The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) is obligated to peer review and to post publicly “Final Research Reports” of all funded projects. PCORI peer review emphasizes adherence to PCORI’s Methodology Standards and principles of ethical scientific communication. During the peer review process, reviewers and editors seek to ensure that results are presented objectively and interpreted appropriately, e.g., free of spin.Two independent raters assessed PCORI peer review feedback sent to authors. We calculated the proportion of reports in which spin was identified during peer review, and the types of spin identified. We included reports submitted by April 2018 with at least one associated journal article. The same raters then assessed whether authors addressed reviewers’ comments about spin. The raters also assessed whether spin identified during PCORI peer review was present in related journal articles.We included 64 PCORI-funded projects. Peer reviewers or editors identified spin in 55/64 (86%) submitted research reports. Types of spin included reporting bias , inappropriate interpretation , inappropriate extrapolation of results , and inappropriate attribution of causality . Authors addressed comments about spin related to 47/55 (85%) of the reports.Of 110 associated journal articles, PCORI comments about spin were potentially applicable to 44/110 (40%) articles, of which 27/44 (61%) contained the same spin that was identified in the PCORI research report. The proportion of articles with spin was similar for articles accepted before and after PCORI peer review (63% vs 58%).Just as spin is common in journal articles and press releases, we found that most reports submitted to PCORI included spin. While most spin was mitigated during the funder’s peer review process, we found no evidence that review of PCORI reports influenced spin in journal articles. Funders could explore interventions aimed at reducing spin in published articles of studies they support.The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s41073-021-00119-1. The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) was authorized by the U.S. Congress in 2010. Since then, PCORI has provided over $2.8 billion in funding for research related projects  the frequency with which peer reviewers and editors identified spin during review of PCORI research reports and [2] whether investigators addressed reviewer comments related to spin in their PCORI research reports. A secondary goal was to investigate whether PCORI peer review had an effect on spin in associated journal articles.To be eligible, a PCORI-funded research project must have submitted a DFRR that completed peer review by the end of April 2018 and must have had at least one associated journal article. Our study began at the end of October 2018, which allowed at least six months to publish journal articles after each eligible DFRR was accepted.Research projects funded under the broad PCORI announcement were eligible and included the following three priority areas: a) Addressing Disparities; b) Assessment of Prevention, Diagnosis, and Treatment Options; and c) Improving Healthcare Systems. Many of the eligible studies included intervention evaluations . We excluded projects in the Communication and Dissemination Research priority area because they differ from other projects with respect to opportunities for spin; for example, they are not research reports and might not contain results regarding the effects of interventions. Similarly, research projects funded under the Improving Methods for Conducting PCORI announcement were excluded because these projects have different goals, such as comparing statistical methods, and might not contain the same types of spin as reports of comparative effectiveness research.Because we sought to evaluate the potential effects of PCORI peer review on journal articles, we excluded projects with no associated journal article. Of the journal articles associated with an included project, we included those that described project results. We excluded protocols and other reports that did not describe results of the research described in the DFRR.We obtained the eligible DFRRs, PCORI peer review feedback, and investigators’ responses to comments through Editorial Manager. Seven of the 64 (11%) eligible DFRRs were submitted by email before the editorial management system was in use, and we obtained these reports and PCORI peer review documents from available electronic records. We curated the list of articles associated with each DFRR from the publicly available PCORI webpage for each report. We did not search other scientific databases to identify additional articles associated with the DFRRs.For each eligible project, we recorded the date the DFRR was submitted; the date peer review feedback was sent to the principal investigator; the date the DFRR was accepted as completing peer review; and the accepted version number of the DFRR.Rather than review each DFRR to assess the prevalence of spin, we recorded whether the PCORI peer review feedback included comments about spin. Two assessors independently read the feedback and completed a Google Form to record the types of spin that peer reviewers and editors identified in the DFRRs sent for peer review . Peer reviewers and editors commented about many issues related to study rigor and reporting; we recorded those comments that explicitly raised issues related to “spin” as defined using the categories identified by Chiu and colleagues Table  7]. For. For7]. not judge whether they considered the accepted report to be free of spin; instead, assessors looked for evidence that the investigators made the specific changes recommended during peer review. We did not include a “partial” response category in our assessment. Instead, assessors coded that all changes were not made if the investigators addressed some but not all comments about spin and the investigators did not provide a justification for not addressing those comments. Assessors coded “changed the DFRR to address this issue” when they found evidence that investigators addressed all comments about spin by modifying the report. Assessors coded “provided a satisfactory response explaining why a change is not required” when the investigators explained or rebutted comments in a response letter and the assessor judged that the response included a reasonable scientific justification.Assessors then used the DFRR as accepted by PCORI peer review and the investigators’ response letter to determine whether the investigators had addressed comments about spin either by modifying the report or by providing a justification  in their report or in their letter. Assessors did Next, the assessors compared their responses on the Google Form, discussed differences, reached agreement concerning the final rating, and entered a final response in a separate form for reconciled DFRR ratings. All final ratings used for analysis were agreed by both assessors. We did not calculate agreement for their preliminary ratings.We assessed whether spin identified in the DFRRs was also present in related journal articles, and we compared journal articles accepted for publication before and after investigators received PCORI peer review feedback on corresponding DFRRs.For each eligible journal article, two investigators checked the journal website and recorded the date of article acceptance or publication in a Google Form . We checIf a journal article reported results for a study for which PCORI peer review had identified spin in the DFRR, then two investigators independently evaluated whether the spin identified in the DFRR was also present in the journal article . Each reWe combined data from the Google Forms for analysis by matching each DFRR with the articles associated with that DFRR. We calculated descriptive statistics for characteristics of the DFRRs and journal articles as proportions or as medians and interquartile ranges (IQRs) as appropriate. All analyses were completed using RStudio, version 1.2.1335.11 [had addressed the comments about spin because the authors made some reasonable changes.For the DFRRs, we calculated the proportions that were accepted by PCORI peer review after 1, 2, 3 or 4 revisions, and the proportions with articles accepted or published prior to receiving PCORI peer review feedback. We calculated the proportion of DFRRs with any spin identified, the proportion of DFRRS with each type of spin, and the proportion of DFRRs that addressed comments about spin in the accepted version. After beginning data extraction, we found some authors addressed comments about spin but did not change all relevant parts of their reports. For example, one reviewer suggested that the authors should address risk of confounding by indication in their abstract, but the authors added that limitation to their discussion in the main manuscript and not to the abstract. In this case, we judged that the report We also calculated the proportion of DFRRs that were associated with articles containing spin during the duration of our study. For articles that presented results, we calculated the proportion for which comments about the DFRRs were potentially applicable ; and for those we calculated the proportion of articles that included the spin identified in the DFRR.For the journal articles that reported study results, we compared the date on which the journal article was accepted with the date on which PCORI peer review feedback was sent. We present stratified analyses of journal articles accepted prior to receiving PCORI peer review feedback, accepted after receiving PCORI peer review feedback, and for which we could not determine the timing of the journal articles compared with PCORI peer review feedback.We included 64 eligible DFRRs with at least one associated journal article listed on the PCORI website Fig. . We exclWe found that spin was identified frequently in submitted reports of PCORI-funded research, and there was less spin in subsequent draft reports following peer review.Specifically, reviewers raised comments regarding spin in 55/64 (86%) of DFRRs. Of those more than one type of spin was detected in 38/55 (69%).Of the DFRRs with spin, we identified comments about reporting bias in 46/55 (84%) of DFRRs, inappropriate interpretation in 40/55 (73%), inappropriate extrapolation of results in 15/55 (27%), and inappropriate attribution of causality in 5/55 (9%). In DFRRs, comments about reporting bias typically focused on the emphasis that investigators gave to outcomes with “statistically significant” results rather than the planned outcomes and analyses. Comments about inappropriate interpretation were typically related to reporting bias and the larger limitations of null hypothesis testing. Editors and reviewers identified fewer problems related to inappropriate extrapolation; mostly they suggested that authors should highlight limitations in their interpretations of results. Comments about inappropriate attribution of causality were relatively uncommon, and most were related to study design and the interpretation of associations. In addition to identifying critical comments about spin, we also found some positive comments about the lack of spin.Most authors addressed all peer review comments about spin by changing the text of their reports . Authors of several reports  justified their approaches or language in the investigators’ response letter, while other DFRRs were accepted without authors responding to comments about spin .Some authors argued that their manuscripts did not contain spin. For example, one author responded to a comment about confounding and interpretation that because a variable mentioned by the reviewers would be in the causal path, it would be inappropriate to treat it as a potential confounder. In all cases in which we judged that investigators had responded to comments about spin by providing a scientific justification, the PCORI associate editors also accepted the research reports without further changes. The types of spin were similar in DFRRs that changed the report and DFRRs that rebutted comments about spin, including reporting bias , inappropriate interpretation , inappropriate extrapolation of results , and inappropriate attribution of causality .p-values and to interpret their results more positively, but the authors made minimal changes in their DFRR. In another case, the authors addressed comments about the interpretation of measures with clinically unimportant differences by removing all mentions of those results from their conclusions in the report.Although we did not record systematically whether spin was introduced during peer review, we unexpectedly noticed two examples in which peer review encouraged spin. In one case, an