The Editors’ Network of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) provides a dynamic forum for editorial discussions and endorses the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) to improve the scientific quality of biomedical journals. Authorship confers credit and important academic rewards. Recently, however, the ICMJE emphasised that authorship also requires responsibility and accountability. These issues are now covered by the new (fourth) criterion for authorship. Authors should agree to be accountable and ensure that questions regarding the accuracy and integrity of the entire work will be appropriately addressed. This review discusses the implications of this paradigm shift on authorship requirements with the aim of increasing awareness of good scientific and editorial practices. The Editors’ Network of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) is committed to fostering the implementation of high-quality editorial standards among ESC National Society Cardiovascular Journals (NSCJ) –6. NSCJ Biomedical research relies on trust and transparency of the scientific process where authors remain centre stage , 7–9. Thand, (3) final approval of the version to be published. In the updated ICMJE requirements a new (fourth) criterion also should be met [In August 2013 an important revision of the ICMJE recommendations included a fourth criterion for authorship to emphasise each author’s responsibility to stand by the integrity of the entire work , 11. Clad be met . With thd be met –14. Editd be met –14. Shoud be met –14.Responsibility is defined as the moral obligation to ensure that a particular task is adequately performed [accountability denotes the duty to justify a given action to others and to respond for the results of that action [To better appraise this fourth criterion the precise meaning of responsibility and accountability should be revisited. erformed , 16. Accerformed , 16. By t action , 16. Thet action , 16. Nevt action , 16.Claiming that each individual author is held morally responsible in every case that misconduct is detected would appear unreasonable considering the complexity of current research. Rather, the fourth criterion suggests that each author must cooperate to clarify misconduct-related issues if the paper is called into question , 16.Acceptance and publication of a scientific paper is always a cause of major celebration among authors . AuthorsPublication of a scientific paper usually marks the end of a research project and opens a time for discussion and criticism or acceptance by the scientific community . Occasiosubstantial’ contribution to the research or the manuscript. In fact, the precise threshold of involvement required to qualify for authorship remains unclear. As the real problem lies in defining what represents a ‘substantial’ contribution, means to quantify the actual work performed by individual authors have been proposed. In this regard it has been suggested [Any researcher listed as an author should have made a ‘substantive’ intellectual contribution to the study and be prepared to take public responsibility for the work, ensure its accuracy, and be able to identify his/her contribution to the study . Howeveruggested  that subuggested .do not qualify as an author include those who ‘only’ provide: (1) recruitment of patients to a trial, (2) general data collection, (3) obtaining samples for a study, (4) acquisition of funding, (5) general supervision of the research group by the department chairperson. Conversely, persons who significantly contributed to the paper but do not meet the four criteria for authorship should be listed in the acknowledgement section after obtaining their consent.According to the ICMJE  persons The ICMJE authorship guidance is intentionally broad and open to accommodate the diversity of scientific research and allow space for the specific editorial policies of individual journals . HoweverDetailing authors’ contributions informs the readers of the nature of the individual work and avoids diluting credits by precisely allocating merits. In multi-authored papers it is particularly important that authors state the specific role they played in the research. Each research project represents a significant amount of effort and, on average, the larger the number of authors the smaller percentage of effort for a given author. Other forms of contributions, not fulfilling criteria for authorship, may be recognised in the acknowledgement section or by listing these people as collaborators. This is an important issue considering the ever-increasing number of authors seen in recent publications that represents a paradigm shift resulting from team-work research –24. ContThere is no adequate guidance for author sequence in the by-line. In fact, practices to clarify the relative merit of the different co-authors in a manuscript vary significantly among scientific disciplines –22. For Many journals allow authors to declare that two or more individuals have made an ‘equal contribution’ to the research , 25–28. The corresponding author takes primary responsibility for communication with the journal during the submission, peer-review, publication and post-publication periods . CurrentThe ‘guarantor’ of the study may be different from the first or corresponding author and frequently is the principal investigator or most senior person in the group. The guarantor takes full responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole from inception to the published paper. Accordingly, the guarantor must be fully prepared to defend all parts of the research project and final manuscript. Guarantors vouching for the integrity of the entire work are of special value for multi-author articles particularly when many institutions are involved. All authors should also disclose potential conflicts of interest , 5. The www.publicationethics.org) guidelines are useful to solve publication disputes [The subjectivity and emotionality of authorship may explain why disputes among investigators are not uncommon. Authorship disputes amongst research teams should be avoided by deciding roles and responsibilities beforehand. Ideally, the order of the authors should be collectively decided by the research team at the onset of the project . Then, tdisputes . Editorsdisputes .Scientific collaboration has become increasingly important because the complexity of modern research involves different competencies . MoreoveThere is evidence that the number of co-authors per paper in medical literature has increased exponentially over time , 31. TheUntil now the number of authors in the by-line was not considered in the evaluation of the relative academic merit of individual authors . HoweverAuthorship guidelines should be updated to adapt to the growing trend of collaborative research. The larger the number of authors the more opportunities for contentious arguments and disputes. Every author of a ‘group authorship’ work must meet the four criteria for authorship. Otherwise they should be identified just as investigators or collaborators rather than authors . Given t. Ghost writing is also an unethical practice as it keeps hidden the involvement in the manuscript. The concern is that writers hired by industry might influence the content of the publication or hide unwelcome results, which introduces potential bias that is obscured when relevant academic guest authors are accredited with authorship [Breaches in authorship are a form of deception. Guest or gift (honorary) and ghost (hidden) authors represent a form of authorship abuse that should not be permitted –37. Ghosthorship . Professthorship .The inclusion of individuals with minimal or no input reflects ‘loose authorship’ practices –37. GuesStudies suggest that breaches of authorship guidelines are frequent. In a recent survey one-third of authors believed that they had been excluded from deserved authorship and a similar number declared that they had experienced pressure to include undeserved authors in their papers . Another


Communications Biology opened for submissions. We’d like to take this opportunity to look back on the past year and thank all those who have contributed to the journal.A year has passed since  Communications Biology, the year since we opened for submissions has passed in a blur. We’ve received more than 850 submissions and, although many of our papers are still making their way through the peer review process, we have already published well over 100 papers. Meanwhile, we are busy working toward the goals set out in our launch editorial1: to be an inclusive, multi-disciplinary journal for all biologists and to provide the best author service we possibly can.For the editorial staff of We are happy to say that we are on the right track. Our published papers represent the breadth of the life sciences—from biophysics to entomology, cognitive neuroscience to microbiology, and much more. Our in-house editors and Editorial Board Members have worked hard to meet our goals of delivering timely decisions and maintaining communication with our authors throughout the editorial and review process. And where we have fallen short of our goals, we strive to do better.But we wouldn’t be anywhere today without our authors, reviewers, and readers. We have had the privilege to publish truly outstanding, high-quality papers that, judging by the response of our reviewers and readers, are important contributions to their respective fields of research. We want to take this moment to thank all of our authors for entrusting us with their discoveries.2. We believe that to truly have an inclusive journal, our reviewers and editors should reflect the broader biological community, and we keep this guiding principle in mind in everything that we do. Our editors consider all forms of diversity when inviting potential reviewers and routinely ask invited reviewers to consider gender balance, ethnic and geographical diversity, and career stage diversity when suggesting alternative reviewers in the event that they must decline our invitation. Despite these efforts, we find that only 26% of our reviewers are women; we are actively working toward increasing this proportion. As part of this effort, we call on our authors to consider diversity when suggesting reviewers for their submitted papers.We are grateful to the more than 1100 individual reviewers who have contributed to the success of our journal and the quality of the final published papers you read in our pages. Our reviewers, like our authors, come from all over the world—representing more than 40 countries—and all career stagesWe are grateful to the more than 1100 individual reviewers who have contributed to the success of our journal and the quality of the final published papers you read in our pages.With Peer Review Week just around the corner—the theme of which we are happy to see is ‘Diversity and Inclusion in Peer Review’—we would also like to take this opportunity to acknowledge our reviewers more publicly. Starting this month, we will highlight a Reviewer of the Month to recognize some of our most outstanding reviewers. Each month, one of our editors will be tapped to choose a reviewer they feel has made a significant and positive contribution to the peer review process, regardless of whether the paper was eventually accepted by the journal. We are not choosing our Reviewers of the Month based on speed, as we feel that an outstanding review is worth the wait (within reason of course). Rather, we are looking for those reviewers who take both a broad and detailed view of the paper, who demonstrate professionalism and compassion, and provide comments that truly help the authors to improve their work. We embark on this project with no small amount of trepidation. After all, many of our reviewers are outstanding and all of them are important to the success of our authors and the journal. But we hope that by publicly recognizing even a small number of our reviewers, we can help humanize the often impersonal process of peer review.Finally, in honor of the upcoming Peer Review Week and outstanding reviewers everywhere, we’d like to hear your stories of peer review done right. Tell us about a time that a review helped you to improve the paper, or when a comment from a reviewer simply brightened your day. Use the comments below or email us at commsbio@nature.com and we may share your story in a future editorial.


