Levac et al, which expanded on the popular Arksey and O’Malley framework. We will systematically search for peer-reviewed articles in 6 electronic databases: CINAHL, the Cochrane Library, EMBASE, PsycInfo, PubMed, and Web of Science. Following a pilot exercise, we devised a search strategy to identify relevant studies. In this protocol, we outline how citations will be assessed for eligibility and what information will be extracted from the included articles. We also highlight how this information will be combined in the review.As of December 2021, at the time of writing, we have searched for articles in the electronic databases and identified 6624 unique citations. We intend to fully assess these citations for eligibility by the end of January 2022, chart and analyze data from the eligible citations by the end of March 2022, and submit a journal article for peer review by late spring 2022.The findings of this review will provide a comprehensive overview on the known experiences of providing abortion care. We also anticipate that the findings will identify aspects of care and experiences that are not reflected in the available literature. We will disseminate the results via a publication in a peer-reviewed academic journal and by presenting the findings at conferences in the areas of abortion care, obstetrics, and midwifery. As this review is a secondary analysis of published articles, ethical approval was not required.DERR1-10.2196/35481 Such prBuilding on the early work of Everett, Ashforth and Kreiner created a theoretical model exploring how employees of stereotypically “dirty” professions may negate potential challenges and create positive social identities around their work ,3. They In designing this review, various methodologies were considered. Given the broad nature of the research aim, a scoping review was considered the most appropriate ,17. ThisTo begin, the research team must devise the research question, which will guide the review ,19. At tIn stage 2 of the framework, the research team discussed and decided on the eligibility criteria, databases, and search strategy for the review.The research team met twice to discuss and decide the criteria for identifying relevant studies. These meetings led to the following inclusion criteria: (1) original research articles published in peer-reviewed journals; (2) papers published in English; and (3) papers focused on the experiences of individuals who have direct patient contact with individuals accessing comprehensive abortion care services. In addition, the following exclusion criteria were also devised: (1) papers that are not original research ; (2) papers that are not published in a peer-reviewed journal; (3) papers on patients’ experiences of accessing abortion care; (4) papers on the technical or procedural aspects of providing care ; (5) papers on providers’ experience of managing “spontaneous abortion” ; and (6) papers on providers’ experience of managing postabortion care. No restrictions were set for the year, country, or reason for abortion.To identify the citations, a systematic search was conducted in 6 electronic databases—CINAHL, Cochrane Library, Embase, PsycInfo, PubMed, and Web of Science.The search strategy was designed using the PCC  framework. The PCC framework has been recommended when conducting scoping reviews by the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI)  and is rContraception, Reproductive Health Matters, PLOS One, International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Reproductive Health, Women’s Health Issues, Family Planning Perspectives, and Social Science & Medicine.Following guidance from the JBI review manual, a 3-step iterative process was used to devise this search strategy . Step 1 Stage 3 will be to search for articles. To begin, we will use the search string in the 6 electronic databases and download all the identified citations into an Endnote  library. We will then remove duplicates and conduct a title review on the unique citations that we find. For this stage, the lead author (BD) will meet with either coauthors (SC or MFH) to review titles as a pair, either agreeing on the inclusion or exclusion of citations or discussing before coming to an agreement. Once complete, all the citations deemed relevant will go through an abstract review. Here, BD will review all abstracts independently, and SC and MFH will each independently review 15% of the total citations. These independent screenings will be collated, and any discrepancies will be discussed as a group. Finally, a full text review will be conducted. Again, BD will independently conduct the full text review, and SC and MFH will both independently cross-examine 15% of the citations, discussing any discrepancies should they arise. This will leave the authors will a final list of citations to be included in the first draft of the scoping review.In stage 4, once the relevant citations have been identified, information relevant to the review questions must be extracted and charted for use ,19. FollCharting elements and characteristics of the study:Reference detailsArticle reference number (given to each article by the research team)Study titleAuthorsYearJournalDOIStudy contextAims or objectivesCountry or regionSample sizeJob titlesAbortion procedures providedThe legal status of abortion care in each countryStudy designQualitative or quantitative or mixed methodsData collection methodSampling strategyAnalysisKey findingsStigmatization of abortion within societyAbortion legislationChallenges in providing careChallenging interactions with patientsChallenging