In this article we discuss the five yearly screenings for publications in questionable journals which have been carried out in the context of the performance-based research funding model in Flanders, Belgium. The Flemish funding model expanded from 2010 onwards, with a comprehensive bibliographic database for research output in the social sciences and humanities. Along with an overview of the procedures followed during the screenings for articles in questionable journals submitted for inclusion in this database, we present a bibliographic analysis of the publications identified. First, we show how the yearly number of publications in questionable journals has evolved over the period 2003–2016. Second, we present a disciplinary classification of the identified journals. In the third part of the results section, three authorship characteristics are discussed: multi-authorship, the seniority–or experience level–of authors in general and of the first author in particular, and the relation of the disciplinary scope of the journal (cognitive classification) with the departmental affiliation of the authors . Our results regarding yearly rates of publications in questionable journals indicate that awareness of the risks of questionable journals does not lead to a turn away from open access in general. The number of publications in open access journals rises every year, while the number of publications in questionable journals decreases from 2012 onwards. We find further that both early career and more senior researchers publish in questionable journals. We show that the average proportion of senior authors contributing to publications in questionable journals is somewhat higher than that for publications in open access journals. In addition, this paper yields insight into the extent to which publications in questionable journals pose a threat to the public and political legitimacy of a performance-based research funding system of a western European region. We include concrete suggestions for those tasked with maintaining bibliographic databases and screening for publications in questionable journals. Predatory open access (POA) publishing has recently gained a lot of attention in mainstream media across the world , 2. A reThe evaluation of (new) knowledge is one of the crucial and systemic components that differentiates science from other domains in society . Peer reQuestionable open access publishing can be a threat to the legitimacy of PRFSs, as the journals and publishers involved do not abide by best practices in academic publishing  . Taking In this article we discuss and analyze the particular case of screening for publications in questionable journals submitted for inclusion in a regional bibliographic database for the social sciences and humanities (SSH), namely the VABB-SHW. The VABB-SHW is a comprehensive bibliographic database covering the metadata of publications authored by researchers affiliated to a university SSH unit in Flanders, Belgium. It is a component of the university funding allocation model of the Flemish government and has been introduced in order to better account for SSH research in the Flemish PRFS . BecauseAfter a short introduction to the workings of the VABB-SHW database in section 2.1, section 2.2 provides an overview of the five screenings that were conducted and the procedures followed. We point out some difficulties that were encountered and a key lesson learned regarding black- and whitelists. The paper proceeds with a short literature review (section 2.3) which motivated our analysis of the characteristics of the flagged papers and their authors. More specifically, we look into the yearly number of publications that appeared in POA journals. We contrast these with the yearly number of peer-reviewed publications and the number of publication in journals indexed by the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). We explore questions regarding authorship characteristics  as well as disciplinary classifications of the journals. The present study is an extended version of conference proceeding presented at the Science and Technology Indicators conference, Leiden (The Netherlands), September 2018 . In thisThe VABB-SHW is a comprehensive bibliographic database that contains all publications belonging to five publication types , and authored by researchers affiliated to an SSH unit at a Flemish university. For a full description of the VABB-SHW in the context of the PRFS see , 12. It Every year the Flemish universities submit the metadata of new publications from the past two years to ECOOM for potential inclusion in the VABB-SHW. A distinction is made between publications that are indexed in WoS and those that are not, since WoS-indexed publications are counted in a separate parameter of the Flemish PRFS . Publicaare publicly accessible;are unambiguously identifiable by an ISSN and/or ISBN;contribute to the development of new insights or the application thereof;have been peer-reviewed by independent experts in the field prior to publication.count at least four pages.A panel of independent scholars oversees the selection of publications for the VABB-SHW (‘Gezaghebbende Panel’ or GP). More specifically, the GP annually decides the publications with which journals and publishers are to be included in the VABB-SHW. Given doubts about the extent to which some questionable journals meet the criteria 3 and 4 the GP requested to cross-check the annual journal list with available black- and whitelists to screen for potential POA journals from 2014 onwards .Each of the five consecutive annual screening reports is publicly available –20. TablThe first two screening rounds of the submissions for the VABB-SHW (i.e. editions IV and V) only compared the VABB-SHW journal list to Beall’s lists and WoS. At that time, the lists of predatory publishers and journals maintained by Jeffrey Beall, commonly known as “Beall’s lists”, were arguably the most widely used references to identify predatory publishers . In 2016From Beall’s lists, publisher names and individual journal titles were collected and matched with the data submitted for potential inclusion in the VABB-SHW. All matches were manually double-checked by the staff of ECOOM –19. Basehttps://clarivate.com/essays/journal-selection-process/);After the first two reports, it became clear that there is a great deal of ambiguity in a screening exercise of this kind. It seems reasonable to assume that if a journal or a publishing house appears on Beall’s lists , such communication channels do not ‘make it through’ WoS’ indexing services, which is commonly credited for having high standards in journal selection procedures. The selection process for indexation in WoS revolves around four central factors ethical publishing practices , publishing format, etc. The editorial board must be following international editorial conventions . Although low in numbers, they do highlight the ambiguity and criticism surrounding the identification of questionable journals with the use of black- and whitelists.Jeffrey Beall himself linked the emergence of POA to the rise of the Gold OA publishing model . He stathttps://doaj.org) was consulted as an additional source for the next three screenings Reviewers' comments:Reviewer's Responses to QuestionsComments to the Author1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: YesReviewer #2: Yes**********2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: YesReviewer #2: Yes**********3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.The Reviewer #1: YesReviewer #2: Yes**********4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.Reviewer #1: YesReviewer #2: Yes**********5. Review Comments to the AuthorPlease use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. Reviewer #1: This is an important topic to examine for public trust in scientific research. More specifically, a critical point the authors make is: whether initiatives to raise awareness about POA publishing have the adverse effect of ranishing all open access journals with the same brush."I was left wondering why more 'predatory' publishers are active in the field of biomedical research and why POA is a serious problem in the neurosciences and related field. Tell me more about what is going on here. This is a worrisome finding.How does prestige come into play with respect to the findings that "the proportions of senior authors in POA publications is in 8 out of 13 of the publication years higher than in other peer-reviewed publications"? Do senior authors need prestigious journals less?The authors do a good job of following up on the research questions by addressing the implications of the answers to the research questions in the conclusion. Specifically, the emphasis on mentoring, and tools like ThinkCheckSubmit. In the U.S., university libraries are playing an educational  in this space. Perhaps another recommendation could be, as part of dossier prep, that outlets are checked or verified. Certainly the conclusion that international citation databases screen for POA journals is an excellent step. I think reaching out to professional associations, such as AEA, COSSA, AMA, etc would also be helpful.The suggestions for future studies, namely contacting authors to address questions about motivation and providing a comparative quantitative investigation of national and regional bibliographic databases, are valuable as well.Reviewer #2: This is an important paper, as many have called for more action on the part of research funders with respect to this issue. Overall, this is a well-written paper. In particular, section 2.2 is really quite fascinating and relevant, as it excellently demonstrates some of the problems with relying on “white” and “black” lists, and the inconsistencies across the lists. My comments are primarily on areas that I feel could either use additional clarification or areas that I think would benefit from additional discussion.Areas for additional discussion:• In the introduction: why did you opt to focus on the SSH fields?• In the discussion, regarding the generalizability of the data: Do you feel that your findings are reflective of other fields, particularly the medical sciences  What about other countries/geographic regions? In general, your findings regarding the decrease in researchers publishing in POA journals seems to be at odds with findings in other fields/locations. Why do you think this is?• Following up on the last point, do you think that the decision by the GP to begin doing analyses of publications in POA journals by Flemish authors could be part of the reason for the drop-off in more recent years? • You note the huge discrepancy between using Beall’s list versus the CJB. Why do you think this is? Is the CJB not as comprehensive a list as Beall’s, or was it that Beall’s had several journals/publishers on it that were not actually POA?• With regard to your findings on authorship (senior versus junior authors), I note that for junio researchers you have targeted those who are primarily pre-doctoral or early post-doctoral – presumably many of these researchers are still under the supervision of an experienced research mentor who may be helping them decide what journal(s) to publish in. Do you think this plays a role? Additionally, do you think you might see any differences if you further separated the “senior” researchers into the group of researchers that are late stage post-doctorates or have just recently been appointed to their first professor position (and looking to establish themselves and win grants), versus more experienced tenured professors that are possibly not under as much pressure to publish?Areas for additional clarity:• In the abstract, I suggest clarifying that this analysis was specific so the SSH fields.• The introduction is quite comprehensive and provides good information, however, the literature review is quite lengthy and, in some places, it could be more concise. At times, the wordiness detracts from clarity.• In Table 1, row 1, it appears that there are more journals on the blacklist than publications in the journals? (62 vs 59). I am also unclear whether the whitelist journals were used by ECOOM  or was the whitelist portion of the analysis was performed only by the authors of this paper?• I would appreciate more clarity regarding how the list of POA journals was generated since, as the authors have noted, this is far from straight-forward. For example, since the list included journals over several years, what happens to a journal that is on a blacklist one year, but was removed from the list in a later year (or vice versa)? Or a journal that was on Beall’s list but not the CJB? What was the role of the whitelists in making this list? What if a journal was on both a black and a white list?• In Table 2, and throughout the Results, I found it confusing what the difference is between the DOAJ-indexed publications and journals versus the “Peer-reviewed” publications and journals. Are peer-reviewed the total number of submissions to the VABB-SHW?• I find the sentence beginning on line 409 and ending on 412 to require several read-throughs to be able to process. Is there a simpler way to say this?• I found the heat map  to be a bit confusing. I assume one direction (i.e. column or row) corresponds to the field in which the authors work and one direction refers to the field in which the journal is classified, but its not clear which is which. I suggest better labeling on the figure and possibly re-phrasing the text. Furthermore, were there no journals that did not fit into a single classification ?• The line that begins on 496 – is this for POA journal articles or for all articles?Finally, the article contains quite a few statements that would be stronger and/or more helpful if citations were provided to support them or for those who might want to seek further information. Examples of statements that would benefit from citations are those starting on the following lines:• Line 47• Line 48 .• Line 53 (what sources?)