Where should I submit my paper? This is a question that young scientists and trainees frequently ask. In this Commentary, we advise on how to make such a decision whilst balancing the risks and benefits. We argue that trying to publish in top tier journals may not always be the best option and that publishing in indexed, open access journals may expose research to the same or larger audiences. The value of research should not be judged according to the publishing journal’s name, but rather from other measures of impact such as successful commercialization of new technologies, number of citations, and downloads. We also highlight the role of mentors, who have the responsibility to protect the long-term interests of their trainees by balancing the consequences of acceptances and rejections. One of the most frequent dilemmas we face as supervisors is where to submit a paper prepared by our trainees. Typically, we ask students to prepare a list of possible journals, along with their respective journal impact factors (JIFs). After editing the work, a discussion takes place with the trainee about where to submit the manuscript. Expectedly, the majority of students wish to publish their papers to the highest possible impact journals, as judged by the JIF. Herein, we discuss the implications of trying to publish in elite journals and the consequences of this on the career and wellbeing of young investigators.Nature and Science magazines. In our view, the value of these journals is mostly related to their high-quality editorial content, with very few papers published in these multidisciplinary journals being directly related to our work . Indeed, for our research purposes, we retrieve most papers by either searching PubMed, or through alerts, based on keywords. We assume that most scientists, young and old, follow similar strategies.Numerous investigators maintain personal subscriptions to Since the 1970s, scientific publishing has changed dramatically , than in lower impact journals (termed as ‘benign’) –5. We anYoung investigators may be prefixed with the JIF. However, we recently predicted the future demise of the JIF and, indeed, we have seen our prediction come true with certain journals , 7. To dNot many senior researchers discuss the fact that submitting to the highest-impact journals may be associated with adverse effects, especially for their trainees. It is now common knowledge that anxiety and depression among graduate students, post-docs, and young faculty is on the rise, with the issue attracting significant attention –16. One In our view, the importance of publishing in high-impact journals  is progressively decreasing due to the rise of open access journals and other publication options. In open access journals, upon publication, research is immediately visible in full text to international audiences who can read and cite it. It is difficult to envisage that any researcher would decide whether or not to read a highly relevant paper for their research based on the journal’s rating by the JIF . A recent analysis demonstrated that the number of citations accrued by a paper is not correlated with the JIF if the journal is open access . ConsequThere are also alternative methods for the publication of research, such as submission to a pre-print server. Pre-print servers are repositories that archive papers and make them available to readers without peer review. The major advantages of such a practice are the immediate visibility and the establishment of some priority in a specific subject. Thus, possible delays with the review process (which sometimes extend to a year or more) are avoided. Our students are increasingly advised to submit to such pre-print servers, yet they are suspicious that somebody may steal their ideas prior to formal acceptance by a peer-reviewed journal. The disadvantages of pre-print servers are that you may lose the benefit of peer review to improve your paper before it becomes public and that some journals have strict qualification rules regarding the prior submission to a pre-print server.We are now increasingly advising our young associates to consider indexed, open access, quick publication journals. While practices vary, some of these journals have additional unique features besides being open access. For instance, they will accept and post a paper on their website (but not in PubMed) prior to formal acceptance by peer review, the reviewers are identifiable, and the reviews are public, and/or they require the submission of complete primary data to allow reanalysis by others. Following acceptance, the paper is freely available in full text in PubMed. Our experience is that, despite some concerns about the JIF, which may not even be used by these journals or could be relatively low, our trainees are thrilled to see their paper in PubMed, sometimes within 2–4 months from submission. Such fast visibility is a highly effective anti-anxiety and anti-depressive remedy. Nevertheless, our trainees realize that, under this publication model, their paper will be under permanent review, since readers can post comments at any time, even years after publication. A further perceived disadvantage would be the nominal fee paid by the authors to cover production costs; yet, due to competition, this fee is steadily decreasing. However, authors must realize that there are costs involved in the publication of a paper, even in open access, and that these costs should be met by authors, institutions, or funders. Finally, we also tell our trainees that no Nobel committee will deny them the Prize due to their work having been published in an open access journal without or with a low impact factor.The open access publishing model has attracted increased attention in recent times following the demand of some scientific opinion leaders that all papers published in closed access journals become freely available in open access format, quickly after publication, without cost to the authors. One concern is that closed access journals could impede scientific progress due to their usually slower publication schedules and paywalls; this could be particularly damaging for very fast-growing disciplines such as artificial intelligence. Some authors are even threatening to boycott some highly visible journals if they insist on closed access or charging publication fees in the open access model . Recentlthe best or nothing”. While many mentors can afford this luxury, their trainees likely cannot. Our own experience suggests that, for most students, it is better to publish one or more papers in open access journals, as outlined above, and then proceed to completion of their degrees, on time. The alternative insistence on publishing in the highest impact journals runs the risk of multiple rejections, major delays, years of additional research, and postponement of personal life decisions such as starting a family or finding a job. By guiding their trainees to publish in non-elite, yet respected journals, mentors may prevent serious consequences such as anxiety and related disorders.We know of many mentors who insist on either publishing in top-tier journals or not publishing at all; their behavior is reminiscent of the Mercedes-Benz car TV advertisement: “Nature report by Watson and Crick on the double helical structure of DNA [In our view, ‘elite’ journals are still required, yet their value lies on their exemplary editorial content, rather than on their original scientific material. Their science could be published elsewhere, and have the same societal impact and benefit. For example, one of the most influential papers in history is the one-page e of DNA . Would tFor mentors, we advise the adoption of a motto different from that of the Mercedes-Benz car manufacturer and to equip their trainees with the knowledge to make an informed decision as to where to send their work. After all, it is preferable that their hard work is made known to the international community through an open access journal or (bio-)archive than to remain unpublished.


Alan Walker is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Aberdeen, UK, studying the intestinal microbiota and its interactions with the host’s diet. In this interview, Alan discusses his research interests, earlier studies of the ways contaminants can affect microbiome analyses, the excitement of experiments going well, and why science doesn’t need to be combative. I am based at The Rowett Institute, which is a centre for inter-disciplinary nutrition research. Our work is therefore focussed on interconnections between what we eat, the gut microbiota, and subsequent impacts on host health. In order to develop more effective microbiota-targeted dietary interventions we need a much better understanding of which gut microbiota species might be beneficial for health, and in which ways. We also need to better understand how a person’s gut microbiota will respond to specific dietary interventions, and how this response can vary between different individuals.Fig. 1 Alan WalkerThe problem of lab reagent contamination had been described many years previously . HoweverBMC Biology has been very positive. It was publicised widely, has been very well cited, and followed up by other studies that echo the concerns raised . AlthouThere have been perhaps a handful of occasions in my life as a scientist when a set of experimental results came back and they were so compelling that I wanted to jump for joy. A personal favourite is perhaps the first study I ever did during my PhD, which established that pH can have major impacts on the metabolic outputs from colonic microbial communities . I stoodI have been very lucky in my career to have worked with lots of brilliant people, including supervisors, co-workers, students and collaborators. To a greater or lesser degree, all of them have inspired my research. If I had to pick out one paper that I often go back to, I thoroughly recommend a review by John Cummings and George Macfarlane from 1991 —it serveBMC Biology paper on contamination was my first as senior author), but my main guiding principle in science has always been to work with interesting and inspiring people. Science does not have to be combative. I’m always staggered to meet scientists who want to keep everything in house, as interdisciplinary collaboration is one of my favourite things about the job. So, I guess my main piece of advice is to be open to collaborative work, and then to be nice to each other! It’s critically important to ensure that there is mutual respect and due credit given between all contributing partners.I am still relatively new to running a lab  into the emerging field of personalised nutrition.Given the amount of misinformation about the microbiome that is currently available in the popular press, and on the internet, I believe that it is important that the general public be given more opportunity to see and judge the underlying science, should they so wish.As such, I would like to see the final, copy edited versions of all peer reviewed manuscripts being fully open access to the public. For those of us without a budget to cover open access charges, this is not always possible, but it is certainly something to aspire to. I would encourage any efforts to facilitate this process.I would also be in favour of mandatory open access lay summaries, scrutinised by peer review at the same time as the scientific manuscript, appearing online alongside research articles. The potential benefits have been well covered by others .Website: https://www.abdn.ac.uk/rowett/research/dr-alan-walker-643.phpTwitter: @_Faecal_Matters


