On behalf of all readers and volunteers, I want to thank and congratulate Dr. Edwin McCullough for his outstanding service to the JACMP and his well‐earned retirement. Ed served as Editor‐in‐Chief for the year 2003 and captained this journal through some stormy seas. In so many ways, we would not have made it without you Ed, so many thanks.I also want to welcome four new Associate Editors to our team: Nikos Papanikolaou, Lu Wang, Janelle Molloy, and Mehrdad Sarfaraz have joined our editorial team in the area of Radiation Oncology Physics. When you see them, please offer your support and thanks. The JACMP could not exist without the dedicated volunteer effort of our Associate Editors.Now, let us think back a few years. It is 1998, and members of the American College of Medical Physics are beginning to talk about how to bring a clinical and professional journal into existence. Web‐based technology offered lower costs and a wonderful opportunity to simplify the publication process, but bringing the JACMP into existence raised a number of questions: If the journal is on the Internet, will we need to have a print version? Should we charge a subscription? How do we handle advertising? What is the cost‐and‐expense model? What if papers from the JACMP are posted elsewhere? Who will own the copyright for the articles? Where will we get the software to manage the articles?It is hard to believe that was seven years ago, and we are completing our fifth year of operation. The JACMP has published 173 clinical and professional papers in addition to book reviews, editorials, etc. There is no subscription; the entire archive is available free to anyone with Web access. There are no page charges or other costs to authors for publication. Authors retain the copyright for their papers and may post these papers anywhere as long as the JACMP is acknowledged. One particularly difficult problem to overcome was the manuscript management software. Products in the marketplace often were not fully featured and were costly to purchase and to maintain. By 2003, it was clear that the JACMP would not exist unless another solution could be found. But what a solution we did find, and that is the story of the Public Knowledge Project (PKP). The PKP is dedicated to exploring whether and how new technologies can be used to improve the professional and public value of scholarly research. It is dedicated to maintaining the public accessibility and coherence of research knowledge in a sustainable and globally accessible form.The PKP is an initiative of the University of British Columbia, funded by the Canadian government. The PKP has developed the Open Journal Systems (OJS), a journal management and publishing system designed to expand and improve access to research. The OJS is open‐source software made freely available to journals worldwide for making open‐access publishing a viable option for more journals. The developers of PKP believe open access can increase a journal's readership as well as contribute to the public good on a global scale.It was hard to believe at first. In August 2003, just at the time the JACMP had to come up with a low‐cost solution, a version of OJS was released that contained all the features required to support the Journal. In addition, the OJS has an ongoing support team at the University of British Columbia. Our interaction with John Willinsky and his fine group of supporters resulted in a few bug fixes, some new features, and the ability to begin double‐blind manuscript reviews. Oh, and the price is very right—no cost; that allows us to keep the JACMP free for you to use and enjoy.Michael D. MillsEditor‐in‐Chief


To provide an overview of the peer review process, its various types, selection of peer reviewers, the purpose and significance of the peer review with regard to the assessment and management of quality of publications in academic journals.Discussion paper.This paper draws on information gained from literature on the peer review process and the authors' knowledge and experience of contributing as peer reviewers and editors in the field of health care, including nursing.There are various types of peer review: single blind; double blind; open; and post‐publication review. The role of the reviewers in reviewing manuscripts and their contribution to the scientific and academic community remains important. Publication in academic journals plays an important role in the development and progress of any profession, including nursing Dipboye . On the et al. ®. If the manuscript is too similar to other sources, it may be rejected or it may be unsubmitted and returned to the author for amendment. Additional checks for readability and the extent to which the manuscript conforms to the standards of the journal, for example, word‐length and use of international reporting standards take place. In Figure et al. et al. The publication process begins with a manuscript submission to a journal by an author. As shown in Figure Journal of Advanced Nursing (one of the present authors is an editor) receives approximately 1,400 manuscripts annually and publishes fewer than 20% of them. The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) receives over 5000 manuscripts annually and publishes fewer than 5% of them . Such knowledge may also help authors and readers to become involved in the peer review process. This article aims to provide an overview of the peer review process for authors, novice peer reviewers and those who may have an interest in becoming a peer reviewer. Various types of peer review, selection of peer reviewers, the role of peer review, and issues associated with peer review are explored.Until recently, little guidance was available to peer reviewers, though, publishers and journals have started developing resources for novice and potential peer reviewers Pierson . The avaet al. Peer review lies at the core of science and academic life  in some journals. Each method has its own advantages and disadvantages as specified in Table single blind review, the author is not aware of the reviewers' identities. However, the reviewers are aware of the authors' identities, affiliations and credentials. It is the most common approach used in the majority of academic and scientific journals, especially biomedical journals  encourage this approach. In an open review, authors and reviewers' names may be published alongside each other with an option to publish reviewers' reports alongside. Proponents believe that this is a better approach as nothing is done in secret and the authors' intellectual property rights are respected  advocates more post‐publication reviewing as a form of scrutiny of papers which are in the public domain and, moreover, advocates and open system of review. By some this has been seen as a response to the: ‘urgent need to reform the way in which authors, editors, and publishers conduct the first line of quality control, the peer review’ . Even if the content is not freely available, academics have easy access to most scientific publications through their university libraries via gateways such as ATHENS. This means that, with the use of online early publication, by many publishers, of articles before they are serialized and with the immediate posting of articles by some online open access publishers such as BioMed Central, that academics have access to a steady stream of articles in their field. Where scientific literature may not be as freely available, for example, in some developing countries and to those working outside academic publishers do take steps to increase ease of access to their work through specific deals and, of course, it is always open to any academic to request an offprint (hard copy or electronic) directly from authors.Finally, and very recently, is the advent of the website PubPeer which explicitly exists to provide anonymous post‐publication review of published, refereed, articles. As explained by Watson , PubPeeret al. et al. Curriculum vitae ]:substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data;drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content.All authors have agreed on the final version and meet at least one of the following criteria [recommended by the ICMJE (


Nursing Open is now listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) which means that people considering submitting to Nursing Open can be confident that we are a bona fide open access journal and that we meet the standards required to be listed there, one of which is that we have had to be publishing for over one year. In fact, we are now well into our second year and I am very happy to bring you our third issue which brings us to a total of nearly 30 papers published since we were launched in 2014. It is also busy at the editorial desk and each week brings a flow of new submissions and I send a steady flow of manuscripts to production. Few things are more satisfying than correcting proofs for Nursing Open and our Twitter following @nursingopen is increasing as are entries and hits on the Nursing Open blog.First some good news: Journal of Advanced Nursing (JAN) and a recent submission to our JAN interactive blog is relevant to Nursing Open and our potential authors and readers. The entry was by Mehdi Dadkah, Foulad Institute of Technology, Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran – it is titled: ‘More on the dark side of open access’ – and it deals with the issue of online open access journal hijacking. I was aware of the problem but had not seen a statement on it and I now realize that journal hijacking is systematically studied by Mehrdad Jalalian and it is a worrying phenomenon. The online open access movement has been full of good intentions and there are many examples of successes and many examples of legitimate journals, as shown by the DOAJ. However, the online environment is malleable, inexpensive and wide‐reaching, and criminal elements have been quick to exploit the pressure on academics to get published. Witness the rapid rise in predatory publishers and the work of Jeffrey Beall which the editorial team of JAN recently wrote about . If it is, does it have a tick next to it to show it has met the DOAJ criteria for acceptance? If it is not, Google the journal webpages and submission systems: does the journal follow COPE guidelines and have set policies in place in relation to research ethics? Does the journal publish content regularly? Is there editorial independence? Does the journal have an established editorial team of more than one Editor and a well‐represented regional Editorial Board? Do you recognize any of the names associated with the journal? If you do not recognize any names, or the people do not appear to work in the purported area of the journal or they all come from one country, then it is best to avoid the journal. If you do recognize names then check with them that they are legitimately listed as it is also the case that individuals are hijacked to lend bogus journals credibility, and can have difficulty having their names dissociated from the journal.Online open access journals in all fields, including nursing, are growing in number and gaining credibility. However, danger lurks along the way for unwary authors. There are some obvious signals that can reveal predatory or hijacked journals and it is possible to check online to verify the status of any journal which contacts you. But the best advice I can offer you is, when you receive an email from an online journal inviting you to submit: if in doubt, do not!