work group culture or interactionsAccess to resources Negative personal impacts of providing carePositive personal impacts of providing carePersonal beliefs about abortionPositive work group culture or interactionsOther (specify)As recommended by Levac et al , this stTo describe the studies included in the review, tabular information will be collated in a Qualtrics form, which will be downloaded to SPSS (IBM Corp). Information collected by this form will include the article reference number and title, continent and country, number of providers, job titles of participants, and methodology . A narrative summary of this information will also be included. As for information pertaining to the research question, we will conduct a thematic analysis following the guidance of Braun and Clarke ,22.The reporting of the review findings will be informed by Ashforth and Kreiner’s model of “dirty work” ,3. This While not required by the scoping review methodology, a quality appraisal will also be conducted on the included studies using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool . StudiesAs suggested by Levac et al , we inteAs of December 2021, at the time of writing, we have searched the electronic databases and identified a total of 6624 unique citations. We intend to complete a title review, an abstract review, and a full text review on these citations by the end of January 2022. These reviews will be conducted to chart and analyze data from the eligible studies by the end of March 2022, and to prepare a journal article for peer review by late spring 2022.The primary goal of this scoping review is to discover and map the existing evidence on the experiences of those involved in the provision of abortion care to understand the potential challenges and facilitators of providing care. This will act as a key point of reference for international providers, researchers, and advocates to further this area of research or discussion in their own territories, particularly in areas where they have recently or will in the future liberalize their abortion legislation. The review will also be relevant for health care workers who may need to reflect on what providing abortion care may involve before becoming involved in the services as well as offering those already involved in the services the opportunity to reflect on their practice. In conducting the review, we also predict that its findings will identify experiences that are lacking within the existing literature, highlighting new areas for exploration. It is also our hope that the findings can be used to inform the design of possible support interventions for providers, which may seek to minimize the impact of the various challenges of abortion work while bolstering the positive features. Thus, it is our hope that this review will be used to improve providers’ professional quality of life and job satisfaction and will help toward ensuring continued access to abortion care services around the world.The findings of this scoping review will be disseminated through a peer-reviewed publication in an international journal. The article will be reported in accordance with guidance from PRISMA-ScR  . The res


FUNCTION has achieved so far. We had very ambitious plans.It is now almost exactly one year since my inaugural editorial was published,FUNCTION by giving opportunities for authors to present their findings at meetings of the American Physiological Society (APS). We announced that we would do our best to speed up the publication process and also, at the same time, contribute to improved reliability by avoiding as much as possible the so-called “reviewer experiments,” making a firm decision about acceptance or rejection at the end of the first review round, even when some revision was needed.The primary aim we announced was to publish the best of physiology and pathophysiology and to place new and important findings in a general context by publishing a Perspective (commentary) related to each original research article. We also wished to give as much exposure as possible to important new original research findings published in FUNCTION to obtain a high Impact Factor. If this were to be our overriding goal, we should currently focus on publishing review articles dealing with COVID-19! In fact, we have been happy, and shall continue to be happy, to publish on any topic within the broad fields of physiology and pathophysiology and it has been gratifying to see that many of these articles have actually already been well cited, considering the short period in which we have been functional. In deciding what to accept or reject, we shall continue to be guided by answers to the three classical questions: “Is it new?,” “Is it important?,” and “Is it true?,” but also by “Is it well written?.”It is clearly impossible, at this early stage in the life of the journal, to judge to what an extent we managed to attract outstanding articles, as time is probably the most important “filter” in this respect, but we have certainly published original research articles from many of the most prominent investigators in the fields of physiology and pathophysiology. Naturally, we hope that the articles we have published and will be publishing, will become highly cited, but it is not the primary aim of As one of the authors of the 2020 ARRIVE guidelines for the reporting of animal research,FUNCTION. The journal has assembled an outstanding group of very experienced editors, who have all made their mark in science and therefore have nothing to prove. The inaugural key group of Executive Editors has very recently