Open Research for several years. This demand is further intensified by requests of funding organizations as well as politics. Open Research is a very broad term that covers various aspects of science becoming more open, accessible, efficient, democratic, and transparent, as defined by the European Commission. Certainly, publishers and journals play an essential role in this process. We do not only consider Advanced Science at the forefront of this development, but we are also committed to further boost this process.In conversations with our readers and authors, we have been noticing an increasing demand for Open Access‐journal such as Advanced Science are accessible to everyone anywhere at any time. They are easy to find on our journal‐website as well as in all important indexing services . Publishing under a CC‐BY license accelerates and simplifies communication. Furthermore, we accept submission of papers published on preprint‐servers in order to improve rapid research availability and transparency. The visibility of your results can be further enhanced by ordering a Video Abstract  or promotion in various social networks.Manuscripts published in an Open Research. As a result, we are confident that our ongoing ambition to facilitate interdisciplinary collaborative science and efficient impactful research will continue to be prosperous.The exceptional quality of our publications is guaranteed by a fast, rigorous and strict peer‐review process. Starting in 2020, our referees will have the option to receive ORCID‐reviewer recognition. This is realized in a very convenient and automated way and represents an additional step towards Advanced Science illustrate that our way towards Open Research is going in the right direction. Submissions increased by more than 60% and the number of published papers increased by more than 35% compared to the previous year . The impact factor raised to a record value of currently 15.804, which represents an increase of 27% compared to 2018. Overall the number of downloaded articles nearly doubled within the last 12 months. FigureThe key performance indicators for th anniversary in 2019, we invited our executive advisory board members to contribute articles for a celebratory series to be published in a continuously expanding virtual issue (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1002/(ISSN)2198-3844.AnniversaryVirtualIssue). These articles showcase outstanding achievements of leading international researchers in the field of materials science, physics and chemistry, medical and life sciences, as well as engineering. In case you are interested in getting to know our executive advisory board members on a more personal level, I would like to recommend our interview‐based highlights on our website Advanced Science News (https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/tag/advanced-science-5th-anniversary/).On the occasion of our 5TableTableAdvanced Science articles published in 2019 that received the highest Altmetric score. This number is an indication of the attention that a publication gained, with red color indicating mainstream media coverage on news platforms, yellow indicating blogs, and blue representing Twitter activities. The table nicely reflects the broad topical scope of our journal with research on 3D printed hearts, or bacterial resistance and new insights into Alzheimer's disease, to more material science‐oriented topics on energy storage or the worlds' thinnest gold.Advanced Science already in summer 2019. Bo Weng from our Beijing office joins the team as a new Deputy Editor for the new year. This growing team is happy to receive feedback and suggestions, and of course looking forward to an interesting and successful new year full of exciting research submitted to Advanced Science.With all this growth, more dedicated people are needed to run the journal. I am happy to announce that we have 2 new Deputy Editors : Ulf Scheffler was promoted to a Deputy Editor position in Advanced Science has evolved into an impactful, well‐known, and eminently respectable journal that publishes the best international research from all areas of natural science. This would certainly not have been possible without the tremendous support by our readers, executive board members, reviewers, and authors. We would like to thank you and we are looking forward to a great future.Within only a few years, On behalf of the whole editorial team,


To increase transparency in science, some scholarly journals are publishing peer review reports. But it is unclear how this practice affects the peer review process. Here, we examine the effect of publishing peer review reports on referee behavior in five scholarly journals involved in a pilot study at Elsevier. By considering 9,220 submissions and 18,525 reviews from 2010 to 2017, we measured changes both before and during the pilot and found that publishing reports did not significantly compromise referees’ willingness to review, recommendations, or turn-around times. Younger and non-academic scholars were more willing to accept to review and provided more positive and objective recommendations. Male referees tended to write more constructive reports during the pilot. Only 8.1% of referees agreed to reveal their identity in the published report. These findings suggest that open peer review does not compromise the process, at least when referees are able to protect their anonymity. To increase transparency in science, some scholarly journals have begun publishing peer review reports. Here, the authors show how this policy shift affects reviewer behavior by analyzing data from five journals piloting open peer review. This sense of urgency is due to the increased importance of publications for tenure and promotion in an academic job market, which is now hypercompetitive worldwide2. Not only could biased peer review distort academic credit allocation; bias could also have-negative implications on scientific knowledge and innovation, and erode the legitimacy and credibility of science6.Scholarly journals are coping with increasing requests for transparency and accountability of their internal processes by academics and various science stakeholders9. The need for more openness and transparency of peer review has been a subject of debate since the 1990s12. Recently, some journals, such as The EMBO Journal, eLife and those from Frontiers, have enabled various forms of pre-publication interaction and collaboration between referees, editors and in some cases even authors, with F1000 implementing advanced collaborative platforms to engage referees in post-publication open reviews. Although very important, these experiments have not led to a univocal and consensual framework14. This is because they have been performed only by individual journals, and mostly without any attempts to measure the effect of manipulation of peer review across different journals16.Under the imperative of open science, certain learned societies, publishers and journals have started to experiment with open peer review as a means to open the black box of internal journal processesOur study aims to fill this gap by presenting data on an open peer review pilot run at five Elsevier journals in different fields simultaneously, in which referees were asked to agree to publish their reports. Starting with 62,790 individual observations, including 9220 submissions and 18,525 completed reviews from 2010 to 2017, we estimated referee behavior before and during the pilot in a quasi natural experiment. In order to minimize any bias due to the non-experimental randomization of these five pilot journals, we accessed similar data on a set of comparable Elsevier journals, so achieving a total number of 138,117 individual observations, including 21,647 manuscripts .17.Our aim was to understand whether knowing that their report would be published affected the referees’ willingness to review, the type of recommendations, the turn-around time and the tone of the report. These are all aspects that must be considered when assessing the viability and sustainability of open peer review. By reconstructing the gender and academic status of referees, we also wanted to understand whether these innovations were perceived differently by certain categories of scholars13, publishing peer review reports is probably the most important and less problematic form. Unlike pre-publication open interaction, post-publication or decoupled reviews, this form of openness neither requires complex management technologies nor it depends on external resources . At the same time, not only do open peer review reports increase transparency of the process, they also stimulate reviewer recognition and transform reports in training material for other referees8.It is important here to note that while open peer review is an umbrella term for different approaches to transparencyIn November 2014, five Elsevier journals agreed to be involved in the Publication of Peer Review reports as articles  pilot. During the pilot, these five journals openly published typeset peer review reports with a separate DOI, fully citable and linked to the published article on ScienceDirect. Review reports were published freely available regardless of the journal’s subscription model . For each accepted article, all revision round review reports were concatenated under the first round for each referee, with all content published as a single review report. Different sections were used in cases of multiple revision rounds. For the sake of simplicity, once agreed to review, referees were not given any opt-out choice and were asked to give their consent to reveal their identity. In agreement with all journal editors, a text was added to the invitation letter to inform referees about the PPR pilot and their options. At the same time, authors themselves were fully informed about the PPR when they submitted their manuscripts. Note that while one of these journals started the pilot earlier in 2012, for all journals the pilot ended in 2017 (further details as SI).Figure 18, in order to increase the coherence of our analysis, we only considered the first round of review, i.e., 85% of observations in our dataset. For observation, we meant any relevant event and activity that were recorded in the journal database, e.g., the day a referee responded to the invitation or the recommendation he/she provided (see Methods)Following previous studiesWe found that only 22,488 (35.8%) of invited referees eventually agreed to review, with a noticeable difference before and after the beginning of the pilot, 43.6% vs. 30.9%. However, it is worth noting that while the acceptance rate varied significantly among journals, there was an overall declining trend, possibly starting before the beginning of the pilot . The year variable allowed us to control for any underlying trend in the data, such as the increased number of submissions and reviews, or the increased referee pool. Furthermore, to check whether the open review condition had a different effect on specific sub-groups of referees, we estimated fixed effects for the interaction between this variable and the status and gender of referees , we estimated a mixed-effect cumulative-link model including the same random and fixed effects as the previous model. Table 8. The average 28.2 ± 4.6 days referees took to complete their reports before the pilot increased to 30.4 ± 4.4 days during it. However, after estimating models that considered the increasing number of observations over time, we did not find any significant effect on turn-round time —and subjectivity—i.e., whether the style used in the reports was predominantly objective . A graphical analysis showed only minimal differences before and during the pilot, with reviews only slightly more severe and objective in the open peer review condition  the number of characters of the report, the year, and the gender and status of the referees (plus interactions), respectively, were included as fixed effects. As before, the submission and journal IDs were used as random effects. Table When testing a similar model on subjectivity, we only found that younger and non-academic referees were more objective, whereas no significant effect was found for other categories Table .Table 5M20. Here, only younger and non-academic referees were slightly sensitive to the pilot. They were more keen to accept to review, more objective in their reports, and less demanding on the quality of submissions when under open peer review, but effects were minor.Our findings suggest that open peer review does not compromise the inner workings of the peer review system. Indeed, we did not find any significant negative effects on referees’ willingness to review, their recommendations, or turn-around time. This contradicts recent research on individual cases, in which various forms of open peer review had a negative effect on these same factorsInterestingly, we found that the tone of the report was less negative and subjective, at least when referees were male and younger. While this could be expected in case referees opting to reveal their identity, as this could be a reputational signal for future cooperation by published authors, this was also true when referees decided not to reveal their identity.14, here only 8.1% of referees agreed to reveal their identity. Although certain benefits of open science and open evaluation are incontrovertible22, our findings suggest that the veil of anonymity is key also for open peer review. It is probable that this reflects the need for protection from possible retaliation or other unforeseen implications of open peer review, perhaps as a consequence of the hyper-competition that currently dominates academic institutions and organizations24. In any case, this means that research is still needed to understand the appropriate level of transparency and openness of internal processes of scholarly journals13.However, it is worth noting that unlike recent survey results25, it is possible that our findings were still context specific. For instance, a recent survey on scientists’ attitudes towards open peer review revealed that scholars in certain fields, such as the humanities and social sciences, were more skeptical about these innovations14. Previous research suggests that peer review reflects epistemic differences in evaluation standards and disciplinary traditions27. Furthermore, while here we focused on referee behavior, it is probable that open peer review could influence author behavior and publication strategies, making journals more or less attractive also depending on their type of peer review and their level of transparency.In this respect, although our cross-journal dataset allowed us to have a more composite and less fragmented picture of peer review14. While large-scale comparisons and across-journal experimental tests are required to improve our understanding of these relevant innovations, these efforts are also necessary to sustain an evidence-based journal management culture.This indicates that the feasibility and sustainability of open peer review could be context specific and that the diversity of current experiments probably reflects this awareness by responsible editors and publishers28.Our dataset included records concerning authors, reviewers and handling editors of all peer reviewed manuscripts submitted to the five journals included in the pilot. The data included 62,790 observations linked to 9220 submissions and 18,525 completed reviews from January 2010 to November 2017. Sharing internal journal data were possible thanks to a protocol signed by the COST Action PEERE representatives and ElsevierWe applied text mining techniques to estimate the gender of referees by using two Python libraries that contain more than 250,000 names from 80 countries and languages, namely gender-guesser 0.4.0 and genderize.io. This allowed us to minimize the number of “uncertain” cases (20.7%). For each subject, we calculated his/her academic status as filled in the journal management platform and performed an alphanumeric case-insensitive matching in the concatenation of title and academic degree. This allowed us to assign everyone the status of “professor” , “Doctor” , and “Other” .29. This allowed us to consider valence shifters , de-amplifiers (downtoners), and adversative conjunctions) through an augmented dictionary lookup. Note that we considered only reports including at least 250 characters, corresponding to a few lines of text.To perform the sentiment analysis of the report text, we used a pattern analyzer provided by the TextBlob 0.15.0 library in Python, which averages the scores of terms found in a lexicon of around 2900 English words that occur frequently in product reviews. TextBlob is one of the most commonly used libraries to perform sentiment analysis and extract polarity and subjectivity from texts. It is based on two standard libraries to perform natural language processing in Python, that is, Pattern and NLTK . We used the former to crawl and parse a variety of online text sources, while the latter, which has more than 50 corpora and lexical resources, allowed us to process text for classification, tokenization, stemming, tagging, parsing, and semantic reasoningR 3.4.4 platform30 with the following additional packages: lme4, lmerTest, ordinal and simpleboot. Plots were produced using the ggplot2 package. The dataset and R script used to estimate the models are provided as supplementary information.All statistical analyses were performed using the 31 .While all robustness checks provided in the SI file allowed us to confirm our findings, it is worth noting that our individual observations could be sensitive to dependency. Indeed, the same referee could have reviewed many manuscripts either for the same or for other journals . While unfortunately we could not obtain consistent referee IDs across journals, we believe that the potential effect of this dependency on our models was minimal considering the large size of the dataset.Supplementary InformationPeer Review FileSource Data 1Source Data 2


