Digital sequence information (DSI), a placeholder term commonly understood to refer to information related to genetic sequences stored in a digital format, has become a foundational component to biological research and its applications, including biodiversity conservation and biotechnological innovation. DSI results from the physical access to and use of genetic resources, which falls under the purview of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization (NP). The CBD and the NP are legal frameworks governing access to genetic resources and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from their use, a mechanism widely known as access and benefit sharing (ABS). ABS should curb biodiversity loss by increasing incentives for conservation and sustainable biodiversity use. Despite good intentions, a number of national regimes adopted in pursuance of the CBD and NP have created complex, ineffective frameworks that exacerbate the risk of counterproductive effects for biodiversity conservation and sustainable use  on DSI. The outcomes of the AHTEG were examined by the Open-Ended Working Group on the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (WG2020), whose recommendations will, in turn, be considered by the CBD Conference of the Parties at its fifteenth conference in Kunming, China, anticipated in summer of 2022. Interim discussions on the issue are taking place at the third meeting of the WG2020 from 14 to 29 March 2022 in Geneva, Switzerland.https://learnnagoya.com/workshop-series/). During this virtual series, funded by the National Science Foundation and conducted in partnership with 18 scientific societies with US and international membership, over 500 participants from 58 countries discussed how DSI is currently managed and what challenges may emerge from explicitly including or excluding DSI under the CBD or the NP. Specifically, we discussed how the scientific community can enhance ABS and conservation in daily practice and in ongoing international discussions. The workshops were focused on experiences of and case studies from archeologists, anthropologists, botanists, biotechnologists, ecologists, microbiologists, plant biologists, virologists, and zoologists. The discussions highlighted that open access to and free circulation of DSI has been the norm within the scientific communities from both developed and developing countries. The participants recognized that benefits arising from the use of genetic resources, including data and knowledge, should be shared in a fair and equitable way, but they also expressed concerns that restrictive regulation of DSI or limits on the open sharing of DSI could further complicate scientific research and innovation . In the present article, we propose recommendations from the workshops that can contribute to the upcoming discussion on DSI during the WG2020 meeting and beyond.To contribute perspectives from the scientific community, the American Institute for Biological Sciences and an informal group of researchers known as the USA Nagoya Protocol Action Group ran an international workshop series called “How does sharing genetic sequence data impact biodiversity science and conservation?” in the fall of 2021 (Recognizing the value of DSI to support research that addresses global challenges, including biodiversity loss, food security, and global health, the workshop participants emphasized the need to ensure that there is open access to DSI for scientific research. If the ABS frameworks are extended to explicitly address DSI, they should distinguish between the commercial and noncommercial use of DSI. Mechanisms to differentiate between commercial and noncommercial use need to be identified and discussed among CBD and NP negotiators with careful consideration to implementation challenges. Furthermore, the scientific community often needs to respond in real time to global crises, such as preventing the spread of invasive species or vector-borne diseases that can have widespread negative ecological and economic impacts. Whatever policy is agreed to should enable the open sharing of DSI for scientific research across international borders without delay to ensure research can address critical needs.Recommendation 1: Urge the continued exploration of policy options that differentiate between commercial and noncommercial use of DSI, which can be practically implemented and to enable the open sharing of DSI across international borders without delay.NP. By making this data available, the scientific and source communities can verify compliance with benefit-sharing commitments. Implementing this will require coordination across many independent stakeholders who fall outside of the jurisdiction of the CBD.The workshop series highlighted that scientists who use DSI often expend significant effort to openly share data, through publication and archiving of sequences for open access via public databases such as GenBank and through other initiatives intended to enhance access to genetic information. We recommend not only to raise the visibility of and investments in data aggregators but to request that they curate benefit sharing and permission information to conform with the Recommendation 2: Establish an open forum for major public DSI databases, data aggregators, and users of DSI to explore mechanisms to improve tracking of provenance data and links among DSI, traditional knowledge, and specimens.The scientific community is well positioned to identify opportunities to improve benefit sharing and to develop pragmatic, implementable practices for international collaboration, which may vary by subdiscipline. International representatives of different scientific disciplines and professional societies can be convened to develop guidelines for the responsible use of biodiversity information and its implementations, which involves user awareness about data policies, sample origins, intended use, reporting performed research, recording publications that use repository-hosted data, and encouraging compliance with regulations. There are multiple examples of long-term international research programs that develop communities of practice and mobilize benefit sharing as a part of broadening opportunities for capacity building, engagement, and true intellectual collaboration. Examples include practices for DSI sharing and use created by the WAVE Center of Excellence in Côte d'Ivoire (Bakelana et al. Inviting members of the scientific community to develop best practices for international collaboration on biodiversity research would be consistent with article 20 of the NP, which establishes that parties “shall encourage, as appropriate, the development, update and use of voluntary codes of conduct, guidelines, and best practices or standards in relation to access and benefit-sharing” and “consider the adoption of specific codes of conduct, guidelines, and best practices or standards.” Engaging with the scientific community to inform these guidelines will increase community buy-in and provide assurances that recommendations will be implementable.Recommendation 3: Establish a forum under the auspices of the CBD to host international scientists and other users of DSI to develop international best practices for cross-border collaboration.The workshop participants expressed that complying with the NP, even without a mandate to expand its scope to include DSI, has delayed research progress and increased the burden and cost of collaboration. Their institutions provide little to no administrative assistance in navigating NP-related legislation in each country, placing the burden of compliance on the researcher alone, without centralization. Furthermore, many NP parties continue to have inadequate or unclear ABS national regimes, which exacerbates uncertainties about how to share genetic resources across international borders and about personal and professional liabilities associated with lack of compliance.To address these ongoing and anticipated challenges, governments should provide funding and administrative support to both scientists and research-and-collections-focused institutions to enable compliance with ABS requirements. This could include support for development of legal agreements, permits, material transfer agreements, data sharing, and communication with NP focal points, as appropriate. Without financial support, many scientists and institutions may be disincentivized from pursuing international collaboration, publication, and data sharing.Recommendation 4: First, urge parties to engage with their domestic science funding agencies to provide institutional-level support to develop domestic infrastructure to support NP compliance. Second, encourage nonparties