associate editor encouraged the authors to focus on Using the PCORI website, we identified 264 journal articles associated with the included projects, with a median of 3 (IQR = 2 to 5) articles per project  were accepted before the corresponding PCORI peer review feedback was sent, and 44/110 (40%) were accepted after PCORI peer review feedback was sent. We could not determine whether 3/110 (3%) were accepted before or after the PCORI peer review feedback was sent Fig. .We found no evidence that peer review of DFRRs was associated spin in journal articles. Indeed, we found that some journal articles contained spin even when authors removed spin from their PCORI research reports, including articles accepted after PCORI peer review.We identified 44 journal articles with results for which comments about spin in the DFRR could have been applicable to the journal article. In the other articles with results, there were either no related comments about spin in the DFRR  or comments about spin made in the DFRR were not applicable to the parts of the project included in the journal article  articles contained spin that was also identified in the DFRR while 17/44 (39%) did not , we found 36 journal articles that could have included the same spin. Comparing those articles with the associated DFRRs, we found that 20/36 (56%) articles had the same spin as the first version of the DFRR and 16/36 (44%) did not have the same spin that was identified in the first version of the DFRR. Thus, the proportion of articles with spin was similar for those accepted before PCORI peer review  and accepted after PCORI peer review . As above, we could not determine whether one article was published before or after the DFRR was submitted .Peer review frequently identified spin in reports submitted to PCORI, and spin identified by reviewers and editors was usually removed after review. Given that the PCORI Methodology Standards include expectations for reporting research, interventions to help investigators adhere to these standards before submitting their DFRRs might improve the quality of reports sent for peer review. We found no evidence that peer review of PCORI research reports was associated with removal of spin in associated journal articles.Because the manner in which authors describe study results might influence how readers interpret study findings, spin in biomedical research might adversely affect the development of future studies, clinical practice, and health policies .PCORI’s publication and peer review requirements are designed, in part, to reduce reporting bias; this study suggests that PCORI’s requirements might be having this intended effect. PCORI-funded investigators must publish a PCORI research report, which may reduce selective non-reporting of studies and results. For studies with null results for primary outcomes, we found peer review raised attention to primary outcomes rather than secondary outcomes with “significant” results. Peer review also encouraged authors to focus on between-group differences rather than within-group change, and to avoid interpretating null results in superiority trials as evidence of equivalence . Some inThis study also provides some evidence that PCORI peer review is associated with better interpretation of results . In several cases of irreconcilable differences over important scientific matters, PCORI has published statements at the time of posting DFRRs that say PCORI disagrees with a study’s findings or interpretation, and provided their reasons behind those disagreements. Authors in those cases were invited to provide their rebuttals.Although both journal articles and PCORI research reports are peer reviewed, differences in the peer review processes might explain observed differences in spin in reports about the same studies. The associate editors who review PCORI research reports are guided by the PCORI Methodology Standards, and PCORI will publish all research reports without respect to the novelty of the findings. The proportion of journal articles with spin in our study was comparable to previous studies; for example, Boutron and colleagues found spin in 58% of the Conclusions in the abstracts for trials with nonsignificant primary outcomes . FurtherPCORI associate editors and peer reviewers made many comments on DFRRs, which included comments unrelated to spin . While most investigators changed their research reports in response to comments about spin, our finding that not all investigators resolved comments about spin could be evidence that investigators disagree with what constitutes “spin,” or that comments about spin were perceived by the investigators (and by the editors who handled those research reports) as relatively less important than other comments. Evidence that investigators sometimes responded with justifications rather than changes suggests that investigators and editors sometimes disagree about what constitutes “spin.” We did not independently evaluate DFRRs and peer reviewers’ comments about spin, and we are not aware of a reference standard that could be used to evaluate the agreement of different readers for detecting spin. A previous study found that peer reviewers identified spin in most abstracts for non-randomized intervention studies, yet reviewers did not comment about all instances of spin , 9.Our finding that spin was commonly identified in PCORI research reports during peer review is consistent with studies showing that selective non-reporting and spin originate with authors rather than with journal editors or journalists –16. In aAlthough our study did not aim to compare text across sources per se, we found that many PCORI research reports and journal articles contained similar text. Consequently, it might be difficult for readers to see how a PCORI report differs from journal articles about the same study. Future studies could explore whether PCORI authors reference their PCORI reports in other publications, and whether stakeholders use PCORI research reports when journal articles are available for the same study.Our study had several limitations. First, we evaluated comments about spin related to only the first version of each DFRR. Many DFRRs were submitted multiple times, and comments about the first version sometimes focused on issues such as clarity, completeness, and analytic methods. It is possible that associate editors commented about spin on subsequent drafts and that we underestimated the proportion of PCORI research reports with comments about spin. For example, we cannot exclude the possibility that all reports eventually received some comments about spin. It is also possible that editors and peer reviewers might have considered some of the investigators’ justifications to be inadequate; because we did not look at acceptance letters , we do not have any direct evidence about the editors’ beliefs about the investigators’ responsiveness to their comments. In addition, our analysis focused on the peer review process that precedes PCORI’s final review. We did not consider comments provided by the PCORI Director of Peer Review, who might have also identified spin. Although all studies and articles were rated by at least one person not involved in PCORI peer review, the first author is an Associate Editor for PCORI peer review and rated some of the included DFRRs and journal articles. Despite these limitations, our conclusions would be the same if the true proportion of DFRRs with spin were greater than 86% and if the true proportion of PCORI research reports that addressed all comments about spin were slightly lower than 85%. Moreover, our conclusions would be unlikely to change meaningfully if comments from the PCORI Director of Peer Review led to additional changes in some PCORI reports and associated journal articles.Another limitation was that we evaluated only journal articles identified by PCORI. We did not search for additional journal articles related to the PCORI research reports and we might have missed articles that would have been included had they been identified. However, we have no reason to believe that other articles published by the time of our study would differ meaningfully from the articles that we included. It is possible that articles published after the cutoff for our study might have addressed comments about spin that authors received during peer review of their DFRRs or from the PCORI Director of Peer Review.Lastly, we used the date that each journal article was accepted—rather than the date each journal article was submitted—because journals more commonly report the date of acceptance than the date of submission. Although using the date of acceptance might overestimate the number of articles that could have been affected by PCORI peer review, using the date of submission might have underestimated the number of articles that could have been affected by PCORI peer review. Even if more complete information had been available for our study, we doubt it would change our conclusion that PCORI peer review was not associated with spin in journal articles about the same studies.PCORI research reports are comprehensive accounts of PCORI funded studies, and our analysis shows that these reports included less spin after peer review. Funders could explore interventions aimed at reducing spin in published articles of studies they support.Additional file 1:. Appendix


We list various factors that may hinder this cycle and thus contribute to behavioral reluctance. After that, we highlight potential remedies to address each of the identified barriers. We thereby hope to point out new ways to think about behavioral reluctances in general, and in relation to open access publishing in particular.Despite growing awareness of the benefits of large-scale open access publishing, individual researchers seem reluctant to adopt this behavior, thereby slowing down the evolution toward a new scientific culture. We outline and apply a goal-directed framework of behavior causation to shed light on this type of behavioral reluctance and to organize and suggest possible intervention strategies. The framework explains behavior as the result of a cycle of events starting with the detection of a discrepancy between a goal and a  We often seem to know that we should change our behavior, but often we do not. Such behavioral reluctance is impeding much needed change in various types of behavior. One such type of behavior is academic open access publishing. Open access journals receive more and more attention because there is a growing awareness of drawbacks associated with traditional, non-open access journals  taking overt action to make research accessible to the public , (b) changing this goal or reducing its value , or (c) ignoring that research is not accessible to the public or by reassuring themselves that the media will communicate research findings from closed journals to the public . Which of these three strategies is chosen likely depends on respective expected utilities of these strategies for reducing the discrepancy. If researchers choose to engage in overt action , they still need to select the action option from their action repertoire with the highest expected utility. Once researchers have chosen the action option they deem most effective to make their research accessible to the public, the corresponding intention is activated and is then translated into an overt action. If researchers, for instance, estimate that publishing in open access journals has a higher expectancy of making their work accessible than writing a blog post, the intention to publish in open access journals is activated. After this intention is translated in the actual publishing in open access journals, it is followed by an outcome. The outcome is fed back as the input to a new cycle and this cycle is repeated until the discrepancy is effectively removed. Researchers may thus continue to publish in open access journals until their research is sufficiently accessible to the public. Furthermore, as discussed in As long as researchers perceive a discrepancy between the From this perspective, it becomes clear that an attempt to find an explanation for the occurrence of the behavior of open access publishing is an attempt to explain the result of a complex chain of events. Understanding why there is a reluctance to engage open access publishing then comes down to understanding how and why the sequence leading up to this behavior might be hindered. As the reluctance to publish in open access journals impedes an important change in the transition toward more accessible and transparent research practices, there is a growing interest in understanding the potential barriers as well as avenues for a large-scale adoption of open access publishing e.g., . We