Eurosurveillance editorial office was made aware of concerns and a request to retract the article ‘Detection of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) by real-time RT-PCR’ by Corman et al., published on 23 January 2020.On 27 November 2020, the Eurosurveillance. The authors of the article and Eurosurveillance’s editorial board were informed about these claims on 2 December and 3 December 2020, respectively. On 3 December 2020, an editorial note was published stating that the Eurosurveillance editorial team would investigate the matter following the journal’s existing procedures and in consultation with experts [Eurosurveillance’s editorial board were excluded from all related proceedings.Allegations concerned the scientific quality of the article, the peer review process and a conflict of interest for two of the authors, who are also editorial board members of  experts . The twoAn initial evaluation of the allegations was undertaken in collaboration with several board members, followed by a discussion at the annual editorial board meeting on 4 December 2020. This resulted in the decision that it was not necessary to publish an expression of concern with respect to allegations of scientific misconduct or fraud, and that there was no conflict of interest by the associate editors who co-authored the manuscript. It was further decided to involve external subject experts to assess the allegations related to the scientific content of the article.Eurosurveillance editorial board may submit manuscripts to the journal, in keeping with the policies of many other respected scholarly journals. However, articles submitted by members of the board are not given any priority over other manuscripts. When editorial board members are authors of a submitted manuscript, they are not involved in any stage of the peer review or the editorial decision-making, nor do they have access to confidential information related to the decision-making process. Whether or not authors are members of the editorial board has no bearing on editorial consideration, nor any effect on the editorial evaluation  or review (https://www.eurosurveillance.org/for-reviewers) processes, which are implemented as described on the journal’s website. These principles were followed for the article by Corman et al., which was authored by 24 virologists and laboratory experts in six different countries; additionally, the editorial board of Eurosurveillance confirmed that when these principles are applied, being a board member does not constitute a conflict of interest. The journal has rejected articles submitted by board members on many occasions.Members of the Eurosurveillance has a confidential peer review process and a policy of double-blind peer review, in which both the authors’ and the reviewers’ identities are confidential. Peer review reports are not made publicly available and are considered internal documents intended solely to guide editorial decision-making. Sharing reviewer reports with third parties would violate the assumed confidentiality obligations for journals that apply this peer review model, as per the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors [ Editors  and the  Editors .Following the allegations raised, all associate editors—except for the two co-authors of the article in question who are associate editors—were given access to the full documentation of the evaluation and review process the article underwent. This enabled them to confirm that the reviews were conducted in full and by independent experts.The article by Corman et al. was fast-tracked and was reviewed by two independent experts in the field. The editorial team decided that this submission warranted quick consideration in the context of an exceptional and rapidly evolving public health situation and a need to enable laboratories to detect the newly emerged virus. When the article was submitted, the situation in Hubei province, China, had evolved massively. Several cases of what was later named coronavirus disease (COVID-19) had been imported to other countries and China had taken unprecedented, large-scale measures to stop virus spread. Thus, after a pre-submission enquiry—a common practice for scholarly journals—we contacted potential peer reviewers who agreed to stand by to review the submission should it pass the initial screening conducted by the editorial team. The reviewers kindly picked up their assignments immediately and submitted their overall positive verdicts hours after submission. The authors were also asked to stand by, as the editors would need them to be available on short notice to reply to the reviewers’ comments and to respond to editorial queries and comments. All parties worked intensely, including outside the usual working hours, on the finalisation of the submission.Eurosurveillance editorial team has long-standing experience in expedited publishing in instances when rapid dissemination of information could potentially lead to a prompt change in an ongoing public health situation or create awareness for topics of timely relevance. In such instances, the editorial team works in close coordination with reviewers and authors. Since 2015, about 30% of rapid communications have been published less than 2 weeks following submission, including peer review. This has also been the case for a maximum of two regular articles per year. Eurosurveillance’s in-house editorial team performs most editorial and all publishing tasks, without involvement of external parties such as typesetters. This allows for great flexibility, particularly in times of emerging or evolving public health emergencies [The speed of the publishing process has led to allegations via social media and email that the evaluation and review process were flawed. The rgencies -6, when Expedited review does not necessarily affect the filtering function of peer review, nor does it compromise reviewers’ ability to critically assess the content, validity and quality of a paper. The article by Corman et al. is a methodological paper describing the setup and validation of a PCR-based workflow that would enable laboratories to detect the then novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). As pointed out in an accompanying editorial note on 23 January 2020 , the priOf note, the 23 January 2020 issue also contained an article by Wu et al. that assessed the epidemiological characteristics of COVID-19 infections [Eurosurveillance associate editors, except for those who were co-authors of the paper.The detailed allegations with respect to scientific flaws in the Corman et al. article were reviewed by a group of five laboratory experts. These comments were made available to the The consulted experts confirmed that the Corman et al. article was scientifically adequate for its purpose and for the limited data and material available at this early stage in the COVID-19 pandemic. Any laboratory deciding to use the primers and protocol suggested in this article would ascertain the assay for its fitness for purpose and compliance with local quality and accreditation requirements; this is what has happened worldwide since the publication of the article. With more data and evolving knowledge, laboratories have since further improved the initial method, as per usual practice.In conclusion, after a thorough investigation in which we collected scientific advice from various sources, including several external reviewers, the editorial team—unanimously supported by its associate editors, except for those who were involved as co-authors—has decided that the criteria for a retraction of the article have not been fulfilled.


Filipe Dantas-Torres for his insightful letter on our article “Tick infestation of the eyelid,” which has recently been published in the Revista Brasileira de Medicina TropicalThe authors thank Prof. Rickettsia rickettsii cannot be taken as the evidence of its absence in that geographic location (like India).We feel that the reason for these glaring inconsistences is the fact that we, the authors, are clinicians and microbiologists and do not have the expertise of an entomologist of Prof. Filipe’s caliber. The section “Images in Infectious Diseases” has a word limit of 250 words; therefore, it was not possible to explain the entomology of ticks. With regard to the quality of images, the reviewers and the editorial board were satisfied with the images we had submitted. It should also be noted that the images were captured in the clinic with whatever means available at that time. The intent of the article was to bring awareness among clinicians and clinical microbiologists about this unique condition of tick infestation and possible zoonotic diseases associated with it. The absence of evidence of a pathogen like Revista Brasileira de Medicina Tropical as per the website is tropical medicine  and not tropical parasitology. Therefore, our article is well within the scope of the journal. The authors also feel that some of the critiques would have been justified had the article been submitted to vector-specific journals like Ticks and Tick-borne Diseases and Parasites and Vectors. Once again, we thank Prof. Filipe Dantas-Torres for enriching our knowledge about the intricacies in identifying ticks and associated diseases.“The eyes do not see what the mind does not know.” It was a humble effort from the authors to let the readers of your prestigious journal learn about this entity. The scope of the journal


The Iranian Journal of Basic Medical Sciences (IJBMS), as one of the 24 scientific journals of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences (MUMS) , is an i1.85  with its two-decade upward trend , which h1.85 . The number of submitted manuscripts to IJBMS has increased during 2019 and is expected to rise further in the next year, in line with the progress of its profile and influence in the scientific community over the past few years. Just to put it into perspective, we have compared the number of submitted, rejected, and accepted manuscripts in 2019 .. Based on the meta-analysis of the primary outcome of Cochrane reviews published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), a significant burden of the so-called “wasted research” is related to inadequate methods that could be avoided to a considerable extent by simple and inexpensive adjustments . For instance, we have dealt with two special cases during 2018, which were successfully addressed by our editorial team in full accordance with the COPE guidelines.In addition, in order to meet the quality standards for COPE membership, we expanded our editorial board members and invited international members from the United States, Singapore, and Turkey.Furthermore, we improved and clarified the "Guide for authors" specifically in terms of ethical concerns to develop the transparency and standards of IJBMS further.In addition, we have also tried hard to enhance the scientific-writing standards of the published papers to motivate readers and grab their interests.In the end, we would also like to take this opportunity to wish our readers and colleagues a Very Happy New Year. We aim at improving the quality of our journal and enjoy yet more credibility in the next year.