to voluntarily follow the guidance in the first part of this recommendation, recognizing that scientists from nonparty countries must also comply with the legal frameworks established by NP parties to conduct international research and data sharing.Recommendation 5: Request CBD Secretariat to develop outreach materials to ensure that institutions and scientists understand their obligations pertaining to the access and benefit sharing of physical specimens and to DSI, as appropriate.The workshop speakers, including those from South America and Africa, emphasized that many biodiversity-rich countries lack capacity, training, funding, and resources to conduct scientific research. In addition, many do not have the infrastructure to archive, publish, or otherwise share DSI or to sustainably house biological specimens. This heightens the importance of international collaborations to maximize nonmonetary benefit sharing to fulfill these functions. If the ABS required under the NP are extended to explicitly include DSI, the delivery of capacity building and training could become further complicated as researchers struggle to understand how to comply with new requirements. For this reason, an increased investment in programs and infrastructure to enhance international collaboration is warranted.Based on the workshop discussions, two types of programs are especially needed, in addition to increasing support of biodiversity-focused research programs and DSI curation efforts:Biorepositories are increasingly important facilitators between users and providers, as well as education centers. Biorepositories often provide biological specimens for research and sequencing and also collect and retain user data. Biorepositories are also ABS instruments because they maintain and safeguard genetic diversity. The workshop participants proposed that investments should be directed to maintain and modernize existing, decentralized biorepositories and should support virtual national and international networks to connect distributed biorepositories and researchers. Examples include the virtual community of practice model, Museums and Emerging Pathogens in the Americas (Colella et al. International platforms that support collaborations between scientists in developed countries and those in low and middle-income countries are needed. There are several examples of programs that should be expanded, noting that current support is insufficient to meet demand. The Partnerships for Enhanced Engagement in Research Program, supported by the US Agency for International Development's Higher Education Solutions Network, provides a platform for scientists in low and middle-income countries to partner with US scientists who have received competitive, merit reviewed funding from nine federal research agencies. Similar programs include the Japan Science and Technology Agency, UK Research and Innovation, and the Philippines Department of Science and Technology Science, Technology and Action's Nexus for Development Program, and the African Union and European Union sponsored African Research Initiative for Scientific Excellence Pilot Programme.Recommendation 6: Recognizing the exemplary practices of growing ABS around DSI in the collections community, direct parties to increase resources to support the development, operations and maintenance of biorepositories, and invite nonparties to voluntarily contribute to these efforts.Recommendation 7: Encourage parties and nonparties to enhance support of bilateral and multilateral capacity building, collaboration, training and educational exchange programs.The conversations about how existing ABS mechanisms can be extended to DSI emphasize the importance for all countries, including the United States, to actively engage in the policy debates occurring in the context of important multilateral environmental agreements, including the CBD. The absence of US negotiators from the policymaking process marginalizes the US scientific community, as well as those in both developed and developing countries who benefit from scientific collaboration and innovation with US scientists.Recommendation 8: Encourage states not party to the CBD to ratify the agreement as soon as practicable.As policy options are considered for how to address DSI in the context of existing ABS mechanisms, including the NP, the implementation framework for each option must be reviewed to assess potential impacts on future technological developments and biodiversity conservation. Policies must preserve open access to DSI for noncommercial intended research, enable international collaboration, be practical, efficient and cost effective to implement, ensure legal certainty, and account for both monetary and nonmonetary benefits; see Scholz et al.  for a rebiac019_Supplemental_FileClick here for additional data file.


Correction: Environ Health 20, 90 (2021)https://doi.org/10.1186/s12940-021-00771-6Following publication of their original article , the autERRATUM:The BMC Competing Interests Policy states: “…A competing interest exists when the authors’ interpretation of data or presentation of information may be influenced by, or may be perceived to be influenced by, their personal or financial relationship with other people or organizations.” At the time of publication in 2021, our team of nine co-authors interpreted the BMC Policy as not requiring declaration of any real or perceived competing interest. Since then, however, the authors decided that any past role for which professional activities or payments were involved ought to have been stated, for the sake of greater transparency. We submit the following as an ERRATUM under the topic of Competing Interests:S. A., L. A. B., and D.M., three of the team of nine authors, declare that they had, and continue to have, no competing financial or non-financial interests.The remaining six co-authors declare as follows:C. L. S. is retired and unfunded since 2013. In the recent past, he served, for about three years prior to 2013, as an expert witness in asbestos tort actions and a diacetyl case on behalf of plaintiffs, the monies from which went into a University of Alberta-managed research account. As a professional legacy, he bankrolled the International Network for Epidemiology in Policy (INEP) (2011–2016) as a voluntary professional society in the hope that it might become self-sustaining in the pursuit of science in the public interest. He has endorsed amicus briefs in support of plaintiffs in asbestos litigation. His doctoral thesis, in the early 1980s, was funded by the Exxon Corporation.S. K. has no financial competing interests. She was the Founder and CEO of Epidemiology International. She has served, until 2016, as an expert witness in toxic tort and pharmaceutical tort litigation on behalf of plaintiffs. Payment for such work was made to her company, Epidemiology International. Epidemiology International has also performed work under contract for industry, pharmaceutical companies, the U.S. federal and state governments, and patient advocacy groups.J.P.R.-B. was invited, between 2015 and 2019, ad honorem, to provide his expert opinion in the Colombian Senate in support of a national asbestos ban that had been proposed, a ban that was finally approved in 2019.J. B. S. is employed by the Natural Resources Defense Council, a U.S.-based environmental non-profit group that engages in public advocacy, lobbying, and litigation to expand protections for the environment and public health and to enforce existing environmental laws regulating toxic chemicals, including some of the chemicals identified in this manuscript. This work receives partial funding from Deer Creek Foundation, and Passport Foundation.M. G. retired in 2014 and has not done paid consulting work on any environmentally related issue since that time. His last paid consulting work was prior to about 2010. He wrote scientific papers and served as an expert on hexavalent chromium clean-up and was deposed by the principal responsible parties fighting a state-ordered cleanup of major hexavalent chromium contamination. The research and deposition were part of his academic job description, and no fees were paid directly to him.C.F.C. has, from time to time, been sought after to serve on science advisory panels and governmental agencies to emphasize issues concerning science in the law. He has participated in various amicus briefs with no compensation. From about 2009, he wrote reports and consulted on scientific reasoning for a few law firms for pay, but he did not testify except in one Daubert hearing before a judge.Our collective goal is transparency in the pursuit of truth through the advancement of science in the public interest.