Non-mainstream scholarly journals are struggling to maintain a healthy flow of the best submissions, influence science growth locally and internationally, and become indexed in prestigious bibliographic databases. There are financial and non-financial factors confounding editing and publishing practices across low-resource countries. Publishers in these countries often face difficulties with involving experienced reviewers and editors in the processing of submissions to their journal. As a result, non-mainstream scholarly journals are at risk of publishing unchecked, poorly edited, erroneous, and unethical papers. They face challenges of inappropriate authorship, non-disclosure of conflicts of interests, plagiarism, and other forms of scientific misconduct. Journals’ applications to global indexing abstract and citation databases are often declined due to the lack of transparent and ethical editorial strategies, inappropriate scope of interest, low level of evidence, and low citation rates. A hhandful of the indexed regional journals are aggressively targeted by unethical authors and brokering editing agencies, exploiting the deficiencies in the editorial strategies and thus further damaging the reputation of the journals. To curb the problems with editing and publishing, journal editors from non-mainstream science countries are encouraged to upgrade their strategies of ethical editing and research reporting in accordance with the updated recommendations of editorial associations, such as the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), and the Council of Science Editors (CSE). Academic institutions and professional societies from these countries are called to provide guidance for researchers and science editors and allocate resources for improving editing and publishing practices.Croatian Medical Journal and other MEDLINE-indexed journals. As the main problems with editing regional journals were highlighted, the decision was made to draft this Declaration. Journal editors from non-mainstream science countries are called to upgrade and enforce their instructions for authors in accordance with the listed points on integrity and visibility.How to address the problems with journal publishing in non-mainstream science countries was discussed at the First Mediterranean Seminar on Science Writing, Editing and Publishing, which was organized by the Academy of Medical Sciences of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo, December 2-3, 2016. The idea of organizing such a meeting and drafting an instructive document for editors and publishers struggling with poor quality and visibility of their journals was proposed by numerous regional experts. They voiced their concerns and suggested to act jointly. The Seminar attracted more than 100 researchers, experienced journal editors, and publishers from Balkan and Mediterranean countries, who shared their experience with writing, reviewing, editing, and publishing. Updates to the recommendations of the most influential editorial associations, such as the ICMJE, COPE, and CSE, were presented to incorporate in the regional journal instructions. Participants had a unique opportunity to receive hands-on training on editing from the flagship regional journals, such as the The Sarajevo Declaration is aimed at upgrading standards of editing and publishing scholarly journals across Balkan and Mediterranean countries. Journal editors from regional and other non-mainstream science countries are encouraged to familiarize themselves with the statements and amend their instructions accordingly.The endorsement and enforcement of the Sarajevo Declaration may help avoid ‘wasteful’ or unethical publishing practices and improve visibility, scientific prestige, and indexability of the adherent scholarly publications.Transparency of in-house editorial procedures and external editing supportSupport of professional editorial teamsFocus on regional and local scientific research problems defined in the journal aims and scopePromotion of ethical research and reviewsScholarly publications are essential for research productivity, academic promotion, sharing professional information, and networking among scientists worldwide. Authors, reviewers, and editors are required to ensure the trustworthiness and ethical soundness of what they write, edit, and publish. To maintain the quality and ensure the impact of their publications, all stakeholders in science communication should make effort to ensure the integrity and promote innovative and evidence-based sources of information.1. Scholarly papers are final products of collective efforts of all stakeholders in science communication. It is increasingly important to promote these papers post-publication by indexing and archiving on relevant global digital platforms. Responsible editors and publishers alike are in the position to contribute to the post-publication communication. To improve visibility of their publications, authors can rely on reliable social media, sharing platforms, and individual and institutional repositories.2. Authors, reviewers, and editorial board members can increase visibility of their scholarly activities by registering with the Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) and providing information on their own authoring, reviewing, and publishing activities via their permanent accounts. Publishers of scholarly journals can maintain the integrity of pre- and post-publication communication by joining the ORCID global initiative.3. Erroneous publications are common, and take place because of the authors’, editors’, and publishers’ oversights. Authors, reviewers, editors, and readers have the responsibility to notify publishers about any instances of known research misconduct and erroneous publications, necessitating corrections or retractions.4. Effective functioning of scholarly journals is dependent on skilled individuals involved in the processing of manuscripts. Publishers encountering problems with erroneous and poorly written publications should expand their editorial teams by inviting experienced editors responsible for statistics, publication ethics, language, and design.5. Continuing professional development (CPD) should be complemented by publications in scholarly journals that serve as platforms for distributing professional information of interest to both novice and seasoned authors. To achieve this goal, publishers may create journal sections for students, researchers, and specialists seeking CPD credits. Efforts should be made by publishers to acknowledge their contributors and obtain CPD credits for publishing and reviewing activities.6. Professional societies can take the lead and contribute to the promotion of scholarly journals by taking responsibility for healthy flow of journal submissions from their memberships, quality checks, and publishing established and start-up periodicals and awarding the contributors with academic credits.7. Science editors should adhere to the most recent recommendations of global editorial associations and incorporate relevant sections in their journal’s instructions to improve the quality of pre- and post-publication communication.8. Websites and editorial management platforms of scholarly journals should contain transparent information on the editorial management, peer review, open access or subscription models, and acceptable editing practices. Commercial editing services, which are offered by publishers and other organizations, may help improve the quality of journal submissions. However, all these services require transparency and acknowledgment in accordance with the recommendations of global editorial associations.9. Traditional and alternative impact indicators are instrumental for assessing the scholarly journals in terms of distributing information, attracting readership, and facilitating science growth. Combined quantitative and qualitative approach to citations, downloads, and distributions of individual papers through social networking channels can reveal interest of readers toward certain topics and types of publication, but not necessarily the quality of scholarly journals. Editors and publishers can increase the impact of their journals by improving the functionality of their journal websites and online content, ensuring the completeness of meta-data in the published papers.10.


In this first newsletter of 2017, we wanted to inform you about importantdevelopments concerning our journal and the performance of the journal in 2016.We also would like to draw your attention to the fourth issue of Advances inCognitive Psychology of 2016, which is a special issue that includes severalcontributions to the Neuronus conference that was held in Kraków in 2015. Thecurrent newsletter will also be included in the first issue of 2017. At the end of 2016, it became clear that our journal was in need of further financialsupport as the University of Finance and Management in Warsaw was no longer able tocover the costs. Multiple ways were considered as to how to continue with thejournal. A first idea, which was thoroughly discussed with several of our editorialboard members, was to examine whether we would be able to obtain sufficientfinancial support from scientific institutions  to continue with our free-of-cost open-access publishing policy. Weare grateful for the financial support from the University of Vienna, theJagiellonian University from Kraków, the University of Twente, and the Ministry ofScience and Higher Education in Poland that we received in response to our requests.However, this financial support is insufficient. Therefore, our policy of publishingarticles free of cost for the authors is history. As time was running out for adifferent solution, we decided to start charging authors an article processing fee(APF), a policy that is in effect from now on.As our journal still receives funding from several sources, see above, we will beable to keep these costs at a relatively low level. We will start with an APF of300,- € and will see how far this gets us. Of course, contributions by authorsaffiliated to institutions funding ACP as well as contributions authored by themembers of our Editorial Board will be waived and continue to be free of cost. Wehope that this policy also encourages further institutional financial contributionsbecause such support will now correspond to a flat rate for the publications oftheir affiliated authors. This also means that, if you want, each of you can ask anyinstitutions for financial support of ACP that you think might sensibly beinterested in supporting our journal. Eventually, we might thus be able to return toa free-of-cost publishing policy in the future. As originally estimated, annualsupport of 1000,- € by about ten institutions would suffice.Another relevant development is the decision to apply the creative commons license(see https://creativecommons.org) to articles published in our journal. This policyhas been implemented from the start of this year. We chose the CC-BY-NC-ND license.This implies that people are free to copy and distribute articles if they giveappropriate credits to the authors. However, the articles published in ACP may notbe used for commercial purposes, and it is not allowed to change ACP articles anddistribute modified ACP articles. This new policy implies that our journal fulfillsthe latest requirements for Open Access journals, as specified by the directory ofopen access journals (https://doaj.org). As a consequence of our creative commonslicense, university libraries are allowed to keep copies or links to articlespublished in ACP, which up to now was not stated clearly.We also welcomed a new editor. Since the end of November 2016, Peter Wühr from theTechnical University of Dortmund serves as an action editor and editorial member forACP. Peter will take care of manuscripts within his field of expertise. Peter’sresearch focuses on attention, action control, conflict adaptation, dual-taskperformance, working memory and perception-action interactions. He is alsointerested in more applied topics, such as judging offside in soccer, the effects ofmusical training on cognitive abilities, and the psychometric assessment ofattention.First of all, in 2016, we received a second Impact Factor (1.444). Secondly, out of89 submissions in 2016, 26% were rejected without external review, 39% were rejectedafter external review, 12% were accepted, and the remaining manuscripts arecurrently being revised or are under review.In conclusion of this letter, we wanted to express our gratitude to the reviewersthat we consulted in 2016: You played a key role in keeping our high standards, andspecial thanks go to you! Your names can also be found on our website. Finally, wekindly wanted to remind you that we continue to welcome your submissions to thejournal. Should you have any questions or comments regarding this letter or ACP ingeneral, please feel always free to contact us.Sincerely yours,Rob van der Lubbe Co-editor in chiefUlrich Ansorge Editor in chief