willstatus quo and one goal because they expect the behavior will itself be discrepant with another goal that has a higher value. It is, therefore, important to consider the values that researchers ascribe to certain goals relative to those of other goals. Researchers may, for instance, not submit their paper to an open access journal, despite the fact that this is instrumental for their goal to make their research accessible to the public, if doing so also constitutes a discrepancy with or has a low expectancy to reach the more important goals to communicate with peer researchers from the same research area or to collect publications in prestigious journals marked by high impact factors  increase the value researchers ascribe to the goal of making research accessible to the public, (b) decrease the value of other, competing goals such as collecting publications in prestigious journals, or (c) change the environment so that these goals no longer conflict with each other, for instance, by creating prestigious  open access journals. We discuss these options in turn alongside an exemplary goal-hierarchy involved in open access publishing see .existing links between the subordinate goal to make research publicly accessible and superordinate goals, one might also create novel links between this subordinate goal and superordinate goals  by implementing changes in the reward structure of the environment. To stimulate researchers to endorse the goal of public accessibility, universities could, for instance, lend accessibility awards to researchers who make significant efforts to promote the accessibility of their research. Another option could be to make accessibility an important quality criterion for the allocation of research grants . In these cases, accessibility of research would become instrumental to superordinate goals (gaining awards and research grants).Increasing the value of the goal to make research accessible to the public may be done by directly underscoring the importance of this goal, or indirectly, by pointing out that this goal is instrumental for superordinate goals such as increased visibility of the researcher to the public, increased impact on societal debates and policy making, and increased collaboration among researchers. In addition to pointing out An alternative strategy is to decrease the value of goals that hinder adopting open access publishing, such as the goal to collect publications in prestigious journals, the goal to save publishing expenses for the individual researcher, and the goal to save time and energy involved in the administrative payment process of publication fees. This can be done by minimizing the values of these other goals directly, or indirectly by pointing out or making sure that these other goals are no longer instrumental for other superordinate goals. To illustrate the indirect pathways, researchers could be convinced that publications in prestigious journals alone do not reflect the quality of one’s work, but better still, universities and funding agencies could attach less weight to publications in such prestigious journals. This would be in line with sfdora.org). In a similar vein, to reduce the value of the goals to save on individual publishing expenses and on time spent on administrative payment procedures, universities could offer to pay the fees for open access publishing  and to fully take care of the administrative aspect, for instance, by setting up contractual agreements with journals to cover publication fees. This is increasingly realized in the form of transformative agreements, which seek to move the stake of contracts between institutions and publishers away from subscription-based reading toward open access publications. While transformative agreements could help to reduce the administrative burden of the payment procedure for researchers, they have also been criticized for the fact that they do not sufficiently change the publishing model, resulting in a costly way of achieving open access  prestigious open access journals. Note, moreover, that the prestige or quality of journals may better be captured by other metrics than impact factors, a suggestion that received support in the Declaration on Research Assessment . For instance, one could point out that open access publishing helps researchers take back control over the publication process, attracts more potential academic collaborators, increases citations, and does already lead to increased job and funding opportunities in some universities  by implementing changes in the reward structure of the environment. For instance, universities can list open access publishing as a criterion for excellence or research integrity.Considering that the intention to engage in a behavior is also a goal, one can also use the aforementioned strategies to increase the value of the behavior to publish in open access journals itself and to decrease the value of alternative behaviors. Increasing the value of open access publishing could be done directly by communicating about the importance of open access publishing. In a more indirect way, one could also point out ties see . One couties see . Such a Reducing the value of alternative behaviors can likewise be done in direct and indirect ways. For instance, researchers may have selected the behavior to publish in a closed access journal but to self-archive the paper and make a post-print available  because it is instrumental for the goal of public access and at the same time, avoids publication fees for individual researchers as well as their administrative burden with the payment process. In addition to directly communicating a low value of this alternative behavior, one can indirectly influence its value by pointing out that the green route does not contribute to other goals in the way that open access publishing does and that it may have certain costs. One could, for instance, highlight uncertainty about copyright/licensing issues and the variety of publisher self-archiving policies, which seem to be major barriers to self-archiving . Anotherstatus quo and their goal or when they underestimate the magnitude of this discrepancy. For instance, researchers may be aware that traditional journals can only be accessed by a paid subscription and may have the goal to make research accessible to the public but fail to realize that the paywall is discrepant with accessibility to the public and hence fail to activate the goal to do something about it. A potential solution could be to point out the discrepancy explicitly. This could be done by illustrating how restricted the access to traditional journals is  and how serious the consequences are for various groups of potential readers .A second factor that might impede behavior is when a person fails to detect a discrepancy between the via online directories that index and provide access to high quality, peer-reviewed open access journals  or via open access platforms at universities, which increase awareness and provide researchers with practical information . They might also reassure themselves that the media will communicate the findings of their research to the public and that this is more effective than publishing in open access journals .Open access publishing can be considered as a collective action, in which the actions of many are required to achieve a large-scale outcome. To achieve a transition toward publicly accessible science, a behavior change by a large collective of researchers is required. In such situations, a single person might feel incapable to reach the outcome with her own actions  and thus refrain from engaging in the behavior. An intervention to facilitate behavior change in these cases might be to change expectancies directly, for example, by setting up a campaign to stress that every single publication in an open access journal compared to a publication in a closed journal makes a meaningful difference in making research accessible to the public. More indirect ways to change expectancies are to alter the framing of the goal so that it seems more achievable by a single individual. One could, for example, reframe the goal from making science accessible to the public to making research in a certain domain, such as neuroscience, accessible to the public. Alternatively, one could reframe the goal from making science accessible to the public in general to making it accessible to a specific group, such as researchers in developing countries, alumni, or professionals. By framing the goal with regard to one’s own domain and/or with regard to a certain group, it may appear more achievable. Another indirect way to change expectancies would be to stress how many others are already publishing in open access journals, thereby increasing the expectancy that an individual researcher’s work will make a difference in the transition toward more accessible research. The latter strategy has already been shown to be effective across many behavioral domains and is referred to as the provision of descriptive norms . There iA factor that runs through all previous ones is the quality of the representations involved in the goal-directed cycle . If one via repetition) or recency  of the relevant representations or by drawing attention to them. To foster open access publishing, one could, for instance, repeatedly expose researchers to current accessibility restrictions or increase the recency of exposure to the goal to make research accessible. In particular, one could expose researchers regularly to illustrations of limited access and prompt them with the goal to make research accessible prior to an upcoming publication. This could be done, for instance, by marking closed access publications with a closed access sign. This is in line with the intervention strategy of mental contrasting proposed by status quo and the goal, and is considered the best way to increase salience of the discrepancy between these two elements and to mobilize a person to take action. Finally, if an action option is not sufficiently activated to be accessible for being chosen, the representation of the desired action option  may be facilitated via behavioral prompts  as well as of different superordinate goals that favor open access publishing . In addition to getting acquainted with an injunctive norm that favors open access publishing, researchers would also be more likely to be exposed to a descriptive norm that favors such a practice because if more scholars in their immediate surroundings already publish in open access journals, engaging in the same behavior would appear more effective to each individual researcher as a means to make research accessible. This may be one potential explanation for the finding that when descriptive and injunctive norms dissociate, people tend to follow the descriptive norm rather than the injunctive norm . FinallyIt may also be worthwhile to situate open access publishing in its broader sociological context. In 1942, the sociologist To conclude, we hope to have illustrated that adopting the goal-directed framework to behavioral reluctance in the domain of open-access publishing offers a pragmatic path forward and helps to develop concrete intervention strategies for tackling publishing behavior that may in the long run also contribute to a wider change in the research culture. Translating the outlined intervention strategies into practical applications will still require creative work and a close consideration of the specific contexts in which an intervention takes place. The analysis at hand focused on one particular goal  and on one particular group of actors  to illustrate the framework and its application. We have mentioned a number of other goals that might start off the behavioral cycle for researchers. In addition to exploring the role of other goals such as these, it will be important to explore the role of different actors and thus target groups for interventions. Different groups of actors, such as early-career compared to senior researchers, likely differ with regard to the barriers that they identify . Addressing these additional questions may help researchers and other stakeholders to deepen their understanding of the reluctance to publish in open access journals. Finally, we hope that the current exercise will pave the way for others to apply the goal-directed framework to reluctances in related domains , as well as to reluctances in completely different domains .MK and AM: writing – first drafts and revisions, development of theoretical framework, and application to open access publishing. AM: supervision. JDH, TR-H, IN, and FV: suggestions for applying the theoretical framework to open access publishing and writing – revision. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.