The use of preprints, research manuscripts shared publicly before completing the traditional peer-review process, is becoming a more common practice among life science researchers. Early-career researchers (ECRs) benefit from posting preprints as they are shareable, citable, and prove productivity. However, preprinting a manuscript involves a discussion among all co-authors, and ECRs are often not the decision-makers. Therefore, ECRs may find themselves in situations where they are interested in depositing a preprint but are unsure how to approach their co-authors or advisor about preprinting. Leveraging our own experiences as ECRs, and feedback from the research community, we have constructed a guide for ECRs who are considering preprinting to enable them to take ownership over the process and to raise awareness about preprinting options. We hope that this guide helps ECRs to initiate conversations about preprinting with co-authors and encourage them to preprint their future research. Summary: Are you an early-career researcher considering preprinting, but unsure how to approach conversations about the possibility? Here, we discuss preprinting and provide tips to enable you to take ownership over the process. Preprints have attracted the attention of life scientists due to their growth in recent years and their role in facilitating the prompt sharing of research findings related to the COVID-19 pandemic . PreprinThough ECRs are often interested in open science and preprints , many fiA preprint is defined as a full draft version of a research manuscript shared publicly prior to the peer-review process . PostingPreprints can enhance the reachability and visibility of research findings, as they are not associated with access barriers . Thus, pPreprints are not new to the research community. In the 1960s, the NIH created the Information Exchange Groups (IEGs) to circulate copies of biological preprints. The IEGs ended up growing into seven different groups with a membership of more than 3600 participants and distributed over 2500 documents. However, by 1967 the IEGs were abandoned after several journal publishers refused to accept articles circulated as preprints . Physicihttps://asapbio.org/preprint-servers; Preprint adoption in the life sciences started with the launch of bioRxiv in November 2013. Currently, over 50 preprint servers cover a wide range of disciplines; for a list of preprint servers relevant to life sciences, biomedical, and clinical research, refer to the ASAPbio webpage . Here are a few important things to consider:So, after considering all the above, you would like to preprint your paper; how to get started? As a first step, have a conversation with your advisor about preprinting your next paper. If you are unsure about where they stand regarding preprints, you can start by asking about their views on preprinting. If you have these discussions with your advisor or co-authors by email, we have provided some draft email structures to help you ; Text S1Keep it simple.Familiarize yourself with your institution or funder policy for communicating the work. Do they encourage or require preprints?Find out your advisor's priorities for sharing the group's work.Provide examples of other researchers in your field who have preprinted.Offer additional resources or seek further input about using preprints.If you are meeting with your advisor in person, even if you come prepared with all the answers, remember that your advisor may have questions that you did not anticipate or may still be unsure of what might be best for the work after your conversation. They may need time to mull over the options and get back to you; not everything needs to be settled in one conversation. You could offer to gather more information on preprinting or their specific concerns to share with them and then continue the conversation at the next meeting. All authors must be on board to preprint the manuscript, so having these meetings early on can leave time for you to address concerns.In addition, consider the language and construction of the argument that you will use in your preprinting conversations. Try to use ‘I’ language when discussing your goals and motivations and remind all parties how this aligns with your values or will benefit your career. If someone has a different opinion on preprinting than you do, investigate this opinion further by asking them how they reached that conclusion. Come prepared with resources to share and be aware of common concerns  . If you are new to social media, there are several existing guides for scientists that can help you get started , preprinting can greatly benefit ECRs.‘scoop protection’ policies that recognize the date of the preprint deposition as the date at which their policy applies. The scooping-protection policy stipulates that from the date of the preprint, if another publication appears reporting similar findings, that would not impact the consideration of the paper submitted to their journals.In the coming years, life scientists might use preprints as a channel to establish priority, which has been established practice in the physics community for years . In suppResearchers often worry about the potential risk of scooping when they present their preliminary findings at conferences or symposiums. Attendees could use the information they heard at the conference and scoop the presenter. As the information would have been available only to the conference attendees, there is limited audience to vouch for who has priority over that work and it would not be easy to establish who did what and when. Depositing a preprint before the conference presentation records the priority claim with a time-stamp and provides protection from scooping.A tangible benefit of preprints is that they are citable and can prove productivity for prospective funders. Many funding agencies now have policies that allow citing preprints as part of grant applications and reports (more information on funder policies at asapbio.org/funder-policies). We expect to see more funding agencies update their policies, recognizing the importance of preprints in the future. Besides funders, several research institutions have started to include preprints in their processes for hiring and promotion (see asapbio.org/university-policies).Another common concern that may arise in conversations around preprints is sharing work before peer review. Some researchers worry about disseminating their findings before completing the traditional peer-review process, which provides feedback on the work and can also address any errors before the broader circulation of the manuscript. It is important to note that the preprint should be carefully prepared before depositing it to the server, similar to journal manuscript preparation. To this end, ensure that all co-authors check the paper before posting and consider receiving feedback from colleagues prior to submitting the paper to the preprint server.An advantage of posting a preprint is that feedback received from the scientific community can help to improve the manuscript and is independent of subjective evaluations about journal fit. Incorporating community feedback into the manuscript can even increase the chances of eventual publication. A preprint brings more eyes and a broader range of perspectives to the paper than the traditional two or three reviewers from the journal's peer-review. Thus, it can provide a robust mechanism to identify any issues before a manuscript enters the journal's editorial process and valuable input on specific aspects including the statistical analyses, methodology, or the interpretations of the data. Importantly, preprint servers allow authors to submit new versions of the preprint. It is straightforward for authors to post a revision as a new preprint version after incorporating additional work or correcting any oversights. The mechanisms for preprint versioning allow updates or corrections to the paper in a faster and simpler path compared to corrections to the article's version of record at a journal.eLife, Journal of Cell Biology, and Molecular Biology of the Cell — that have agreed to use the reviews provided by Review Commons to inform their evaluation and editorial decision, thus avoiding multiple review rounds. Review Commons requires the authors to post a preprint before submitting the manuscript to an affiliate journal.Several platforms offer feedback and evaluations on preprints, and in some of these the peer-review process runs similarly to the traditional journal peer review. For example, Review Commons, an initiative by EMBO Press and ASAPbio, allows researchers to submit their preprint for peer review prior to journal submission. Review Commons has partnered with 17 affiliate journals — the Company of Biologists’s journals, EMBO Press journals, PLOS, Services such as Review Commons and Peer Community In - which also completes evaluation of preprints - involve the review of preprints in a process coordinated by an editor or similar role. On the other hand, other platforms, such as PREreview and PubPeer, allow any community member to provide feedback on the preprint . In addiProceedings of the Royal Society B and Open Biology have appointed preprint editors who check the latest preprints to solicit submissions to their journals .First, you need to choose a preprint server for your manuscript. Think carefully about your audience and what server will best reach the targeted audience (see above). If you plan to submit the manuscript to a journal, familiarize yourself with the journal's editorial policies about preprints. Check if the journal specifies any preprint servers they accept for preprint deposition, for example, some journals have policies only allowing preprints to be deposited on non-profit servers  to a range of Creative Commons (CC) licenses, which standardize permissions for the type of use allowed for the work (asapbio.org/licensing-faq). A CC BY license allows any type of re-use without requiring permission from the author, providing credit is given to the original author(s). This type of credit is called attribution . The CC In general, preprint servers are format agnostic, meaning they accept a single file of your manuscript in any format  and then authorship information. You can link the preprint-related data and additional resources deposited in public repositories to your preprint. This may be important if your target journal has an open-data policy  which requires all data and code to be publicly available.Now that you've chosen a preprint server, license type, and prepared your manuscript, decide who will submit the manuscript and when it will be submitted. In the bioRxiv survey, authors preferred preprinting either before journal submission (42%) or concurrent to journal submission (37%)  preprintIrrespective of the field, many researchers are still wary of preprinting, and it is understandable that other authors may have concerns or may need additional time to consider your request. Almost half of the respondents in our Twitter survey who were unable to convince their co-authors to preprint, indicated that their co-authors might be open to preprinting in the future. Offer to continue the conversation another time and suggest to them that it's worth keeping an eye on the latest preprints coming out in your field. You may also suggest you revisit the option of preprinting for another paper where they may view the stakes as less high. If your co-authors are still uninterested, there are still many other ways to get involved with preprints even if you are unable to preprint your current work.Beyond providing an opportunity to promptly share your work and get credit for it, preprints also offer other benefits to your scientific career. For example, several communities with an interest in open science also support preprints. Getting involved with one or more of those groups can be a way to expand your professional network and connect with other researchers in your discipline.ASAPbio has an international community of researchers and others in the science communication space, who drive initiatives to support preprints and interact and support each other. ASAPbio also runs a fellows program allowing participants to learn more about preprints and develop skills to drive discussions about the productive use of preprints in the life sciences. eLife coordinates an ambassadors program, which aims to bring together ECRs interested in promoting change in academic culture and science communication. preLights, an initiative of the Company of Biologists, provides a platform for ECRs to highlight preprints they find of interest and is another way to engage with preprints.If you are interested in developing your review skills, several options are currently available. Preprint journal clubs are an excellent opportunity to keep up to date with the latest research in your field and connect with others. If you are part of a local journal club, you can suggest incorporating preprints, if they are not already covered. If you do not have a local journal club, you can explore online options, e.g. PREreview coordinates live-streamed preprint journal clubs.We hope that this informational guide will be useful for readers, especially ECRs, interested in preprinting their research. In addition to exploring the current landscape of preprints in the life sciences, we have discussed common concerns around preprints that might come up in conversations with colleagues. The tips provided in this article are useful for having conversations with advisors and co-authors about preprinting, including email templates and practical steps needed to preprint your work.In this piece, we may have missed many tips and suggestions, but as preprints continue to grow, so will our collective expertise as well as the evidence around the use of preprints for science communication. We are excited to watch the preprinting community continue to grow and look forward to seeing more preprint engagement from ECRs in the coming years.