Journals and other scientific organizations produce a diverse variety of plain-language summaries. What do the British Psychology Society, the journal Functional Ecology and an astronomy website called Astrobites have in common? The answer is that they all attempt to explain the findings of research papers to a broad audience by publishing plain-language summaries of the papers. And they are not alone: a growing number of journals and scientific organizations are trying to do the same, and not just for papers on topics that the public are generally thought to be interested in, such as fossils, invisibility cloaks and new medical treatments. These summaries go by a myriad of names – including lay summaries, author summaries, significance statements and digests – and can cover topics as diverse as the discovery of water on a distant planet and the lifestyles of bacteria. To find out more about this phenomenon we contacted ten journals and other organizations that between them produce around 5,400 plain-language summaries per year .Plain-laWhen the British Psychological Society (BPS) started its Research Digest email newsletter back in 2003, its aim was to summarize new psychology research for 16–18 year old school students. "However, we quickly came to realize that we were reaching a much wider audience," says its editor, Christian Jarrett. "For many years now we've been writing for the general public, as well as students, researchers and journalists."Something similar has happened at Astrobites, a website that publishes plain-language summaries of astrophysics papers on the ArXiv preprint server. At first the site was aimed primarily at undergraduate students studying astrophysics but, again, it has attracted other readers. "Our audience turns out to be approximately equal parts undergraduates, graduate students, professional researchers, and interested members of the broader public," says Nathan Sanders, who helped to launch the site in 2010, when he was a graduate student at Harvard University .Another Astrobites author, Susanna Kohler, went on to set up AAS Nova for the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in 2015. The website aims to highlight research published in the society’s journals and "provide astrophysics researchers and enthusiasts access to a stream of curated and digested current astrophysics research content". The two initiatives have established a partnership, with some Astrobites summaries appearing on AAS Nova and the AAS helping to fund Astrobites.Plain-language summaries can help journals in the biomedical sciences to reach out to patients and others who might benefit from the research. The journal Autism has been publishing Lay Abstracts since 2011. The journal's social media editor, Laura Crane, looks after the abstracts. "The target audience is the general public, but particularly the autism community – individuals on the autism spectrum, their families and the people who work with them," says Crane, who is also a researcher at Goldsmiths, University of London.A major challenge when writing for a broad audience is how to pitch the language, content and style of the text so that it is informative and appealing to people with different levels of scientific education. Many journals and organizations rely on in-house editors to check that their plain-language summaries are suitable for their intended audiences, but some go one step further by including members of their audience in the checking process. At Frontiers for Young Minds (which produces articles aimed at children and teenagers) all articles are reviewed by two people – a young scientist and a research scientist .Box 1.Frontiers for Young Minds is a journal that commissions scientists to write about their research for readers aged between 8 and 15. Authors are given up to 2000 words to translate their work "into terms accessible to kids and teens". A young scientist and a current research scientist then pair up to review the article and provide feedback to the authors. The revised article is then checked by an associate editor, who is an experienced researcher: if this editor is happy with the article they approve it for publication.Since launching in 2013, the journal has published over 100 articles. "Frontiers for Young Minds flips the scientific process by having kids review scientific publications and as a result, provides an excellent tool for scientists to become better communicators," says Emma Clayton of Frontiers.The Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases has been producing patient summaries for selected research articles since 2013. "The summaries go through several approval rounds with the patient organization PARE [People with Arthritis and Rheumatism] and the Editor in Chief," says the journal's publishing executive Frances Lee. While this level of checking helps to make the summaries more accessible to patients, it can delay their publication for several months after the research paper is published.The Cochrane network of medical researchers has been including plain-language summaries in their reviews of the medical literature since 1997. The aim is to "summarize the review in a straightforward style that can be understood by consumers of health care," says Nancy Owens, senior communication manager at Cochrane. Although authors are given guidelines to help them write a summary for their review, a recent study found that none of the plain-language summaries published by Cochrane during a 23-month period fully adhered to these guidelines . Owens sSome journals and societies produce summaries primarily for scientists working in other fields of research. Since October 2012, all research articles published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) – which span the biological, physical and social sciences – have included a Significance Statement to explain the relevance of the work to the readers of the journal, as opposed to the general reader .write summaries of their research papers. Again these summaries – which ran to two A4 pages in pdf – were primarily aimed at other researchers rather than the public: "The summaries remain technical," explained an editorial in the journal, "these are not articles suitable for the popular press"  – including PLOS Biology, PLOS Genetics and PLOS Medicine – include plain-language summaries in all of their research articles. When PLOS Medicine launched in 2004, it employed freelance writers to prepare the summaries for the articles. Last year, however, the journal changed its approach and started to ask authors to draft their own. Chief Editor Larry Peiperl explains: "We thought it would make for a more efficient process – author drafts, editor edits and author approves, rather than, in the most extended case, freelancer drafts, editor checks, author reviews and makes edits, editor approves or revises further – and better use of resources." The journal was initially worried about how authors would respond to the new approach, but the change appears to have been accepted. "The transition went remarkably smoothly," says Peiperl. "The authors seem quite willing, and generally we’ve been happy with the quality and clarity of their summaries."Like PLOS Medicine, many other journals – including Autism and Functional Ecology – also ask the authors of research articles to write their own plain-language summaries. Aware that the authors may not have much experience of writing for a broad audience, the journals check and, if necessary, edit the summaries before publication.Some journals and other organizations employ writers to produce plain-language summaries. To help their writers, Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases and eLife both ask the authors of research papers to answer a set of questions about their work in plain language. At eLife we have found that involving the original authors in this way can save time later because they tend to make fewer changes when they check the draft summary.When is a good time to ask authors to draft a summary? PNAS require authors to include a Significance Statement when they first submit an article to the journal. However, if the paper is rejected and eventually published without the statement in another journal, the authors’ efforts will have been wasted. Autism avoids this problem by asking authors to produce a Lay Abstract once their paper has been accepted for publication. Functional Ecology and PLOS Medicine, on the other hand, ask authors to draft a plain-language summary when they are revising their article after peer review: this gives the journal and the authors time to check and revise the summary before the article is published.Astrobites employs a different model to write its summaries. "All our authors are current astronomy graduate students at universities worldwide who volunteer," says Nathan Sanders. "We have a 'regular rotation' of about 20 authors at a time so that each author writes one post per month." They use a 'collaborative authorship model' in which every author also acts as a content editor for another student in the collaboration and as a style editor for someone else. In this way, Astrobites is able to coordinate the efforts of a team of volunteers to produce a regular stream of content.oceanbites.org), particle physics (particlebites.com) and astronomy in Spanish (astrobitos.org). It is also re-launching a site for chemistry (chembites.org). Alongside its summaries of research, Astrobites also publishes content about careers and other issues. In 2013, to help young scientists develop their science communication skills, some of the authors from Astrobites and Chembites also founded ComSciCon, which runs workshops for graduate students in the US.Their collaborative authorship model has proved popular in other disciplines and Astrobites now has sister sites covering oceanography . These journals and other scientific organizations are taking a variety of approaches to writing and displaying their summaries, with different target audiences in mind. This diversity should mean that there will be something out there for everyone interested in science, regardless of their scientific background, providing they know where to look.While researching this article we compiled a list of 50 journals that produce plain-language summaries, with recent additions to the list including JGR: Planets  and Evol