The selenium field expanded at a rapid rate for about 45 years, from the mid-1970’s until about 2015  Dr. Leopold Flohé, M.D., who made many important discoveries to the growth and expansion in the field of this unique element. We were delighted that Editor Fang informed us that we could. In addition, Ms. Fang was most helpful throughout the organization of our Special Issue by handling so much of the correspondence with authors, and by obtaining reviewers for each of the papers. We are certainly indebted to her.When we were in the early stages of organizing this Special Issue on Molecular Biology of Selenium in Health and Disease, with the assistance of our internal editor at the International Journal of Molecular Sciences Special Issues, is dedicated to Prof. Dr. Leopold Flohé, M.D.  to support his education from 1962 to 1968, which is Germany’s oldest, largest, and most prestigious scholarship foundation. In 1973, he won the Award of the Anna-Monika-Foundation for the basic research he carried out on endogenous depression, and in 1985, he was presented the Claudius-Galenus Award for the production of urokinase by recombinant technology. Prof. Dr. Flohé, M.D. was presented with two superb awards in 1997, an Honorary Degree from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina for his major achievements in parasitology, and the Klaus Schwarz Commemorative Medal for his pioneering work in research on the trace element selenium.In 1998, Dr. Flohé was awarded the ‘Science and Humanity Prize’ for lifetime achievements by the Oxygen Club of California. A few years later, in 2006, he was awarded the Trevor Frank Slater Award and Gold Medal, which is the highest academic and research prize in the redox biology and medicine/free radical field conferred by the Society for Free Radical Research International, for lifetime achievements in science. https://www.sfrr-europe.org/index.php/awards/leopold-flohe-award, accessed on 11 January 2022). Lastly, in 2019, he was nominated as an honorary member of the international Scientific Network “Selenium Sulfur Redox and Catalysis” (SeSRedCat). It is indeed a pleasure and an honor to dedicate this Special Issue of the IJMS to Prof. Dr. Leopold Flohé, M.D.Furthermore, in 2010, he was recognized as a Redox Pioneer, an award given to authors whose publications on redox biology have been cited more than 1,000 times, and who have over 20 articles that have been cited more than 100 times . A few y


RSC Chemical Biology.News from Hiroaki Suga, the Editorial Board Chair of  RSC Chemical Biology.News from Hiroaki Suga, the Editorial Board Chair of  Hiroaki SugaRSC Chemical Biology and help build the team of Associate Editors and Editorial Board members. I agreed, and began working closely together with the RSC Editorial Office to build our expert Editorial Board to span the diverse gender, geography, and expertise of chemical biology researchers, commissioning high-quality papers and launching our first issue of RSC Chemical Biology in April 2020.It was during the 2019 IUPAC meeting in Paris when I first discussed launching a new journal with a focus on the field of chemical biology with the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). Despite there being several excellent journals in the chemical biology field already available at the time, I was excited about this new launch since the field is continuously expanding and there was definitely space for a new journal. As a consequence of this encounter in Paris, and after exchanging many e-mails with the RSC Editorial Office, I was invited to become the Editorial Board Chair of RSC Chemical Biology is undeniably inimitable in several ways.RSC Chemical Biology. We believe by making research freely available to anyone who needs it, gold open access publishing allows wider knowledge dissemination, removes reading restrictions, and offers more opportunities for researchers to improve the visibility of their work and build a strong reputation. Because of this, science can progress faster. This is good for everyone.First of all, it is a gold Open Access journal. This is especially important for the community as there had been no specialized open access journal in this area until the launch of RSC Chemical Biology was the first journal at the RSC to launch TPR and indeed, with half of our submitting authors opting for this option, we are pleased to be offering and meeting the interest of our community in this way. I expect that this number will increase when the benefits of TPR become more widely recognized and established among scientists.Second, we offer our authors a Transparent Peer-Review (TPR) option. If authors choose this option the full history of peer-review is published alongside their manuscript. We launched this initiative, further demonstrating our commitment to open science, to combat bias in publishing and to openly demonstrate that our editors and reviewers are both held accountable and acknowledged (I have to highlight here that the reviewers remain anonymous unless they decide to sign their report). Our 2020 volume includes review, research, communication and opinion articles; in terms of modalities of molecules, research including small molecules, peptides/peptidomimetics, nucleic acids, natural products/secondary metabolites, and proteins are all featured; and in terms of topics in chemical biology, we published research on drug discovery, biosynthesis, enzyme and cellular mechanisms, probes/tools, and more. Most importantly, at least to me, all research published involved significant components of chemistry as an RSC journal. Some stand-out examples for me include:et al., DOI: 10.1039/D0CB00070A.• “Harnessing the PD-L1 interface peptide for positron emission tomography imaging of the PD-1 immune checkpoint” by Hu ex vivo detection but also in vivo detection in mice.The authors of this paper have developed an impressive PET imaging tool for the most famous immune check point mediated by the PD-1 and PD-L1 interaction, demonstrating not only cell culture and et al., DOI: 10.1039/D0CB00092B.• “A thorough analysis and categorization of bacterial interrupted adenylation domains, including previously unidentified families” by Lundy The families of interrupted A domains and types of M domains in the nonribosomal peptide class of natural products have been categorized. It has illuminated patterns and insights on how to harness them for engineering studies in the future.et al., DOI: 10.1039/D0CB00197J.• “The chemical biology of coronavirus host–cell interactions” by Datta This timely review comprehensively summarizes the biological events linked to the coronavirus outbreak. RSC Chemical Biology, and welcome you as our growing community.As we welcome you to the opening issue of our 2021 volume, we want to share our focus for 2021 to continue increasing the excellent quality and quantity of the manuscripts published in Hiroaki SugaProfessor, University of Tokyo.RSC Chemical BiologyEditorial Board Chair,


Microbiology Spectrum, published by the American Society for Microbiology, has relaunched as an open-access journal with a broad scope across microbiology research. Pivoting from publishing monographs such as review articles, Spectrum now welcomes all types of microbiology research studies that have been carried out in a rigorous way and advance knowledge in the area of focus, without consideration of novelty or impact. Central to the journal’s mission is promoting open science, reproducibility, and transparency in the review process.The journal Microbiology Spectrum has relaunched with a new scope of research across microbiology. While this includes the areas covered by many ASM journals, a notable distinction is that Microbiology Spectrum will not gate manuscripts based on the perceived impact or novelty of a study. Requiring such a threshold for publication can involve subjective assessments on the part of reviewers and editors, and this can limit the publication of high-quality work. Similar to other journals, Microbiology Spectrum will expect that manuscripts clearly describe the study’s rationale, design, methods, results, and interpretation, including limitations, with clear and concise writing.Microbiology Spectrum, manuscripts can be transferred from other ASM journals. For manuscripts transferred with reviews, editors seek to provide a decision based on the provided reviews and response of the authors, avoiding additional cycles of review when a paper is resubmitted. For other manuscripts, editors at Microbiology Spectrum will evaluate the paper and decide whether to solicit reviews.The wide scope across microbiology and lack of impact criteria for publication expand the options for most authors within ASM publishing. In addition to being submitted directly to Microbiology Spectrum will publish all types of reports that document rigorous work. These include replication studies that provide additional support for findings, as well as negative results that reject a study hypothesis. Studies could focus on a deeper investigation of previously published work, such as independent analyses of large data sets. In addition to research studies, methodological advances and protocols are also welcome.Microbiology Spectrum supports these publication types and practices as part of a central ethos to bolster support for open science. Open and early data release is particularly urgent where the results may directly impact public health decisions, such as viral genome sequencing during the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic. More broadly, all research can be accelerated by the use of standard repositories, so that advances in one study can be easily built on or validated by other researchers. ASM has outlined an open data policy  that authors at Microbiology Spectrum will need to follow to make it easy to find and reuse data and metadata. We also seek to promote papers that take additional steps to support the reproducibility of the results, such as providing walk-throughs or interactive notebooks in addition to making software or code available, such that users can easily take data from processing all the way to table or figure generation. For transparency in the review process, authors will have the option to publish reviews for their manuscript from Microbiology Spectrum along with the paper, which adds the context of issues raised and how they were addressed by the authors to the publication record. The wider publication of reviews may help ensure that reviewer feedback is carefully considered and considerate and will provide a wider view into the review process for early-career scientists. Microbiology Spectrum also welcomes manuscripts posted to preprint servers, and we are interested in considering how the review process can interface with preprint servers moving forward.Microbiology Spectrum not only via direct invitations but also through open calls for those interested in supporting the mission of the journal. Open calls for editors are a needed change from reliance on personal networks and visibility in selecting editors. While a major factor in recruitment or selection is the expertise to cover needed areas of microbiology, an underlying principle is to build an editorial board that is diverse in terms of race and ethnicity, as well as geography, institution or employer, and career stage. The differences that people bring to the board are highly valued, such as different experiences with the review process and different ideas about priorities for the journal. For early-career stage scientists, we will soon open a call for those interested in serving as reviewers and encourage scientists at the postdoctoral level to apply. We look forward to working with other ASM programs to support building expertise as reviewers.As part of our commitment to openness, we are building the editorial board at Microbiology Spectrum will seek to incorporate new practices that support strengthening the scientific record and promote open science. Many journals are experimenting with new publishing initiatives, and with our relaunch, we have a platform to pilot those that make review more transparent and equitable and improve the publication process for authors, reviewers, and readers. At its core, the mission of Microbiology Spectrum is to support microbial research and the microbiology community, and we embrace a culture of open discourse to chart a course forward.Moving forward,