This study aimed to determine the publication rate of free paper abstracts presented by the postgraduate (PG) trainees and determine the reasons for non-publication. A mixed methods study was conducted. PG trainees presenting free papers at the at the Pakistan Society of Chemical Pathologist conferences from 2012 to 2018 were included. Three databases were searched to identify if the abstracts were published or not. The PG trainee authors of abstracts not published as full manuscript, were surveyed to determine the barriers and challenges in publishing a manuscript.The average rate of full manuscript publication was 51.8% (n = 93/177) for the abstracts presented by the PG trainees. Publication rate was higher for oral  compared to poster presentation . Most of the manuscripts were published after two years of abstract presentation. The survey showed that the main challenges to publishing an abstract were lack of time, limited scientific writing or submission skills, lack of funding for publication fee, and negative or statistically non-significant results. This reflects a need to arrange workshops/symposia for the PG trainees of low-middle income country (LMIC) to enhance their writing and time management skills and improve the full manuscript publication rate from LMICs.The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13104-022-06138-5. Scientific meetings provide a platform for sharing developments in medical research, exchange ideas, and initiate future collaboration. Presentation of a study at a scientific conference is a method for rapidly disseminating research information which otherwise may take months or even years until it is made available to the colleagues through peer-reviewed journals . Not allIn LMICs, where research funding is low and research opportunities are scarce, it is feared that the rate of publication could be even lower, especially in countries like Pakistan. This leads to a gap in the current literature from the LMICs and this will become more apparent seeing the 97% of population growth in developing versus the developed countries . A studyThe annual conference of Pakistan Society of Chemical Pathologist (PSCP) is the largest national event fully dedicated to the analytical, clinical, epidemiological, and translational research areas of Chemical Pathology in Pakistan. Majority of submissions come from PGME trainees who are beginning their research career under supervision of senior faculty. In this study we aimed to determine the factors responsible for non-publication in our setup and what further steps can be taken to improve it.Mixed method study was conducted to ascertain the self-perceived barriers to full manuscript publication by the PG trainees. In the first phase, quantitative data of free paper abstracts by PG trainees accepted for presentation at the PSCP conferences from 2012 to 2018 was analyzed. To identify the maximum number of articles published, we choose to include abstracts from meetings done at least three years ago, as previous literature has reported that most articles are published as full manuscript within two to three years of presentation , 4. AbstA manual search of the online PubMed, Google scholar, and PakMedinet databases for each abstract using keywords  and presenting author names of abstracts. If not found on the aforementioned search engines, authors were contacted to gather information about the full manuscript published. An abstract was considered published as a complete manuscript if the title, manuscript body, author list had similarities with the abstract presented. Journal titles, indexing, local or international , Medline/PubMed indexing status, impact factors and time to publication (months elapsed between the presentation at the conference and the publication of the manuscript) was retrieved for each published article.For identifying the reasons of not publishing a 15-question anonymous survey was developed on Google forms and piloted to check the face validity, functionality and logic by two peers who were not part of the study  with three young researchers with less than 5 years of experience after post-graduation, was conducted on March 13th, 2019 to determine the barriers and challenges in publishing abstracts presented at conferences, reasons of not publishing abstracts as full manuscripts and ascertain the possible solutions to these problems.The study was done as per Helsinki’s ethical code, and the ethical review committee’s approval was not required. Exemption was sought from the institutional Ethical Review Committee (2019-1449-3769). A research assistant transferred all the research data to a password-protected computer that was not connected to the internet, via a USB flash drive. The computer was located in a research team member’s office.Data was analyzed by Microsoft Excel 2010. Frequencies were generated for oral or poster abstracts, full manuscript published, local or international journal, high or low impact and reasons for non-publication. The publication rate for each conference was determined. A qualitative analysis of FGD data was performed.In PSCP meetings held annually over a 6 years’ period, a total of 177 free paper abstracts were presented. Of the total published abstracts 65.7% (n = 119) were presented as oral presentations. Of the total abstracts 51.8% (n = 93) of these were eventually published in journals. The overall publication rates for the 6 years ranged from 31.2% in 2017 to 77.8% in 2015 and the average time to publish was 1.71 years  shown in Additional file The survey questionnaire was sent only to PG trainee authors, whose full manuscripts were not published as full manuscripts. Total 82 abstracts by 66 presenters were not published, and of these contact information was available for 60 presenters only. The response rate for the survey was 45% (27/60). The commonest barrier to publish an abstract as a full manuscript reported by the abstract authors was lack of time. The self-reported barriers to publication are shown in Fig. A FGD was conducted to assess the challenges faced by the researchers while publishing researches. It was attended by the PI and three junior consultants from different medical universities across Pakistan. The consultants from AKU and Ziauddin University, Karachi participated in person, while residents from Quaid-e-Azam University, Bahawalpur, attended via Zoom. All the participants were presented with 7 open ended questions; and their responses are summarized in Table Publication of a free paper abstract as full text manuscripts not only improves discoverability of the work, widens dissemination, but the published objective evidence can then be used for developing guidelines and clinical practice recommendations. Only 44% abstracts presented were published. Similar publication rates were reported by other studies , 9. ConfMost common barrier to publication is lack of time. Kapp et al. reported that in addition to difficulties of the writing process, lack of time and uncertainty about choice of topic, the fear of rejection are also a major barrier to publication . Keen etPG trainee or junior faculty development as a researcher: workshops related to research should be planned and executed. CPD activities like courses and workshops can be conducted on ‘How should a researcher manage time?’, ‘How to write a manuscript?’, and ‘How and where to publish?’. Shoko et al. reported that researchers in the developing or LMICs often have inadequate writing skills and workshops can improve these skills [e skills .Mentoring programs: mentoring programs should be developed by pairing a junior with a senior researcher who can provide guidance in project planning, execution and manuscript writing. As Jatin et al. reported that mentors play a significant role of in guiding, encouraging, and supporting novice researchers [earchers .Cultural change: small group research meetings, initiatives for formulation of specific task force and working groups on theme-based topics should be developed. Avenues for indexed journals with impact factors should be identified, dissemination of information regarding different grants opportunities to pay for processing/publishing fee for the junior researchers or identify avenues for fee waive off for institutions of LMICs. Keen et al. explores the changes an institutes can bring to support and facilitate researchers to develop a positive culture towards publication, identified that providing editing services and collaborative scientific writing courses can improve the publications [ications .Resources, awards and appreciations: one of the barrier to full-text publication was lack of funding/grant to cover for the article processing or publication charges. This can be overcome by giving awards, small grants for publication, and to further motivate young researchers’ societies can give free registration to attend conference etc., hence promoting research culture in a society. The societies and institutes can provide different resources for researchers, like end note for reference citations, software for anlysis, diagrams, plagiarism checking, and language editing services and workshops can be conducted on how to select a journal best suited for the manuscript. A study by Clapton J reported that to enhance research and publication culture the key motivators are sharing of ideas through research meetings, professional development through workshops or courses, giving protected time to researchers to write manuscripts, mentoring, peer recognition and encouragement [ragement .The findings reported in this study mostly reflect the pre-pandemic behavior of author, while during the pandemic most of the conferences were conducted virtually, increasing the number of abstracts submitted but the barriers to full-text publication may not change. Different strategies which can be adopted to overcome the barriers to full text manuscript publication reported by the abstracts’ presenters are:The study findings presented here may be particularly useful for researchers from LMICs, however results cannot be extrapolated to the whole country, as these conclusions are mainly based on only 27 questionnaires and larger sample size studies are required in this area.The barriers to full manuscript publication were poor time management by the young researcherst and limited writing skills. These findings call for better research training of PG trainees are better equipped to translate their research findings into successful publications and increase the publication rates from the LMICs.The limitation of the current study was that the reliability testing of questionnaire was not done and not all participants attempted the survey questionnaire and only free papers presented by PG trainees before 2018 were selected.Additional file 1: Figure 1. Proforma of the Survey to assess the publication outcomes of the abstracts presented at the Annual PSCP conferences.Additional file 2: Figure 2. a Abstracts Presented Orally and Published as Full Manuscript. b Abstracts Presented as Posters and Published as Full Manuscript.