At the beginning of November, the Manager of the Sociedade Brasileira de CirurgiaCardiovascular (SBCCV), Dr. Meryt Zanini, the Editorial Assistant Camila Sáfadiand I participated in the IX WORKSHOP OF SCIENTIFIC EDITING, a specific event forScientific Editors and professionals working with Scientific Journals in ourcountry.Among the topics discussed, the concern with the financial maintenance of scientificjournals was at the top of the discussions, considering that the budget crisis faced bythe development agencies was a multiplier of this situation in constant aggravation.Another point widely debated is what concerns the relevance of the work of the Reviewers,and eventual forms of recognition of this important work, in the Universities,Institutions, and especially regarding CAPES (Coordination for the Improvement of HigherEducation Personnel).I have been insisting and claiming for a long time that CAPES should recognize thevoluntary work of the Editors, Reviewers and those who give their technical opinion onthe articles, punctuating its performance, by the number of reviews and opinions issued,similar to the conduct adopted in relation to the published articles.The counterpoint lies in the demands, which are increasingly greater in relation to thequality of the opinions, something that must be structured and justified, since they areabsolutely essential for the improvement of the manuscript to be published.This is something that should be done together with the author, aiming at improving thearticles and, consequently, improving the scientific publications, opening the necessaryquotations indispensable to increase the Impact Factor, which is our greatest goal.During the 5 days of the event, we were pleased to note the great evolution presented bythe Brazilian Journal of Cardiovascular Surgery (BJCVS), showing its improvement and,above all, its maintenance at the top of the scientific-editorial innovations.Once again we have made sure that the whole process of changes that we have been goingthrough in recent months was the right decision, because we were able to fulfill all thenecessary requirements to become one of the leading publications in the surgicalfield.We are part of the small number of scientific journals indexed in all the importantInternational Databases. This is one of the reasons why we adopted a few years ago, thetrend currently confirmed of the publication being done exclusively in English, indigital texts with all the facilities offered by this technology, allowing onlineconsultations, hypertexts and the diffusion of our works around the globe where Englishis considered the universal scientific language.We made efforts to join the ScholarOne editorial submission and management system,recognized and used by major journals, a measure that is already showing results by thenumber of manuscripts coming from overseas, which are some of the traditional nations inthe areas of research and development.We also have spared no effort to rapidly join social media, occupying a vanguard positionstill incipient in other Brazilian journals! We have witnessed a steady rise in BJCVSfollowers in our Facebook page and our Blog, and we are working to open up our range ofinfluence when it comes to spreading ideas in this hotly contested area.It is clear that in the near future, articles and scientific journals will use this toolas an immediate forum for discussions of the most varied and disruptive subjects of thespecialty. Obstacles will always be a permanent challenge in our scientific path,however, we are optimistic that the BJCVS, with the collaboration of researchers,authors and those who voluntarily collaborate with the Editorial Board, will reach itsgoals soon, putting the Journal back at the top of scientific publications of thespecialty. Commitment is the watchword. And, fortunately, it is a verb conjugated by allwho, tirelessly, help the BJCVS.With the issue 31.6, we are completing the second year in which the Brazilian Journalof Cardiovascular Surgery became a bimonthly publication, (an issue every twomonths) besides a supplement issue.Difficulties and victories are part of our routine, but with each achievement theemotion and the feeling we have when we accomplish our goals encourages us tocontinue.This is the right time to thank the Board and the SBCCV Members for their continuedsupport and prestige.We should also thank the Authors, Associate Editors and Reviewers of the BJCVS whokeep our journal alive.With great affection, I thank the dedicated collaborators of the SBCCV and the BJCVS,who struggle to ensure that everything is done in the most appropriate way, alwayswilling to help with joy and enthusiasm.The BJCVS wishes a merry Christmas with illuminated charity and compassion, renewingin each one of us the deep feelings of faith and hope.May the New Year be our companion in joy and friendship that surrounds us in a greatfamily, united in the ideal of improving humanity.My warmest regards!1Editor-in-Chief - BJCVSDomingo M. Braile


The open access paradigm has become an important approach in today’s information and communication society. Funders and governments in different countries stipulate open access publications of funded research results. Medical informatics as part of the science, technology and medicine disciplines benefits from many research funds, such as National Institutes of Health in the US, Wellcome Trust in UK, German Research Foundation in Germany and many more. In this study an overview of the current open access programs and conditions of major journals in the field of medical informatics is presented. It was investigated whether there are suitable options and how they are shaped. Therefore all journals in Thomson Reuters Web of Science that were listed in the subject category “Medical Informatics” in 2014 were examined. An Internet research was conducted by investigating the journals’ websites. It was reviewed whether journals offer an open access option with a subsequent check of conditions as for example the type of open access, the fees and the licensing. As a result all journals in the field of medical informatics that had an impact factor in 2014 offer an open access option. A predominantly consistent pricing range was determined with an average fee of 2.248 € and a median fee of 2.207 €. The height of a journals’ open access fee did not correlate with the height of its Impact Factor. Hence, medical informatics journals have recognized the trend of open access publishing, though the vast majority of them are working with the hybrid method. Hybrid open access may however lead to problems in questions of double dipping and the often stipulated gold open access. Existing publication models charge readers for accessing journal or book content of publishers. Within the framework of changes and advancements in the information and communication technologies this traditional publishing model is also experiencing change , 2. The The free access to scientific journal articles is also a target of many research funders as well as various governments –6. The EAs medical informatics belongs to these STM disciplines, the researchers should also have the possibility to publish their research in open access. Certainly there are some journals that are of particular importance for publishing in this field, predominantly those who have an Impact Factor , 10–12. The subsequent sections describe which options are currently available to authors of articles in medical informatics to publish open access and how these programs are shaped with a focus on the type of open access, the fees and the licensing models. Furthermore, the suitability of various options will be discussed from different perspectives.The starting point of this analysis was to find out which journals are most relevant for researchers in medical informatics. As the Impact Factor is an important factor in the decision where to publish, it was concluded that all journals that had an Impact Factor in the year 2014 should be included in the investigation. Hence the 24 journals listed in Thomson Reuters Web of Science in the subject category “Medical Informatics” were chosen [In the next step, the websites of the selected journals were examined. In many cases there were two different websites per journal, as some have a website within the homepage of the publishing house and an autonomous one, for example maintained by the society behind the journal. It was checked if and which options are available to publish a journal article open access. If the reviewed journal offered options for open access publishing, a further screening of conditions was performed. Important parameters were the type of open access , whether there are associated costs, how the articles are licensed and other interesting or important aspects if applicable. The results were collected in an Excel sheet.At the time of this investigation (April and May 2016) all of the 24 examined journals provided their authors with the possibility to publish their articles in open access if desired. The open access option was usually embedded in open access programs of underlying publishing houses. The names of these programs predominantly contain the word “open” so that authors immediately know what this refers to. Springer for example denotes its open access program as “Open Choice” and Wiley as “OnlineOpen” , 16. In Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, published by Elsevier, does so with an embargo period of 12 months [Green open access is possible for all journals. The authors have the possibility to deposit their articles in repositories or on their websites after a defined embargo period. Differences can be found in the version that the publishers allow to deposit and in the time span. Most publishers allow authors to post the version of the accepted manuscript after six to 24 months, for example the journal 2 months .The investigation showed that for open access publishing of articles the hybrid model is offered in most cases. Here articles are immediately published in open access and authors usually retain the copyright. Articles are published in the printed version of a journal and open access in the online version on the journal’s website . Often aThe two other journals are purely open access journals offering their authors the possibility of gold open access publishing. The articles are solely published online, either in HTML or as PDF for download. It is also conspicuous that these two journals are published by open access publishing houses that only work with this business model. In contrast to the other journals their online articles are more often enriched with new technology and applications such as for example embedded metrics and social media options by trend , 21.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, charging their authors 2.844 €Medical Decision Making with 1.479 €. Both journals are listed under the top five pertaining to the Impact Factor of this subject category. Table It is a common business model that journals charge authors for publishing their articles in open access. Though there are also other ways of financing open access, all of the big commercial publishers demand such fees. If a scientific society is involved in a journal, another financial model may be applied. In the past few years many new open access publishing houses were founded that also charge their authors or operate with different business models as for example with the above mentioned society subsidies or with a low cost infrastructure and volunteer support . In the BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 1.745 € and Journal of Medical Internet Research 2.209 €).A comparison of the hybrid journals with the two pure open access journals reveals that there is no real price difference. Both charge in about the same amount as nearly half of the hybrid journals  are used. They regulate how someone else can proceed with an article, for example what others are allowed to do with it  . The exaHowever, there are differences in the licensing strategy of medical informatics journals. There are four different CC licensing types which can be combined in various ways. The most liberal type is CC-BY where credit must only be given to the authors. This type is often required by funding organizations so authors often need to use this license to meet their funders’ obligations . In manyMost publishers of the surveyed journals prefer the license CC-BY-NC or even CC-BY-NC-ND. The former means that in addition to the credit for authors the article must not be used for commercial purposes (NC). The latter furthermore prohibits the distribution of any derivatives (ND), so the article cannot be used in modified forms. Overall CC-BY-NC-ND is the most widely spread license type. Only in five cases CC-BY is offered as the standard license, for example in case of the two open access journals.