Bai Y, Lu H, Wu C, Lin C, Liang Y and Chen B. Life Sci: 105, 22–30, 2014]. The authors have been able to re-examine their original data, and realized that certain of the data were misplaced in Subsequently to the publication of the above paper, an interested reader drew to the authors’ attention that certain of the data featured in Molecular Medicine Reports for allowing them the opportunity to publish this corrigendum, and all authors agree to the publication of this corrigendum. Furthermore, they wish to apologize to the readership of the Journal for any inconvenience caused.The revised version of


G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics. As the open access journal of the Society, G3 provides a forum for the publication of high-quality foundational research—particularly research that generates useful genetic and genomic information.The Genetics Society of America is seeking candidates for the position of Editor-in-Chief of G3 Editor-in-Chief (EIC), assisted by the Deputy Editor, leads an Editorial Board of seven Senior Editors and >100 Associate Editors who are all research-active scientists. The EIC works closely with Senior Editors to recruit and retain Associate Editors to cultivate an Editorial Board that represents a broad, deep, and diverse range of researchers and scientific expertise.The The EIC is responsible for fostering consistent decision-making across the journal, delivering clear, timely decisions and feedback to authors, and ensuring that the highest scientific and ethical standards are maintained. The EIC consults on submissions, collaborates with editors on decisions, and oversees consideration of authors’ appeals.GENETICS to set journal strategy that supports GSA’s mission and core values.The EIC collaborates with Editorial Office staff , GSA staff, the Senior Editors, the Publications Committee, and the Editor-in-Chief of G3, including increasing its visibility in the international community and attracting new groups of authors, readers, and reviewers. The EIC will help identify trending and emerging topics for publication as new journal sections or in a themed series and continue to develop the journal as a valuable forum for the publication and discussion of important discoveries and ideas. The EIC will work toward a culture of inclusivity, keeping in mind the diverse audiences served by GSA and its journals, conferences, and programs.The new EIC will build on existing strengths of the journal and identify opportunities for continuing development of the journal. The ideal candidate will have a vision to grow The position officially begins January 1, 2023, but to provide for overlap with the current Editor-in-Chief, the appointee should start on or around October 1, 2022. The Editor-in-Chief serves a 5-year term, with the option to renew. GSA offers a stipend.The EIC is expected to attend biannual meetings of the GSA Board of Directors, some GSA conferences, and publishing- or journal-related conferences . In addition, the EIC travels at least once each year to meet with editorial staff, Senior Editors, and the GENETICS EIC. While it can vary, typically the EIC will serve 10–20 h per week.G3 is a member of the GSA Board of Directors, reports directly to the Board, and is an ex officio member of the Publications Committee.The EIC of Candidates should be established researchers with strong ties to the genetics and scientific community and a demonstrated track record of service, leadership, collaboration, and innovation. They should have a broad understanding and appreciation of topics in genetics and genomics, with a keen sense of emerging areas of inquiry. They should have an understanding of and empathy for the interests and needs of authors at all career stages.At least 7 years of previous editorial experience, preferably at the Senior Editor level, is required. Candidates should have an interest in current topics relating to scholarly communications, such as publication ethics, public access mandates, open science, peer review, and reproducibility.G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics is an open access journal providing a forum for the publication of high-quality foundational research—particularly research that generates useful genetic and genomic information such as genome maps, single-gene studies, genome-wide association and QTL studies, as well as genome reports, mutant screens, and advances in methods and technology. The Editorial Board of G3 believes that rapid dissemination of these data is the necessary foundation for analysis that leads to mechanistic insights.G3 meets the critical and growing need of the genetics community for rapid review and publication of important results in all areas of genetics. G3 offers the opportunity to publish the puzzling finding or to present unpublished results that may not have been submitted for review and publication due to a perceived lack of a potential high–impact finding. As part of our mission to serve our communities, we’ve published thematic collections that include Genomic Prediction, Fungal Genetics and Genomics, and Neurogenetics. G3 has earned the DOAJ Seal, which is awarded by the Directory of Open Access Journals to journals that achieve a high level of openness, adhering to Best Practices and high publishing standards.GSA serves an international community of scientists who use genetics to make new discoveries and improve lives. We advance biological research by supporting professional development of scientists, by communicating advances and fostering collaboration through scholarly publishing and conferences, and by advocating for science and for scientists. We seek to cultivate an inclusive, diverse research community that engages with the public, communicates the excitement and implications of discovery, and serves as an authoritative source of information.genetics-gsa.org for more information about GSA.See G3, at g3_eic_search@thegsajournals.org.Interested candidates should send a letter of intent and CV to Tracey DePellegrin, Executive Editor of


Ten years ago, in 2011, the first articles were published in EJNMMI Research. When Ignasi Carrió, at the time Editor-in-Chief of EJNMMI, together with Ute Heilmann, Editorial Director Clinical Medicine, Springer-Verlag Heidelberg, presented the project to launch a new European journal of nuclear medicine as a companion journal to the prestigious EJNMMI, the reaction of the EJNMMI Editorial Board was mixed. This even more that the new journal would be an open access journal. Many members of the Board feared that the need to pay article processing charges would prevent authors from submitting manuscripts; others were not sure about the respective roles of EJNMMI and EJNMMI Research and worried about potential overlaps. However, the response of the nuclear medicine scientific community to the new publication platform quickly overcame these concerns. Furthermore, the fact that most funding agencies currently ask scientific results to be made widely available and support open access contributed to the development of the journal.After EJNMMI Research, other open access journals, EJNMMI Physics, EJNMMI Radiopharmacy and Chemistry and the European Journal of Hybrid Imaging, have been launched by Springer Nature as additional platforms of scientific exchange within the “EJNMMI Family”, in close connection and with the effective support of the EANM.In 2011, EJNMMI Research published 37 manuscripts, in 2020 this number increased by a factor of four to 155. From the beginning, we decided to be selective, so the rejection rate was close to 40% already in the first years; due to the increased number of submissions, this percentage now represents the approximate acceptance rate. Submissions are received from all over the world, in 2020 mainly from Europe (162) and Asia (157). The Americas submitted 46, Africa 2 and Australia 13 manuscripts. The country with the largest number of submissions was China (78). All these manuscripts were read and evaluated by the editor first to find appropriate reviewers. This task is not always easy, especially when some very specific molecular targets are studied in preclinical settings. In 2020, 2045 reviewers from Europe (1235), the Americas (548), Asia (205), Australia (49) and Africa (8) gave their invaluable support to the journal by evaluating manuscripts and assisted me in selecting the most remarkable publications. Here, I want to express my gratitude for the excellent reviews produced, most often well within the short time limit of 14 days, and the constant availability for a re-review of revised manuscripts. The large majority of reviews was exhaustive, benevolent and reliable. Even when reviewers proposed to reject the manuscript, excellent comments have usually been provided to the authors to assist them in improving their work. Consequently, many authors expressed their gratitude and appreciation of the reviewers’ comments.In these ten years, the aim was to favor novelty and quality of the scientific work to be published rather than hunting the impact factor. Some results still preliminary but encouraging were published to make them available to the scientific community, to incite further research and discussion. The submission of studies that did not provide the expected results was also encouraged. Negative results, if clearly recognized as such, are as important as positive ones; they should, therefore, be known by the scientific community and not disappear in a drawer or a forgotten file on a personal computer. Their publication helps others to avoid spending time, energy and money in studies that have already been proven unsuccessful. Knowing the lack of success of an experiment, new ways might be designed to circumvent or overcome potential drawbacks and consequently advance science.https://www.scopus.com/sourceid/21100235610?origin=sbrowse).Today EJNMMI Research has found its place among the international journals publishing manuscripts in radiology and nuclear medicine. It is largely known, accessed and quoted. For 2019, the last available complete data, the Scopus CiteScore ranked EJNMMI Research 65th of 284 journals in the field of radiology, nuclear medicine and imaging, and at the 77th percentile (Now, time has come to move the journal to the next level and to hand the responsibility of the journal over to a new Editor-in-Chief. I am happy that Wim Oyen accepted this task and hope that he will find as much satisfaction and pleasure as I did, while I have no doubt on his success in further developing the journal. I look forward to seeing the journal take a new momentum.Finally, I wish to thank all those who have trusted and supported me in the task of Editor-in-Chief, first of all Ignasi Carrió and Ute Heilmann, who invited me to participate in founding and developing the first open access companion journal to the EJNMMI. My gratitude goes to all persons with whom I had the pleasure to work at Springer Nature and Biomed Central; in particular, I wish to thank Sabine Ben Ghechir for her continuous encouragement and support. I am also thankful to all those who were successively in charge of the journal at the Editorial Office, who assisted me in the daily editorial tasks for more than ten years. Special thanks go to the Editorial Board and Associate Editors for advice and help with complex decisions.Above all I would like to express my thanks and appreciation to the authors who have supported the journal by submitting their manuscripts from the very beginning and also to the readers of EJNMMI Research. They are the ones who finally made and continue to make the success of the journal.