been expanded by the appointment of Donald Bers  who has made so many important and impactful contributions to our knowledge of cardiovascular physiology and pathophysiology. I had the pleasure and honor to work with Don when we were both Senior Editors of the Journal of Physiology and now look forward to working with him again.A distinguished colleague of mine once told me that whenever he submits a paper or a grant application, he “prays” for the assessment to be undertaken by mature individuals. I believe this is the case for FUNCTION has to be satisfied that the data presented are novel, important, and likely to be reliable, I do not think that we (editors/reviewers) should dictate the opinions authors are allowed to express. Unlike many other journals, we have not gone back to authors several times with further revision requirements. Generally, papers in FUNCTION only go through a single revision round.It is my personal view that ultimately authors are responsible for the content of their papers and although We have fulfilled our promise to publish quickly. In 2020, the mean time from submission to the decision point (at the end of the first review round) was 16.3 days and time from acceptance to final publication was 1.1 months. Accepted manuscripts have been posted on our website (Advance Articles) within 72 h after the principal author signed the license agreement.We have managed to publish perspectives in relation to almost every single original research article, although in several cases it turned out not to be feasible to publish the perspective in the same issue as the original article, as this would have imposed a delay on the final publication of the original research.FUNCTION on authors of these reviews may be regarded as relatively severe  and some authors have found this challenging, but also innovative and invigorating. We would like to publish more of these articles, as we think they provide a valuable new perspective on clarifying precisely what has actually been shown in a particular field.Our new style Evidence Reviews have done well, both with regard to downloads and citations. The restrictions imposed by ,One disappointment so far, has been the relatively few submissions of papers in the Function Focus category. These papers are relatively short original research reports of significant and fully documented findings for which we do not require exploration of all the ramifications that typically are expected for full papers. So far, we have only published three such papersFUNCTION events  to give additional publicity to papers published in FUNCTION. So far, FUNCTION has organized four webinars plus a symposium at EB2021. FUNCTION authors are given preference with regard to invitations to talk at these events and, so far, ∼30% of the papers published in the journal have been presented on these occasions. When we eventually get out of the COVID-19 crisis, we do of course hope and expect to organize many physical FUNCTION events, but shall no doubt also continue to utilize the very efficient webinar format which, in our case, has repeatedly attracted audiences of ∼400.The principal aims of journals and meetings are the same, namely to facilitate communication between scientists, and we have used the opportunities for FUNCTION and, importantly, also very visibly demonstrated their support for this new journal by contributing some of their best papers. I am also very grateful to the many authors from outside the editorial groups, who have shown confidence in the journal by submitting excellent papers to us. This bodes well for the future of FUNCTION.At the end of this first year of publishing, I wish to thank my editorial colleagues, who have generously given priority to evaluating manuscripts for The author acknowledges support from the European Commission’s Horizon 2020, grant agreement 737432.Function.O.H.P. is Editor-in-Chief of


Every time a paper is submitted to the journal, we realize the effort and amount of work it takes for performing the study, writing, formatting, and submitting the paper for peer review. However, how many of these papers are suitable for publication? Medical writing considerations, including an understandable text that does not confuse reading, formality, and ethics in writing, should be kept in mind when preparing and writing a paper to be submitted for publication to a journal. This editorial note offers useful advice for the authors submitting their papers to a journal on what to keep in mind before submission, how to prepare a quality submission, how to win the editor for their paper to avoid rejection, and how to make it to the review process and maybe to get published. It is our belief that these tips and advice on medical writing apply to any author and any journal. Science progresses by the publication of novel ideas and research. It does not exist unless it is published. However, medical writing has special considerations; it should be formal, accurate and up-to-date, unbiased, easy to understand, ethical, should not confuse reading, and adhere to high-quality principles and guidelines. Every time a paper is submitted to a journal, the Editors realize the effort and amount of work it takes for performing the study, writing, formatting, and submitting the paper for publication. However, how many of these papers are accepted for publication? Medical writing has special considerations; it should be easy to understand, should not confuse reading, and should be ethical and formal in writing. These should be kept in mind when preparing and writing a paper to be submitted