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. For an article with the CC-BY-NC-ND license 2.437 € are charged and if the CC-BY license is desired the author has to pay an approximately 17% higher fee, namely an APC of 2.844 € [In many cases authors can decide which license type they would like to have for their article, and the publisher charges a different amount of article publication charges subject to the chosen CC license. This method is for example practiced by the  2.844 € .For authors green open access is a good possibility to publish their articles online, for example on their own website or in a repository, besides the publication in the normal subscription journal. This means that everyone can access their articles independently from a journal subscription what may lead to a higher visibility. But authors must comply with the embargo period of publishers and deposit, i.e. upload, the permitted article versions on their own. In addition, green open access often is not sufficient to comply with the regulations of funding organizations.Readers can access green open access articles without any restrictions or limitations on access. Though they will not find newest research results in green open access due to the above mentioned embargo periods. Also, they may not receive the final version of the published article but a version of record, according to the regulations of various publishers. This version must not be distributed, modified or used for own purposes.Publishers are not that much involved in green open access. This open access version does not mean a lot of extra work or an in- or decrease in earnings. In general publishers only have to define the frame conditions in advance. As they are the copyright holders of the articles they can determine which article version may be used and how long the authors have to wait with the deposit.The hybrid open access option means for authors that their articles will be published within the subscription journals and additionally as an open access article online on the website of the publishers. Authors will have to transfer the copyright to the publishers and frequently the articles receive a very strict CC license in the online version. This option often results in high costs for authors. Depending on the publisher they have to pay page and color figure charges for the printed version and additional APCs for making the articles open access in the online version. The choice of the hybrid version is often also possible later on, after the publication of the article in a subscription journal. Funding organizations are sometimes critical pertaining to hybrid open access so that authors should check their regulations in advance.Readers can easily access hybrid open access articles, as they can do with green or gold open access articles, subscriptions or payments for accessing articles are not necessary. But as the articles are in many cases under a strict CC license (e.g. CC-BY-NC or CC-BY-NC-ND), readers can only freely read them. The modification and use of the articles is not allowed if the publisher does not apply a CC-BY license. The chance of hybrid open access for readers is that they can access some articles of journals that are normally behind a paywall.For publishers hybrid open access does mean extra work. They have to handle the manuscript as they normally do for printed articles and additionally it must be edited for the open access online version, which requires new workflows. Furthermore, there are more administrative tasks for publishers. For this extra work publishers charge the authors APCs for the hybrid open access option. They also have to implement new contracts with libraries, so-called “offsetting deals”, to combine subscription and open access publications for involved institutions.When authors want to publish their research results in open access, they have the choice of various pure gold open access journals. If they decide to publish in such a journal they can normally retain their copyright as the article will be under a CC license. Some publishers may require the transfer of a non-exclusive copyright for the purpose of publishing and promoting the article. In most cases authors will be confronted with paying an APC, which can be a crucial factor in their decision where to publish. In return if they have to meet open access regulations of a funding body this option will usually be the most suitable.For readers gold open access has many advantages. They can access gold open access articles comparatively easily, without barriers like for example paywalls. This is especially very important for readers who do not have the possibility to access normally published articles from an institution or library that has a subscription for that journal, which is often the case for researchers from developing countries. Moreover, gold open access publications are also open for interested readers from the general public. Depending on the applied CC license, which is oftentimes the most liberal CC-BY, readers can even make further use of the articles, e.g. distribute, modify and use them.Gold open access means a relatively new publication and business model to publishers. They have to define and implement new workflows. This results mainly in a higher administration effort, for example in terms of licensing. Gold open access also means for publishers that they do not have to print these articles, which may lead to declining earnings from subscriptions or advert bookings. For compensating this loss many publishers charge APCs for gold open access articles, as described in An important and often discussed issue when publishing open access in the hybrid model is the so-called “double dipping”. Journals earn on subscription fees and in addition on article publication charges, as described above in It is also remarkable how and where open access articles can be found on the websites. This examination has shown that this differs considerably. When authors pay for open access publishing they expect that their articles can be found easily. Many journals have a separate section where all open access articles are listed. But there are also cases where no special reference is contained and these articles are simply listed amongst the traditionally published articles.Medical informatics is a research intensive discipline and research projects are often supported by funding organizations. For their research results authors have the choice to publish, among others, in many renowned journals, all offering an open access option. However, one result of this investigation is that it is often quite hard to find information on open access within the websites of the journals. In most cases a search across various linked sites is necessary to gain all information needed.By mainly working with the hybrid model, journals are charging article publication charges to serve the interest of some authors or funders in publishing research results open access. There is an increasing demand for this option, though it is still a small percentage of all articles. This also mirrors the general situation across all disciplines. This investigation has shown that the open access option is not yet completely implemented in the daily publishing business, visible in the disparate organization for example in terms of financing or licensing.If pure gold open access publishing in the field of medical informatics is desired, there is only the choice between two journals with an Impact Factor. As most funding bodies also support the publication in a hybrid journal so far, researchers can chose from a broad range of learned journals. Those who want to support the expansion of gold open access journals in their field can also consider publishing their articles in one of more than 20 medical informatics journals listed in the “Directory of Open Access Journals”. These journals are proven to fulfil defined criteria for gold open access, and authors can easily see if there are article publication charges including their height and which license types are offered .Altogether there are many options available to publish open access. Medical informatics researchers can decide if their publications should be released traditionally or openly. Obstacles for open access are mainly the uncertainty of many authors regarding this possibility, the financial factor and the often discovered passivity of journals in promoting this option.


The majority of our authors are opting in to publish reviewer reports of their papers Nature Communications (http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms10277). In this scheme we publish reviewer reports and author rebuttal letters for papers submitted from January 2016 onwards, but only if authors agree to this upon acceptance of the paper. The anonymity of our reviewers is maintained, unless they sign their reports to the authors. Our intention is to open up the peer review process at the journal, and to provide information on the expert reports that led to our editorial decision to publish a paper. Moreover, the reviewer reports also can serve as a background on the merits of a study, and inform about the discussion between authors and our reviewers. Other steps that we take to support our reviewers are described in a separate editorial (http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms13625).Last year we announced a trial of transparent peer review at In our view, crucial to the success of transparent peer review is the rate at which authors are opting in to the publication of the peer review files. So how did this go so far? The data are shown in On average, around 60% of our authors are voluntarily opting in to publishing the peer review history of their paper. We believe that this is a very encouraging result, given also the diversity of our content across so many research areas. Looking at the data for different research fields, not surprisingly, there is some variation. In areas where more open peer review is commonplace and reviewers often sign their reports by name, author opt-in is particularly strong. Other areas may not necessarily be that familiar with publishing reviewer reports, and might therefore still be hesitant to do so. However, in almost all research areas the majority of papers that we publish will now contain a peer review file.Whereas authors do have the option to opt out of the scheme, this is not the case for reviewers, who have to agree to the potential publication of their reviewer reports. We were curious to see how our reviewers would react to this approach. However, this has only been a problem for a small number of reviewers, who declined to review under this circumstance. For example, we had instances where reviewers objected because they feared that for their small research area it would be easy to deduce their identity from the published reports.From our readers we have had some feedback, albeit this was more limited as the number of published papers still continues to ramp up. With more time it may also be possible to study the number of downloads of the peer review files in detail. Nevertheless, we have become aware of instances where authors promoted the very positive published reviewer comments of their paper. At the same time, we also had feedback from readers on the peer review discussion of a paper. These instances showcase the potential of transparent peer review—on the one hand to appreciate the value of published papers, and on the other hand to initiate a constructive dialogue between authors and readers on the specifics of a study.Overall, we are very encouraged by the response to the trial, and will make transparent peer review a permanent feature. We hope that with time more and more authors and readers will appreciate the benefits of having the peer review files published.Published online: 10 Nov 2016