Not dissuaded by Horganism, Sir Maddox, the legendary editor of Nature, in “What Remains to Be Discovered” argues that the flow of fundamental discoveries is ceaseless. Consequently, scientific advances will ultimately enable extension of the healthspan and slowing the aging process, if not halting it. The remarkable progresses in molecular genetics and biology have just begun to impact the practice of medicine, as best illustrated by COVID-19. It is quite remarkable that within a year or so after the first case of COVID-19 was reported, several highly effective vaccines were developed and became available for mass vaccination. Thus, the task of scientists is to discover and never claim to have the final say in any scientific matter. The mission of scientific journals is to disseminate such discoveries.Biological aging, defined as a gradual decline of the biological/physiological processes that sustain life, is a constitutive element of living and hence, is inescapable. Not only is aging unavoidable but so is its obligatory outcome of death. Naturally, the humans have fantasized about means to avoid aging and maintaining youth since the birth of civilization. The desire to stay young has been universal amongst cultures and epochs, as depicted in the ancient mythology, arts, and literatures. Hebe, the cup-bearer to the Gods and the daughter of Zeus and Hera, was the Goddess of Eternal Youth who had the power to restore eternal youth to aging Gods. In Charles Gounod’s opera Faust, the aged philosopher Dr. Faust morphed into a handsome young man by drinking the elixir of youth offered by Mephistopheles in exchange for his place in hell. In Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, Dorian sought eternal youth by selling his soul in pursuit of hedonistic life. Despite such a strong yearning to prevent aging, the progress has been slow to come. In “The End of Science”, HorganThe Journal of Cardiovascular Aging (JCA) provides such a dedicated platform for rapid dissemination of clinical, translational, and basic scientific discoveries related to cardiovascular aging. The JCA is the first journal specifically dedicated to cardiovascular aging. It fills the niche in this field of increasing importance. The journal is a member of a member of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and supports Gold Open Access, the latter provides access to full content of the articles free of charge.Biological aging is defined very broadly as a series of processes that start from the very beginning of the life of a cell or an organism. While the observational findings might be model specific or subject to the experimental conditions, fundamental discoveries would be expected to have universal implications. Consequently, a discovery that elucidates the fundamental basis of aging or senescence, whether observed in the yeast or in a mammalian model organism, will be pertinent to cardiovascular system as well. The cardiovascular system is a prime target of biological aging, and its involvement is a major determinant of the inevitable outcome of aging. Aging burdens the coronary arteries with atherosclerotic plaques and calcifications, degenerates the valves rendering them malfunctional, thins the contractile units of the myocytes impairing their relaxation and ability to utilize mitochondrial energy, expands and thickens the myocardial collagenous network reducing ventricular compliance and disrupting impulse conduction, distorts the aorta and blood vessels making them non-complaint, and makes cardiovascular system less resilient to stress and injury with diminishing capacity of repair and regeneration. To counter the process of cardiovascular aging, it is essential to discover the fundamental mechanisms that govern aging, whether at the cellular or organismal level, make astute clinical observations, and intervene to prevent, attenuate, and reverse the processes. It is also necessary and timely to establish a desirable platform that enables the clinicians and scientists to disseminate their seminal discoveries and observations pertaining to cardiovascular aging. JCA as the premier, most authoritative, and entirely transparent international platform for dissemination of state-of-the-art basic, translational, and clinical studies in aging and cardiovascular disease. The JCA aims to publish discoveries that pertain to all aspects of aging and cardiovascular disease. Aging is considered in a broader view and considered a process that begins with the birth of a cell and continues till the death of the organism. Therefore, all aspects of basic and clinical sciences related to aging within the context of cardiovascular disease are considered to be within the scope of the journal.The editors are committed to developing the JCA are listed in the instructions to the authors and the editorial policy is published at the journal website (https://cardiovascularaging.com/). Briefly, the primary focus of the journal is to publish original research articles, whether in full-length article or brief report format, that provide novel mechanistic insights into cardiovascular aging. Studies confirming, validating, or challenging existing dogmata, whenever providing unequivocal findings, are considered to be within the scope of the journal. Typically, original research articles will be accompanied by editorials to highlight strengths and weaknesses of the articles and surmise the significance of the findings. While the focus is on publication of original scientific discoveries, the journal will also publish state-of-the-art review manuscripts on topics of broad interest to the readership of the journal. Furthermore, the journal will invite the leading authorities to write commentaries on impactful discoveries published elsewhere, as well as perspectives. Case reports and case series, as well as unique medical images will be considered. The editors are committed to enhancing the career development of early-stage investigators through various platforms, including profiling the young investigators in the journal. Finally, young investigators have been recruited to function as academic assistant editors in scanning the scientific journals and summarizing new and significant findings related to aging in the category of News.The categories of articles that will be considered for publication in the Dissemination of scientific discoveries is essential for advancing the biomedical sciences. The four key elements of the biomedical publishing are the authors, the referees (reviewers), the editors, and the publisher.The authors, fully aware of the dictum “publish or perish”, which is ingrained in the academic culture, aim to publish their findings in the most prestigious journals in order to get recognition within and outside of their organization. The pressure must not obscure the main purpose of scientific publications, which is to disseminate discoveries with the ultimate goal of favorably impacting the lives of patients and preventing illnesses. The primary responsibility of the authors is to present their observations in the most lucid and clear fashion, allowing the data to speak for themselves, without embellishment or excessive emphasis. The success of a manuscript is partly based upon the ability of the authors to present their findings in the most succinct and lucid manner. It is essential to minimize, and if possible, to eliminate all known biases when setting up the experiments to test the hypothesis. It is easy to ignore those ugly data that slay a beautiful hypothesis. This temptation must be avoided. Likewise, it is crucial that the authors do not twist the data to fit into their hypothesis, instead of fitting the hypothesis into the data, as the latter was Sherlock Holmes’ mantra in solving the puzzles.The rapid pace of advances in biomedical sciences and the increased number of the scientific papers has necessitated prioritization of manuscripts for publication, based on their scientific contents. The expanded depth and breadth of biomedical research have resulted in an increased reliance on evaluations of manuscripts by the external and typically anonymous referees. Peer-review approach, despite its limitations, has emerged as the key component of judging the merit of the scientific manuscripts. The reviewers are usually impartial judges who render their evaluations pro bono and do not benefit from much recognition for their hard work. They are exceedingly generous with their time and in offering scientific guidance to the authors. in a commentary in Nature, entitled “End the wasteful tyranny of reviewer experiments”. The editors are actively engaged in assessing the scientific content of the manuscripts as well as the reviewers’ comments with the objective of increasing the scientific quality of the manuscript, the robustness of the data, and the rigor of the findings, while eliminating unnecessary experiments.Reviewers are committed to excellence in scientific publications and are seldom biased. Such departures from normality are easily recognized by the editors and properly handled. On occasion, the reviewers place an excessive burden on the authors to conduct experiments that are often tangential to the original discoveries and provide only incremental data. The point was elegantly expressed by PloeghThe primary objective of the editors is to disseminate advances in cardiovascular sciences by publishing the best and most robust research related to aging. The editors have the ultimate responsibility in making the final disposition of the manuscripts, while functioning as active referees who carefully analyze not only the comments of the external reviewers but also the scientific content of the manuscript. The editors have the responsibility of making decisions about accepting or rejecting a manuscript based on the overall standing of the paper as compared to others being processed for publication in the journal.Accessibility of the editors and a close rapport between the editors and the authors are the crux of enticing submission of top scientific discoveries to the journal. The editors will encourage direct pre-submission inquiries and provide a fair, efficient, and transparent direction to the authors. The editors are committed to providing timely review, processing of the manuscripts, and their publications.JCA will be waived until the journal is indexed in Web of Science. The publisher also provides manuscript editing services for free. Finally, the publisher along with the editors will publicize the journal and its content in various social media and the scientific meetings.The publisher provides the platform for the journal to disseminate the scientific discoveries and assists the editors in managing all aspects of the scientific publishing, ranging from submission of articles to their publications. The publisher honors the total independence of the editors and does not interfere with the scientific content of the journal. Of course, the main objective of most, if not all, publishers is financial gain. The sage publisher realizes that the best way to achieve this objective is to provide a robust platform for dissemination of the most authentic scientific information to the benefit of the society and consequently, to the benefit of the publisher. Accordingly, the publication fee for the articles published in the In conclusion, the primary responsibility of authors, referees, editors, and the publisher is to disseminate the most robust data in cardiovascular sciences with the ultimate goal of improving the lives of our aging population and preventing diseases. Despite the best efforts by all involved, the process of publishing scientific papers is not without its shortcomings. The editors will strive to improve the process to the complete satisfaction of all parties involved, a task that requires tremendous efforts by all major constituents; including the authors, referees, editors, and the publisher. The editors of this journal have strong track records of accomplishments not only in their own scientific research fields but also with respect to their scientific integrity and dedication to furthering scientific advances.