• Line 64 • Lines 225 – 230• Line 485**********what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article  digital diagnostic tool,  2 Sep 2019Subject: Revision and resubmission of manuscript PONE-D-19-14700, Identitying publications in questionable journals in the context of performance-based research funding, PLoS ONEDear Dr. Useche,Dear reviewers,We are pleased to read that our manuscript will have merit for PLoS ONE. The suggestions offered by the reviewers have been very helpful; we appreciate the constructive and critical comments. We have included the reviewer comments in this letter, together with a description of how we addressed each concern. For each comment, we indicate where changes have been made. The revised manuscript as well as the marked-up copy with tracked changes were submitted via the editorial manger platform. Although most of the revisions prompted by the reviewers were addressed by making  alterations to the text, we would like to further highlight an addition made to Table 1. In this table we present the results of the different screenings that were carried out over the past period. In the first row, indicating the screening for articles published between 2003 and 2012. For the numbers presented there, one of the reviewers has correctly noticed that the number of journals found on the blacklist was higher than the number of publications which appeared in the journals and were found in VABB-SHW. We have added a brief footnote to the figure which also refers readers to the corresponding report, but we here detail how this difference came about. A screening round is typically done on the basis of a journal list which is compiled from the raw bibliographical data we receive from the five Flemish universities. However, after compiling this list several operations happen that may cause differences between the list and the corresponding final version of the VABB-SHW . This may lead to such – at first sight at least – inaccuracies. A question raised by one of the reviewers regarding ‘predatory’ publishers active in the field of (bio)medical research and neurosciences has also been addressed in the text, but we wish to share some additional thoughts which might be out of scope of the manuscript but of interest for the reviewer. It is indeed worrisome finding that these fields suffer more from questionable publishers. This might have to do with, we believe, three things. First, the relative size and popularity of these fields. Second, differences in publishing practices between fields, and third, more potential interest of organizations and businesses in such fields to publish their findings regardless of their scientific value. With regard to the first aspect, it is reasonable to assume that predatory publishers are only interested in making ‘easy money’. The most efficient way to accomplish this, is to look for the largest market potential. Given the relative size of fields like biomedicine and the rapid growth of the neurosciences, these fields are interesting areas to operate in. This might be one of the reasons why prevalence is higher. Whereas we only briefly touched upon this in the literature overview, other authors have already shown that predatory publishers are targeting these fields intensively.The second aspect closely relates to the former. These fields are known to differ in their publishing practices compared to, let’s say fields in the social sciences and humanities. Whereas SSH scholars are prone to publish, for example, more books, scholars from medicine related fields almost exclusively publish journal articles. In addition, within the medical fields, there is a greater prevalence of open access publishing in general. This is especially true for the preferred format of predatory publishers: the Gold Open Access model. Third, and this is again (much like the previous two aspects) speculative but has been shown by investigative journalists; employees of pharmaceutical and other companies have been publishing in predatory journals and sponsor predatory publisher’s conferences. Beall and colleagues also suggested that some pharmaceutical companies have an interest in publishing their findings, regardless of their scientific value. They do not really care where their research gets published, as long as it is out there and shows to potential new ‘costumers’ that their products are ‘beneficial’. http://sti2018.cwts.nl/proceedings and the paper can be found here: https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/65285. In the current paper however, we expand this description considerably. Table 1 of the current manuscript is copied from the conference proceedings, as it gives an overview of the results from our previous five screenings. In addition, we present a lot of new information, including novel bibliographic analyses, which haven’t been published or presented elsewhere. As noted in the manuscript, this article elaborates considerably on an earlier conference proceeding. In the conference paper, we report on the yearly results of the screenings for POA journals and shortly address the architecture of the Flemish PRFS. It was presented as a research in progress paper and presented at the Science and Technology Indicators conference in Leiden, September 2018 (STI2018). The article has undergone external peer review and has been published in the conference proceedings. The proceedings book can be found here: The other comments will be addressed below. We hope the revised manuscript will better suit PLoS ONE’s publishing standards. We would like to thank you for your continued interest in this study.Sincerely, Joshua EykensECOOM – University of AntwerpMiddelheimlaan 12020 Antwerp, Belgium Reviewer comments, author responses and manuscript changeReviewer 1Comment 1I was left wondering why more 'predatory' publishers are active in the field of biomedical research and why POA is a serious problem in the neurosciences and related field. Tell me more about what is going on here. This is a worrisome finding.Answer: Besides the short note presented in the guiding letter above, in the discussion we have added some findings from a study by investigative journalists. See lines 507 – 513Comment 2How does prestige come into play with respect to the findings that "the proportions of senior authors in POA publications is in 8 out of 13 of the publication years higher than in other peer-reviewed publications"? Do senior authors need prestigious journals less?Answer: This is a very interesting question and something we haven’t looked into. It is a reasonable assumption, but should be studied by making use of qualitative methods. We have added this in the limitations section and refer interested readers to studies which present more qualitative insights into the motivations of scholars who have published in questionable journals.See lines 562 - 565Comment 3Perhaps another recommendation could be, as part of dossier prep, that outlets are checked or verified. Certainly the conclusion that international citation databases screen for POA journals is an excellent step. I think reaching out to professional associations, such as AEA, COSSA, AMA, etc would also be helpful.Answer: Thank you for bringing this up, we didn’t think of including such suggestions but have done so now. This is indeed an important action which could certainly lead to greater awareness.See lines 531 - 541 Reviewer 2Comment 1In the introduction: why did you opt to focus on the SSH fields?Answer: This relates to the database at hand. VABB-SHW has been set up to better account for research in the SSH and as such offers a unique opportunity to study these fields in a comprehensive manner. We have made this more explicit in the abstract.See line 25Comment 2In the discussion, regarding the generalizability of the data: Do you feel that your findings are reflective of other fields, particularly the medical sciences  What about other countries/geographic regions? In general, your findings regarding the decrease in researchers publishing in POA journals seems to be at odds with findings in other fields/locations. Why