and considered for publication to a journal.This article offers valuable advice for the authors submitting their papers to a journal on what to keep in mind before submission, how to prepare a quality submission, the prerequisites (checklist) for an attractive submission, how to win the editor for their paper to avoid rejection and to make it to the review process. These tips on medical writing apply to any author and any journal and focus scientists on submission and publication of quality papers.An outline is a short, organized description of what will be contained in an article. It is important to organize the work and make writing and reading simple. The classic hierarchal model of the outline is the IMRAD system  used for research reports . The lenThe instructions to authors should be followed concerning the manuscript and the references’ format, and medical writing. The authors should not begin writing without reading the instructions to authors for the journal in question. Most instructions describe the types of articles published, provide guidelines for preparing each type of article, and list requirements for submitted papers. The authors should consult these instructions because failure to do so results in extra work for the editors and the authors and can cause delays in the review process. The manuscript is sent back to authors for the missing information or correction of the wrong format. Moreover, failure to follow instructions can result in rapid rejection, simply because by the authors carelessly prepared it.Based on the journal’s instructions, requirements for manuscript submission may be related to ethical standards . The editors reserve the right to reject manuscripts that do not comply with these requirements. All medical writing contains references, and although each publication has its reference style, most follow the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) . The varThe related literature should be reviewed, the most important published papers should be read in full text, and quality citations should be included in the references list . ReferenWhile section editors and reviewers assigned as per their classifications will have some familiarity with the research area, often, they will not be as expert in the area as the authors are. Therefore, the authors should provide a clear, reader-friendly description focusing on critical issues in the research area. They should explain and convince the editors, the reviewers, and the readers that the study fills an essential gap in the literature, the idea is original, the rationale addresses conflicting reports, and possibly it might lead to a change in practice , 5. ThisThe number and the order of the authors’ names should be fair by reflecting their contribution and the order of their contribution to the manuscript. All who authored should be listed as authors of the manuscript; none who did not author should be listed. Researchers who have contributed to the work, but not enough to merit their inclusion in the authorship, should be acknowledged in the respective section. For example, a scientist who contributed only to the statistical analysis but not to the study conception and design, data acquisition, drafting or critical revision of the manuscript could be acknowledged only . AuthorsAuthors familiar with the journal, such as previous submission/publication and peer-reviewers, have an advantage. Indeed those authors who have frequently reviewed for the journal or have previously submitted a paper to be considered for publication at the journal usually have a far better vision of the scope and quality requirements of the journal in question. In this regard, this understanding will prove invaluable to prepare their next submission to the right quality level and increase the chances of it being accepted for publication.P-values may also be omitted from the abstract.After the title, the abstract is the first section of the manuscript, and for approximately 75% of the authors, it is the only section to read, either because of lack of time or lack of institutional access to the full text of the manuscript . The absJournals incorporate a word number limitation in the abstract. Therefore, the abstract should emphasize new and important aspects of the study. If the editor likes the abstract, they will most likely read the article itself –15.The topic of the study may be topical, which the editors do not like, but it may be of interest, which the editors do like. In general, the editors do not favor copycat topics, meaning topics that closely imitate, adopt, copy or mimic one another. The editors are not interested in yet another study of the same problem osteoporosis/hip fractures, femoral head osteonecrosis, volar plating for distal radial fractures, etc that replicate previous studies. In contrast, the importance of new research or a new way of looking at an old problem should be emphasized in scientific writing.The topic of the study should be focused on; if it is too broad, it will produce an article much too long that is not easy to read and digest. Additionally, reporting authors’ own experience is not a reason for publication because it may not be relevant or of interest to other people unless important information, a new implant, a surgical technique, or modification of standard techniques/methods are presented.An accurate level of evidence is required depending on the type of study. For randomized clinical trials, calculation of the sample size, a robust randomization method, and knowledge of the primary and secondary outcome measures and loss