To have a successful publication in a peer-reviewed journal, a collection of factors and items is needed. Some of them directly and the others indirectly have important roles in scholarly publication. However, a well-designed scientific investigation together with a powerful academic English language may guarantee the publication of a manuscript. In other words, a standard and professional methodology which is expressed by an influent academic English language constitutes the soul of the manuscript’s body. Obviously, the accuracy and fluency of the English language of the manuscript is the author(s)’ responsibility and neither the reviewers’ nor the editor’s and the journal’s. As publication of a research paper is the complementary section of a scientific study, it is recognized as an academic criterion for academicians. Thus, this review focuses on the all of items which are necessary and vital for a successful scholarly publication. As references show, the year of 1665 was the first historical reference of writing modern scientific papers in scholarly journals. Although no style or standard format requirements were defined for scientific papers at that time, classification of formatted scientific papers was present even in the late 17th century . AlthougAs the quality and validity of scientific manuscripts are some of the most important qualities to consider; the number of peer-reviewed journals has significantly increased and their methods to rigorously evaluate scientific papers have also shown important progress in the last three centuries. Indeed, peer-reviewed journals evaluate the quality and validity of submitted scientific manuscripts by expert referees relating to the field. Usually, the scientific evaluation is achieved by determined reviewers  that are selected by the journal’s editor(s). The editor’s final decision is predominantly made in accordance with and based on the reviewers’ points of view; however, if discordant review reports are presented, it is the Editor’s responsibility to either sequester additional review reports or to make a decision by reflecting on the quality of the paper him/herself. The publication process of peer-reviewed journals is time-consuming as the validity and quality of scientific papers are evaluated by the professional specialists and experts who are usually also performing research and have educational responsibilities, therefore are busy , 6.The evaluations performed by the reviewers may lead to the direct acceptance (publication in the present form), acceptance with minor revision, reconsider after major revision, weak rejection  and direct rejection , 7. Hencbona fide scientific paper needs practice, experience, serenity, patience and an ability to accept failures and feedbacks, which are all integral parts of the peer-review process. As the mainstream scholarly peer-reviewed journals are predominantly in English, the language can be a serious problem for those authors that have English as their second language. Of course, the authors speaking English as their second language have lesser confidence in scientific writing than native English speakers [In addition, authors must also have the ability to screen existing literature to find the appropriate place for their article, or to find the “gaps” of knowledge, which they may fill . Therefospeakers , 15, 16.speakers , 18.https://www.clarivate.com/) (Web of Science (WoS) [Scientific peer-reviewed journals are suitable and important means of spreading the results and outcomes obtained from scientific investigations , 19. In ce (WoS) ), MEDLINce (WoS) , 7, Scopce (WoS)  and Sciece (WoS)  are impoce (WoS) . Many unce (WoS) , 13. HowIF = the number of cited articles  published by the journal in the last 2 years at present/the number of published articles  by the journal in the last two years.For example, the calculation of IF for a journal in 2018 gets back to the years of 2017 and 2016.https://clarivate.com/products/journal-citation-reports/). It is recommended to check the JCR for your interested journal if there is any suspicious regarding the journal’s IF [The IF of a journal from Journal Citation Reports (JCR) may be found on the website of the database , the Eigenfactor Score (ES) , Article Influence Score (AIS), SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) (https://www.scimagojr.com/) [2-index (the Impact Factor squared) [https://www.scopus.com/sources) and is calculated just like the IF but for three previous years ago. For instance, the CiteScore of a journal in 2018 goes back to the years of 2015, 2016 and 2017 .Rather than the IF, other indicators including CiteScore (jr.com/) , 23, Immjr.com/) , IF2-indsquared)  and Hirssquared)  are alsoThe ES is supported by Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) while the SJR is covered by Scopus . Anotherhttps://rd.springer.com/search?facet-content-type=%22Journal%22), Wiley  , Elsevier  , Taylor and Francis  , Oxford University Press (OUP)   are known as the largest publishers of important and well-known academic journals. Prior to starting a journal’s draft, an author should raise the following pivotal questions from yourself: “What is the importance of my work?” and “What is novelty of my work?”. If you have considerable answers to these questions, design your manuscript’s blueprint and be ready to write your paper to publish it [According to some estimation, there are up to 10,000 journal publishers worldwide that cover different numbers of journals. Among a wide range of journal publishers, some largest journal publishers, Springer   , Springer  and Wiley  have prepared journal finder systems which can be used for choosing proper journal(s). These systems are very helpful because Scopus, Springer and Wiley indexed Journals involve a huge number of peer-reviewed journals including 38,380 journals (active and inactive) [https://rd.springer.com/search?facet-content-type=%22Journal%22) and 1,493 journals , respectively. Besides, these journal finder systems –depending on the related publishers-represent important information about the introduced journals including IF, ISI ranking, CiteScore, publication type, journal’s ISSN, average time for the journal’s first decision, average time for the publication, acceptance rate, relevance and direct access to the journal’s website. This facility is a great opportunity for the authors to decide which journal is suitable to submit their manuscripts. After finding suitable journal(s), the authors should read the “Aims and Scope” of the journal to avoid immediate rejection. We believe that the authors should be aware from the scientific level of their manuscript and the selected journal. We, as professional reviewers have observed several manuscripts with well-designed methodology and fluent academic English which were submitted to the wrong journal. This status will lead to direct rejection. The authors should take into account that a prestigious peer-reviewed journal employs expert referees.Using short and simple sentences are the best means for transferring a paper’s data and information to the readers. Repetition, unclear, weak and poorly understandable sentences are hidden means for direct rejection ,22,27,28nactive) , 3,596 jWhen you receive the referees’ comments, read them word by word and answer them in polite and scientific manner. Then, consider the requested materials within the text one by one; and finally, highlight the addenda. A professional author never debates with the referee(s); because the losers are the authors of the manuscript. The reviewers try to improve the quality of your manuscript; therefore it is important to just consider the reviewers’ comments carefully and be thankful for their helpful recommendations , 28, 30.As the publication process of a paper in a peer-reviewed journal is hard and time-consuming, novices try with those journals that publish their work in a short period of time (for a limited amount of money). Many of these types of journals are known as predatory journals. Jeffrey Beal, an associate professor at Denver University, Colorado, and the Scholarly Communications Librarian coined the term of “Predatory” journals. In 2008, when the number of these doubtful journals was considerably increasing, he actively investigated regarding these predatory journals  , 32. Prehttp://www2.cabells.com/about-blacklist), Think. Check. Submit. (https://thinkchecksubmit.org/) and Queen’s University Library (https://guides.library.queensu.ca/deceptive-pubs-conf/checklist) websites [https://doaj.org/), ICMJE  (http://www.icmje.org/), COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) (https://publicationethics.org/), INASP  , OASPA (Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association) (https://oaspa.org/), AJOL  (https://www.ajol.info/) and WAME  (http://www.wame.org/) can be used as a suitable criterion for detecting predatory journals (https://guides.library.queensu.ca/deceptive-pubs-conf/checklist) [There are different resources for detecting predatory journals including Beall’s list , Cabell’s International  , 35, 38.https://publicationethics.org/) for ethical issues in details. The COPE’s core practices include allegations of misconduct, authorship and contributorship, complaints and appeals, conflicts of interest, data and reproducibility, ethical oversight, intellectual property, journal management, peer-review processes, and post-publication discussions (https://publicationethics.org/). The ICMJE guidelines include recommendations , conflicts of interest, journals, news and editorials regarding medical journals (http://www.icmje.org/).Avoiding self-plagiarism, “salami publication” (i.e. wasteful publication), pure plagiarism (copy-and-paste), paraphrasing, falsification, fabrication, duplication, sending a manuscript to two peer-reviewed journals at the same time and so on are the red-lines for the authors for not being blacklisted by the academic journals , 39–42. Due to the technical progression of journals’ submission systems, each journal receives a huge number of manuscripts around the world. Due to this facility, the peer-reviewed and quality journals try to select the best articles for publication. Thus, to have a successful publication in a peer-reviewed and indexed scholarly journal with an IF, a well-designed study, strong methodology and skillful author is needed, with high ability to write scientific paper in effective and fluent academic English language. These types of authors are able to satisfy Editors-in-Chief and reviewers of high quality journals, resulting in a subsequent publication of a paper. To be a skillful author needs practice, practice, practice and patience!