do you think this is?Following up on the last point, do you think that the decision by the GP to begin doing analyses of publications in POA journals by Flemish authors could be part of the reason for the drop-off in more recent years? Answer: We belief the decrease in the number of POA publications has to do with (1) awareness raising in general as well as targeted awareness raising by Higher Education institutions. We have added some lines on these aspects. And (2) Cabells’ blacklisting service is relatively young and under continuous development. Publishers like Frontiers, which were included on Bealls list, are not present on Cabells’ Blacklist. This leads to quite large differences. In sum, we do think the screenings for publications in POA outlets have indeed increased awareness and may have lowered the prevalence. With regard to the possibility of authors who are knowingly using these journals to boost their CV’s; we have not found any alarming numbers of POA articles authored by a single individual. In the manuscript, we cannot disclose any information on the individual level, as this could be at odds with researchers’ privacy.  See lines 187, 374 - 376Comment 3You note the huge discrepancy between using Beall’s list versus the CJB. Why do you think this is? Is the CJB not as comprehensive a list as Beall’s, or was it that Beall’s had several journals/publishers on it that were not actually POA?Answer: As noted above, this might have to do with the relative ‘newness’ of Cabells’ black list. Publishers like Frontiers, for example, are not present on Cabells black list, but many of their journals were listed on Bealls lists. We have added this example to illustrate this.  See line 187Comment 4With regard to your findings on authorship (senior versus junior authors), I note that for junior researchers you have targeted those who are primarily pre-doctoral or early post-doctoral – presumably many of these researchers are still under the supervision of an experienced research mentor who may be helping them decide what journal(s) to publish in. Do you think this plays a role? Additionally, do you think you might see any differences if you further separated the “senior” researchers into the group of researchers that are late stage post-doctorates or have just recently been appointed to their first professor position (and looking to establish themselves and win grants), versus more experienced tenured professors that are possibly not under as much pressure to publish?Answer: With regard to mentoring; we have emphasized the importance of mentoring and other initiatives targeted at junior researchers. This has been done in the discussion. Regarding further differentiating between academic positions of authors; unfortunately we do not have any detailed information available on these aspects. We have added a brief note about this in the ‘Limitations and future research section’. See lines 531 – 541, 560 – 566 Comment 5In the abstract, I suggest clarifying that this analysis was specific so the SSH fields.Answer: Thanks for pointing this out. We have made this more explicit in the abstract.See line 25Comment 6The introduction is quite comprehensive and provides good information, however, the literature review is quite lengthy and, in some places, it could be more concise. At times, the wordiness detracts from clarity.Answer: We have substantially altered both the introduction and the literature overview to increase readability. See section 1 and 2.3Comment 7In Table 1, row 1, it appears that there are more journals on the blacklist than publications in the journals? (62 vs 59). I am also unclear whether the whitelist journals were used by ECOOM  or was the whitelist portion of the analysis was performed only by the authors of this paper?Answer: Regarding the discrepancy in table 1; besides the note presented in the guiding letter, we have added a footnote to the table further detailing how this difference came about. With regard to the whitelist used by ECOOM; we have further detailed how this list is being curated in the methods section. See lines 132 – 135, 271 - 283Comment 8I would appreciate more clarity regarding how the list of POA journals was generated since, as the authors have noted, this is far from straight-forward. For example, since the list included journals over several years, what happens to a journal that is on a blacklist one year, but was removed from the list in a later year (or vice versa)? Or a journal that was on Beall’s list but not the CJB? What was the role of the whitelists in making this list? What if a journal was on both a black and a white list?Answer: Thank you for pointing out this rather confusing aspect. We have included some more details on this procedure in two places in the methods section.See lines 271 – 283, 295 – 300Comment 9In Table 2, and throughout the Results, I found it confusing what the difference is between the DOAJ-indexed publications and journals versus the “Peer-reviewed” publications and journals. Are peer-reviewed the total number of submissions to the VABB-SHW?Answer: We have further detailed this in the methods section. See lines 295 - 300Comment 10I find the sentence beginning on line 409 and ending on 412 to require several read-throughs to be able to process. Is there a simpler way to say this?Answer: This sentence has been rephrased.See lines 430 - 435Comment 11I found the heat map  to be a bit confusing. I assume one direction (i.e. column or row) corresponds to the field in which the authors work and one direction refers to the field in which the journal is classified, but its not clear which is which. I suggest better labeling on the figure and possibly re-phrasing the text. Furthermore, were there no journals that did not fit into a single classification ?Answer: Indeed, some journals did not fit into a single category. These are indicated by the label ‘General/very broad’ (last row). The heatmap has been relabeled and the caption has been rephrased. See figure 3, lines 463 - 464Comment 12The line that begins on 496 – is this for POA journal articles or for all articles?Answer: Thanks for pointing this out, this has been clarified in the text. See lines 526 - 527Comment 13Finally, the article contains quite a few statements that would be stronger and/or more helpful if citations were provided to support them or for those who might want to seek further information. Examples of statements that would benefit from citations are those starting on the following lines:Comment 13.1Line 47Answer: This sentence has been omitted, since after all it does not add any value to the introduction. Comment 13.2Line 48 .Answer: We have added some information about the report to the introduction. See lines 50 – 54Comment 13.3Line 53 (what sources?)Answer: Here we were referring to statements by public opinion makers in Flanders, shared primarily on social media. After reconsideration, these do not add context or value to the manuscript, so we have omitted these lines.Comment 13.4Line 64 Answer: A citation has been added here.See line 65Comment 13.5Lines 225 – 230Answer: Reference has been added. See line 226Comment 13.6Line 485Answer: This sentence has been altered and a reference has been added.See lines 507AttachmentResponse_reviewers_v2.docxSubmitted filename: Click here for additional data file. 17 Oct 2019Identifying publications in questionable journals in the context of performance-based research fundingPONE-D-19-14700R1Dear Dr. Eykens,We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it complies with all outstanding technical requirements.Within one week, you will receive an e-mail containing information on the amendments required prior to publication. 