Plant Biotechnology Journal. PBJ has successfully transitioned from a subscription based journal to an open access journal, ranked by Scopus as second among 238 open access journals published in all fields of research and is the only open access journal among the top ten plant science journals. This transition has resulted in enhanced free global access to all our readers.Welcome to the first issue of the seventeenth volume of the PBJ first among 309 Agronomy and Crop Science journals. Excluding review journals in plant sciences, CiteScore ranks PBJ third (6.51) behind Plant Cell (7.33) and New Phytologist (6.65). Both Plant Journal and Plant Physiology (6.01) are ranked fourth and Molecular Plant and Nature Plants (5.71) are ranked seventh. CiteScore metrics addresses some of the major limitations of the ISI impact Factor, which excludes certain article types  thereby decreasing the number of citable items counted in the denominator of the impact factor. For example, Nature Plants (11.47) and Molecular Plant (9.32) are ranked highest by impact factor score amongst plant science journals publishing original research but are ranked much lower among the top ten by the CiteScore. Therefore, most journals including PBJ now list both scores on their websites to highlight such discrepancies in journal impact. PBJ ranks third based on CiteScore and fifth based on impact factor among plant science journals publishing original research. Irrespective of the method of citation analysis, PBJ is building on the strength of high impact original inventions reported by our authors and critically evaluated by our editors/reviewers. Therefore, I convey my greatest appreciation to our authors for submitting their best research and our editors/reviewers for their critical evaluations. I look forward to your continued support in 2019.Scopus CiteScore also ranks PBJ, I have accepted this challenge and continue to encourage publication of more research articles. Therefore, PBJ received a record number of manuscripts in 2018 from all continents, with more submissions from Asia (114%), Middle East (250%), Central /South America (163%), North America (111%) and Oceania (104%) but a slight (−6%) decrease from Europe. Of course, this has increased required the number of PBJ reviewers and I am eternally grateful for their critical evaluations and generous time commitment. I am happy to report that the increase in number of reviewers didn't significantly increase the average turnaround time, rewarding our authors with timely decisions on their submissions. Considering PBJ is still a very young journal, these are very impressive accomplishments.While it is relatively easy to reduce the number of published articles in order to improve journal ranking, it is quite challenging to publish high quality original research and also meet the publication needs of the plant research community. As the Editor in Chief of PBJ Altmetric scores of high impact articles are, at times, higher than those published in Science or Nature journals. The PBJ website has highlighted the top three articles with very high Altmetric scores on polio booster vaccine (558), low‐gluten non‐transgenic wheat (509) and golden bananas (242). In order to further engage the public or policy makers in scientific discussions, I request that authors provide Twitter titles at the time of manuscript submission. In addition, I encourage authors to share news releases on their articles with the PBJ editorial office so that they are included in Wiley Plant Science tweets @PlantSciNews, which currently has ~13 500 followers.PBJ has a unique role in building bridges between academia, industry and regulatory agencies and also in increasing awareness of plant biotechnology research among the public. While full length articles encompassing in depth studies meet scientific needs, they are not suitable when engaging the public and regulatory agencies. Therefore, I encourage authors to submit “PBJ letters” to briefly report new inventions or commentaries . PBJ will not publish more letters or commentaries to manipulate journal ranking and will restrict this for it's intended purpose. Letters submitted to PBJ will also undergo the same rigorous peer review that we expect of original research articles.As an applied plant biology journal, PBJ management, I have significantly increased the number of associate editors, representing several new areas and different continents, not previously represented. We welcome new associate editors: Dr. François Belzile, Department of Plant Sciences, Institute for Integrative and Systems Biology, Laval University, Québec, Canada; Dr. Shuangxia Jin, National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement, Huazhong Agricultural University, China; Dr. Jihong Liu‐Clarke, NIBIO, Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research, Norway and Dr. Marco Maccaferri, Department of Agricultural Science, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy. The PBJ editorial board has also been revitalized by replacing less active members with investigators in emerging new disciplines.With the support of PBJ production editor for many years but moved on to another position recently, and I welcome our new production editor Ms. Maricar Dumlao, Wiley, Manila.I convey my sincere thanks for the excellent service offered by all our Associate Editors who have served more than 10 years  or in the past few years  or joined recently , and also the Editorial staff  at Wiley, Oxford. I thank Julie Ann Suliguin, who served as PBJ is now compatible with mobile platforms, tablets, iPads and iPhones and offers several new options to evaluate the short and long‐term impact of published articles, including Altmetric scores, article readership and citations. I encourage all readers to visit the journal homepage to take advantage of open access, keep up to date with latest developments and to sign up for our automated e‐alerts in order to receive emailed notifications when new issues or Early View articles are published. Please note that readers should ‘opt‐in’ to receive e‐alerts, by visiting the journal homepage and registering at the ‘Get Content Alerts’ area.PBJ management has approved my request to waive or reduce open access fees for manuscripts recommended for publication from authors who do not have adequate funding for publications. Therefore, I am fully committed to advancing PBJ's mission of publishing high quality manuscripts with free global access and look forward to your continued support in 2019.