Nature Communications encouraged rapid dissemination of results with the launch of Under Consideration in 2017. Today we take one more step by offering an integrated preprint deposition service to our authors as part of the submission process. Early sharing of results in preprints has been a familiar practice for some research communities for decades—physicists will know that the arXiv is turning 30 next year —and has grown in popularity with many other communities in the past 5–10 years, perhaps catalysed by the launch of bioRxiv, which now serves a large community of researchers in the life sciences.While the word ‘preprint’ might sound archaic in a digitally-led world, the need for early sharing and discovery of results has never been greater, particularly at a time when a pandemic is sweeping the globe. We strongly believe in the importance of this practice to increase transparency in the research process and to speed up the dissemination and re-use of scientific results, while maintaining that a rigorous peer-review  is needed to validate the findings.From today, our authors have the option to take advantage of In Review, a free preprint deposition service integrated with the submission process to our journal.encourages it since last year. In order to further promote the practice of preprinting, Nature Communications launched an initiative in 2017 that allowed authors to list the preprints of papers hosted on any platform, and undergoing peer review at our journal, on our Under Consideration web page. The link from our page to the preprint is available for the length of the peer review process, and removed once a final decision is made.Nature Research, the portfolio of our sister journals, has long supported preprint deposition of the originally submitted version of manuscripts, and actively We have been offering this option to our authors for two and a half years, and we are very happy to report that 59% of the authors who opted in ended up depositing a preprint of their work as a result of our initiative. The overall uptake has grown from 3% in 2017 to 7% in 2019, and has varied significantly by discipline, with 22% of participating papers in the physical sciences, and 78% in the life and biological sciences. Perhaps this uneven breakdown is a reflection of the more recent adoption of preprints by the latter community, when compared with the more mature practice in the physical sciences. Authors working in neuroscience have been by far the most receptive to this initiative, contributing 18% of all participating papers.Wishing to facilitate greater adoption of preprints across the multidisciplinary scope of our journal, we are retiring Under Consideration to support a new early sharing tool with added functionalities for our authors.In Review, a free preprint deposition service integrated with the submission process to our journal. The preprint of the author’s original submission will be posted  on the multidisciplinary platform hosted by our partner Research Square at the same time as the submission is being considered by our editorial team.From today, our authors have the option to take advantage of For authors who opt-in, the posting will happen when our editors decide whether to send the manuscript for external review. If the manuscript is sent to reviewers, the preprint on Research Square will be displayed as being ‘under review at Nature Research’ for as long as the manuscript is being considered. Once the manuscript is published, the preprint will link to the published version. When the preprint is posted, a HTML version of the manuscript will be created and displayed when original figures are available, making it more machine-readable—and hence easier to be discovered by search engines—than a PDF.here. At present, the In Review opt-in is available for submissions received via the Nature Communications portal, but not to authors transferring their paper from another Nature Research journal.As part of the service offered by In Review, authors will be able to track the status of their manuscript thanks to a private peer review timeline, showing main events such as the recruitment of a reviewer or the receipt of a reviewer report. More information about In Review for Nature Research journals, including the minimum disclosures required, can be found Springer Nature journals since October 2018. This integrated preprint deposition service will hopefully make it easier, and thus more likely, for our authors to share their results early. Moreover, we believe that In Review will be particularly useful in serving communities that do not yet have an established discipline-specific preprint server, as well as providing more visibility for multidisciplinary works.In Review has been offered on almost 300 We continue to encourage preprint deposition on any community-recognised preprint server—it is solely the author’s choice to decide if and where they are going to post their results before the conclusion of the peer review process.We are excited about this new step we are taking in support of early sharing. We will monitor reception of this new service by our authors, and continue to evolve our offering to them in response to the needs of the community.


Human Genome Variation (HGV), the second official journal of the Japan Society of Human Genetics, and worked diligently to increase its profile. For the last 6 years, the editorial committee has been successfully managed under his strong leadership. This open-access journal, launched in 2014, has attained a unique position in the human genetics/genomics research community. On behalf of the Editorial Board of the HGV, its authors and readers, I sincerely want to thank Professor Tokunaga for all his contributions to the journal.It is with great pleasure that, from 1 January 2020, I have taken over the role of Editor-in-Chief from Professor Katsushi Tokunaga, who founded HGV as a member of the Editorial Board, I have seen and experienced the success of this unique open-access, online-only journal. An innovative feature of the journal is a curated database of the underlying data from Data Reports, which is growing into an important resource for the human genetics/genomics community. The rapidly changing field of genomic technologies, especially next-generation sequencing and genome editing, are revealing more and more genetic variants responsible for or associated with various human diseases and traits. HGV aims to provide a coherent link between a published paper and the underlying data deposited in an accompanying database. This open-access database of variations and variability can be searched, filtered and variously used to further the progress of genomics research. Articles published in this journal are also fully open access, allowing for the widest dissemination, visibility, and impact of authors’ research. The intended audience for this journal is researchers, scientists, clinicians, genetic counsellors and those interested in human genetics/genomics, from all sectors and from around the world. We warmly welcome submissions from the scientific community. We assure authors submitting to the journal of efficient and respectful handling of their manuscripts and, in particular, of a shorter submission to decision time.During the years that I have been associated with HGV, and also very proud to be working with an outstanding internationally diverse team of Associate Editors, members of the Editorial Board, reviewers, and the supporting staff in Springer Nature. As the new Editor-in-Chief, I will strive to continue to improve and enhance the quality and reputation of HGV. I welcome suggestions, discussions and thoughts from the readers, authors, reviewers, and editors to help me to understand and rectify any problems with the journal.I am truly honored to assume the responsibility of the Editor-in-Chief of I am enthusiastic about this opportunity and look forward to working with you over the coming years.