Journal of California Anthropology/ Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology and California Archaeology, and in one un-refereed venue, the Society for California Archaeology Proceedings. Although multiple independent measures indicate that women are contributing and active members of the discipline, publishing records yield more variable results. Specifically, while women have historic and increasingly robust levels of participation in the non-peer-reviewed Proceedings, they remain vastly underrepresented in the two peer-reviewed journals, which are widely regarded as more prestigious and influential. We argue that this “peer review gap” is influenced by variation in the costs (largely time investment) and benefits of publication for people working in different professional roles . We also argue that these cost and benefit variations may ultimately influence the decisions of people of all genders and backgrounds, but, because of the current structure of our discipline—including the fact that women and minorities lag in positions where costly peer-reviewed publication is a rewarded and supported activity—overwhelmingly affect these groups. We recognize that non-refereed publications such as Proceedings provide an important means of bridging the peer review gap and give voice to individuals from diverse backgrounds and perspectives.Researchers have repeatedly demonstrated that women continue to be underrepresented in publication output in the sciences. This is true even in female-rich fields such as archaeology. Since most gender-related publication studies rely on data from peer-reviewed journals, it would be instructive, though challenging, to also track publication output in non-refereed and professional or industry venues, which tend to be more accessible to those working in extra-academic settings. This comparison is important in fields such as archaeology in which the vast majority (approximately 90%) of practitioners in the USA work for private sector cultural resource management firms and federal and state agencies. To understand the dynamics of who publishes where, we compiled a new dataset tracking over 40 years of peer-reviewed versus non-peer-reviewed publications that publish articles on the archaeology of California  and the Great Basin culture area (spanning eight western USA states). Historic gender differences in the publishing output of authors identified as men versus those identified as women were revealed by articles published between 1974 and 2016 in two refereed journals, the  American Antiquity, the SAA’s flagship peer-reviewed journal, rose from 5% of lead authors between 1967–1991 )One of the difficulties of using publication rate to evaluate professional productivity in archaeology is that there is significant disparity between the academic publishing model and the reality of modern archaeology, namely that most archaeologists are employed where publication in peer-reviewed journals is typically not explicitly rewarded or supported. These dynamics underlie the overall structure of our discipline, and they are especially relevant when evaluating gendered publication patterns: While there is overall gender parity in terms of the demographic representation of women and men as participants in the field and in degrees awarded, women continue to lag in academic appointments  , 44–45 wThis incongruity between the lived experiences of professionals within and outside of academia warrants a reevaluation of the criteria that we use to conceive of and assess the output of practitioners in archaeology and in other disciplines. In an effort to assess the impacts of gender and institutional affiliation on professional productivity beyond the standard metrics that have traditionally been used to evaluate equity in publication rates, we employed a method that tracked the two general groups of publications with the methods described below.This case study speaks to archaeological publication trajectories of journals that cover a large area of western North America . Archaeologists working in this region account for a substantial number of professionals working in the USA. For example, more members of the Society for American Archaeology reside in California than any other state ; the same is true for the Register of Professional Archaeologists . Furthermore, in both societies, archaeologists from California and Great Basin states account for over a third of all USA members , which is the largest state archaeology society in the USA, with a membership that currently approximates 1100 individuals, and annual meetings that regularly attract upwards of 800 people . NotablyJournal of California and Great Basin Anthropology/ Journal of California Archaeology (JCGBA/ JCA) and California Archaeology (CA), and the non-peer-reviewed Society for California Archaeology Proceedings . All three publications vary in purpose, content, and audience , as well as Baja, Mexico . The longest running journal, JCGBA/JCA, has the greatest geographic breadth, and publishes articles on California , and the Great Basin culture area, which includes parts of eastern California, southeast Oregon, Nevada, Utah, western Colorado, northern Arizona, southern Idaho, western Wyoming).We tracked longitudinal publishing trends of men versus women by considering the three major venues for publication of California and Great Basin archaeological research, including two peer-reviewed journals: the JCGBA/JCA, established in 1974; Proceedings was first published in 1984, followed by CA in 2006  authors, and the occupational affiliation of lead authors (see below), was tabulated.We determined the longitudinal publishing trends of men versus women by tracking gender and occupational data for all authors for the entire publication history (up to the year 2016) of the three journals used in this study. The longest running journal is In the above data set, we designated individuals as “male,” “female,” or “other.” . In the case of ambiguous names for authors who we did not know personally, we were often able to discern gender from a simple internet search. For example, biographies of many authors are readily accessible on departmental, professional, or social media websites, and the gender of the author could be discerned through gender-specific pronouns used in the text and supported through the presentation of gender through photographs. When this method was not successful, we asked past and present editors of the journals and other colleagues for assistance. When the gender of an author could not be discerned, was ambiguous, or was queer/genderqueer/non-binary, we designated the author as “unknown.” A limitation of this study is that we were unable to fully assess the representation of queer/genderqueer/non-binary individuals due to our methods, which did not include self-reporting.Academic: Mostly universities and colleges, but also academic museums, and academic CRM firms; (2) Private sector/ CRM firms: Cultural resource management firms and entities; (3) Agency: Federal, state, and local agencies; (4) Museums: Public or private nonprofit museum institutions; (5) Independent: No affiliation stated or only an address; (6) Other: Any other affiliation not clearly associated with the above categories, including historical societies, research groups, international research institutes, and Tribal organizations ; Ten lead authors in Proceedings and three authors in JCGBA/ JCA who listed more than one affiliation were also included in this category. Note that these affiliation categories cannot take into account the various stages of each author’s career .To better understand occupational patterns of journal contributors over time, we tracked the occupational affiliation  of all lead authors. We divided affiliation into seven general categories: (1) Baseline participation of women in our regional sample of SCA archaeologists has steadily risen over the past four decades and today equals or exceeds that of men according to several metrics. Although the SCA membership was overwhelmingly dominated by men in its first year (80.8% men in 1967), the number of female SCA members steadily rose during the following years . By 2000We also examined the gender representation of different membership categories and general age groups for two recent years, 2011 and 2016. First, we looked more closely at the composition of different membership categories  and 2016 . Though not the focus of our paper, more longitudinal data are needed to better understand these dynamics.Next, we looked at the gender composition of contributing participants for two recent years of the SCA Annual Meeting—the 2011 meeting held in Rohnert Park, and the 2016 meeting held in Ontario, California. By compiling data recorded in the annual meeting program, we found that women are substantial contributors at meetings: 126 women and 151 men were authors in the listed papers, posters, and forums . This variability is a result of the lack of page limits in the Proceedings: it publishes all submissions as long as they were presented at the previous year’s SCA annual meeting and meet the SCA Bylaws and Ethical Guidelines  has been historically robust and remains strong today, we found a profound and persistent gender gap in the two peer-reviewed publications, JCA/JCGBA and California Archaeology.For the three journals we examined, we found that between 1974 and 2016, 2,617 authors had papers published. Of those authors, 844 (32.3%) were women, 1,762 (67.3%) were men, and 11 (0.4%) were gender unknown/ambiguous. After tabulating these data, we calculated the percentage of women authors in every journal issue as a way to compare historic gender participation rates. While we demonstrated that women’s participation in the non-refereed source (JCA/ JCGBA (1974–2012) is comparatively low. Of the 710 papers examined, 166 (23.4%) had female lead (first or sole) authors, and 294 (24.9%) total female authors  female lead authors and 69 (33.8%) total female authors between 2009 and 2012 : JCGBA/ JCA  and Proceedings  , but this journal has only been published for a relatively short period (seven years)  after 2009.We performed statistical analysis on our publication data using the Cochran-Armitage χor trend , 50. Whi01) Figs . A signin years) . NotablyJCGBA/ JCA. In the early 1970s, most first or single authors were affiliated with academic institutions or museums , Centro Baja California, 11 authors affiliated with regional and topical societies, research groups and committees, 10 authors with more than one affiliation, two site stewards, and two authors affiliated with Tribal organizations.We also noted longitudinal and gender trends in our analysis of occupational affiliation of lead authors Figs –11. The um group . Overalled group . One of JCGBA/ JCA and 64.7% in CA) , there are noticeably higher percentages of men associated with private sector/ CRM entities (32.8%) than are found in JCGBA/JCA. Conversely, there are markedly lower numbers of women with affiliations outside of academia in CA, and only 11.8% are private sector/CRM archaeologists , private sector/ CRM , and agency authors . Clearly, the percentages of extra-academic lead authors are significantly higher in Proceedings than in JCGBA/ JCA for both women and men, and are also higher than those for women in CA  . We obseectively . Howeveren in CA . NotablyCA. Due to the relative infancy of this journal, however, the sample size is small, so the future evolution of this exception will be interesting to track. We attribute current accessibility trends to a complex suite of factors that include, but are not limited to, the overall structure of our discipline, gender socialization and cultural norms, and variation in the time costs and benefits associated with different publication categories . Our analysis is especially revealing of the disciplinary structure and occupational cost-benefit realities of different occupational settings within the field of archaeology.Our analysis of publication data from three journals indicates that women and extra-academic professionals are the least likely groups to publish in peer reviewed journals. A notable exception to this patterns involves male compliance archeologists who are publishing extensively in the peer-reviewed For academics, there are many clear benefits to investing significant time and effort into publishing in peer-reviewed journals. Tenure, especially in R1 institutions, depends on an individual’s success in publishing, as well as on grant writing, teaching, and service. Publication output, especially in peer-reviewed journals, is a highly valued and highly rewarded metric, and the system is designed to reward scholars with high output with tenure and coveted faculty positions. Likewise, a lack of productivity is punished directly; academics with few or no publications are less competitive for post-doctoral and tenue-track positions, have lower grant success  and