Being an editor of a scientific journal is a challenging job. The editor’s task is to select articles regarding quality and interest. This is not always easy: we accept approximately 25% of manuscripts we receive. The obvious selection criterion is the quality of the manuscript. However, sometimes a paper suffers from other issues and these problems are not related to the scientific quality of the paper but to the proper conduct of the authors. Sometimes they are suspected early in the editorial process but sometimes even after the paper has been published.What are the most frequent and grave errors we as editors encounter?Technical sloppiness is not a problem of misconduct but is included here because it is an important cause for a paper to be rejected early. Quite often papers we receive are not prepared according to the technical standards of our journal. Sometimes a statement on the medical research ethics committee is missing. Sometimes authors have not been careful enough in reading the instructions for authors. However in other cases, we notice that the paper has obviously been sent elsewhere, rejected and then simply resent to our journal. In that case, the article is sent back to the authors with a request that the paper should be prepared correctly. This kind of error does not improve the chance of the paper to be published.Editors tend to become suspicious if the cover letter does not mention conflicts of interest. If there is any potential conflict, this should be mentioned not only in the cover letter but also in the main text of the manuscript since reviewers need to be informed about this issue as well. Most studies are sponsored and sponsoring may affect the objectivity of the paper. Not mentioning conflict of interest, especially in sponsored research is bad practice. Not only ‘material’ conflicts of interest should be mentioned, but also ‘immaterial’ interests—like being co-author of a clinical guideline, or being a member of a special interest group need to be acknowledged. In particular, the authors of a ‘background paper’ or ‘narrative review’ should be transparent about the perspective from which they write a paper.It has become common practice for most journals (ours included) to use computer programmes that check databases for texts to screen for possible plagiarism. Real plagiarism, where substantial parts of an article written by someone else are being reprinted and submitted as an original paper from another author is rather rare. Often, an expert reviewer informs the editor that parts of the manuscript seem to be copied from a text they know. Needless to say, such a paper will be rejected and the authors will be asked for an explanation. Depending on their answer, more steps that are serious may follow, like informing superiors or the dean of a university.Self-plagiarism is more common and sometimes necessary: it is perfectly logical to have similar paragraphs in the method sections of papers reporting on the same dataset. However, sometimes we come across a paper that has been originally published in a non-English journal and is then submitted in English. For an editor, it is hard to judge whether this is done on purpose—and the authors hope that this will not be spotted—or whether it is ignorance of the authors. If the authors did not mention the other publication in their cover letter, we will not negotiate about a possible allowed ‘duplicate publication.’Other commonly encountered issues are partially overlapping and ‘salami’ publications. Then, an editorial decision is less straightforward. If a prospective study has outcomes after three, six and 12 months, it will be hard to defend that this situation warrants three separate publications. The last paper of such a series will be rejected if there is too much repetition of the text, especially if previously published results are repeated .There may be legitimate reasons for the authors to produce several articles from the same study. Sometimes the methodology of the study is so complex that describing it in detail may require too much space, and a separate methodological paper is published. An overview of the literature, if done systematically, may be a separate paper or a systematic review. International studies may make it possible to produce ‘national’ sub-papers which would be interesting for a national journal. Some ‘self-plagiarism’ cannot be avoided, but authors should try to prevent too much overlap with their work.It is good practice that authors are transparent about previous, similar, or associated publications (in any language). In all these cases, authors should mention their previous publications on a similar topic in the cover letter, and they should explain the benefit of the current manuscript.Sometimes, authors decide to submit the same paper—or a similar one, e.g., a more comprehensive version—to several journals at the same time. Some authors, usually the inexperienced ones, not well supervised by a senior are not aware that double submission is not allowed. It is clear that this is explicitly forbidden according to international guidelines on publication ethics . If it hIt is logical that authors quote their previous work in a new manuscript. However, there must be a balance between own work and work of others on the same topic. It is bad practice to list only the author’s previous work in the references, giving the impression that the author is the only researcher on the topic. The authors must be critical enough and acknowledge the work of other research groups working on the same topic by quoting their studies.Sometimes the data are fabricated, modified or changed. Sometimes authors decide to report only the part of their results that support their theory, hypothesis or interest, and neglect to mention the other results. These are serious cases of misconduct . It is aSometimes serious misconduct occurs it is possible to inform the authorities. This is done extremely rarely, but this year we had the first case when it was discussed at the editorial board meeting.In principle, the rules of authorship are clear. The authors are people who have substantially participated in various stages of the study. Less substantial contributions should be acknowledged as such and should not be awarded a ‘gift,’ ‘guest’ or ‘honorary’ authorship. Ghostwriting (when somebody else writes the paper) is forbidden. A professional writer, often paid by the commercial sponsor of a study or ‘background paper,’ may do this.Make substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; andDraft the work or revise it critically for important intellectual content; andMake final approval of the version to be published; andAgree to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved .To qualify as an author, the authors should:It is hard for the editorial office to find out if an author is real. Google and PubMed may reveal a lot of information, which either may increase or decrease suspicion that authorship may be an issue. It is important for co-authors of a paper to be aware that they have a shared responsibility for their collective authorship.Almost all conflicts of authorship are made known only after the paper has been published and create conflicts between the authors that can easily be avoided. Many friendships are broken over the issue of authorship.Authors are expected to know what is considered ‘good practice’ in academic writing. We suggest you have a good look at the websites of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors  and the Be clear about who you are. Try to make yourself known through ORCID, a university web page, LinkedIn or other sources that are well known. This makes the work of editors much easier. Check the affiliations you provide in the electronic manuscript management system and on the ‘author page’. Use official stationery or logos in your cover letter or email address.Adhere to the instructions for authors. Did you formally prepare your manuscript according to the requirements of the journal?Do your co-authors fulfil the criteria for authorship? Is a long list of authors explained in the cover letter? Have they all agreed to be a co-author? Is that stated in the cover letter?Does the cover letter include bibliographic details of already published articles—in any language—by the same author group? Do you discuss the benefit of the current manuscript if it looks similar to an article you have published already?Did you not simultaneously submit the same manuscript to another journal? Did you include a statement on that in the cover letter?Did you mention possible conflicts of interest in the cover letter as well as the text of the manuscript?Are details of medical ethics committee approval provided?Here is a simple checklist that every author could use before submitting a paper to a journal to avoid problems and allegations of possible misconduct:Editors have to be suspicious and look for clues how to find cases of misconduct. Even with the utmost care, it is always possible to cheat and misconduct will never be eradicated. However, the main responsibility lies with the author, who should make it clear that professionalism, research and publication ethics are more important than scores and factors based on publication of controversial articles.European Journal of General Practice, we are dealing with these problems in a fair but strict way. After all, we are family doctors.Very little is clear-cut in terms of finding and investigating misconduct, including the boundaries of responsibilities and how far to take an investigation. In the


FEBS Open Bio continues to go from strength to strength, with 2021 perhaps marking its most exciting year. In this Editorial, the Editor‐in‐Chief Miguel A. De la Rosa looks back at all the new developments of 2021 and forecasts the outlook for 2022. FEBS Open Bio in 2021 and forecasts the outlook for 2022.In this Editorial, the Editor‐in‐Chief Miguel A. De la Rosa looks back at the exciting developments of  In the last twelve months, we have started the following new initiatives:FEBS Open Bio Article Prize, please refer to the editorial published in the 10th anniversary issue [We concluded 2021 with a special issue to celebrate the journal’s 10th anniversary issue, which included several editorials, and research and review articles especially commissioned to mark the occasion. For full details on the speed talk prizes and the 2021 So NakagawaIn 2021, we welcomed So Nakagawa  and Ingela Lanekoff  to the Editorial Board. Prof. So Nakagawa obtained his Ph.D. from Tokyo Medical and Dental University in 2008. He completed postdoctoral training at National Institute of Genetics and Harvard University. He moved to Tokai University School of Medicine as Assistant Professor in 2013 and was promoted to Junior Associate Professor in 2018.Ingela LanekoffHe has been working on comparative and evolutionary genomic studies, including translation initiation mechanisms, multigene families and retrotransposons. In particular, he is recently interested in virus and host co‐evolution. He conducts evolutionary studies of various retroviruses, including endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) and de novo genes in host species derived from ERVs. He also works on molecular evolution of coronaviruses including SARS‐CoV‐2 and filoviruses, including Ebola viruses. Dr. Ingela Lanekoff completed her Ph.D. in 2011 at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and spent two years as a postdoctoral research associate at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in the United States. In 2014, she started her own research group at Uppsala University in Sweden, where she was recently appointed full Professor of Analytical Chemistry. The Lanekoff research group works on developments and applications of analytical approaches for spatially resolved and in‐depth analysis of small molecules, such as metabolites and lipids. In particular, they perform quantitative mass spectrometry