To investigate peer review practices by medical imaging journals.Journals in the category "radiology, nuclear medicine and medical imaging" of the 2018 Journal Citation Reports were included.P = 0.022). On subgroup analysis, only subspecialty medical imaging journals had a significant association between the use of single-blinded peer review and a journal’s impact factor . Forty-eight journals (40.3%) had a reviewer preference option, 48 journals (40.3%) did not have a reviewer recommendation option, and 23 journals (19.3%) obliged authors to indicate reviewers on their manuscript submission systems. Sixty-four journals (53.8%) did not provide an explicit option on their manuscript submission Web site to indicate nonpreferred reviewers, whereas 55 (46.2%) did. There were no significant associations between the option or obligation to indicate preferred or nonpreferred reviewers and a journal’s impact factor.Of 119 included journals, 62 (52.1%) used single-blinded peer review, 49 (41.2%) used double-blinded peer review, two (1.7%) used open peer review and one (0.8%) used both single-blinded and double-blinded peer reviews, while the peer review model of five journals (4.2%) remained unclear. The use of single-blinded peer review was significantly associated with a journal’s impact factor  associated with a higher impact factor, also for subspecialty journals. The option or obligation to indicate preferred or nonpreferred reviewers is evenly distributed among journals, regardless of impact factor. Nearly all medical imaging journals use either a single-blinded peer review model (51.2%) or a double-blinded peer review model (41.2%).Reviewer preferences are optional by 40.3% and obligatory by 19.3% of medical imaging journals.P = 0.022), also for subspecialty journals .There is a positive association between the use of a single-blinded peer review model and a journal’s impact factor , because all journals publish articles that refer to some degree to studies that have been published elsewhere. The currently available evidence is supportive of double-blinded or open peer review rather than single-blinded peer review , 9–11 anOur study used data available in the public domain and did not concern medical scientific research in which participants or animals were subjected to procedures or were observed. Therefore, it did not require institutional review board approval or informed consent. All 129 journals listed by the 2018 Journal Citation Reports in the category “radiology, nuclear medicine and medical imaging” as of April 2020 were eligible for inclusion . JournalThe editorial procedure on each journal’s Web site was carefully studied for the peer review model employed by the journal . If this information was not provided on the journal’s Web site, editors-in-chief or editorial managers were contacted to require information about the peer review model. In the case of no reply within two weeks, editors-in-chief and editorial managers were contacted again in a final attempt to retrieve this information. Furthermore, the manuscript submission system of each journal was accessed to determine the presence of an optional or obligatory reviewer recommendation, and the presence of an option to indicate nonpreferred reviewers. Finally, the impact factor of each journal was determined based on the information provided by the Journal Citation Reports as of April 2020 . All datp values < 0.05 were considered statistically significant. Statistical analyses were executed using IBM Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 26 .The proportions of journals with single-blinded, double-blinded, triple-blinded, quadruple-blinded, open review, and other models were determined. The proportions of journals with optional or mandatory reviewer recommendations, and those with the option to indicate nonpreferred reviewers, were also assessed. Point-biserial correlation analyses were performed to determine the associations between the peer review model employed by the journal and the journal’s impact factor, between the presence of a reviewer recommendation option or obligation and a journal’s impact factor, and between the presence of an option to indicate nonpreferred reviewers and a journal’s impact factor. A subgroup analysis was performed for all medical imaging journals except radiotherapy journals, journals for physicists, engineers, and chemists, and journals related to a single country. Additional subgroup analyses were performed for general and subspecialty medical imaging journals separately, and for imaging journals with more and less than 1000 published articles per 2-year period separately. Of the 129 journals listed by the Journal Citation Reports in the category “radiology, nuclear medicine and medical imaging,” ten were excluded because they allowed submissions by invitation only. The 119 journals that were included in our analyses had a mean impact factor of 2.205 (range: 0.413–10.975).P = 0.022) indicated a positive association between the use of a single-blinded peer review system and a journal’s impact factor. On subgroup analysis, only subspecialty medical imaging journals had a significant association between the use of a single-blinded peer review system and a journal’s impact factor   used a single-blinded peer review model, 49 (41.2%) used a double-blinded peer review model, two (1.7%) used an open peer review model, and one (0.8%) used both a single-blinded and a double-blinded peer review model (depending on whether or not the submitting author disclosed the authors’ names on the first page of the manuscript), whereas for five journals the peer review model remained unclear  indicated no significant association between the presence of a reviewer recommendation option or obligation and a journal’s impact factor. There were no significant associations on additional subgroup analyses  provided authors the option to indicate reviewer recommendations, 48 (40.3%) did not have a reviewer recommendation option, and 23 (19.3%) obliged authors to indicate reviewers on their manuscript submission systems  indicated no significant association between the presence of a nonpreferred reviewer option and a journal’s impact factor. There were no significant associations on additional subgroup analyses  did not provide an explicit option on their manuscript submission Web site to indicate nonpreferred reviewers, whereas 55 (46.2%) did , followed by a double-blinded peer review model (41.2%). However, there is ample evidence that the single-blinded peer review system is prone to bias , 9–11. FAnother important finding of our study is that there were just as many journals with and without the option to indicate reviewer preferences (both 40.3%), whereas the remaining journals (19.3%) obliged submitting authors to provide potential reviewers. This may also be considered worrisome, because recommendation of potential reviewers by the submitting authors has been shown to be vulnerable to exploitation, hacking, and peer review bias . FurtherA nonpreferred reviewer option was present in nearly half (46.2%) of the included journals and was not associated with a journal’s impact factor. It is currently unclear how a nonpreferred reviewer option affects peer review. It may avoid peer review bias when authors disclose individuals with whom a conflict of interest exists. However, if authors indicate their wish to exclude certain knowledgeable individuals with stringent standards from whom they expect to receive a critical review which could lead to rejection, and the journal follows this request, the review process may potentially be biased in favor of the authors’ manuscript . FurtherP < 0.038 and P < 0.039, respectively) [To our knowledge, there have been no previously published, similar studies on peer review practices by medical imaging journals. Nevertheless, the topic of peer review is regularly discussed –19 and tctively) . The stuctively)  and O'Coctively)  underlinctively) .Our study had some limitations. First, it did not compare the validity of different peer review models. A randomized trial has yet to be performed to investigate whether any peer review model is more prone to bias in the medical imaging field. However, the current literature favors double-blinded and open peer reviews over single-blinded peer review models , 9–11. TIn conclusion, single-blinded peer review and the option or obligation to indicate preferred or nonpreferred reviewers are frequently employed by medical imaging journals. Single-blinded review is (weakly) associated with a higher impact factor, also for subspecialty journals. The option or obligation to indicate preferred or nonpreferred reviewers is evenly distributed among journals, regardless of impact factor.