loweFor the majority (90%) of American archaeologists who work in compliance archaeology (page 7 in ), there While there is overall gender parity in archaeology terms of the demographic representation of women and men as participants in the field and in degrees awarded, women continue to lag in higher tier and more prestigious positions within the profession. Within the compliance industry, there is some evidence that men more commonly occupy senior leadership positions . This diDissemination of results remains a major challenge in archaeology today –54: “ManProceedings offer publication opportunities for professionals who are not willing or able to pay the time costs associated with publication in peer-reviewed journals. As documented here, this seems to be especially true for women and people working in extra-academic settings. The process for publishing in Proceedings is straightforward and open to any SCA member who presented a paper at the previous year’s SCA Annual meeting (Text A in Proceedings provides an accessible means of disseminating research in a timely and relatively low cost manner (reduced time investment) for those who do not have the time (or desire) to publish in peer-reviewed journals. An added benefit of the journal is that it follows an “open access model” with no associated publication fees for authors; there are no space limitations for papers and, since 2009, all content is freely available to the public at no cost. In contrast, the peer-reviewed CA is behind a firewall and only accessible to subscribing SCA members and paying readers, and recent issues of JCGBA/ JCA are not accessible online .Journals such as Proceedings provides. For those working in compliance archaeology, the journal can be an important avenue for disseminating major findings from technical reports that might otherwise be overlooked. An added benefit is that it promotes “multi-vocality”, which Seymour points out is one of the significant advantages of the grey literature [Proceedings may also help to make publishing more accessible to underrepresented groups, such as People of Color, who constitute less than 20% of American students in archaeology graduate programs [Our results indicate that women and CRM and agency professionals are taking advantage of the opportunity the terature . While oprograms . This isprograms –57. Simiprograms –59.Proceedings can provide a means for professionals from diverse backgrounds to disseminate their findings. While the overall impact of these publications is hard to predict, even if the potential readership is small, we think it is a benefit to the discipline to democratize the dissemination of ideas. This is not to say that non-peer reviewed journals are a replacement for peer-reviewed publications. Indeed, our aim should remain to close the peer-review gap, but until we solve some of the structural problems with dissemination outlined above, non-refereed venues may be the only realistic option for many individuals at present.In archaeology, because most grey literature consists of technical reports that are often difficult to access, venues like Proceedings) to give insight into the dynamics of how gender and occupation influence publication rates.This paper tracked the research output of archaeologists comparing articles published in two peer-reviewed publications  with those in a non-peer-reviewed venue  from western North America. Women are now well represented in the field, particularly among students and professionals in the middle stages of their career, but remain poorly represented in peer-reviewed publishing venues. Publishing trends suggest that the peer-review process acts as a major barrier to women publishing in archaeology journals, despite high levels of participation in terms of number of PhDs and SCA membership. The peer-review process can also act as a barrier to individuals from non-academic professions. While it is a challenge to track output affiliated with cultural resource management and agency roles , a corpus of written output that is essential to our field, we employed a novel means of tracking un-refereed productivity , a handful of women authors could potentially make a very large impact on future trends and close the gender gap to more accurately reflect the overall participation of women in California and Great Basin archaeology.The growing female contingent of SCA members  is an enProceedings have the potential to increase the representation of a variety of stakeholders and historically marginalized voices in addition to women and extra-academic professionals. Such considerations of identity and politics in archaeology are a necessary part of fulfilling our ethical responsibility as professionals [individual’s decision to publish , the larger message here is that the discipline can only benefit from the dissemination of different ideas and perspectives. Who ultimately controls the discourse of archaeology is precisely the point.In the future, we would like to track and recognize research output in more grey literature sources and track a broader range of participants. Our analysis of gender, unfortunately, cannot possibly account for non-gender-binary and non-gender conforming individuals. The lack of attention to queer/genderqueer/non-binary genders is a major component that is lacking in most equity studies, and is an issue that should be comprehensively addressed in future research on gender and publication rates in archaeology as well as in other disciplines. If journals began voluntary self-identification of gender upon paper submittal/ acceptance we would be able to better understand these patterns for people of all orientations and backgrounds. Similarly, it is also impossible to effectively study the publication and participation rates of underrepresented groups and self-identification of ethnicity may be a means of working this out in the future. There remains a need for archaeology as a discipline to be more intersectional and multi-vocal , and pubssionals . While rArchaeology has emerged as a field with equal or greater numbers of women participants compared to men. Like many other STEM disciplines there is a heavy contingent of extra-academic professionals; Today, nine out of ten archaeologists work in a growing industry that accounts for an estimated one billion dollars of annual spending (page 297 in ). While S1 FileText A. Journal Summaries; Table A. National Archaeological Society Members, CRM firms, and PhD Programs from California and Great Basin States; Table B. Gender Composition of SCA Members (1967–2016); Table C. Gender representation of SCA membership categories, 2011 and 2016; Table D. Gender Composition of SCA Annual Meeting Contributors, 2011 and 2016; Table E. Paper and author counts of peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed journals; Table F. Gender of First and Total Authors, JCA/ JCGBA (1974–2016) (note: not published in 2003); Table G. Gender of First and Total Authors, California Archaeology (2009–2016); Table H. Gender of First and Total Authors, SCA Proceedings (1988–2016) (Note: Proceedings not published in 2002 or 2008); Table I. Gender of lead authors by occupational affiliation, JCA/ JCGBA (1974–2016); Table J. Gender of lead authors by occupational affiliation, California Archaeology (2009–2016); Table K. Gender of lead authors by occupational affiliation, SCA Proceedings (1988–2016).(DOCX)Click here for additional data file.


Readers of the JACMP are well aware that the JACMP is an online journal rather than a print journal. In addition to being less expensive to produce, which enables the JACMP readership to access articles at no cost, an online journal provides the reader with several additional advantages over a print journal.One advantage is ecological soundness. Electrons are greener than paper. If a reader wishes to have a copy of an article from a print journal, he/she must take the journal to a copy machine and generate a photocopy of the article. One of my professors in graduate school said that “once you have copied an article, you have fulfilled your obligations to the author.” To “fulfill your obligations to the author” of an online journal article, now all you have to do is download the PDF form of the article and store it in a folder on your computer. Only if desired, do you need to generate a hardcopy of the file. Thus the onus of killing trees has been moved from the publisher to the reader.Other advantages of an online journal exist as well. Viewing an article in its HTML format allows the reader to take advantage of the capabilities of the web. When you view an article on the JACMP website, have a look on the right side of the web page. There you will find additional information about the article and its authors. For example, selecting the “About the author” tab will open up a window that contains brief biographical sketches of the authors, provided such biographical information is available. Authors of the JACMP are encouraged to fill out this information when they submit their manuscripts.Perhaps the major feature of an article published in HTML is the access to supplementary files. The most familiar type of supplementary files are figures. Clicking on the “Supplementary file” tab, also found on the right side of a JACMP article, will take you to a page of all the figures referenced in an article. Figures that appear in the JACMP can be downloaded and used in other publications and presentations provided proper acknowledgment is given to the author. Copyright of these figures is maintained by the author, who signs a release authorizing distribution of the figures. But please, if you are using an author's figure, be sure to provide proper acknowledgment. Supplementary files may also contain data sets that might be useful for various applications, or they may contain files, such as AVI files of moving entities, that cannot be incorporated into a PDF file of an article. Because of our long tradition with print presentation, we are not used to incorporating dynamic displays in our manuscripts. We encourage the JACMP authors to explore this method for data representation, when appropriate.Finally, a web‐based journal provides readers an opportunity to comment on articles, much like the reviews of books on the Amazon website . Good discussion of an article is a welcome addition to any publication. Readers are encouraged to enter their comments onto the JACMP website.Medical Physics and Physics in Medicine and Biology have addressed this topic as well, and it is certainly an issue for which we need to have a clearly stated policy. Although the JACMP has not had to deal with plagiarism, it does indeed have a plagiarism policy. A copy of the policy has been placed on our website as a supplementary file to this editorial.Recently, the issue of plagiarism has come across the desks of online journal editors. Editorials in Another current topic is the development of a Bill of Rights for Scientists and Engineers, recently prepared by Bill Hendee, Chair of the International Organization of Medical Physics (IOMP) Publication Committee. Concerns about the intrusion of pressures on the research of scientists and engineers led the president of the IOMP to ask Dr. Hendee to write a Bill of Rights for Scientists and Engineers. This Bill of Rights, which is accessible as a supplementary file to this editorial, responds to the IOMP president's request, and has been approved by the IOMP Council. Because the IOMP is one of the sponsors of the JACMP I have included a copy of the Bill of Rights with this editorial.As authors and readers of scientific research we are no longer limited by the printed page and as discussed, the advantages of online publishing are numerous. Incorporating features like easy access to supplementary files into our online journals complies with the principles of open access publishing of scholarly resources. I hope that you will expand your articles beyond the printed page and take advantage of all the features that the JACMP website has to offer.George Starkschall, PhDEditor‐in‐ChiefAugust 15, 2008Supplementary Material FilesClick here for additional data file.Supplementary Material FilesClick here for additional data file.