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Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact With kind regards,Sergio A. Useche, Ph.D.Academic EditorPLOS ONEAdditional Editor Comments :Reviewers' comments:Reviewer's Responses to QuestionsComments to the Author1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressedReviewer #2: All comments have been addressed**********2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: YesReviewer #2: Yes**********3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: YesReviewer #2: Yes**********4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.The Reviewer #1: YesReviewer #2: Yes**********5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.Reviewer #1: YesReviewer #2: Yes**********6. Review Comments to the AuthorPlease use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. Reviewer #1: The author has adequately address my concerns and those of the other reviewer. The manuscript provides solid work on an important question.Reviewer #2: (No Response)**********what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.Reviewer #1: NoReviewer #2: No 31 Oct 2019PONE-D-19-14700R1 Identifying publications in questionable journals in the context of performance-based research funding Dear Dr. Eykens:I am pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. onepress@plos.org.If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper at this point, to enable them to help maximize its impact. If they will be preparing press materials for this manuscript, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact plosone@plos.org. For any other questions or concerns, please email Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE.With kind regards,PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staffon behalf ofDr. Sergio A. Useche Academic EditorPLOS ONE


Publons to trial their Reviewer Recognition tool, giving reviewers formal recognition of their peer review contributions. Reviewers can now choose to add their DMM review to their Publons profile when completing the reviewer form (via an automated process). The profile can then be used in job, visa and grant applications, complete with verified review activities. Since the tool's launch, more than 40% of DMM's reviewers have taken up this option (data from Publons) and we hope that more will do so.During 2019, Disease Models & Mechanisms (DMM) partnered with Review Commons, a new platform for high-quality journal-independent peer review in the life sciences. Reviewers will be asked to focus on the science rather than fit for a journal. DMM Editors have agreed to consider articles and their transferred reviews without soliciting additional reviews . We look forward to receiving submissions from the Review Commons platform.DMM is excited to be an affiliate journal for Following a successful trial, DMM now operates a system of cross-referee commenting, to help resolve differences between referees, identify unnecessary or unreasonable requests, or – conversely – highlight valid concerns raised by one referee but overlooked by others. Happily, average speeds to decision and acceptance have not been affected by this change.highlighted. For early-career scientists to be involved in the peer review process, DMM requires that there must be a genuine mentoring process and that the senior invited reviewer should always take final responsibility for the report delivered to DMM. The name of the co-reviewer must be reported to the Editor; a field is provided in the report form for this purpose. The names of these co-reviewers are also included in our annual published list of reviewers (see Supplementary Information). We thank every one of them for their expertise and time, as well as our authors, readers and Editors for their support.https://www.rsc.org/globalassets/04-campaigning-outreach/campaigning/gender-bias/gender-bias-report-final.pdf). Many thanks to Sam for his work on this project, and to our colleagues at the RSC for their support.This analysis was done primarily by Sam Holden, a PhD student at the University of Norwich, who in 2018 spent three months as a Professional Internships for PhD Students (PIPS) intern with us as part of his PhD program. Sam was helped in his analysis by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), who developed the algorithm used to assign gender to names Name of first authorName of corresponding author (note that this may be the same as the first author)Names of individuals suggested by authors as potential reviewersNames of individuals invited to review the paperNames of reviewers who completed a report on the paperFor each of our five journals , we downloaded data on all research papers submitted between October 2006 and May 2018, and extracted the following information:We ran the lists of names through an algorithm that assigns gender to names, along with a confidence value in the assignment. We assigned a gender to names where the confidence value was greater than 90%, allowing us to assign gender to ∼75% of authors and 85% of reviewers. It should be noted that the algorithm was developed using a dataset of mainly Western names, and the majority of names with ‘unassigned’ gender are Asian. Thus, the results outlined below do not necessarily reflect patterns that might apply to non-Western authors and reviewers.To allow more rigorous statistical analysis, data were pooled across all the journals and the whole >10-year time span, although we have also looked at trends over time and between journals.In addition to calculating basic statistics on the gender balance of our author and reviewer pool, we also analysed the success rate of submissions based on author and reviewer gender.Almost exactly 50% of first authors  are female – implying minimal gender disparity at the level of the PhD students and postdocs in our community of authors. However, among corresponding authors  only 30.3% were female.P<0.05), reduction in acceptance rate – only 28.5% of corresponding authors on accepted papers were female.The gender of the first author had no influence on the success rate of the submission. However, papers from female corresponding authors showed a slight, but statistically significant  and, once sent out for peer review, are less likely to be accepted for publication (52.9% versus 56.2%).There is a greater gender imbalance in our pool of reviewers than in our pool of corresponding authors: 26.1% of people invited to review a paper are female and 25.8% of completed reviews are by women . These figures have improved over the 10-year time window: in 2007, only 23% of reviewers were female; this reached 29% by 2017 .Authors are more likely to suggest reviewers of the same gender as themselves. However, we have not found evidence that female-authored papers are at a disadvantage if reviewed by men .Key results This box has also been reproduced in other Company journals. See also an Editorial  from theThe Company of Biologists and DMM strive to support the academic community by engaging a broad and diverse array of authors, reviewers, Editors, editorial staff, editorial board members and readers in their activities. DMM encourages authors and Editors to consider diversity in career stage, geographical location, gender and ethnicity when suggesting and selecting appropriate reviewers for a manuscript. This was prompted, in part, by a gender analysis conducted across The Company of Biologists' journals see . More re