Nursing Reports, the focus of my work is to ensure submitted manuscripts are handled in a timely manner and that authors are provided with helpful and constructive feedback. I also want to be engaged and transparent with authors, reviewers, editorial board members and editors regarding the performance of the journal and how we might work to improve what we do and how we work. One of the ways I promote transparency is by publishing an annual report about how we are doing as a journal against a range of metrics. I published my first annual report for 2020 which covered the first six months of MDPI taking over as the publisher of Nursing Reports [As Editor-in-Chief of  Reports . My secoGoals from 2021Nursing Reports for the coming year [In my previous report, we set some goals for ing year . In summNursing Reports—is a member of COPE and that all members of the editorial team follow the COPE code of conduct and best practice guidelines for journal editors. The COPE code is a set of minimum standards that editors are expected to adhere to. More information about the COPE code can be accessed via this link: https://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_Mar11.pdf (accessed on 7 March 2011). Please make me or any of my editorial colleagues aware if you think our editorial practices fall below these standards.An important starting point is to restate that MDPI—the publisher of Nursing Reports has three Associate Editors, which is down one from the four we had in 2020. All are women. Two work in North America and one in Australia.Currently, Nursing Reports comprises 31 colleagues from nine countries. The number of editorial board members has decreased one since the last report. Board members are mainly from Europe (n = 17), Australia (n = 6) and North America (n = 5). Growing the size of the editorial board was a goal for 2021 which we did not achieve. Ten of our editorial board members are highly cited researchers.The Editorial Board of Nursing Reports, for which I am personally extremely grateful. Most reviewers were from Europe (n = 132), North America (n = 48) and Asia (n = 20). No journal can function without peer reviewers who freely give their time to provide a rigorous critique of their colleagues' work; on behalf of MDPI and the editorial team, we thank you.In total 227 colleagues have reviewed papers for Nursing Reports in 2021. Most were reporting primary research (n = 154) or reviews of the literature (n = 28).In total 186 papers were submitted to Nursing Reports published 90 papers—an acceptance rate of 60%—of which 68 papers were observational studies  and 9 were qualitative studies. In total, 13 (14.4%) papers were reviews of the existing literature . Additionally, we published two editorials. We exceed our target in terms of the number of papers but not the number of editorials we were aiming for. We received fewer letters to the editor than we were hoping for.Nursing Reports are reviewed by at least two reviewers. Reviewers are selected by the editorial team by matching keywords in the paper with those in the reviewer profile. The modal (average) number of reviews for each paper received was 2.7. The mean time from submission to first decision was 23.5 days (range 8–64 days), which was broadly similar to those we reported last year. As intended, we have maintained our handling times for submitted manuscripts.All papers—except for letters to the editor and editorials—submitted to Once authors have received a formal acceptance notification from MDPI the average time to online publication is 5 days.Nursing Reports has—as is required by the COPE code—a clear and transparent appeals process. If an author feels that their work has been unfairly rejected by an editor, they should feel empowered to appeal knowing that the decision will be reviewed by another editor who was not involved with the initial decision. It could be interpreted positively that Nursing Reports received no appeals against any of the editorial decisions that we made in 2021. However, I might express some concern that authors have not felt willing to challenge decisions they consider to be wrong.There is an increasing recognition that authors should make their data freely available for other researchers to check and reuse  and MDPI is committed to encouraging and supporting authors to share and archive their research data publicly accessible repositories. Of the 90 papers published in 2021, 4 authors made their data available in a publicly accessible repository and 31 authors indicated that data were available on request.Much has been written about the importance of pre-registering research before fieldwork starts or, in the case of systematic reviews, authors undertake their initial searches . Pre-regn = 1 experimental study, n = 1 observational research, n = 5 reviews).One way in which journals can support the pre-registration agenda is through the publication of research protocols. Protocols are detailed descriptions of the study justification and methodology that a research group intends to follow. By publishing a protocol researchers make open and transparent the work they are doing. Since 2021, we have published seven protocols . In total papers published in Nursing Reports received 84 citations (in WoS) in 2021.The papers that were published in Nursing Reports Special Issues in progress : New Advances in Nursing Care, Evidence-Base Practice and Personalized Care, Burnout and Nursing Care, Nursing and COVID-19, Quality of Life in Cancer Patients. Special Issues serve as a useful mechanism for bringing together researchers and scholars to focus on a particular topic. Currently, we have five active Nursing Reports has established a Twitter account (@NursRep_MDPI) which we launched in February 2021. To date, we have 112 followers and have published 129 tweets. I would encourage colleagues to follow us on Twitter and retweet our content that interests or engages you.Nursing Reports is listed on Clarivate Analytics Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI). ESCI was launched in 2015 to ensure visibility of research in the Web of Science Core collection and is a stepping stone to inclusion in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) if journals consistently demonstrate the highest standard of editorial and publishing best practices. Over the course of the rest of 2022, we will continue to work towards the twin goals of being listed in SCOPUS and the SCIE which is important in affirming the reputation of the journal across the broader nursing science community.Nursing Reports to take a positive position on publishing empty reviews. An empty review is one where no studies meet the pre-defined inclusion criteria. If you would like to read more about empty reviews, I would direct readers to the work of Yaffe et al. [A small—but in my view important—achievement in 2021 was for e et al. . Empty rNursing Reports has launched a best paper award. In fact, two awards—best review and best research—for papers published in 2021. Winners of the awards will receive 500 CHF and a voucher to publish a paper in the Journal. More importantly, winners will receive a certificate. If you would like more information about the awards, please see the following link . Rest assured we will have journal awards for the best papers published in 2022.The winner will not be announced until March 2023, but Nursing Reports to be careful and considered in the language they use. Simply put, words matter. You can read more about the importance of inclusive language in our revised instructions for authors .A final, but again important, achievement  is that we have published guidance encouraging authors that contribute to For the year ahead—recognizing that we are already well into 2022—these are what I see as the challenges and opportunities that—with my editorial colleagues—I want to address.The editorial board will meet three times in 2022 to review the performance of the journal and how we might work together to better address the challenges and concerns of authors. We will also look to expand the membership of the editorial board, with a particular focus on colleagues from underrepresented regions. If you are