Scholarly publication in a peer-reviewed journal is the highest form of disseminating research findings. However, the process of publishing in peer-reviewed journals remains a daunting task for researchers and academics in Africa. This commentary will assist authors in Africa to understand the peer-review process, to appreciate the length of time it takes for a manuscript to be published and to encourage them to publish in local peer-review journals. The authors argue that the peer-review process is essential because it acts as a quality control mechanism to ensure that valid and reliable research is published. Although peer review does not guarantee exclusive publication of reliable and valid research, it remains central in the scientific activity. Authors need to take the comments from reviewers and editors, even in cases of rejection seriously and in the positive sense, inorder to improve upon the quality of their work. Rejections by some journals happen not to be scientifically grounded. It happens that African authors suffer more from this flaw. This could justify why some naïve authors easily turn to publish in predatory journals. The authors argue that publishing in local journals is imperative for Africans scholars. Therefore, initiatives to encourage publication in these journals are highly needed. Scholarly publications remain the main vehicles for disseminating research findings, with research publication in peer-reviewed journals being at the peak of dissemination. Academic activities that contribute to the advancement of knowledge, must be published in sufficient details to enable other potential researchers to replicate the study . HoweverThe importance of peer-review: Peer-review is the most important part of the scholarly publication process. It acts as the quality control mechanism put in place by journals, with the aim of selecting quality articles for publication, by filtering out studies that have been poorly conceived, designed and executed, with the selection criteria based upon the scientific merit and validity of the article. Peer-review also aims to improve the quality of the manuscript before publication and to check against plagiarism and unethical considerations. Therefore, the main functions of the peer-review process are to help maintain standards and ensure that the reporting of research work is as empirical and accurate as possible [possible .The peer-review process: The peer-review process is similar for most journals, howbeit with minor variations among journals. The first step of the process is the editorial triage; once the corresponding author submits a manuscript either as an email attachment or through the online submission process it is logged in and checked to make sure that the submission is complete and has been prepared according to the journal's scope, instructions to authors and submission guidelines [idelines . At thisidelines . If a maidelines . This tyidelines , though idelines . HoweverOnce reviewers are chosen and they accept the assignment, the real process begins. Most reviewers are giving timelines and some form of a checklist that covers all the sections of the manuscript according to the journal guidelines . HoweverThe bane of publishing in top-quality international peer-reviewed journals for African scientists: Africa accounts for only 2% of the world research output. This is partly due to the fact that research papers from Africa are often rejected when submitted to international journals for publication [lication . Due to lication , AfricanThe high rejection rate for manuscripts from Africa: Research originating from Africa often address local problems and are meant for the local audience. The findings are of little interest to international journals; therefore, these manuscripts are often rejected when submitted to international journals for publication. It is possible that some editors think upfront that research, in some fields, is automatically of lower quality.Financial constraints: Journals may be either close-access or open-access; however, the peer-review process is the same. Most open-access journals attract publication fees, which are paid by the author(s) of the manuscript, while consumers of research access the journals free of charge. Meanwhile, with most close-access journals, accepted articles are published free of charge and the users pay some fee before they can access the articles. In a rapidly growing scientific world and in the internet age we find ourselves today, coupled with the poverty situation in Africa, most consumers of research go for open-access journals where they can access information free of charge even via their mobile electronic devices. This has left most scientists and researchers in Africa with no choice than to publish in open-access journals with the challenge of paying publication fees. The high financial cost of publishing in some international peer-reviewed open-access journals means that much of the research done in Africa remains invisible to the rest of the world because of the inability for most scientists in Africa to afford publication fees [ion fees .Turnaround time for peer-review in top quality journals: Most accredited and high-impact factor journals that are indexed in databases like Medline, PubMed and Scopus have a very long turnaround time for the peer-review process to be completed, sometimes as long as two years. Sometimes before the paper is actually published, the information has become obsolete or redundant. It is against this backdrop that most African researchers and scientists prefer to publish their papers in low-impact-factor journals or in the so-called “predatory journals”.The “publish or perish” conundrum: The “publish or perish” conundrum has caused many researchers from Africa to publish their works in low-quality journals, often without rigorous peer-review process, because they are under tremendous pressure to publish in order to gain promotion especially in the academia where publication is often regarded as the sole currency for promotion.The publishing abroad syndrome: Researchers and academics in Africa have been made to feel that they will gain worldwide recognition and reputation when their papers are published outside the continent. They have been brain-washed to feel that works published outside Africa are better than locally published ones [hed ones .The high mortality rate for African journals: The high mortality rate of journals in Africa is another major reason why researchers in Africa would prefer to publish their works in international journals. Many of these journals do not even acknowledge receipt of papers sent to them. In some cases, a manuscript could be delayed for a considerable length of time, thereby making the information they provide obsolete or redundant when it is eventually published. Foreign journals always have the advantage of getting information abstracted, indexed and reviewed by major international abstracting and indexing services, thereby increasing the visibility of authors. This serves as an attraction to African researchers.Advantages of publishing in African Journals: There are many reasons why researchers in Africa should patronize local journals: the impact factor and usability of these journals would be raised, thereby reducing their mortality rates; research findings from Africa that are often meant for the local audience because they address local issues, which are of little interest to international audience, would not be lost when the articles are being published in local African journals. Articles published in international journals are often inaccessible to the African audience because of the high cost of accessing these articles.The contentious issue of Predatory Journals: “Predatory journals are ones that exploit the page fee model for self-gain. They transgress all the rules of research integrity and in most cases, they have no clear focus area” [us area” . Due to us area” , charactus area” . NotwithThe peer-review process helps refine and improve the quality of the published article by addressing the thoughtful comments raised by reviewers and editors. This can only happen when expert reviewers take time to participate in the peer-review process and evaluate submissions with care and sensitivity. The editors and reviewers of peer-reviewed journals are committed to utilising a stringent but fair review process in order to assist authors who submit scholarly work for publication . HoweverThe authors declare no competing interest.


Journal of Orthopaedics and Traumatology (JORT), founded in 2000 by Francesco Pipino, has been publishing regularly for 18 years. The initial vision was an English-language journal that could communicate the results of Italian musculoskeletal research to the rest of the world whilst also reciprocally absorbing the newest orthopaedic developments circulating internationally. This objective was immediately and enthusiastically embraced by the Italian Society of Orthopaedics and Traumatology (SIOT) and the journal’s distinguished international editorial board, whose mission was to enhance a bidirectional exchange of findings, techniques and knowledge between Italy and the rest of the world and, more recently, promote international cooperation in musculoskeletal research.The JORT’s contents open to all potential readers (open-access policy) was a choice that SIOT has made since the very beginning of its editorial experience, permitting authors to retain the right to store, reuse and distribute their papers.The collaboration with a scientific publisher like Springer allowed us to exploit a submissions management platform that helped editors shepherd manuscripts through a rigorous double-blind peer-review system, which guarantees the highest scientific quality. Making In 2017, the journal entered a new phase of its life; the open-access publication, granted for free by SIOT to all authors before then, was replaced by an “author-pays” model, whereby article processing charges (APCs) are waived only for those authors whose full membership is confirmed by the society or for those scientific referees whose curriculum and commitment are considered outstanding. The publisher offers a free open-access support funding service [JORT’s diversity in authorship. Often, the author team is made up of academics from different countries who collaborate with a profitable synergy towards the same objective. One-quarter of our associate editors is based in countries other than Italy, as well as half of the advisors and many reviewers. Very soon, a renewal is planned in the editorial structure of the journal, to satisfy the ambitions of those who have contributed more (e.g. peer-reviewing) to JORT’s success and to allow some rest to those who have been proud defenders of JORT from the very early days of this enthusiastic editorial experience. This renewal will represent a further opportunity to increase the international diversity of the journal. JORT’s submissions previously outnumbered the referees and associate editors dedicated to each research field; at the same time, musculoskeletal research has developed in so many directions that regular updates and new designations were required. The recent history of our journal has taught us that self-nominations with strict requirements in terms of both proficiency and commitment allowed us to assign JORT’s key positions more wisely than third-party nominations did in the past. These features should be confirmed by high author-level scientometrics and hopefully might associate with countries of origin marked by high scientific output , although such information cannot be considered a criterion of preference.Two-thirds of 2018 production come from international institutions, clearly displaying JORT readers:Commentaries, brief observations written by editors or advisors that endorse the contents of a cutting-edge research paper published at the same time.Emerging topics, narrative reviews or mini-reviews commissioned by editors from top scientists in a novel field of research (level of evidence V).Controversies in orthopaedics and traumatology, narrative reviews or mini-reviews commissioned by editors from top orthopaedic surgeons to illustrate their preferred surgical technique . Obviously, “controversies” are published in a minimum number of two per subject, as a topic is defined as “controversial” only if it may be interpreted or managed from two perspectives or more.Back in 2016, three thematic series were announced to JORT has exerted a remarkable teaching effect thanks to these commissioned contributions, and it will be our commitment to add new thematic contents as of January 2019. The prevailing focus of next year’s thematic contributions will be orthobiologics and regenerative medicine, as this field is novel enough to catch readers’ attention and has gathered enough experience to benefit from a critical review.JORT’s articles have been downloaded 226,435 times and received 87 Altmetric mentions [At the time of writing, JORT is 23, which means that at least 23 articles published from 2013 to 2017 obtained a minimum of 23 citations in the database [According to Google Scholar, the h5-index of database , and ranJORT’s 18-year publication, for all the scientific and personal efforts that editors have put into managing a growing number of submissions and into aiming at continuous quality improvement, as well as for all the academic efforts that authors have contributed to provide sound reports of worldwide orthotraumatological research.As for citations, in 2017 the Scopus CiteScore reached 2.06. Presently the attribution of a journal impact factor would represent a prestigious acknowledgement for all the efforts from SIOT to guarantee In conclusion, we thank you all for your continuous commitment.