Discoveries is a new peer-reviewed, open access, online multidisciplinary and integrative journal publishing high impact reviews, experimental articles, perspective articles, and editorials from all areas related to medicine, biology, and chemistry, including but not limited to: Molecular and Cellular Biology, Biochemistry, Biophysics, Genomics, Proteomics, Biotechnology, Synthetic Biology, Bioengineering, Systems Biology, Bioinformatics, Translational Medicine, Medicine/ Clinical findings, Cognitive Science, Epidemiology, Global Medicine, Family Medicine, Organic/ Inorganic/ Physical Chemistry and Ethics in Science.
Discoveries brings to the research community an outstanding editorial board that aims to address several of the innovations proposed above: there is no need to format the manuscript before submission, we have a rapid and efficient submission process, there is no need for a Cover Letter and we support the need for rules for validation of critical reagents, such as antibodies. Discoveries will aim to support high quality research on human subjects materials to provide relevance for non-human studies along with mechanistic insights into human biology and chemistry. We also aim to avoid requesting unnecessary experiments during the review process, without affecting the quality and conclusions of published manuscripts. In addition, we recognize the need of adopting the recommendations made by NCCD and other similar scientific guiding entities. Over the last decades, we have witnessed an extraordinary explosion of scientific breakthroughs that have been successfully applied in many areas of research. In particular, rapid developments in fields such as medicine, biology, chemistry and related disciplines provides an unprecedented opportunity for scientists to be involved in this scientific revolution and enthusiastically contribute to it with life-changing discoveries. This accelerated evolution has led to an exponentially increased number of published research articles. Although there has been a surprisingly high number of newly launched journals in the last several years (trying to keep up with the increasing number of submitted research manuscripts), only a small fraction of these journals are ISI/PubMed indexed and have meaningful impact factors. Only few journals can be considered as high impact factor and very few of the recently launched journals have reached this stage. Moreover, there is an even smaller number of new high quality multidisciplinary journals covering more than one area of research. An increasing need for interdisciplinary approaches makes publication of high quality, innovative and reproducible papers in non-multidisciplinary journals sometimes challenging.1-3 many of the cutting-edge discoveries not accepted for publication end up being re-submitted (frequently multiple times) to a lower impact factor journal, most of the time a more specialized one. In addition, a low acceptance rate also makes the reviewing process prone to subjectivity and may result in outstanding manuscripts being rejected. Thus, we consider that new high impact platforms for publishing high-quality interdisciplinary/ multidisciplinary research and cutting-edge discoveries are very much needed.With a dismal acceptance rate of less than 8% in some of the top multidisciplinary journals, such as Science, Nature, other journals from the Nature family, the New England Journal of Medicineconsiderable and unnecessary time modifying the format of the manuscript every time when they submit it to a different journal. We believe that this cumbersome and multi-step submission process increases the submission time more than is necessary. Many manuscripts submitted in a specific format requested by a particular journal are eventually rejected. For a journal with an acceptance rate of less than 8%, the vast majority of the manuscripts will subsequently be submitted to an alternative journal, with different formatting requirements. In fact, many manuscripts are submitted to several journals before they are finally accepted. Thus, the authors spend Would it not be more efficient for journals to consider reviewing manuscripts in different formats and only request the specific format for those accepted, after completion of the reviewing process and a final decision was reached?Why make more than 92% of the authors with rejected manuscripts  spend unnecessary time to format them, only to end up changing the format again before the manuscript is published?Our solution is simple and straightforward: allow submission of manuscripts in different formats and only request the re-formatting for those accepted, after reviewing process is finalized.We believe that an easy and simplified submission process will be well received by authors.Why not allow authors to submit their manuscripts with only minimal necessary information in less than a few minutes? In addition, why not complete the additional agreements or other information that is requested after acceptance? What is the point of submitting a Cover Letter with a letterhead and signature by the corresponding author when that author can just conveniently write the same text and send it in an e-mail (with or without an electronic signature) or can submit it as a text on the submission platform?Do we really need a Cover Letter, when we have the Abstract and Conclusions of a manuscript in front of us? Many editors and reviewers consider a Cover Letter useful, since it is easier for them to get a quick general idea about the scope and importance of the manuscript. Authors may consider that the Cover Letter is a way of highlighting their discoveries and significance of their findings. However, in our opinion, it is faster, easier and without significant consequences for authors to submit a manuscript without a Cover Letter, as long as the innovation, novelty, and importance of their findings is well underscored in the Abstract and Conclusion sections of the manuscript. Thus, we think that the Cover Letter should be optional.4-8. Thus, adequate measures and rules for reagents defined by the journals would be of great help in decreasing the number of reported irreproducible research findings.Antibodies, other reagents, inadequate animal models or cell-based models/assays, insufficient number of experimental repeats and statistical inadequacies all contribute to the low reproducibility of preclinical and clinical data4. The authors should employ knockdown or knockout validation experiments to confirm the specificity of the employed antibodies. Thus, requesting proofs of the specificity of the main/key antibodies used in the manuscript would be of great help. These proofs may be the experiments performed by the authors themselves, results already published or validation experiments done by the manufacturer. Also, it is worth mentioning a recent initiative for Independent Antibody Validation to Improve Research Quality9. Manufacturers and