imaging using nanospray desorption electrospray ionization and in‐depth spatial metabolomics with surface sampling capillary electrophoresis on thin tissue sections and cells to realize metabolites involved in health and disease.Aditi BhargavaUniversity of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USALukas CajanekMasaryk University, Brno, Czech RepublicJobichen ChackoNational University of Singapore, SingaporeSherien M. El‐DalyNational Research Centre, Cairo, EgyptKazumi HiranoNational Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), JapanGaetano LetoUniversity of Palermo, ItalyMozart MarinsUniversity of Ribeirão Preto, BrazilJoão Ramalho‐SantosUniversity of Coimbra, PortugalChristine SchwartzUniversity of Wisconsin‐La Crosse, La Crosse, WI, USAZhen SunMemorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, USAIn 2021, we also appointed 10 new members to the journal’s Editorial Advisory Board (EAB), bringing the total to 37. The EAB is instrumental in helping us ensure timely and thorough peer review for submissions to the journal, and we greatly appreciate their hard work and commitment. We warmly welcome the following to the EAB:th FEBS Congress. In this issue, Raffaele Porta, OF Department of Chemical Sciences, University of Naples ‘Federico II’, Italy, provided a comprehensive overview of the plastics revolution that began in the 1940s and resulted in the long‐term problem of global plastics pollution, before introducing the potential of biodegradable and/or bio‐based plastics as a solution to this problem [In April 2021, we published the journal’s first ‘In the Limelight’ issue, which focussed on bioplastics and accompanied the FEBS Special Session on Science & Society – Plastics: revolution, pollution and substitution at the 45 problem . Oliver  problem .Our second ‘In the Limelight’ section was published in September 2021 and focussed on membraneless organelles. In the first article, Douglas V. Laurents of Instituto de Química Física Rocasolano examines the evidence for whether polyproline II (PPII) helices modulate biomolecular condensates . In the th anniversary [th anniversary issue [Our third special issue of the year was published to commemorate the journal’s 10iversary . We werery issue .In 2021, we began publishing a series of interviews with members of our prestigious Editorial Board (dubbed ‘An open chat with…’). This series is coordinated by Beáta Vertessy, who gave the inaugural interview, published in the February 2021 issue . In thisFor our second fascinating interview, published in October this year, we spoke to Stuart Ferguson on his research on cytochrome assembly, the perils of online teaching and the possible effects of Brexit on Horizon Europe and scientific research in the UK generally . We are To present articles published in the journal to a lay audience, we started a new series of articles called ‘Insights’ coordinated by our editor Cornelia de Moor. To date, we have published four Insight articles, which cover subjects as diverse as the role of the GAD67 protein in fear in rats , 13, theFEBS Open Bio continues to increase, with total downloads increasing dramatically year on year: by the end of October, downloads in 2021 were already 37% greater than in the whole of 2020. As a signatory of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, we strive to promote article‐level metrics, rather than those focussed on the journal. One of the most downloaded and cited articles published in FEBS Open Bio in 2021 is the excellent article ‘Seeded assembly in vitro does not replicate the structures of α‐synuclein filaments from multiple system atrophy’, authored by Sjors H. W. Scheres and colleagues [FEBS Open Bio – the article was originally submitted to FEBS Letters and sent for peer review. The manuscript was then offered the opportunity to transfer to FEBS Open Bio. The authors asked for advice from the academic community on Twitter and, after some discussion with the journal’s Managing Editor, were persuaded to complete the transfer. The manuscript was rapidly accepted based on the reviewer reports received from FEBS Letters, and we were delighted to see that the article has gained tremendous traction and is already well cited in the few months since its publication, confirming the importance of publishing these data. This case demonstrates the value of transferring reviewer reports between journals, which saves considerable time for reviewers, editors and authors.The primary role of the journal is the assessment and publication of original research articles, and in 2021, we published 224 original research articles (including Methods articles), many of which have already been well cited and downloaded. We are pleased that the visibility of articles published in Last year saw many new developments for the journal, and we fully intend to continue and expand on these new initiatives in 2022. We are planning to publish several new ‘In the Limelight’ issues, including sections focussing on lysosomes, neurotransmitter release, virology, SARS‐CoV‐2 structure and RNA biology, so please look out for these later this year. In addition, we plan to continue publishing Insight articles and Interviews, with several in the pipeline already. On the more distant horizon, we are also planning to publish a special issue of articles authored by recipients of FEBS fellowships in 2023, to accompany the FEBS fellows meeting to be held in Lisbon in 2022. In addition, we are also developing a new article type, to be called ‘Research Protocols’. Such articles will provide comprehensive information on the materials and methods required to perform technically challenging experiments, with a level of detail greater than that provided in a standard article Methods section. In addition, these articles will provide tricks and tips for common troubleshooting issues, with the goal of helping to combat the reproducibility crisis by ensuring that full experimental details are available. We hope that this will be a valuable resource for the community, and we invite anyone interested in submitting such an article to contact the journal’s editorial office for further details.FEBS Open Bio in 2022. We have provided some reasons to submit to FEBS Open Bio below:‐The FEBS Journal, FEBS Letters and Molecular Oncology), FEBS Open Bio is society‐owned and not for profit. Any profits made on the journal are reinvested into science by FEBS to support fellowships, advanced courses, the annual FEBS Congress, travel grants and many other activities. As such, by submitting your work to FEBS Open Bio, you are helping to support scientists across Europe and beyond.Not for profit: Like the other FEBS Press journals , and leave assessments of ‘impact’ to the community after publication.‐Speed: We are committed to ensuring that your manuscript is reviewed as quickly as possible, without sacrificing rigour in the peer‐review process. At the time of writing, the median time to first decision for submissions sent for peer review in 2021 was 28 days.‐FEBS Open Bio. Authors of such transferred manuscripts receive a discount on the article processing charge if their work is accepted.Ease of transfers: Authors of manuscripts rejected by one of other three FEBS Press journals may be given the opportunity to easily transfer their work to ‐Figure screening service: All figures of accepted manuscripts are carefully screened by our image integrity analyst prior to publication to identify any errors (e.g. duplication of images).We would like to thank everyone who submitted their work to the journal for consideration in 2021 and would like to invite all our readers to consider submitting to Finally, we would like to thank all of our authors, colleagues, editors, readers and reviewers for your ongoing support and wish you all a productive and positive New Year.


The main task of scientific journals is publishing highly impactful articles in their field. However, publishing is not free. Financial pressure can be found from the operating submission system, article review process, editing the accepted articles, etc. The classic article has a subscription-based model, which readers pay to view. Although large companies save money by distributing labor-intensive work to the low- and middle-income countries, small regional publishers cannot endure this increase in publication fees. Accordingly, except for a few publishers, most publishers select an open-access model as their publication model. Now, only rich people can submit their work for publication to a scientific journal. At a glance, this is not fair; a big company gives a waiver for a submission from underdeveloped countries. While this is fine, the number of submissions from these countries is limited and the general quality of articles is not good enough. Thus, most editors still rely on submissions from qualified scientists, but not all of these scientists are rich. Accordingly, the article processing charge (APC) should be paid by public funds, universities, or academic societies. Otherwise, these parties will not have a chance for publication.Maxillofacial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (MPRS) has been indexed by the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), I have not received a single mail from Clarivate Analytics for the background of this decision. If the editor does not know the weakness of their journal, there will be no way to improve the journal.The article indexing service shows its power at this point. In the case of Korea, most universities support the APC only for articles published in Scientific Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) journals . Some universities also pay for the articles indexed by Scopus (operated by Elsevier). Therefore, the editor should try their best to index their journal to one of these services. Otherwise, the number of submissions will not increase. As the importance of indexing increases, the transparency of selecting criteria is also important for maintaining the authority of the indexing services. Three years ago, the following reason for rejection was suggested by a famous indexing service: “It is a great pity that the society was advised to drop the word Korean from the title, as this gave the journal a very clear geographic distinction and discriminator from other journals, which it has now lost.” Even though we removed “Korean” from the title, I do not believe this decision damaged the quality of our journal. If this is the main reason for rejection, we will not have a second chance until correcting our journal title. This can be evidence that politics intervened in this decision process, even in major indexing services. In the case of Clarivate Analytics, the service did not communicate with the editor, who is mainly responsible for the quality control of the journal. Although Dentistry, Oral Surgery & Medicine. It was the 1st-ranked journal among the ESCI indexed titles in this category in 2019 and the 6th ranked in 2020. The number of titles in this category was 163 including 13 new titles in 2020.Recently, Clarivate Analytics launched the “Journal Citation Indicator (JCI)” for evaluating both SCIE and ESCI titles. It looks like a wonderful trial and can be the first step for a fair comparison among titles. Fair competition should not be the motto exclusively for the sports game only. Some titles have extremely low impact, but still, stay in the SCIE. Without political consideration, this is poorly explained. Most major indexing services asked for a new journal to be included as the first or the second quartiles (Q1 or Q2) in terms of citations. However, it is unclear whether it should be positioned just once or should be positioned serially. There has been up and down in the citation number of indexed journals. If only new born journals should keep their status as Q1 or Q2, it should be unfair. According to JCI, MPRS has been ranked 62nd in 2019 and the 80th in 2020 among the category of the