In 2011, I wrote an Editorial to introduce Biology Open (BiO) as a new journal from The Company of Biologists . I quickMy prediction that biomedical publishing would change rapidly appears to have been wide of the mark. When BiO was launched, many of the problems associated with publishing in the biomedical sciences were well known and widely discussed. Powerful people and institutions railed against the large profit margins of the major publishers of scientific papers, arguing that these profits were built on the backs of taxpayers who funded the science, paid for the scientists who review the papers, and then had to pay the publishers to read the papers. Many scientists also rebelled against the dominance of journal Impact Factors (IFs), which, although widely discredited, influenced so many aspects of a scientist's career, ensuring that only those who publish in high-impact journals are rewarded with jobs, grants and promotions. This rebellion led to the launch of the DORA declaration, of which The Company of Biologists was an early signatory .  to an Open Access system  could have disastrous unintended consequences if the fundamental distortions of IFs were not dealt with first. Unfortunately, this prediction appears to have been more prescient. Our continuing obsession with IFs – even though this is often now expressly forbidden for tenure review and grant funding – has meant that publishers such as the Nature Publishing Group (NPG) and Cell Press/Elsevier have successfully launched a string of sister journals, many of which are Open Access and feed off the success of their high-profile parent journals. These new journals hoover up great swathes of the best papers that used to go to smaller, community-based, not-for-profit journals, creating a vicious feedback loop that simultaneously enhances the IFs of the new NPG/Elsevier journals and lowers the IFs of the journals of competing publishers that don't have such high-profile parents to drive the quality of their submissions. The electronic nature of these new journals means that there is no limit to the number of papers they can take from competing journals; the Open Access model ensures that the more papers they publish, the more money they make for their owners. Indeed, the seemingly inevitable high IF of these new journals means the owners can charge much higher fees than their rivals, as scientists are willing to pay more to publish in journals with a higher IF .Box 1. Recent developments and initiatives at Biology OpenFirst author interviewsFirst person’ interviews, early-career researchers talk about their work in and out of the lab, the journeys that led them to where they are now and the issues they feel are priorities for early-career researchers.BiO is keen to support the next generation of biomedical scientists. The first authors of accepted articles now have the opportunity to talk about themselves and their research in more detail. In these popular ‘Continuous publicationcontinuous publication model. BiO has long posted peer-reviewed author manuscripts soon after acceptance. Now, the final version of the article is immediately published online, rather than waiting for the other articles in the issue to be completed, resulting in faster, free access to the article for our international community of readers. Our continuous publication issues reported an average of 33 days (median 31 days) between article acceptance and publication of the final version (compared with 38 days in 2017).Issue 1 of 2018 was the first issue of BiO to be published under the BiO alert options, to ensure that they are receiving the content alerts they need, when they need them.Readers should consider reviewing their Play-in-place moviesdolphin movies).BiO articles now feature play-in-place movies in the full-text online version of its articles. This makes videos an integral part of any article, making it easier and quicker for readers to access this type of content  is not nearly nuanced enough to provide this type of analysis, but the rise of preprint servers such as bioRxiv might provide a forum in which providing feedback becomes more acceptable.Such a system clearly has several potential pitfalls, and it would take time to evolve into a useful way to quickly and accurately judge the value of a paper's contribution. Nevertheless, the next generation of scientists are much more comfortable in an online world, where commenting on other people's contributions is the norm. Perhaps we scientists should all be encouraging this habit?In my first Editorial, I also expressed the hope that BiO would be something special. I thought that, by having a not-for-profit publisher such as The Company of Biologists and a team of academic Editors close to their publishing communities, BiO could establish a meaningful connection with our authors and readers. Although I was perhaps naïve in this aspiration, I like to think that it was not entirely a pipedream. Through handling submissions to BiO, I have interacted with many hundreds of authors and reviewers. I have always tried to give helpful advice, even when rejecting a paper without sending it for review [such as when BiO was among the Open Access journals ‘tested’ by a spoof article devised by a journalist ]. These Finally, I want to express my extreme gratitude to all those who have helped BiO. These include the authors who have submitted papers to the journal, the hard-working team of academic Editors who have handled them and all the reviewers who have reviewed them and the excellent editorial team at The Company of Biologists who have made my job so enjoyable over the years.I wish my successor, Steven Kelly, the best of luck. From his accompanying Editorial , I hope


Journal of the Medical Library Association encourages authors to self-archive their work to boost its reach and impact.Self-archiving offers opportunities for authors to more broadly disseminate their work—both in pre-print form before its submission to a journal and in post-print form after its acceptance and publication in a journal. This editorial provides authors with guidance in navigating the rapidly changing options for self-archiving and affirms that the  Journal of the Medical Library Association (JMLA) has embraced its open access status for nearly twenty years .” After the article is published, the self-archived manuscript should be updated with a final complete citation paired with a statement pointing readers to the publisher’s version as the official version of record.This process can be complicated if the repository housing the self-archived manuscript assigns digital object identifiers (DOIs), as ideally each scholarly object should have only one DOI. Authors may be able to request the temporary suppression of this field in a repository and update the record with the publisher-assigned DOI upon publication. If not, the pre-print or post-print will have one DOI, and the publisher’s final version of record will have another DOI, and authors need to track both DOIs to assess their work’s impact.Some journals may request that authors wait until the article has been formally published before making their post-print publicly available. Accordingly, many repositories permit authors to set an embargo period during deposit that will automatically release the manuscript file on the appropriate date. This embargo allows the publisher’s version of record to be the first discoverable version and may help prevent DOI duplication issues. Other journals, such as subscription-based journals, require that authors do not publicly share their post-print until one to three years after article publication. These journals argue this delay preserves the value of the journal, but the delay could ultimately decrease article readership and impact. Making a pre-print available before manuscript submission, if allowed by the journal, could serve to preempt this requirement.JMLA fully embraces the freedom of authors to share their work as widely as they desire to meet their own objectives—whether to obtain pre-submission feedback, increase their readership, enhance the potential impact of their work, achieve professional recognition, or support the principles of research transparency and open science.JMLA, you retain copyright and grant our publisher the right to publish your work under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license. You are permitted and encouraged to post a pre-print of your manuscript anywhere you choose. If your manuscript is accepted by and published in JMLA, we ask that you update your posted pre-print or post-print with the publisher’s assigned DOI, which can be requested from the JMLA editor after acceptance, and a link to the online abstract for the final published article on the JMLA website. No embargoes are requested or required. You are also allowed to post the publisher’s PDF anywhere you choose after publication of your article. These policies are described in greater detail on the Author Guidelines and Editorial Policies pages of the JMLA website and are shown in SHERPA/RoMEO’s entry for JMLA.If you publish in JMLA’s dedication to open access with the ultimate goal of amplifying our authors’ voices and increasing the likelihood that their work will influence the profession’s knowledgebase and practice.Health sciences librarians and information professionals who engage in scholarly publishing have the opportunity to explore, understand, and influence the availability of their own work and that of the health care professionals, researchers, and students they support. By highlighting the value of self-archiving, we emphasize Abigail Goben, agoben@uic.edu, http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6520-3648, Library of the Health Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, ILKatherine G. Akers, JMLA@journals.pitt.edu,https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4578-6575, Editor-in-Chief, Journal of the Medical Library Association


Angelika Stollewerk is a Reader at Queen Mary University of London, where her lab uses a diverse range of species to study the evolution of the arthropod nervous system. Angelika spoke to us about social spiders, the future of evo-devo, and open peer review. I have lots of different interests but they all revolve around arthropods and the evolution of the nervous system. I like to work with many different species and one exciting new project involves two social spider species, which we have recently collected. We are looking for links between peripheral nervous system evolution and the evolution of sociality using gene expression and functional and behavioural approaches.The evo-devo research field has changed substantially over the past 10 years. Rather than analyzing single genes, morphology and a handful of representatives for taxa/phyla, the field has moved on to generating transcriptomes of developmental stages, tissues and single cells and substantially increased the genome coverage, in particular in arthropods . One ofI like reading brand new research! I also think peer review is an essential service to the academic community to ensure high quality publications and this responsibility should be shared by as many researchers as possible.All journals should change to open peer review.http://astollewerk.sbcs.qmul.ac.uk/index.html and http://www.sbcs.qmul.ac.uk/staff/angelikastollewerk.html.