to follow-up are important. For matched cohort studies, the definition of the cohort and matching is important. The authors should clearly inform the readers if the study groups are comparable and any potentially confounding variables between the study groups at baseline. For registry studies, it is important to include where/what is the registry, and how complete and comprehensive the database is. Meta-analyses are overdone; for the meta-analysis to be interesting, it should include important study questions. If the answer to these questions is negative, then the meta-analysis is probably not necessary. If the answer to these questions is the need for high-level randomized trials, then the study is useless. In any study, concluding that there is a need for further research reduces the power of the study and discourages the further reading of the article.Medical writing should be formal and not confuse reading. Standard rules of grammar and syntax should be followed; redundancy should be avoided, and slang and idiomatic should not be used. Do not invent but use abbreviations that are widely known, such as ORIF , THA , or TKA . The editorial office can handle minor errors in writing and grammar; however, a poorly written article, full of typing errors and careless writing and preparation is more likely to be rejected.Paragraphs should be indented and presented in an orderly, organized fashion according to concepts/ideas. Each paragraph  should be supported by appropriate citations , 5. ParaScientific journals such as SICOT-J and International Orthopaedics often ask once or twice a year for invited papers in special issues with one to three guest editors. The scope of these special issues is to focus on current, hot, and/or important topical topics. The invited papers aimed for these special issues are subjected to the same peer-review process by the journal’s reviewers, and if accepted, they are published in the same procedure , 17.A submission or cover letter to the editor should be the first item in the submission list. This should be addressed to the editor-in-chief and include information about the submitted paper and the corresponding author. A concise cover letter should tell the editor what is novel about the study and why it falls within the journal’s scope. For most journals, the submission letter should also include copyright and conflict of interest disclosures and author approval statements. A resubmission (cover) letter is also necessary for submitting revised manuscripts; this is often called the “Authors’ Responses to Reviewers’ comments” letter. These letters are important during the submission and review process as they provide important information for the original submission and the point-by-point answers and manuscript changes according to the editor’s and the reviewers’ comments and recommendations .Submitting a paper for publication means recognizing and respecting what the journal and the editors anticipate from the authors. What the editor likes from a submitted paper is a focused topic of interest, a well-written manuscript with an aim and scope that falls within the journal’s scope, a manuscript with a compact introduction/discussion section, clear study question, accurate statistics, appropriate illustrations, and tabular data. What the editor does not like from a paper is a careless outline, a copycat topic or a topic that does not fall within the aims and scope of the journal, a manuscript written in poor language, a long manuscript, an unclear study question, overstated conclusions, inaccurate statistics, too many figures and tables, and poor illustrations. The editors’ view is to maintain the journal’s reputation, raise the journal’s visibility, citation rate, and impact. However, this means a lot of work and stress for each submitted manuscript. Follow these tips to make it easier for the editor to accept your paper.All authors declare no conflicts of interest.


FEBS Open Bio since the journal’s inception and is a passionate supporter of FEBS Press and other society journals. Currently, he is also an editor of FEBS Letters and The Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI). He studied medicine at the University Medical School of Debrecen in Hungary, where he graduated with an M.D. and later Ph.D., and then moved to the United States to conduct postdoctoral research at the University of Texas–Houston and subsequently the Salk Institute in San Diego. Laszlo is a Professor of Medicine and Biological Chemistry at John Hopkins School of Medicine, where he is Co‐Director of the Institute for Fundamental Biomedical Research and Associate Director of the Center for Metabolic Origins of Disease, and Adjunct Professor at the University of Debrecen. Formerly, he was a Professor and Founding Director of the Genomic Control of Metabolism Program at the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute. He is also a member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO), Academia Europaea, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and The Henry Kunkel Society, and recipient of several awards, including the Boehringer Ingelheim Research Award, Cheryl Whitlock/Pathology Prize, a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellowship in Biomedical Sciences, and three Howard Hughes Medical Institute International Research Scholar Awards. In this fascinating interview, Laszlo Nagy shares the advice that changed his career trajectory, relates his views on scientific publishing, discusses new developments at The Johns Hopkins Center for Metabolic Origins of Disease, and