Journal of Insect Science (JIS) was started 20 yr ago by Professor Henry Hagedorn as the first broad-based Open Access (OA) entomology journal  readers could comment on published articles to stimulate and involve the general research community, and 3) I welcomed the publication of negative results.The  journal . His visJIS was not similarly inundated with manuscripts, but published articles have always been free to readers. However, the issue of inter-racial and inter-gender biases continues in publishing and this is something that JIS can and will be addressing.Unfortunately, 2020 was a year of great consequences on many levels, two major examples being: 1) coronavirus and the disruption of societies around the world, and 2) inter-racial strife. As governments attempted to mitigate the transmission of coronavirus by closures and social distancing, research—both in the laboratory and field—was severely curtailed or, in some cases, brought to a stand-still. More than 120 journals responded to an influx of manuscripts on coronavirus by expediting publication and making articles free to the public . Since tJIS is one of the eight journals under its auspices. The Journal of Insect Science can boast of SEs from Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania  has moved from deplorable to on par with the percent of women in the Entomological Society of America (~30%), of which  Oceania . Lest I A cursory sketch of the history that brought an almost 300-yr-old method of peer-review  publications was by There are two potential changes to the predominate, long-established, single-blind peer-review system: open review and double-blind  peer review. The major drawback of an open review process, wherein authors know the identities of the reviewers and vice versa, is that early-career professionals would be reluctant to openly criticize established researchers for fear of retribution in often relatively small academic communities as direct criticism at meeting, poor reviews, or lack of promotion .Double-blind peer review means that, as with the typical single-blind review where the author doesn’t know who the reviewers are, additionally the reviewer does not know who the author(s) is/are as well, hence ‘double’. Beneficiaries of double-blind peer review are women , minoritAs long as humans exist, there will be implicit biases so, instead of ignoring them or pretending they do not exist, we must try to rectify the situation, and as the editor-in-chief of a peer-reviewed journal, I strongly believe that double-blind review is the best method. ScholarOne allows for the electronic submission of blinded manuscripts, lacking the author names, institutions, and acknowledgments. However, double-blind review is not infallible:1.There are some research areas within entomology which are so narrow, or have so few people researching the area, that an educated person might guess at the authorship.2.JIS has always considered an unethical practice of plagiarism and rejected, or verbiage like ‘in our previous study’, which can be easily detected by the editor before being sent to reviewers.Some researchers may be generally against double-blind reviews because they would lack the benefit of their established name. To circumvent this obstacle, some authors could try to reveal their identity by excessive self-citation, which I do not expect that the transition will perfectly smooth in the beginning. Since I review all manuscripts before they are sent to a subject editor, I anticipate some additional review time to look for excessive self-citation (which I have encountered in the past) and cryptic self-revealing verbiage. But, I am confident that whatever extra effort is needed will be rewarded in the long-run.Moving to double-blind/double-anonymous peer review is an important shift as research has shown that gender balance is an important means of improving the quality of decision-making and ‘innovation dividends’ . I since


Journal of the Medical Library Association (JMLA) open access and published the entire archive of JMLA and its predecessor, the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association, in PubMed Central. Nearly two decades later, the promise of open access and open science finally seems to be coming to fruition. In the 2020 Janet Doe Lecture, Chris Shaffer, AHIP, described the ways that MLA has led the profession, standing behind a shared vision and “walking the walk.” In challenging listeners to embrace open science, he affirmed that, as leaders in improving access to health sciences information since 1898, medical librarians must work in the open science arena to realize our vision “that quality information is essential for improved health.”Over the years, health sciences librarians have been change agents, leading the charge on issues of importance to the profession and the communities we serve. From its founding in 1898 with the Exchange, the Medical Library Association (MLA) has been dedicated to improving access to health information. In 2003, the Board of Directors published a statement supporting open access to information generated from federally funded scientific and medical research and maintained that having access to timely, relevant, and accurate information is vital to the health of the nation and its education and research programs. At some financial risk, the association made the  Thank you for the gracious introduction, Gerald (Jerry) Perry, AHIP, FMLA. As a queer librarian living in San Francisco, it was very gratifying to learn more about the work that you did to support the communities and individuals who suffered during the HIV/AIDS pandemic in your lecture, “The Activist Health Sciences Librarian” . As a chEach of you has influenced my work as a librarian from the very beginning of my career. Dr. Ana introduced me to medical librarianship in graduate school at the University of North Texas; Elaine was director of the Library of the Health Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where I took my first job following library school; and my “frolleague” Jerry welcomed me to the LGBT Special Interest Group (the “SIG”) at my first Medical Library Association (MLA) meeting. I am honored to follow in your footsteps and those of the many wonderful librarians who have stood before me at previous annual meetings to speak on the history or philosophy of medical librarianship.Wizard of Oz is an allegory for monetary policy in nineteenth century America over coffee or cocktails, if you are so inclined.Like so many other Janet Doe Lecturers, I am neither a philosopher nor a historian. While I have an undergraduate degree in philosophy with a minor in history from Texas A&M University, I can only claim to be a dabbler in the study of the past and of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence. Thirty years later, I can hardly remember what I am sure I believed at the time were profound discussions of Willard Van Orman Quine's theories of language and logic or the names of the many usurpers and “False Dmitrys” who claimed the title of tsar in the Russian Time of Troubles. That said, I would be happy to discuss Henry Littlefield's debunked theory that the As I was musing over the issue of selecting a topic for the lecture, I did what so many of my predecessors have done: I read the entire corpus of previous Janet Doe Lectures, and, this being the modern age, I watched a few of the more recent ones on video. I highly recommend this activity for those who want to learn more about our association and profession.My first meeting was in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1996, where Robert M. Braude, AHIP, FMLA, of the Samuel J. Wood Library at Cornell University Medical College, chose the title, “On the Origin of a Species: Evolution of Health Sciences Librarianship.” He challenged listeners to consider the long history of health sciences communication with these words:Our territory has been the world of biomedical information, represented for more than 500 years as print on paper. But the reality is that biomedical information has existed for longer than 500 years and in a variety of different containers. The newer containers resulting from developments in information technology just represent a more rapid change in the form and format of this information. Nevertheless, these developments are fundamentally changing the nature of information and its management, which, traditionally, has been our responsibility. Medical Bibliography in an Age of Discontinuity .I now turn to ILL. It might seem obvious now, but a 1962 study by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) showed that most ILL requests were for common titles, indicating that many health care practitioners and the libraries that served them did not have access to the core literature of health sciences . The hisBMLA. They imagined a world in which a “microphotographer” in New York could take a picture of a book in Spain by means of a “supertelescopic” lens . In 1982, Washington University in St. Louis launched OCTANET, so named because they were the RML for Region VIII. Based on the Periodicals Holdings in Libraries of Schools of Medicine (PHILSOM), developed under the leadership of Estelle Brodman, FMLA, it was perhaps the first online ILL system that used automated routing, an innovation that significantly speeded delivery of materials to patrons . This waEstelle Brodman's impact on medical librarianship as a scholar, teacher, and researcher were major. Estelle's dissertation, “The Development of Medical Bibliography,” published in 1954 remains a landmark work. She developed the PHILSOM automation project for serials control in the 1960s. This was one of the first applications of the new computer technologies to library routines. Switching gears from ILL to library automation: I remember getting enormous spools of PHILSOM computer tape from Washington University in St. Louis at the NNLM Greater Midwest Region office in the late 1990s. We converted the holdings to regional and state union lists on microfilm and sent them