interested in joining the editorial board, please contact me or my MDPI colleagues.Nursing Reports, we do encourage authors to describe how patients and the public were involved in the submitted research. Working with the editorial board we will develop a plan about how we support meaningful engagement of patients and the public in research.There is a consensus view that patient and public involvement and engagement (PPIE) in research improves the quality, relevance, and impact of the work. In many countries funding bodies require that researchers demonstrate how patients and the public have been authentically and meaningfully involved in the design of the research. There is little evidence that nurses are working with patients and the public in the design of their research . I wouldNursing Reports indicate that they have followed the relevant guideline. In 2022, we will make it much clearer to authors that they need to ensure that their reporting is fully compliant with the relevant guideline and ensure that this has been done prior to manuscripts being sent for peer review.Guidelines such as CONSORT  are inteIn 2022, we would like to instigate at least another six Special Issues; please contact me if you would like to discuss this further.Nursing Reports. We will set a goal of publishing at least six editorials in 2022 and would encourage authors with a topic or issue that would like to write about, again, to contact me. I will also actively encourage members of the editorial board to contribute editorials to the journal.It would be good to see more editorials in Nursing Reports in 2022. We will also award a prize at the end of the year to the reviewer that has reviewed most papers for the journal.We will publish a list annually (likely in January 2023) acknowledging and thanking peer reviewers that have contributed to Post-publication scrutiny is a vital part of the scientific method . Unlike I am not convinced that nurse researchers have grappled with the need to ensure that the data that underpins the research that they publish is freely available for other researchers to check and reuse. I intend to write an editorial setting out the journal's position on data availability and how nurses—when designing their research—should consider carefully how the data from their study will be curated at the end of the project.Nursing Reports will adopt a positive editorial position encouraging authors to submit their pilot and feasibility work.Several other nursing journals have an editorial position not to publish pilot or feasibility studies. This type of research is important in informing full studies. Researchers should not, for example, embark on a full randomized controlled trial without first establishing that it is feasible to recruit the required number of participants. By not publishing pilot or feasibility studies, in my view, journals are sending a message to authors that this work is not important; in fact, the opposite is true. Well-conducted preliminary research is important in ensuring that time, effort, and resources are not wasted and that participants are not put at unnecessary risk. Nursing Reports, my MDPI colleagues and I are endeavoring to be as open and transparent with our editors, reviewers, authors, and readers as we can be. If there is information that you think is helpful for us to include in the next report, please do get in touch.By publishing an annual report as Editor-in-Chief of Nursing Reports is to be author-focused. We aim to ensure that researchers and scholars that submit their work to the journal receive positive, constructive, and timely reviews of their work. Because Nursing Reports is Open Access, papers are not hidden behind a paywall and can be freely accessed by nurses in practice, and the patients and families they work with.The editorial philosophy of


Ensuring that public feedback on preprints is focused, appropriate, specific and transparent (or FAST) will help to develop a thriving culture for reviewing and commenting on preprints. In the traditional publishing model, the gap between the submission of a manuscript to a journal and its publication after peer review is measured in months, sometimes years. With preprints, this gap comes down to days. This early and public availability of articles creates opportunities for other researchers to read, cite, and build on the work. It also enables others to respond to the work on social media or via a comment on the preprint platform. Examples include articles highlighting preprints  posted a preprint (about preprints) on bioRxiv , and a cMolecular Biology of the Cell: “Any jackass can trash a manuscript, but it takes good scholarship to create one” . For journals seeking to bring feedback on preprints into their editorial process , the pri Journal , the priInstitutions seeking to recognize peer review activities, including the peer review of preprints, in staff performance reviews could signal that for reviews of preprints to be eligible for recognition, they must have been completed in line with the principles.Biochemistry 200A at the University of California San Francisco), as could participants in preprint journal clubs.And most importantly, we hope that the FAST principles are also a valuable resource for researchers. Early-career researchers seeking to build review skills, including students participating in courses on peer review, could be encouraged to use the principles when writing their reviews (as in the course Of course, we do not expect the culture of public commenting on preprints to change overnight. Most of those who have previously participated in peer review have only done so in the context of a closed process run by a journal, where their comments were only seen by the editor and authors, and where most often comments were not signed. Moving the conversation into the public space means being much more proactive about how we develop our review, what biases we may have, and what choices of language we make to prevent misinterpretation. It may mean putting in that bit of extra effort when drafting our comments, but given the overall benefits of public feedback on preprints, we view this as a worthwhile investment.New platforms and communities are developing around the review of preprints, and it is likely that new approaches and tools will allow us to react to and comment on preprints in ways that are not possible today. The norms around public commentary on preprints are still fluid, but it is important to set the foundations for a constructive and inclusive culture at this early stage. The FAST principles outline behaviors that will encourage and lead to such a culture. And as activities around preprint feedback grow in visibility, scope and variety, we expect that standards will also evolve, and we look forward to seeing the principles develop to meet the changing needs of the community.Preprints have brought researchers new freedom for how and when they communicate their research. By enabling new ways of public interaction, preprints also allow researchers to make new choices about how they engage in feedback and scientific discourse. In the context of a preprint, feedback is focused on the science, and not on the requirements of a particular journal. This gives an individual the opportunity to comment on a specific aspect of a preprint, or work in a group to provide a collective review. Importantly, by encouraging this public interaction and articulating what we value in preprint feedback, we can also enable new ways to reward reviews as scholarly contributions in their own right.Journal peer review is valued by the scientific community, but it is seldom a conversation. Scientists value interactions with their peers about their work, and they gather feedback and ideas from face-to-face conversations, email enquiries, discussions at conferences and, sometimes, social media. The spirit of the FAST principles is to open a new avenue for this communication through preprint feedback. An added benefit is that it will give both the broader scientific community and the general public a chance to participate. We invite all members of the scientific community to be part of this conversation.