It is with great pride and a strong feeling of accomplishment, we now transition the editorship of Respiratory Research to our capable and accomplished colleagues Kelan Tantisira and Oliver Schildgen. After having served as Co-Editors for over 15 years, we wish to reflect on the legacy of the journal and heartily thank all those who worked so diligently as associate editors, editorial board members and dedicated reviewers, as well as the BioMedCentral staff.The initial vision for RR was created by the founding editor Professor Peter J. Barnes who saw an unmet need to bridge basic and clinical respiratory research. He therefore helped start this journal as an exclusively web-based publications, almost unheard off at the time. The journal was created in the year 2000, a time when significant challenges existed in the scientific literary world dominated by printed matter, complicated search processes, and inaccessibility to science for anyone outside of a large academic or commercial institution. The concept of open access was totally novel. As editors, the first years were challenging, and in 2003 only 15 papers were published. The scientific community was not familiar with the fundamental changes that Open Access publishing required, such as authors paying for publishing the work. Initially, the journal had no impact factor. However, when the initial impact factor was issued in 2004 the interest from peers suddenly exploded, and in the following year the number of publications increased ten-fold, and has steadily grown with approximately 200 papers now published by RR per year. In parallel, submissions have increased and are approaching 1,000 per year.When we assumed the Co-Editorship of RR in the spring of 2003 we embraced the contemporary concept of translational medicine and science that focused on fundamental studies using human cells, tissues or model systems that would translate basic observations into clinical studies. This approach was intrinsically bidirectional in nature; the insights from RR articles could generate novel questions that could be pursued by studies focused on the discovery of molecular mechanisms of disease. Most importantly, the open access of RR offered a global audience the rapid dissemination of scientific knowledge into clinical practice. The Journal boasts of a global focus with a consistent recruitment of international editors, associate editors and reviewers who provide the critical vision to publish cutting-edge, interdisciplinary work.We challenge the new Co-editors Kelan and Oliver to sustain the RR legacy and wish them the best in propelling RR to new heights. Providing respiratory scientists and clinicians with the highest quality translational research in a timely and easily accessible manner, remains the critical RR mission.Last, but not least, we wish to thank all the authors of the 2126 papers that have been published in Respiratory Research since we took on the editorship 15 years ago, as we could not have done this without your relentless support. Thank you also to all readers of the journal, who bring progress to science and translate basic science to clinical practice. We are both grateful and humbled for having had the opportunity to harness Respiratory Research for such a significant period of time, and wish the best of luck to Kelan and Oliver!Reynold Panettieri and Jan Lötvall.


As editors, we will work to make the journal itself the exception in many different ways.The title of an Editorial does not typically start with a lowercase letter, so this column, which opens the first issue of iScience, the newest open access journal from Cell Press, aims to address two needs within the research community: creating connections (between scientific topics and scientists of different fields) and meeting researchers’ requirements for the publishing process. To realize these aims, we are creating a new journal with several key characteristics, many of which start with the letter “i”—hence the journal name.interdisciplinary. We acknowledge upfront that not all research can (or needs to) be interdisciplinary; to be published in iScience, it is not a requirement for a paper to straddle two or more fields. At the same time, interdisciplinary research is clearly of increasing interest across the research enterprise, so we aim to create a forum that connects different communities and to seek out and highlight work that crosses boundaries. Obtaining funding for interdisciplinary proposals, getting people from different fields to speak the same language when performing research, and navigating an often-fraught publication process have all been pointed out as obstacles for interdisciplinary research. We aim to help in several ways. To begin with, many members of our editorial board run highly interdisciplinary labs, so they know firsthand the value and challenges of research that crosses boundaries. Our editors strive to provide a fair peer review process, in which the various expertise areas needed to evaluate a paper are accurately represented. Our editors, for example, often note to referees which other fields of expertise will complement their own in the manuscript evaluation process. The iScience editors also strive to reconcile different points of view among referees ; this is critical for interdisciplinary manuscripts, as the total is often more than the sum of its parts.The “i” word that is central to our vision for the journal is iScience  are empowered to select manuscripts that advance their fields—that is, papers that are important to publish and share. iScience will be a selective venue and will showcase inspiring research across its entire scope, covering the life, physical, and earth sciences.The editors of iScience aims to tear down walls so as to be more inclusive. iScience is a Cell Press journal not just in the sense that it is published by Cell Press, but also because it builds on the collective expertise of all Cell Press editors, as well as the communities served by their journals. Cell Press editors inform our decisions: for example, they can pre-accept directly into iScience (in selected situations and in consultation with the iScience editors) papers that advance their field and have robust methods and data. This collaborative ethos, and the effort we put into making decisions based on what is already reported in the paper, allows iScience to be more immediate, bringing quickly to the community a story that is complete and interesting on its own. The scientific community can then build upon those results, for example by providing more mechanistic details.In addition to building connections, integrity. Along these lines, iScience will strive to remove unnecessary obstacles toward reproducibility of the data shown in the manuscripts it publishes. For example, our “Transparent Methods” section will include provisions to avoid citations of previous publications as a substitute for providing the details of a procedure. We encourage data deposition in open repositories whenever possible. It is a condition for publication in iScience, as for all Cell Press journals, that authors must be willing to distribute materials and protocols to qualified researchers, with minimal restrictions and in a timely manner.At the core of what Cell Press does, there is a passion for science and a desire to help scientists, which includes a deep commitment to iScience as a platform that will evolve like the inspiring science it wants to publish. We do not claim to have all the answers today; however, together with the help of our scientific community, we will work hard to find them.We envision


Concerns have been raised that the transplants performed in the local context at the time of the procedures reported in this article  may haveDetails as to the donor sources and methods of obtaining informed consent from donors were not reported in , and wheThe authors stated that no vulnerable populations were involved in their research and all organs were obtained voluntarily but did not provide ethics approval documentation or consent forms to support their claim or clarify whether organs had been procured from prisoners.The authors did not respond to inquiries about the availability of underlying data supporting this study.PLOS ONE Editors retract this article.Owing to the lack of documentation to demonstrate that this study had prospective ethical approval, insufficient reporting, unresolved concerns around the source of transplanted organs and whether they included organs from prisoners, and in compliance with international ethical standards for organ/tissue donation and transplantation, the One of the corresponding authors, Shusen Zheng, notified the journal that all authors disagree with the retraction. The other authors either could not be reached or did not respond directly.