off to NLM to update SERHOLD.Science Citation Index, now part of Web of Science , Fleming, and Esterquest in the early 1960s. .BMLA will be available in full text online and continue a 100-year commitment to preserving and promoting the best evidence of health sciences librarianship” .JMLA. Plutchak wrote an editorial, “Embracing Open Access,” which is relevant to this day (and worth reading again). He persuasively argued that “The reason to embrace the open access movement is that it promises to be a very good thing for society, not that it will be a good thing for libraries” .In 2005, Plutchak wrote about the impact of open access on the association's journal. He reported that usage statistics showed that 20,000 unique users were accessing the journal every month, and that NLM actually estimated the number of unique users was closer to 30,000, due to shared Internet protocol (IP) addresses. This compared to the membership of MLA, which was 4,500 at the time, and the print run of the journal, which was only 5,000, demonstrating a significant increase in the impact of medical librarian research. However, he identified a future challenge for MLA, which received $200,000 per year in subscriptions and advertising from the journal, a significant source of association revenue. He then asked:But has the attempt been worth it so far? I look again at the PMC statistics. Twenty to thirty thousand unique users? Has it been worth it? Oh, yes! From 2007 to 2011, the Ad Hoc Committee for Advocating Scholarly Communications took on the task “to educate and support MLA members, and provide leadership within the association on the broad trends and issues within scholarly communication, including, but not limited to, public access, open access, and the publishing industry.” Finally, at long last, in 2012 MLA established a full-blown Scholarly Communications Committee, which is now planning to become an MLA caucus.In 2008, the MLA Board of Directors endorsed Health Care Information For All and its vision of “a world where every person will have access to the healthcare information they need to protect their own health and the health of those for whom they are responsible.” And in 2017, MLA joined Re:Create: Supporting a Pro-Innovation, Pro-Creator, Pro-Consumer Copyright Framework .In that same year, AAHSL worked with the Association of American Medical Colleges and publisher groups to create the Chicago Collaborative, a working group to promote open communication and education among the primary stakeholders in the scholarly scientific communication arena .JMLA editorial team decided “it is time to ‘practice what we preach,' the JMLA is taking a step forward and implementing a firm data sharing policy to increase the rigor and reproducibility of published research, enable data reuse, and promote open science” [generally advocates of open access and data sharing” [emphasis added]. One of my goals is to remove the word “generally” from that statement.Most recently, this past fall, the science” . To the I now discuss some of the things that induced me to consider moving to the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Before she retired, Karen Butter, FMLA, encouraged me to apply and described the leadership role that she and UCSF had taken over the years in promoting open access.Way back in the late 1990s, or maybe it was the early aughts, Gail Persily tried to convince me to apply for a job with the UCSF Library. They were launching a new project to create a digital library of tobacco documents. While I chose to stay in Chicago at the time and did not submit an application, I followed the project over the years.The story begins in 1994, when a set of confidential documents from the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation was leaked to Dr. Stanton Glantz, a cardiologist at UCSF. He deposited the materials in the UCSF Library Archives & Special Collections to protect them and make them available to other researchers. Naturally, the tobacco companies sued. I am happy to report that the University of California (UC) backed up the researchers and the library and won a judgment in favor of the public's right to know. The documents served as a resource for litigators in the multistate lawsuit and master settlement agreement (MSA), reached in November 1998 between the state attorneys general of forty-six states, five US territories, the District of Columbia, and the four largest cigarette manufacturers in America.Following this major victory for public health, my predecessor Butter suggested putting the original documents, as well as those released as a result of the MSA, on the Internet to make them available to researchers around the world. The result was the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library, now part of the open access Industry Documents Library, which is still growing and includes documents from the chemical, drug, food, and fossil fuel industries that influence public health . The morNew England Journal of Medicine, and New Hampshire, which never had a medical journal). Jisc and the Wellcome Library have also sponsored the UK Medical Heritage Library, focused on nineteenth and early twentieth century history of medicine and related disciplines [Open access has been adopted by all areas of medical librarianship. When I arrived at UCSF, I learned about the Medical Heritage Library (MHL), founded in 2010 by a consortium of medical libraries to provide open access to history of medicine and health resources. In collaboration with the Internet Archive, the members have digitized historical American journals, primary resources in topic areas such as vaccines and racism in health and medicine, and hundreds of thousands of rare medical books, pamphlets, journals, and films. UCSF was honored to be invited to join as a member in 2018, following our participation in a project to digitize every state medical journal in the United States, Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico  as a funding mechanism for scholarly publishing might perpetuate the inequities of the current system, as researchers who lack funding will encounter new barriers to publishing. And, as Choo so compellingly demonstrated, open science does not, by itself, reduce health care disparities.So, what is open science? It is the natural next step beyond open access. UNESCO defines open science as “the movement to make scientific research and data accessible to all” . The OrgOpen Science Is the Future of Research!Medical librarians have been leaders in improving access since 1898. Take the next step on that journey and join the conversation at the open science session, “Roles to Play: Open Science & Health Sciences Librarians,” during the MLA '20 vConference.Thank you.


Over the past several years, several consortiums of national research institutions and libraries, notably Sweden, the Netherlands, Norway, Hungary, and Germany, have initiated negotiations with the leading electronic journal publishing houses including Wiley, Springer, and Elsevier. This editorial focuses on one of the more successful initiatives, Project DEAL (Projekt DEAL), in Germany. The goal of this endeavor is to rewrite the nationwide agreements for licensing content in electronic journals. Under the terms of these negotiations, scientists in Germany would get immediate and full online access to most of the electronic content of a publisher’s journals. In exchange, the publication costs for the German authors would be subsidized, and all of their articles would be published immediately open access. This “publish and read” model makes all articles available to anyone with web access, and additionally, authors have access to all electronic journals of the publisher, including archives.https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/project-deal-in-germany-reaches-agreement-with-springer-nature-66342. Archive access extends back to 1997 for all electronic Wiley journals. The cost to publish an article open access is approximately $3,050 US, which is paid centrally by the academic institutions responsible for the article. https://authorservices.wiley.com/author-resources/Journal-Authors/open-access/affiliation-policies-payments/german-projekt-deal-agreement.htmlOn January 15, 2019, the DEAL consortium found a willing publisher in Wiley, and signed a 3‐year contract to bring a published and read model to libraries and research institutions in Germany. The Wiley deal is expected to cover and fund an anticipated 9,500 articles per year. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/08/more-700-german-research-institutions-strike-open-access-deal-springer-nature“With Wiley, we found a publisher on the other side of the table that was willing to make this transition [to open access] in partnership with us,” says Gerard Meijer, a molecular physicist at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society and a member of the DEAL negotiations team. “We consider the contract with Wiley as a blueprint for the contracts that are going to follow.”