Brain Communications. We launched the journal in April 2019, meaning we are 3.5 years old now and halfway through the 7-year tenure of the first editorial team. A question we are often asked by authors is ‘What is your impact factor?’. In one way, this is a very simple question to answer—we do not have one yet. In another way, this question opens a can of worms that all scientists, perhaps even more particularly those in the early stages of their careers, struggle with at some level.Welcome to Volume 4 Issue 6 of 1 As you will know, impact factor is used as a measurement of how important a journal is, based on the logic that high average citations per paper means ‘good’ papers are published in the journal. The impact factor was developed long before the invention of the World Wide Web, at a time when librarians had to decide which journals to subscribe to and researchers had to browse manually through tables of contents of each issue of each journal in institution libraries. While there is nothing intrinsically wrong with knowing the average citations per paper in a journal, there is considerable controversy over the impact of impact factor (pun intended).Impact factor is a metric of journal citations calculated by the for-profit company Clarivate Analytics. Impact factor is a ratio between citations received and the number of citable papers published in a journal. For example, Clarivate’s website states that the 2021 impact factor of a journal was calculated as the cites in 2020 to items published in 2018 and 2019 divided by the total number of citable items published in 2018 and 2019.et al.2 shows that the citation of individual papers cannot be inferred from journal impact factor. Instead, the majority of papers in a given journal receive fewer citations than the average citation the journal attracts which is skewed, driven by some very highly cited outliers. When calculating the ratio between the citations a paper attracts and the product of the impact factor and the number of years since publication, it is easy to establish whether a particular paper contributes to the impact factor of the journal or if instead, it drags it down.One problem with using impact factor as a metric is that people too often generalize the average citations to assess the quality of individual papers. Many of us have experienced direct pressure to publish in ‘high impact’, or top tier, journals, which are often the property of for-profit companies, even though having a paper in a high impact factor journal does not guarantee that it will be either highly cited or that it will be of high quality. Indeed, an analysis posted on bioRxiv by Larivière 3In spite of these clear confounds, whether intentionally or unintentionally, researchers on panels evaluating grant applications, hiring, or promotions have long evaluated the scholarly achievements of their peers in their field by the impact factor of the journals where their research was published. To begin to counteract this bias, many prominent scientists, research funders, and journal editors have signed up to the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment which aims to stop impact factor being used to assess individual scientists in favour of requiring that each paper be judged on its own merits.Brain Communications is to facilitate a high standard of rigour in our published papers, and we welcome incremental work, negative results or replication studies, as long as the research is robustly conducted.Another problem associated with chasing high impact factor journals, in our view, is that this practice promotes tunnel vision of what impactful contemporary research is. Focusing on high-impact journals as a driver of the ‘impact’ of research concentrates power in the hands of a few ‘gate-keeper’ editors and reviewers, while discouraging replication and robust, rigorous incremental science, which are fundamental to advancing knowledge using the scientific process. Most journals with high impact factors only want to publish very ‘novel’ (the definition of which is highly debatable), flashy work that will be highly cited. Since most ‘credit’ and citations tend to favour the first paper to publish a new idea, replicating results in different populations or model systems are often difficult to publish in these high impact factor journals. One of our core goals at Thus, we are not driven at all to aim for a high impact factor, and we are thrilled that people are choosing to publish in our journal and that so many are willing to offer expertise in our transparent and constructive peer review process. It is also a real pleasure and a source of pride for us when we see our papers are cited, as it is an indicator that people are reading the valuable work published in our e-pages.We will likely be bestowed an impact factor next year, which is great from the perspective that we will have an answer for authors to this question. But, we will be acutely aware that while impact factor is one informative metric to have for our journal, it is not important to our goals, and it has for too long generated undue stress and pressure in the scientific community and given privately owned journals too much influence over the careers and research of scientists, by handling the lottery of who gets into the big impact factor journals.et al.4 and shows a precision medicine targeting approach for transcranial magnetic resonance–guided high intensity focused ultrasound.The cover for this issue comes from Feltrin


We reflect on how far we have come while looking forward to the next phase of our journey. The journal was launched to provide a new open access option for research in all fields of biology, offering an alternative venue for findings of high interest to a specialist audience. We envisioned an inclusive biology journal with high standards for reporting, reproducibility, ethics and transparency.Chere, here and here.Now, five years later, we have published more than 4000 Research Articles, and over 60 Review and Perspective Articles. We are immensely grateful to the authors and reviewers who have put their trust in a new and ambitious journal. To highlight some of our very first authors, we have interviewed them about their research and experience of the journal; these Q&As can be found editorial board, who have been instrumental in shaping Communications Biology. Our collaborative editorial model is outlined in more detail here. We feel that this model brings together the best of two worlds: the in-house team of PhD-level full-time editors bring their broad knowledge of their field of expertise and help to ensure consistency and adherence to editorial policies. Sharing our commitment to editorial excellence, our editorial board members (EBMs) not only provide their scientific expertise but also their perspective as representatives of their research communities.We celebrate our first five years together with our in-house editorial team has expanded to 11 editors including the Chief Editor and two Deputy Editors. Starting with eight EBMs back in January 2018, the Communications Biology editorial board has grown to 133 EBMs, who are at different career stages and spread across no less than 29 countries. In 2022 we introduced Section Lead EBMs, who are experienced external editors who are given additional responsibilities. In this video, some of our Section Leads talk about their work and their thoughts on the journal.Along with an increase in submissions over these five years, our metrics and editorial values on our website. To improve the transparency of the peer-review process, since January 2019, authors can choose to have referee reports published alongside their paper. In the first half of 2022, 69% of our authors chose transparent peer review, illustrating that this is a welcome option. Since June 2021, we have also published the names of the handling editors for each paper to acknowledge their contributions.We are aware that fairness and timeliness in editorial decisions is very important to our authors and we strive to be as consistent and efficient as possible, while also being thorough and transparent. You can read more about our early career researchers and more recently we have interviewed various researchers from diverse backgrounds and disciplines about their research and experiences. An ongoing goal is to further diversify our reviewer pool.We aim to keep diversity, equity and inclusion at the forefront of everything we do. And, we are proud of our efforts to acknowledge the diversity of the research community. In our series of Q&As, we initially highlighted Collections. These can either be retrospective or involve an active call for papers, often headed by one of our EBMs such as the latest one on DNA replication and replication stress.Our papers span subfields across all biological sciences from biophysics to ecology. While we are proud to provide a home for such a wide range of excellent research, we also showcase specific research areas through retrospective collection. We have gathered the papers that attracted attention from the press and on social media. Among these is the study on the attempts to grow plants in moon soil and one on stinging structures in upside-down jellyfish! The in-house editorial team and our EBMs have also selected some of their favourite papers from the last five years. Although this collection includes our most highly cited paper, SPHIRE-crYOLO is a fast and accurate fully automated particle picker for cryo-EM, publications were chosen in the spirit of celebrating our broad scope rather than according to any specific metrics. We hope you will enjoy the selection!And, speaking of Collections, to highlight some of the great papers we have published in our first five years, we have put together a Communications Biology, but our journey is just beginning. We will continue to serve our specialist communities as an platform for excellent research and celebrate diversity across the biological sciences. Our ethos as a journal is reflected in the dedication of our editors and board members to high quality and reproducible research, and we remain committed to working with all biologists now and in the future.Five years marks a major milestone for Communications Biology as a potential venue to publish your research. You can sign up to meet the editors, email an individual editor, or contact us on Twitter @commsbio.You are welcome to get in touch with any feedback on the journal or to discuss