BMC Rheumatology, a new open access, peer-reviewed journal within the BMC Series portfolio, which considers studies on all aspects of rheumatological diseases. The Journal will also place a special emphasis on manuscripts reporting systemic and inflammatory conditions and connective tissue diseases, along with related comorbidities, including cardiovascular disease, malignancy and infection. Through the publication of a variety of article types, including Research articles, Case reports, Study protocols and Debates, BMC Rheumatology will provide the rheumatology community with an open access avenue to disseminate research into rheumatological diseases, with the ultimate aim of improving patient care.This editorial accompanies the launch of The online version of this article (10.1186/s41927-017-0006-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Rheumatology is a multidisciplinary branch of medicine concerned with the study and treatment of a wide variety of disorders collectively known as rheumatological diseases. Many of these disorders affect the joints, muscles and bones, and cause swelling, stiffness, pain and deformity; however, the term rheumatological disease extends beyond the musculoskeletal system itself and includes a wide variety of related systemic and inflammatory conditions, and heritable connective tissue disorders, and thus affecting multiple organ systems and tissues. Nevertheless, as these disorders generally involve inflammation or the involvement of the immune system (auto-immunity), rheumatology is generally seen increasingly moving in the direction of autoimmunity.Rheumatological diseases have a significant burden and impact on healthcare systems and are one of the most common causes of disability and work-related absences. For example, in the UK alone, approximately 9 million people are affected by osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis (RA), conditions which affect the knees, hips and hands/wrists . Gout, wIn addition to the disease burden, patients with rheumatological diseases have been found to be at an increased risk of developing a variety of comorbid conditions. There is a growing list of comorbidities that are frequently associated with rheumatological diseases and these include malignancies, cardiovascular diseases, infections, kidney diseases, lung diseases, gastrointestinal diseases, osteoporosis and depression. These comorbidities have a significant effect on the lives of patients and therefore it is important to increase our understanding of these conditions to ensure optimal treatment and improvements in quality of life.BMC Rheumatology is being launched to provide the rheumatology community with an open access avenue to disseminate research findings across the range of rheumatological diseases and their associated comorbidities, with the ultimate aim of improving patient care.It is upon this background that BMC Rheumatology considers research on all aspects of the prevention, treatment and management of rheumatological diseases, and will place a special emphasis on systemic and inflammatory conditions and connective tissue diseases, along with related comorbidities. The Journal will publish a variety of article types, including Research articles, Case reports, Debates and Database articles, as well as Study protocols for proposed or on-going prospective clinical research.BMC Rheumatology will complement and expand the open access journal portfolio within the area of rheumatology at BioMed Central and will be a sister journal to BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders within the BMC Series. Although there is some overlap in scope, BMC Rheumatology and BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders sit very comfortably alongside each other: BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders has a focus on studies with a definite musculoskeletal component , whereas BMC Rheumatology will cover all areas of rheumatology, including systemic conditions and related comorbidities, which are topics that fall outside the scope of BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders.As part of the BMC Series, which is a collection of high-quality, peer-reviewed journals covering all areas of biology and medicine and focusing on the needs of the research communities which they serve, the Journal does not make editorial decisions on the basis of the interest of a study or its likely impact; however, studies must be scientifically valid. For research articles this includes a scientifically sound research question, the use of suitable methods and analysis, and following community-agreed standards relevant to the research field.BMC Rheumatology has three editorial sections:Clinical rheumatologyEpidemiology and public healthPre-clinical and translational scienceWe are delighted to welcome Susan Goodman, Edward Roddy and Alessia Alunno as Section Editors for the Journal, along with an expanding international team of Associate Editors . TogetheBMC Rheumatology, like all of the medical journals in the BMC Series, operates an open peer review system. Open peer review means that the identity of the peer reviewers is disclosed and their names are included on the peer review reports, so that authors can see who has reviewed their manuscript. Once the article has been published, the reviewer reports throughout the peer review process and corresponding author responses are made available online along with the final version of the manuscript. The online published article will provide a link to its ‘pre-publication history’, which lists all of the versions of the manuscript, all the signed reviews, and all responses to the reviewers from the submission of the manuscript to its publication.In order to ensure the transparency and fairness of the review process and to give credit to reviewers for their efforts, BMC Rheumatology aims to publish work deemed by peer reviewers to be a coherent and valid addition to scientific knowledge, and to provide an all-important open access platform to allow the effective dissemination of this knowledge, so that we can all work together to understand more fully and explore the most important developments, trends, and practices in rheumatological diseases and their associated comorbidities. We believe that open access and the Creative Commons Attribution License [BMC Rheumatology will work closely with the other journals in the BMC Series portfolio [ License  is essenortfolio  to help BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders.The clinical rheumatology section has a broad portfolio: our new journal intends to address all aspects of clinical rheumatology. We aim to publish papers from all areas regarding those rheumatological diseases that are systemic, rather than the mechanical or regional musculoskeletal syndromes. The rapid advances in diagnosis, management, and therapy in the rheumatological diseases have fostered the need for more focused publications and has facilitated our separation from There has been an explosion of publications defining disease diagnosis and measurement for patients with RA and spondyloarthritis (SpA), and the application of aggressive management strategies mandates careful assessment of disease status and response to interventions. Careful determination of disease subsets to predict treatment responses can avoid unnecessary drug exposure and avoid delay when drug exposure is warranted requires a forum for disseminating information. The gratifying expansion of effective treatment options has built on the precise definition of measurement strategies so that the application and response to treatment can be assessed. Do we know which patient with SpA should receive a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) alone vs a biologic? How do we know when to taper medications in inflammatory arthritis or if it is safe to discontinue drug therapy? We hope to publish the investigations as well as the in-depth expert reviews to help our readers answer these questions as knowledge advances.The promising therapeutic benefit of interleukin-6 (IL-6) inhibition with tocilizumab for patients with PMR/GCA has created a need for new strategies to accelerate diagnosis and improve disease assessments. Diagnostic modalities will likely evolve along with treatment strategies; we will need to understand the role of imaging in early assessment. Do we know the best way to prevent complications of GCA such as loss of vision, and do we know when it is safe to taper or discontinue tocilizumab? These advances have created the need for publications to reliably facilitate dissemination as well as assessment of information as it becomes available.BMC Rheumatology aims to provide a new platform to help assess the explosion of rheumatology information.Treatment breakthroughs have been more elusive for scleroderma (systemic sclerosis) and Sjögren’s syndrome, highlighting the unmet needs for better understanding of the pathogenesis of these diseases so that treatment targets can be developed. For patients with SLE, the recent development of belimumab as SLE-specific therapy leads to thought about the limited understanding of therapeutic targets in SLE and the need for better understanding of SLE epidemiology and pathogenesis. Progress can be enhanced by the rapid and open dissemination of well-designed trials and observational studies, as well as expert’s views to contextualize studies. contrasting trends in disease occurrence between rheumatological conditions. The incidence of gout is rising reflecting trends in the population prevalences of obesity, adverse lifestyles and comorbidity , whereascareful clinical observations leading to the historical recognition of new diseases such as the first descriptions of nodal osteoarthritis and psoriatic arthritis , 9;prospective cohort studies describing the increased risk of lymphoproliferative disease in RA  and premsurveillance of adverse effects of treatment in routine clinical practice through drug registries, such as the British Society for Rheumatology Biologics Register , 13.Epidemiology is defined as the study of the occurrence and distribution of health-related events, states, and processes in specified populations, including the study of the determinants influencing such processes, and the application of this knowledge to control relevant health problems . EpidemiBMC Rheumatology aims to create a platform through which to disseminate examples of continued excellence in this long tradition of rheumatological epidemiology. We aim to publish original research articles relating to all aspects of the epidemiology of rheumatological diseases, related systemic and inflammatory conditions and comorbidity, including but not limited to studies of disease occurrence, risk factors, outcomes and prognosis, and encompassing a wide range of study designs and methodologies.The epidemiology and public health section of P. gingivalis being the most prominent example. Furthermore, in the era of the ‘omics’ platforms and next-generation sequencing, researchers can access a massive amount of information about the molecular signature of rheumatological disease. All these exciting developments open new research avenues to ideally reach the appealing goal of rheumatological disease prevention. However, also old techniques, such as immunohistochemistry historically employed only for diagnostic purposes, have been recently acknowledged as potential prognostic tools in diseases such as RA and Sjögren’s syndrome boosting research studies to possibly predict disease evolution and response to treatment by integrating experimental results and patient health record.Rheumatology has witnessed rapid advances over the last few decades and translational science is gaining increasing prominence . By pursBMC Rheumatology aims to publish papers focused on the identification of the molecular underpinnings of the disease and the application of this knowledge for the discovery of new drug targets or for patient stratification. We aim to publish original research articles relating to all aspects of pre-clinical and translational research in rheumatology which covers a wide range of methodologies and study designs.The pre-clinical and translational science section of BMC Rheumatology is being launched to provide a community-driven, authoritative, unbiased and fully open access journal publishing all aspects of research into rheumatological diseases, and to provide a home for all scientifically valid manuscripts in this exciting research area. We are looking forward to working closely with authors, reviewers and members of the Editorial Board to provide the community with high-quality research into this diverse medical speciality.We hope you will find the first articles published in the Journal an interesting and valuable read, and we look forward to working with you all to disseminate research into rheumatological diseases.Additional file 1:Reviewer reports and AU response to reviewers. (DOCX 15 kb)


Respiratory Research was first published in April 2000, accompanied by an editorial written by Dr. Peter Barnes, entitled “Respiratory Research: a new multidisciplinary journal for a new age (http://respiratory-research.com). “It was the first respiratory medicine journal in which the online version was the primary place of publication. According to the Directory of Open Access Journals (www.doaj.org), there are now 48 open access journals in the field of respiratory medicine; among these, Respiratory Research has continuously retained the top InCites Journal Impact Factor. It is in this spirit that we congratulate and commend Drs. Jan Lotvall and Rey Panettieri for their dedicated and tireless service as the outgoing Editors-in-Chief. We sincerely appreciate their guidance during our recent transition period and their journal leadership over the past 10 years. Our goal is to learn from their successes and strive to continuously improve the journal in ways that directly and positively impact our readers.Respiratory Research was conceived with co-Editors-in-Chief (starting with Drs. Barnes and Jeffrey Drazen) and this continues with our tenure. This model allows for facilitation of broader ideas, enhanced efficiency in peer review, and increased breadth of knowledge in the understanding of our product. As a brief background, Oliver Schildgen is based in Cologne at the Hospital of the City of Cologne and the Private University of Witten/Herdecke, Germany’s oldest Private University. He is a recognized Ph.D. virologist and molecular pathologist focused on the pathogenesis of human respiratory viruses, including human metapneumovirus, human bocavirus, and lung cancer. Kelan Tantisira is based in Boston at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School and is a pulmonologist known for his work in asthma epidemiology, genetics, genomics, and pharmacogenomics. Thus, our backgrounds are highly complementary, with our expertise further enhanced by our outstanding associate editors and editorial board.At its inception, Respiratory Research. Our first goal is to maintain the journal as the pre-eminent Open Access publication focused on advancing the understandings of lung health and disease, as established by our predecessors. We are committed to continuing to solicit and review a wide range of manuscripts spanning the breadth of respiratory medicine. We will augment this with efficient editorial review complemented by journalistic rigor and integrity. Second, we both agree that it is important to attract readership and investment by the young scientists of today, which are the stakeholders and senior authors of tomorrow. This emphasis on young readers can be further extended to early physician-scientists.Despite our diverse backgrounds, we share a common vision for Respiratory Research portfolio. Along a similar vein, we plan to actively pursue the opportunity to publish articles on emerging lung therapeutics, including early clinical trial results.Next, we plan to begin a regular feature focusing on emerging technologies and their application to respiratory research and disease. These are areas of great evolving interest, but are currently under-represented in the Respiratory Research and welcome your suggestions for future commentaries, reviews and other content. Please do not hesitate to contact either of us with your thoughts.Finally, we remain very open and receptive to your feedback on the format and content of