outlines the prospects for future development of research and technology infrastructures in eastern Europe.Laszlo Nagy has been on the Editorial Board of  FEBS Open Bio since the journal’s inception. Here, he shares the advice that changed his career trajectory, shares his views on scientific publishing, discusses new developments at The Johns Hopkins Center for Metabolic Origins of Disease, and outlines the prospects for future development of research and technology infrastructures in eastern Europe.Laszlo Nagy has been on the Editorial Board of  Photo credit: Allyn DiVito/JHACH.I am interested in how cells become what they are, that is, how they differentiate and specify, which is a very broad and fundamental biological question. We, as organisms, all start out with one cell, a fertilised oocyte, which gives rise to hundreds of different tissues and cell types. I have been fascinated by the process by which cells, all with the same instruction book, that is our genome, are able to generate all these different cell types which then respond differently to various stimuli. Obviously, over the course of my career I’ve had to narrow this down – I’m not working on embryogenesis or similar very fundamental biological processes, but I’m not unhappy where I am  and can use these various assays to identify the chromatin environment and the binding site of these transcription factors. We can now connect those with even newer technologies to find links between promoters and enhancers, which has provided us with the most wonderful tools to accelerate our research. It became an ethos in our laboratory, when we have a biological system, a model which we study, to first have an unbiased exploratory phase, when we catalogue everything that changes upon a signal, or activation of a transcription factor, and then dive into a particular pathway or regulated gene.So these two events, my fascination with lipids regulating cell fate, in this case vitamin A and retinoic acid receptor, and later PPARg (Peroxisome Proliferator‐Activated Receptor gamma) and the availability of genome‐wide surveys of gene expression and gene regulation, have shaped my career to a large extent.Macrophages are exposed to many different stimuli often simultaneously, which they integrate like a microprocessor , so I woThe other, related question is, how programmable macrophages are? Can we arrive at a point when we can use either small molecules, antibodies, or proteins to program macrophages at will in certain parts of the body in a therapeutically useful way to repair tissues or eliminate unwanted cells such as cancers? There are reports that this may be possible, but nothing is being used in the clinic at present.laughs) So it was basically my curiosity about diseases which drove me toward medical school. Further motivation was given by the fact that my mother worked as a pharmacist and my father as a country veterinarian.It’s not as glamorous as one might think, as it was more a pragmatic choice: I was a sickly child, in retrospect not very serious diseases, but at the time, I found it traumatic that I had to go to the doctor more often than my peers. And I was curious, I wanted to know what was going on with me, so I said: ‘Okay, one way to do it is to become a physician!’  And what Peter told me, which was very, very unselfish of him, was: ‘Laszlo, if you choose this path, it will be great for me; I would benefit from your knowledge, we would work together, and I’d get more papers out of this – but you wouldn’t learn much more. I’ve taught you everything I have to offer, but if you really want to complete your education, you need to go to a top‐tier, high‐pressure, high‐intensity laboratory to complete that’. And so he advised me to try to get into a superstar’s laboratory, which is what happened: I applied and got accepted into the laboratory of Ronald Evans, who is one of the discovers of the nuclear receptor superfamily. He had one of the prototypical large US laboratories with over thirty people and lots of interesting projects and research tools, some pressure and competition, but overall, it was a magical environment, sort of a time accelerator. Everything happened very fast. Joining his laboratory was an incredible experience for many reasons: obviously, I was lucky and I got good publications fast [The one piece of advice that was probably the most useful for me was when I was a postdoc in Peter Davies’ laboratory at the University of Texas in Houston. When I was finishing my postdoc, my plan was to go back to Hungary, start my laboratory, and perhaps collaborate with his laboratory, by visiting and sending students, and having a joint research programme. This was in the early 1990s, so things were not as connected as they are now – there was no e‐mail for instance, so my days were much more relaxed and I spent more time in the library than on Zoom! , but the basic criteria should be: based on what we know today, is this finding likely to be true or not? And if we have a situation wherein the upper 60% of journals are rigorous, but the bottom 30% are not, then why have the latter?My fourth point is that there are too many journals: my cynical opinion is that anything can be published, even if it’s in predatory journals that generate income by publishing anything that’s submitted there. A philosophical view, which is not mine but I endorse it, is that there should be just one journal: either something is publishable, or it is not. If anything can be published, then what is the value of publishing? Yes, we make a distinction between whether something