Getting an article published in a scientific journal requires skills that are rarely taught, but are almost invariably learned by (bitter) experience. Yet, there are generally applicable guidelines that facilitate the process. This article summarises them. N of publications or to the citation index of the journals in which you publish. There is no simple escape route from this dilemma. Working collaboratively, in an area of research that attracts lots of attention, will benefit those who are in large teams. They are likely to produce more – and more highly cited – publications. We at the BJPsych International have a mission to give a voice to clinicians and clinician-scientists who do not have access to those facilities, but who nevertheless are doing work that benefits patients, directly or indirectly, with novel approaches that others could emulate. Although we do not publish original research, our mission is to educate; it could be construed as hypothesis generation, work that could be rigorously evaluated by scientific enquiry by others with the resources to do so.There is an ‘art’ to getting your article published in a scientific journal. Many aspiring authors do not understand, probably because they have never been told, that it is not sufficient just to have a good idea. There are some general ground rules, and there are certain inflexible limitations, which differ from journal to journal. But beyond those, there is the need to consider basic questions, such as why do I want to publish? What is my message? Am I doing this simply to get promotion or retain my post? Sadly, in these days of predatory journals that advertise the opportunity to publish almost anything (at a price), we are at risk of demeaning the noble art of writing scientific articles in pursuit of quantity rather than quality. No country is entirely free from the menace of universities that link your career prospects to your The first question to ask yourself when composing an article for our journal, or any other reputable publication, is ‘What is my message?’. That might sound facile, but it is not at all easy to answer for most aspiring authors. Your message should be simple. Remember, however good your article is, your reader is likely to remember just one thing from reading it. You can quite easily identify whether or not you have a simple message by writing an abstract. Good abstracts are about as difficult to compose as your entire article. My recommendation to any aspiring author is to compose your abstract before you write the paper. Show the abstract to your colleagues and ask them, ‘What do you think this article is about? What is the take-home message?’ If they are unable to give you an answer straight away, you will have to redraft it. When writing your abstract, remember you need to have identified the journal to which you will submit, and you should have looked at the formatting of the abstract required by that journal. You should be aware of its length. Many journals advise an upper word limit for the abstract. Can you get your message across in less than 200 words?We have discussed the length of the abstract and the fact that it should encapsulate the essence of your article. Another general point about publication is the choice of journal for your message. How do you decide? I have already emphasised the absurdity of judging the worth of an article on the citation index of the journal in which it is published. That index will correlate positively with the difficulty of getting your article accepted, but it is no guarantee that anyone will want to cite it. In the days of search engines such as PubMed and Google Scholar, if your article is indexed, it will be accessible to anyone. It does not matter if no library in the world stocks the journal in paper form. If what you wrote is worth reading, it will be cited. I know authors who are now Fellows of the Royal Society, who have barely published a single article in a high-impact journal. That said, if you work in an obscure area of science your work is less likely to be searched for than if you are in a popular area. As a general rule, highly cited articles are often original and authoritative reviews, or the description of a new methodology for measuring something .Avoid piecemeal publication: your article should deliver just one message. You may find there is a good reason to divide up your findings from a substantial piece of research because they will fit more appropriately into a range of specialist publications. Which leads on to another point that is often ignored by prospective authors: read the instructions for authors that are published by the journal on their website, and make sure your article fits with the aims and objectives of the journal! Look for articles that are similar – if no article on that subject has been published in that journal it is unlikely to accept your article either, so you should look elsewhere.It is incredibly irritating, as an editor, to receive an article that is formatted in a way that bears no relationship to your journal's format. The article is the wrong length (often two or three times too long), the referencing is wrong, perhaps even the content is inappropriate. The editor will assume it is an article that was rejected by a previous journal and has simply been passed on without any further consideration. This is insulting to the journal and guarantees instant rejection.Take an objective look at your writing style. Avoid excessively complex and repetitive language. Try to avoid overusing certain words: for example, there is a temptation to stick ‘However’ or ‘Nevertheless’ at the beginning of sentences. So do a count of how many of these words are in your article. It is easy nowadays with a program such as Word. Cut them out. Use short sentences. Avoid excessive verbiage. Journals are short on space; they have page budgets. Keep it brief. When it comes to citing literature in your article, make sure you have actually read the references – and make sure they are accurately quoted. I have often looked up what appears to be a promising reference, only to find the article cited says no such thing. My guess is this is because the original article was cited by another paper, and a lazy author took the citation straight out of context without checking it. Don't copy what someone else said a reference claimed without reading the original yourself and checking. If you cannot find the original reference, don't use it at all. Make sure your references are up to date. This is a particular bugbear of mine and bedevils work in our area of medicine. Although psychiatry sadly evolves at a snail's pace compared with fields such as immunology or cancer, it is usually pointless discussing findings in relation to publications from 20 years ago if the field has moved on and definitions have changed.If the journal in which you are publishing accepts tables and figures, know the difference. A typical table provides a summary of data in rows and columns. Figures, on the other hand, are illustrations, for example flow charts or histograms. Composing either is challenging. Show your colleagues. Are they clear? Could you understand them without reference to the text? Don't prepare coloured figures if the journal only publishes in black and white.Finally, the discussion section always requires a certain format, irrespective of the journal. New information is not appropriate for the discussion. Don't put results into the discussion unless they have already been presented. The point of a discussion is to review the findings and draw out the most important aspects of your text. It should be structured. It should set your findings in the context of existing literature. Limitations are an important aspect of the discussion. How could your study be improved? What have you learned from your investigation? What are the implications for generalisation? What are the implications for the future?www.biorxiv.org). A complementary system, which works well for many scientific investigations, is the registered report. This is a publishing format used by an increasing number of journals, in which the study design is published ahead of data collection and is subject to its own peer review. Not all articles are suitable, of course, especially commentaries and exploratory studies. But, as the now 80-year-old Bob Dylan said, ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’.Changes in publication practice are coming thick and fast. There is a trend for prepublication in an online format, inviting criticism from your peers, prior to submission to the journal of your choice. One such preprint server is the bioRxiv (pronounced ‘bio-archive’) (


Upper tract urothelial carcinoma (UTUC) is a neglected cancer in urology , 2. Due This is an editorial update in the field of UTUC. The 12 papers published in Frontiers in Oncology-Genitourinary Oncology by internationally renowned researchers cover five major topics:1. New diagnostic techniques for UTUC include confocal laser microscopy and optical coherence tomography (OCT). 2. Radiography techniques and biomarkers for the identification of low-risk UTUC VS aggressive UTUC. 3. Survival data for KSS and lymph node dissection in UTUC. 4. Neoadjuvant and adjuvant chemotherapy and systemic immunotherapies targeting immune checkpoint inhibition in UTUC. 5. Systemic therapy for metastatic UTUC.The first paper reported by Fan et al. investigated the relationship between preoperative urine cytology and intravesical recurrence (IVR) in patients with UTUC in in northeast China. They performed a multicenter retrospective cohort study and demonstrated that preoperative positive urine cytology correlated with poor intravesical recurrence-free survival and can serve as a significant independent predictor of IVR. They concluded that preoperative urine cytology is a potential predictor of intravesical recurrence in patients with UTUC after radical nephroureterectomy (RNU) . The secIn summary, the papers included in this Research Topic provide an emerging update and new avenue on UTUC. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to all authors, editors, and reviewers of these publications, as well as the editorial team at Frontiers for their devotion and assistance in the process of reviewing and publishing this Research Topic.CL wrote the editorial. LL and YB edited the editorial. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.We would like to express our sincere gratitude to all authors, editors, and reviewers of these publications, as well as the editorial team at Frontiers for their devotion and assistance in the process of reviewing and publishing this Research Topic.The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.