J. Cheminform. we would like to present our goals for the journal and our views on where cheminformatics as a field is headed and how the journal may influence it. As editors our overarching goal is to disseminate cheminformatics research and practice that is impactful and useful within the community. Open Access publishing remains central to this, as well as continued innovation in simplifying reuse of published work. This includes encouraging FAIR [As we take over the editorial reigns of ing FAIR  outputs In parallel with good publishing practice, we want to focus the journal on innovative research in, and the practice of, cheminformatics. This leads to an obvious question: what do we consider cheminformatics? An answer to this allows us to judge where innovation lies. Very broadly, cheminformatics addresses the generation, representation and manipulation of chemical information, with the chemical structure at its foundation. And thus innovation can occur at multiple levels, starting from the chemical structure itself  to novel ways to integrate chemical information with other data types (such as sequence data or protein structure data). At the same time, it is important to understand the bottlenecks and challenges in dealing with chemical information. While not necessarily novel, discussion of how organizations deal with chemical information problems and practice cheminformatics, which tools work and which do not, are all valuable contributions to the field.New methodology and work that address theoretical underpinnings of cheminformatics methods, such as new representations to complement QM and chemical graphs and methods to derive them;Approaches to describe and model new data types such as compound combination responses;New topical areas, such as approaches to modeling and screening inorganic materials or informatics approaches to QM/MM problems that enables application to large datasets; andNew perspectives on how chemical information can and should be employed in multi-disciplinary settings such as drug discovery and development pipelines, clinical environments or regulatory settings.Importantly, this partial list is driven by our scientific interests and vision. It is not comprehensive and we encourage authors to contact us regarding topics not listed here.Given the broad definition, it is useful to focus on a few areas that we feel are relevant to the future of the field. This aspect was touched upon by Wild  and morehttps://jcheminf.springeropen.com/submission-guidelines/preparing-your-manuscript/software).While aiming for high quality, relevant and innovative topical content is a primary goal, it is equally important that we ensure the usability and accessibility of the content published by the journal. Our goal is to publish material that can be reused, modified, and redistributed as far as possible. For studies that involve proprietary datasets, we encourage authors to include at least one non-proprietary dataset so that users can reproduce the study. Similar requirements for software usage are described elsewhere . As an Open Access journal, open licensing of content (including data and code) is a foundational aspect and coupled with waivers, we hope to further remove barriers to adoption of material published in the journal and encourage authors from around the world to consider J. Cheminform. using a variety of mechanisms such as videos, blog posts and Twitter (https://twitter.com/jcheminf). We are actively reviewing article and reviewer guidelines to ensure clarity in terms of what is or isn’t acceptable for different article types. More generally, as a platform for the dissemination of computational research we hope to contribute to the solution of challenges described by Neylon et al. [At the journal level, we will continue to work on improving dissemination of research published in n et al.  and Listn et al. While pontificating on the future is always a fun task, we are committed to the more challenging task of bringing the future to the present. To that end, we are currently designing a series of thematic issues and actively soliciting articles in a number of the areas listed above. In these efforts, the Editorial Board has provided useful inputs and we would like to acknowledge their participation in the journal’s activities. Simultaneously, we are working with the publisher to make our content more accessible in more ways.J. Cheminform. will play a key role in pushing the field forward.We believe that cheminformatics has a bright and broad future and that by focusing on emerging topics, cheminformatics practice and ensuring Open publishing policies,


Insights into Imaging starting from January 2018, Prof. Robert Hermans, who has served as the Editor-in-Chief since 2010, continued to provide support throughout the transition period. During his editorship, the journal has developed into a very successful international open-access peer-reviewed journal. The educational journal is appreciated all over the world as a high-quality and up-to-date source of information in the field of radiology.When the European Society of Radiology (ESR) announced my appointment as the new Editor-in-Chief of Insights into Imaging, we want to provide relevant professional knowledge as an addition to the clinical and research-focused content covered by the other members of the ESR journal family, European Radiology and European Radiology Experimental.At Insights into Imaging will largely focus on publishing in-depth critical reviews and illustrated pictorial articles, helping radiologists to envision the best way to meet patients’ needs while improving healthcare performance. Furthermore, the journal is also looking for submissions from leading European radiological societies and groups willing to improve the organisation of radiological departments and to strengthen relationships with other hospital departments. In addition, we very much welcome relevant papers dealing with standardisation proposals, state-of-the-art topics, research critiques and opportunities and the future of medical imaging. Insights into Imaging is meant to inspire healthcare professionals to develop expert opinions and take on new challenges.Insights into Imaging supports radiologists by discussing topics such as how to properly perform exams, how to report and how to measure and quantify imaging data and tissue properties. The journal provides input on what we know and explores what we should know to improve the healthcare cycle through the use of medical imaging and related computer science.We recognise that the greatest challenge for our journal is to strengthen the connection with the readership. As a high-quality platform for the dissemination of critical and useful knowledge, the journal will aid in the transformation of radiological practice towards an evidence-based, technology-based and patient-driven focus. To succeed as a journal, the topics covered have to be constantly exciting and relevant. The purpose of a scientific paper is to analyse and dissect a whole into parts to discover its nature, function and context, and transform it into knowledge through logical reasoning. Having been involved in academia and research, and with previous editorial experience on different Editorial Boards of major radiological journals, I fully recognise that the authors are the most important stakeholders in quality publishing. Authors should be considered as the main clients of our journal.Insights into Imaging will help readers refine their critical thinking skills and encourage them to develop stronger connections with their colleagues and other healthcare professionals. The most important articles will focus on patient-centred imaging and quality processes.The journal focuses and strengthens the role of radiologists in healthcare. By publishing critical reviews, up-to-date evaluations, guidelines, topics with the highest level of evidence, professional and management issues, new developments and meta-analyses, I would advise authors to focus on reviews and state-of-the-art papers in their field of expertise. Review papers should cover educational aspects of imaging with a pearls-and-pitfalls approach for pictorial reviews or give an overview of emerging techniques and cutting-edge concepts with an up-to-date and innovative approach for critical reviews. Both pictorial and critical reviews have significant potential to serve the radiological community, providing access to the best evidence-based research and displaying the impact of new imaging approaches.Insights into Imaging.I particularly want to encourage subspecialty societies and networking groups to submit position papers, including imaging guidelines on patient management aspects, as well as consensus statements on imaging-related topics. Furthermore, we will introduce in-depth commentaries of articles recently published in various radiological journals, not only in As a general rule, I advise authors to be original and to develop the critical thinking skills necessary to write any important paper; to choose a well-defined interesting topic on an important aspect related to imaging and to stay focused on it; to search the literature for relevant papers and related reviews; to be up to date but not forget older studies; to take notes while reading; to rewrite, restructure and rethink in order to obtain a text with a coherent argument; to avoid any possible plagiarism; and, finally, to be critical and consistent, identifying methodological problems while pointing out knowledge and research gaps.Insights into Imaging will ensure excellent visibility of your work and your team. Open-access publishing is not without cost, and I am happy to say that the ESR covers the article processing charges for all corresponding authors who are active society members and have no other funding options.As papers are fully available online worldwide, their impact in the community is large and they are easily citable. Outstanding and steadily increasing download numbers prove that publishing in In order to attract the best manuscripts and to provide good feedback to authors, high-quality reviews are essential. Reviewers spend much time and effort helping authors to improve the quality of their submitted manuscripts and assisting the Editor-in-Chief in selecting the best papers to be published. Their work is immensely valuable. Therefore, it is important to constantly improve the review process and increase the number of reviewers within the defined areas of interest and expertise. I do invite all of you interested in reviewing to send us an e-mail  stating your fields of interest and expertise.Insights into Imaging is an international, high-quality, peer-reviewed, open-access journal that makes your work immediately and permanently available online, for everyone, worldwide. I hope that we will all further enhance the journal’s quality and standing within the radiological and medical imaging community.In summary,