can be published in The fifth point is that we’re still publishing the same way our predecessors published a hundred years ago; we need to ask, what is a paper and how much data should it contain? Nowadays, a paper may include 5 figures and 55 supplementary figures. In my opinion, the primary data should be deposited so that other people can re‐analyse it. Publication should just be an advertisement: here are the data I acquired, and this is how I interpret it.I can see some very positive changes in publishing, such as transparent peer review and publishing comprehensive datasets. I think with these innovations, we may be able to counter‐balance this spiral, in which more and more content is going to for‐profit journals. By opening up the constraints of a paper and making peer review transparent , we might be able to break down the tyranny of the for‐profit journals.JCB papers, or three Nature papers, you have the same fair shot at a grant. However, they are very rigorous when it comes to scrutinising what you’re proposing, and that’s because of the competition. So the style in which you write grants is very different; in Europe, at least in my experience, it’s more about expressing how good you are and how much you contribute to that particular field, while for the American system, you have to focus on the proposed research, rigour and reproducibility. So who benefits under these systems? Obviously more established investigators benefit in Europe than younger ones. While I like to believe that the US system is more permissive for younger people, I’m sure established researchers still also have the upper hand in the United States. Also, many countries in Europe and the EU itself also have mechanisms, such as the ERC, for which not only individual excellence, but also project excellence matters. National funding schemes tend to be more inbred and favour senior scientists.I think the major difference is that European systems favour past performance more than the actual proposal, while in the United States, it’s much more project‐based: I’ve been on NIH Study Sections, and I’ve realised, that if past performance reaches a certain threshold, that is, if the panel judges that you are someone who can do the research, it doesn’t really matter whether you have three The United States also has many more philanthropy‐based grants; there are entire systems, and it’s not just the big ones like Howard Hughes, there are also small foundation grants, various charities etc. The UK might be an exception here, but generally individual giving is a bigger thing in the United States than in Europe. There are many endowed chairs and individual donations, so people can build a grant portfolio that isn’t based entirely on state and federal funding, but also philanthropy, and that is largely missing in Europe. This is also true in many areas, not just science.This is something I’ve been working on for many years and I am very passionate about, but the status quo is changing very slowly. It’s a grand idea everywhere, the United States included: you need to include more areas and have local centres. I’m currently on the EMBO Council so I can see that this divide is not diminishing at a sufficiently fast pace: a lot of money is poured into these regional centres and a lot of money is wasted. You need to have an infrastructure and you need to have good people there to absorb the funds. But the reality is that most people still want to go to Cambridge, or maybe London or Heidelberg, and not to Debrecen, not even Prague or Warsaw. So that’s changing slowly, but there are a few people who make this move. If we’re discussing central and eastern Europe, there is a lot of money available – some of my colleagues in Poland have said they’ve never been this rich in terms of money for research and infrastructure, so they can do better science than before. However, they have a hard time breaking down institutional boundaries: the evaluation system is not up to western standards, and they are certainly not internationalised sufficiently, so even if everything else is there – the money, the right people, the right structure to evaluate and promote them – there are very few foreigners to join those institutions. So I think more involvement from western institutions would help, by evaluating and promoting scientists, and sharing best practices. Locally, people who work in these countries need to convince their politicians that they need a different system, not one which is based on some obscure, ‘who knows who’ and ‘who likes who’ basis, but on objective evaluation and decision making with the help of outside experts. It’s hard, very, very hard – these countries, and Hungary is not an exception unfortunately, are moving backwards in some areas, not just in terms of science, but also in parts of the political system as well. At least relative to what I consider progress. I think we need to keep trying, but it’s going to take longer than I anticipated.The answer is neither! Hungary and the entire state of Florida are very flat, so if I have an opportunity to go on vacation, I go to the mountains! I tend to alternate between Austria or Switzerland in Europe, or Colorado or North Carolina in the United States. Recent family holidays have tended to be in the Blue Ridge mountains in North Carolina or in Colorado because of my move and the pandemic, but if given the chance, I’d go to Austria. My holidays consist of hiking in the mountains, without computer access. I practically live on the beach in St. Petersburg, FL, so beach holidays aren’t particularly appealing to me.