researchers can send antibodies to be validated by an independent laboratory.A recent study pointed out that many of the antibodies used in publications are non-specific and some of them do not even detect endogenous target proteins in multiple cell linesDue to the numerous off-target effects of siRNA or shRNAs widely used in preclinical biomedical research, rescue experiments, or at least two different types of siRNA/shRNAs for the same target, need to be used. Many journals, reviewers or editors still accept manuscripts that employ only one siRNA/shRNA.10.These are only two important examples. Several journals, such as those published by American Association for Cancer Research, already have rules for validation of antibodies and other reagentsTherefore, the articles submitted to Discoveries are expected to describe work undertaken only with critical reagents that have been validated using one of the manners suggested above, or accompanied by other convincing scientific evidence about their effects.11-13. Notable examples are the recommendations on classification of cell death made by Nomenclature Committee on Cell Death (NCCD)11,12. One of the committee’s suggestions is to use at least two different methods for detection of apoptosis or other forms of cell death11, since it is well established that many of the methods that detect apoptosis may also detect necrosis13. A second recommendation is to avoid terminology such as “% apoptosis”, “% cell death”, or “% survival”. Instead, the authors should mention exactly what they have measured by stating the employed method, such as “% cells TUNEL positive”, or “% cells Annexin V positive” 11,13. This is due to the fact that most of the techniques are not entirely specific for detection of apoptosis, cell death, survival, or proliferation. For example, MTT/MTS assays are considered methods that can measure survival, proliferation, or a combination of survival and proliferation, while Annexin V staining alone can detect not only apoptosis, but also non-apoptotic cell death, such as necrosis13. NCCD “urges” all scientific journals to join NCCD and Cell Death and Differentiation journal’s initiative in adopting these recommendations11,13. Similar initiatives and recommendations are needed in many other areas of research.We want to highlight the importance of using standards in scientific research, such as the definition of cell death and classificasion of all cell death typesHow many of the experiments suggested by the reviewers/editor are indeed necessary to accept a manuscript? The answer to this question depends on many variables, including the standards of the journal and the quality of the experiments presented in the manuscript. The myth of the complete paper enlists effort from entire laboratories so that a complete paper is eventually published, rather than one experimental observation that would be sufficient in itself to advance the field and benefit others. Not so uncommonly, in such papers the valuable data are still those at the core of the main experimental observation. As recently suggested by Professor Hidde Ploegh from Harvard Medical School in a recent article published in Nature14, “although such extra work can provide important support for the results being presented, all too frequently it represents instead an entirely new phase of the project, or does not extend the reach of what is presented. It is often expensive and unnecessary, and slows the pace of research to a crawl.” Unnecessary experiments are not only expensive, but also time consuming and can have a negative consequence, particularly on a young researcher’s career: “PhD degrees are delayed, postdocs may have to wait an entire year to compete for jobs and assistant professors can miss out on promotions. […] The extra months of experiments increase costs for labs, without any obvious advantage for science”14. Some of the reviewers may feel the need to ask for additional experiments, even though these experiments do not change the overall results or conclusions of the manuscript.14, one solution is to select editors with expertise and ability to decide which of the experiments suggested by the reviewers are indeed necessary. Another useful measure would be to ask the reviewers to suggest only critical experiments addressing the validity of the manuscript’s conclusions (and to state what points of the manuscript are clarified by the requested experiments), avoiding unnecessary work that could be included in a future project. Discoveries is committed to implement these measures.As previously suggestedIn vivo studies in people  require significant preclinical work in model organisms but the “single figure” that aims to show relevance of a model study to humans is often poorly designed and described, especially with respect to clinical parameters of tissue donors. On the other hand, many studies using materials from human subjects are relegated to relatively low impact journals and are difficult to assess by readers due to the lack of important controls, lack of subject matching and other technical weaknesses. Other studies that exclusively analyze human materials are published in modestly perceived journals due to their focus on characterization, even if such papers are destined to be widely cited by, for example, rodent studies that hunger for human relevance. Overall, the difficulties of human studies, which include recruitment challenges amidst the need for high numbers of samples to account for genetic variability, are insufficiently offset by publication in lower impact journals, where even strong human studies are generally mixed in with non-human studies of lower technical value. Sometimes human studies that provide critical foundations for years of preclinical work are published in similarly obscure journals due to lack of mechanistic or in vivo approaches. These limitations do not reward well-designed human studies that are absolutely critical to move fields forward, and to prevent surprises once clinical trials seem justified. High quality research on human subjects' material is absolutely essential to support top human materials research, which is a critical segue from the avalanche of models studies waiting to be proven applicable to the clinic.Translation of mechanistic studies from tissue culture or model organisms into human subjects is perhaps one of the most daunting challenges in biomedical research. Therefore, Discoveries will also consider manuscripts describing research involving human materials studies.Discoveries brings to the research community an outstanding editorial board that aims to address several of the innovations proposed above: there is no need to format the manuscript before submission, we have a rapid and efficient submission process, there is no need for a Cover Letter and we support the need for rules for validation of critical reagents, such as antibodies. Discoveries will aim to support high quality research on human subjects' material to provide relevance for non-human studies along with mechanistic insights into human biology and chemistry. We also aim to avoid requesting unnecessary experiments during the review process, without affecting the quality and conclusions of published manuscripts. In addition, we recognize the need of adopting the recommendations made by NCCD and other similar scientific guiding entities.