“On a practical level, researchers in Germany will find publishing their papers open access much simpler, says Frank Sander, head of the Max Planck Digital Library Services (MPDL Services), a company in Munich, Germany, formed to manage the Project DEAL contracts. Instead of researchers paying open‐access fees to a journal covered by the agreement, MPDL Services will pay. MPDL Services will then bill the authors’ institution. This arrangement, which was set up to support the earlier Project Deal agreement with Wiley, means German funding for publications will shift from libraries to research institutions, he notes.” https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/as-elsevier-falters--wiley-succeeds-in-open-access-deal-making-65664“We believe [these deals are] the right thing to do on behalf of our community,” says Judy Verses, the executive vice president of research at Wiley. “Researchers in our community have made clear that open research and open access is a critical part of the future.” According to Verses, Wiley is currently in active discussions for new licensing deals with consortia in other countries, including in the US. JACMP) or a subscription journal that offers OnlineOpen  You must publish open access in one of Wiley's fully open access journals , which individual journals administer separately.To be eligible:https://authorservices.wiley.com/author-resources/Journal-Authors/open-access/affiliation-policies-payments/german-projekt-deal-agreement.htmlThe Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association has some reservations, which they discuss in the context of Plan S, but which applies equally to Project DEAL. https://oaspa.org/oaspa-feedback-on-plan-s-implementation-guidance/OASPA’s main concern relating to Plan S, however, is that discussions and solutions continue to be focused on the largest, mixed‐model publishers. While it is this segment of the market on which funders’ attention — and spend — is concentrated, the vast majority of publishers within the so‐called “Long Tail” (the majority of OASPA’s members) appear to be absent from the focus of Plan S. Many of these publishers are too small to negotiate the kind of “transformative” national Big Deals we are seeing for the largest publishers, while exclusively open access publishers without legacy subscription businesses are also unable to participate. Many are not even of sufficient size to make agreements directly with institutions. JACMP? It is likely that consortiums such as Project Deal will continue to flourish and become a larger part of the landscape. This will continue to put pressure on the print/subscription/print advertising business model of traditional journals. Published by a world’s leading publisher, the JACMP is well positioned to take advantage of such consortium deals in the short term. We may see large library systems in the US, such as the Universities of California, Texas, New York, and Florida show interest in such deals in the near future. There may even be a national US initiative, although it is not certain how that would emerge. Such deals have the potential of increasing interest in open access publishing, both because the authors would no longer be responsible for the article publication charge (APC), but also because such sweeping deals would bring higher revenue to journals with an APC lower than the negotiated cost per article. Both would benefit the JACMP.What does this mean for the The idea of a clinical medical physics journal that was published open access and successful first presented itself to me in November of 1997, when I was 45. I am finishing this editorial on my 68th birthday. I am grateful to have lived to see the day!https://twitter.com/hashtag/JACMP20?src=hashtag_click&f=liveFinally, please view this twitter link for the JACMP 20th Anniversary Social Media Campaign:


The authors also independently informed the Editorial Office that they were unable to repeat the experiments shown in Fig. 4, and requested a retraction.An interested reader drew to our attention that, in the above paper, several of the figures appeared to contain strikingly similar data to those published in other articles by different authors from different research institutions, including (as examples) Fig. 8 (cf. Fig. 8 in Fang, K Molecular Medicine Reports has agreed with the authors that this article should be retracted from the publication. The Editor and the authors apologize for any inconvenience caused.Given the overall problems that have come to light with this paper, the Editor of


Rheumatology as a research-intensive discipline may particularly benefit from the emerging digital evaluation tools, systematic search engines, distribution platforms, and repositories. Currently, processing journal submissions through advanced online systems allows detecting major inconsistencies and mistakes in research reporting and formatting manuscripts. Such systems, linked to regularly updated reviewer instructions of global editorial associations and supported by external bibliographic searches, enable fast evaluation of the novelty, originality, methodological rigour, and implications of the manuscripts by peer reviewers.In times of information deluge, editing and publishing a scholarly journal is increasingly dependent on digital tools and artificial intelligence.Open Researcher and Contributor IDs , are now employed by most publishers to validate individual profiles at the peer review and increase visibility of their contributions post-publication. The Mediterranean Journal of Rheumatology has also encouraged its contributors to register with and submit informative ORCID iDs with biographical notes, publication lists, and other academic accomplishments. The ORCID iDs are now integrated with the the Publons platform (https://publons.com), yet another indispensable digital tool for crediting reviewers and selecting active and skilled experts for further evaluations.3 Notably, the number of academic contributors with ORCID iDs is fast approaching the level of 6 million, and more publishers and standalone journals are partnering with Publons to streamline the peer review activities and global recognition of their reviewers. With the integration of Publons with Web of Science  in 2017 and further upgrades of the platform, the registered scholars are now offered automatic updates of their profiles by listing their WoS-indexed articles and tracking related citations. Publons profiles are particularly valued by emerging scholarly journals, aiming to attract scarcely available reviewers and increase the quality of peer review.5 The total number of registered reviewers on Publons is 541,093, including 571 in rheumatology . The Mediterranean Journal of Rheumatology acquired its profile on Publons this year to increase transparency of the peer review activities and give deserved academic credits to its best contributors .The author and reviewer identifiers, and particularly the Crossref, a powerful system for cross-linking references and updating individual digital profiles (http://crossref.org/). Launched in 2000, Crossref is currently run by the Publishers International Linking Association. The reference validation and formatting tools supported by Crossref permanent identifiers guarantee the accuracy of technical editing, formatting, and detecting plagiarism, to name just a few advantages of the system. With the expansion of Crossref services and integration with journal platforms , ensuring the efficiency of online publishing, navigating through myriads of scientific articles, and indexing with bibliographic databases are becoming closely interconnected. Once and for all, the concept of discoverability of scholarly items and systematic searches through online databases has shifted towards permanent article identifiers.7 Given the growing importance of the Crossref services, a decision was made to acquire DOIs for the Mediterranean Journal of Rheumatology this year to benefit from vast opportunities of improved visibility and integration with digital platforms and databases.The speed of processing and visibility of scholarly contributions are also increasingly dependent on Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) issued by 8 The absolute majority of open-access medical journals have benefited from archiving by PubMed Central, the largest digital repository of medical articles. The editors’ relentless efforts aimed to archive the Mediterranean Journal of Rheumatology by PubMed Central will widen prospects of indexing for this rapidly developing periodical.Over the past two decades, open-access publishing has increased global visibility and international recognition of journals across numerous subject categories. Various open access models have increased article views, downloads, and citations, transforming all these benefits into the scientific prestige of emerging and research-intensive fields of science.Mediterranean Journal of Rheumatology, and related links are embedded in the journal instructions: the Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002) and the Berlin Declaration on Open Access (2003).10 In line with the statements of these documents, the Open Access initiative is primarily aimed to increase the use of published items for research and education.11 Additionally, the improved visibility, one of the main achievements of the initiative, has enabled detecting and ‘cleaning’ erroneous and fraudulent literature.12 Although the main attribute of Open Access is free access to published works for readers, there are other, not less important, components related to digitization, preservation, and archiving. To meet the requirements of Open Access and satisfy indexing criteria of most bibliographic services, medical journal editors should familiarize themselves with the Journal Article Tag Suite (JATS) format of Extensible Markup Language (XML), which is employed by the National Library of Medicine of the US for encoding PubMed Central-archived items.13 The XML format enables machine-readability and makes it possible to index quality journals by most prestigious bibliographic databases and digital repositories.The basic principles of Open Access are outlined in two seminal documents, which are consulted by the editors of the Mediterranean Journal of Rheumatology to the area of medicine of the registry is an exemplary achievement for the whole field of rheumatology .While Open Access is gaining momentum and numerous journals opt for different models of open-access publishing , several global initiatives have been launched to distinguish periodicals with reliable peer-reviewed contents from spurious online platforms of wasteful publishing. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is one such initiative with strict scientific and technical criteria, listing 12,397 open access journals from 129 countries and offering records of 3,600,965 for systematic searches . The number of the listed medical journals is 699, with 472,913 linked items available for searches. The latest incorporation of the 14 The declared by the Mediterranean Journal of Rheumatology adherence to these principles is essential for its development and ethical promotion.Launched in 2003, the DOAJ project has passed a long way and become a ‘whitelist’ of reliable periodicals. The DOAJ collaborated with several global editorial associations to set principles of transparency in publishing.16 For medical journals, the DOAJ listing is proposed as one of the requirements for indexing by PubMed and archiving by PubMed Central.17 In 2015, the Scopus database introduced the open access indicator for separate marking DOAJ-listed journals, making it easier to navigate and search through the growing number of open-access periodicals which passed stringent quality checks.18 Notably, the SCImago Journal & Country Rank platform currently ranks 34,171 Scopus-indexed periodicals across all subject categories, including 4,504 for open access. In the field of rheumatology there are 60 Scopus-indexed periodicals, with 20 registered with DOAJ . These numbers will definitely continue to grow in the future.Acquiring the seal of DOAJ is a milestone in the journal digitization and recognition by the scientific community.International Committee of Medical Journal Editors  is perhaps the most important association; offering frequently updated editorial guidance for authors, reviewers, and editors. Editors claiming adherence to the ICMJE recommendations and enforcing its points in their daily practice offer good service to their community of authors and readers. Exemplary, the editors of the Mediterranean Journal of Rheumatology registered their interest in the recommendations at the ICMJE website in 2017.19While the recent digital innovations enormously influence the speed of publishing, editorial credentials still remain precious assets for the quality of publishing and impacting science. The journal editors with connections to global and regional editorial associations are capable of establishing networks of skilled peers, share experience, and add to the scientific prestige of respective periodicals. In the field of medicine, the 20 The editorial credentials and reviewer responsibilities are currently highlighted in the documents published by the Committee on Publication Ethics, the largest association of editors with more than 12,000 members. Member-editors of the COPE are now offered a set of updated recommendations about authorship problems, conflict of interest disclosures, ethics approval, copyright issues, journal management, and retractions.21 The latest incorporation of the updated publication ethics points into the instructions of the Mediterranean Journal of Rheumatology is an exemplary move towards better quality control for disseminating reliable information for the respective regional community.Several other global associations also allow advancing scientific and publishing editors’ skills.


European Psychiatry is the official journal of the European Psychiatric Association. Launched in 1986 by Patrice Boyer, Julien-Daniel Guelfi, and Yves Lecrubier, European Psychiatry has achieved a dynamic presence in the field by publishing cutting-edge clinical, biological and psychosocial research, by disseminating key policy and guidance documents, and by stimulating and fostering debate among all stakeholders in mental health and neuroscience.European Psychiatry is a peer-reviewed journal that is committed to publish the latest advances in the full range of issues related to mental health, including new developments in diagnosis and treatment, and advances in the biological underpinnings of mental, behavioral, and cognitive function in clinical and general population samples. Each year, European Psychiatry receives an average of 600 manuscripts, mostly from Europe, North and Central America, Australia, and Asia, which attract more than 1 million annual article views and downloads. We offer authors timely feedback with a mean time to editorial desk decision of less than a week and 4 weeks with peer review. Accepted articles are published online immediately upon receipt of corrected proofs, with an average time from submission to publication of 18 weeks.European Psychiatry is now undertaking a number of changes in line with our commitment to accessibility and transparency in publishing. From January 2020, European Psychiatry will become a fully gold open access journal, while maintaining its high standards in peer review and adhering to the current best practices in publishing. The move to a full open access model is motivated by our commitment to the principles outlined in Plan S—that the pursuit of science is supported by free access to research for all, including the public and those in disadvantaged regions.We are pleased to announce that At the same time, the journal will move to an online only publication model, emphasizing accessibility for readers and speed to publication for authors, and will allow authors to retain copyright through the adoption of a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. We are also adopting a new data transparency policy for all submissions made to the journal.European Psychiatry is introducing a new 21-member editorial board of international experts in mental health and neuroscience with equal gender representation. Our board will have a key role in increasing the profile and influence of the journal and shaping our development strategy going forward.In order to further support our goals, The journal will also change its publisher. We are delighted to become part of the publishing family of Cambridge University Press, a not-for-profit publishing house, which shares our commitment to psychiatry and open access and our vision for the future of the journal.European Psychiatry will not only continue to make fundamental contributions to the field of psychiatry, but also help strengthen communication and collaboration among clinicians, researchers, policy makers, and patient advocates.As we move forward, we believe that


JAMIA Open articles.It is simply astounding to consider the substantial advancements of biomedical informatics over its short 60-year history. Many will recall the era where paper charts dominated the practice of medicine and access to electronic health records was largely relegated to the precursor to what we now refer to as an academic health center. Along with the exponential advancements in digital technologies, led by the advent and rapid availability of microcomputers (what most now refer to as just a computer), the concept of digital medicine went from scholarly pursuit to clinical requirement. It is rare now to find a clinician who does not interact with a digital system, whether it be a simple electronic health record system to reference information about a patient or a more advanced clinical decision support system to guide a decision, to provide the highest quality of care. There are still many areas where refinement and improvement are needed, which form the basis of the content for JAMIA Open did prioritize COVID-19–related manuscripts through its peer-review process without sacrificing scholarly integrity or scientific quality. It is our intention to continue to do so as long as the pandemic results in record numbers of individuals being diagnosed, hospitalized, or dying from COVID-19 or its sequalae.The predominant vision for biomedical informaticians has long been to develop, implement, and evaluate solutions that would enable a digital future for medicine through the provision of the right electronic health information to the right person at the right time. In the past year, the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus resulted in the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw increased reliance on digital systems to support clinical and public health needs. There were, and continue to be, studies specific to how electronic systems have been developed or adapted to support diagnosis, treatment, and now vaccination for COVID-19. While COVID-19 dominated the headlines, advances across the full spectrum of health care continued. As with many biomedical journals, JAMIA Open reflects this, and with each issue extending our overall toolkit for transforming data into actionable clinical insights. As you read and experience the science presented across this issue, you will find a range of articles that reflect the breadth of biomedical informatics. We are fortunate that the regular submissions enable the development of issues that have something for the entirety of the biomedical informatics community.Even during a pandemic of historic proportions, healthcare challenges that existed before still remain. The research community continues its foundational work of improving models to better understand disease mechanisms, advancing approaches to support integration and use of electronic health data, or demonstrating how the latest algorithms can measurably increase the diagnosis, treatment, or monitoring of disease. The constant flow of submissions to JAMIA Open, I am pleased to reflect on the success that the journal has had as a result of the submissions, reviewers, and growing readership. We were purposeful in allowing the scope of the journal to develop organically, which has resulted in a strong and synergistic partnership with our sibling journal, JAMIA. Starting next year, we will begin the introduction of a limited number of special issues focused on specific topic areas. If you would be interested in leading, in collaboration with our editorial team, a topical special issue, look for more specific instructions in the coming months.Having concluded our first major phase to launch We will also be focusing this coming year on increasing our community of readers. As a young journal, our overall impact and readership depend on each share, tweet, and reference for both our short-term success and long-term sustainability. Please take a few moments to share your reflections on your favorite articles from this issue on your social media!JAMIA Open and hope you enjoy this latest issue.As always, I thank you for your support for