Two recent papers on a controversial topic in this journal attracted significant criticism from readers. This editorial addresses these criticisms and describes changes to be made to the journal's editorial and review procedures in light of the complaints received. Psychiatry in Dissent1 ran the gamut of contested areas – from the validity of psychiatric diagnosis to electroconvulsive therapy and psychosurgery – which are, to varying degrees, still with us. Some have argued that disputes over the concept of mental disorder generally2 and certain specific categories3 merely demonstrate that psychiatry is a pseudoscience: psychiatric diagnosis, unlike the remainder of medicine, is a matter of value judgements rather than ‘hard facts’. In this view, psychiatrists are really just pathologising people who transgress some sort of social norm.Psychiatry, like other branches of medicine, is no stranger to controversy. Anthony Clare's 4 But we deprecate the first, so consider it disordered. Yet psychiatry remains the more controversial specialty. Bill Fulford draws an analogy between the different ways we use the word ‘good’ when thinking about a ‘good strawberry’ versus a ‘good painting’.5 It turns out that there is greater agreement about the former than the latter, hence less conflict and controversy. And what constitutes a person's very nature and identity is a lot more like paintings than strawberries.Since the heyday of such arguments, it has been increasingly understood that, yes, values are involved in diagnosis, but this is true also in other medical specialties. In Peter Sedgwick's memorable phrase, ‘The fracture of a septuagenarian's femur has, within the world of nature, no more significance than the snapping of an autumn leaf from its twig’.BJPsych Bulletin, representing views within and about psychiatry, cannot evade controversial issues, but neither should we court them for their own sake. At the heart of such controversies are real people with real lives, often ostracised and denigrated. So, we have a duty to be respectful and balanced when articles on controversial topics are accepted for publication. We recently published two papers6 on gender incongruence that have attracted a significant number of letters and complaints, particularly regarding Marcus Evans’ opinion piece ‘Freedom to think: the need for thorough assessment and treatment of gender dysphoric children’.7 In light of the criticisms, we reviewed the article and have published a corrigendum of clarifications and additional information that provides a stronger evidence base for his arguments. Importantly, Evans has also provided a declaration of interest statement addressing his involvement in a judicial review of gender-affirming treatment for minors.The 8 so see the journal's role as enabling discussion. We seek to present the suffering caused by prejudice and failings in care systems, address omissions in the evidence base, and enable clinicians and patients to express concerns about ethical practice. The journal's position is not to censor one or other argument – albeit clarity and care are needed when discussing emotive issues and the potential harms of psychiatric practice. The editorial board have discussed how handling editors should deal with submissions about such controversial topics, and agreed the following recommendations.The Special Articles category currently combines both review and opinion pieces. We will reintroduce Review and Opinion type papers to clarify for readers the nature of the content.We have added to the instructions for authors that Opinion pieces can include references from news items and blogs.We will not accept an Opinion article with reviews solely by the author's suggested reviewers. As a general rule, editors do avoid this. However, it is now a firm policy for Opinion pieces to ensure that an independent review is always sought, even though this may lead to delays to the peer review process. We may call on editorial board members as required to provide reviews.https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/ to check the level of bias of non-scholarly sites.Reviewer invitation templates will be revised to include a link to the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers and the Reviewer Support Hub on Cambridge Core (in development). We will encourage reviewers and editors to use sites such as If an article involves a controversial issue, handling editors will seek to balance it, either in reviews or with a counterbalancing article, commentary or eLetter, although we acknowledge that this may not always be possible.Criticisms of the paper have been discussed by the editorial board. It was never the intention for the board to review the evidence for and against gender-affirming treatment. We appreciate that there are gaps in the evidence base concerning psychological outcomes of gender-affirming surgery,https://doi.org/10.1192/bjb.2020.72.I appreciate that the published corrigendum and review of editorial processes will, for some, not go far enough. Many of the complainants sought retraction rather than correction and pointed to the distress such papers can cause an already marginalised group of people. I am deeply sorry for the hurt caused and have invited authors of the complaint letters to submit counterbalancing articles and/or eLetters to ensure that the spectrum of opinions is presented. Readers are welcome to submit correspondence by clicking the e-letters tab when accessing the article via the following link: 9 for editors considering retraction of an academic paper. Its criteria cover situations where there is clear evidence of unreliability or falsification of data, plagiarism, copyright infringement or manipulation of the peer review process. These do not apply here. Failure to disclose a major conflict of interest can also lead to retraction where non-disclosure has ‘unduly affected interpretations of the work’ by editors and peer reviewers. However, Evans has been candid about his opinions, which are of a piece with his involvement in the judicial review.COPE, the Committee on Publication Ethics, has guidelinesWhat is Mental Disorder?10 has long struck me as a fine argument for the constructive value of disagreement. Where concepts are contended, they are subject to competing pressures from the various stakeholders, including patients, carers, doctors, psychologists, social scientists, the general public and politicians. He was referring to disputes about the boundary between order and disorder, health and illness, but it applies to controversial issues within psychiatry generally. In this spirit, the BJPsych Bulletin will always strive for open, transparent and respectful dialogue.Derek Bolton's