Plant Direct, we take our role as a society journal seriously. So seriously, in fact, that we belong to two societies: the American Society of Plant Biologists and the Society for Experimental Biology. Part of our commitment is to publish the work of our community members without worrying about impact or novelty, as long as it meets our sound science criteria.At Plant Direct is a great venue for reviewer training, as the sound science criteria are easier for novice (and experienced) reviewers to judge than the more subjective novelty/impact criteria used at other journals.But that is not the only way we want to contribute to our community. We also want to be involved in training the next generation of plant scientists. The essential function of a journal—peer review—is conducted by our community members, but it is a skill that needs to be developed. Participating in peer review is a great opportunity for early career researchers to play a role in the community. It is a highly rewarding experience that can also improve a reviewer's own research and writing, as well as help to build their professional reputation. Plant Direct Associate Reviewer Board. We are looking to identify two groups of early career researchers: Those who are just beginning to review (upper‐level graduate students and beginning postdocs) and those who have performed reviews already and are looking to get more experience. The former group will receive training that is a combination of online training and hands‐on mentoring from Plant Direct's Editorial Board. Once completed, they will be employed as additional reviewers for Plant Direct papers, while getting feedback on their reviews from the Supervising and Academic editors handling the paper. The latter group will be added to our reviewer pool with a special tag that lets our editors know that they are excited to review for us, a characteristic that all editors appreciate.So today, we are announcing the https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page/journal/24754455/homepage/associate-reviewer-board].So if you are an early career researcher interested in developing and using your peer review skills, please join the Associate Reviewer Board [


Molecules, as one year ends and another starts its Publisher and Editor-in-Chief would like to take stock of our progress in 2008 and offer our readership a preview of things to come in 2009. Just as we had hoped in last year’s editorial [Molecules. By year’s end we had published 239 papers and three Editorials or Editor's Notes for a total of 3,252 pages. While the 8% growth in the number of papers published compared to 2007 may appear modest, the number of pages published represented a 22% increase over the prior year, and was largely attributable to the increase in the number of reviews published. As has now become a custom for ditorial , the yeaPhenolics and Polyphenolics, 5-Fluorouracil, Prodrugs, Alkaloids and Spirocompounds, whose Guest Editors, Professors Pereira and Andrade, Puoci, Vanden Eynde, Valentao and Plourde shall continue to work on the manuscripts submitted for these issues that will continue to appear in the coming months, as they make their way through the peer review process. These Guest Editors will be joined in 2009 by those from our lengthy list of planned new special issues: Macromolecules Applied to Pharmaceutics (Coviello); Dynamic Combinatorial Chemistry (Otto); Acetogenins: Extraction, Synthesis and Biological Properties ; Coumarins and Xanthones (Richomme); Neglected Diseases: Medicinal Chemistry and Natural Product Chemistry (Batista); Nucleic Acids (Carlsen); Triterpenes and Triterpenoids (Roussis); Biodegradation: Organic, Medicinal and Analytical Chemistry (Lin and Teramoto); Dendrimers – From Synthesis to Applications (Zhang); Ferrocenes (Ríos Torres); Microwave Assisted Synthesis (Seijas Vázquez); Organocatalysis (Zhong); Quinones and Hydroquinones: Target Molecules and Building Blocks (Spyroudis); Selenium and Tellurium Chemistry (Pietschnig); Alpha- or Beta-aminophosphonates and -phosphinates ; Aporphines and Oxaporphines (Sobarzo-Sánchez); Baylis-Hillman Reaction and Related Processes (Li); Ionic Liquids (Bonrath) and Sonochemistry – Organic Synthesis (Bonrath). Last year also saw the passing of the submission deadlines for some of the special issues carried over from the previous year, like those dedicated to Molecules is now indexed and/or abstracted in PubMed/Medline; Beilstein CrossFire; Chemical Abstracts (CAplus); Science Citation Index Expanded; Chemistry Citation Index; Current Contents/Physical, Chemical & Earth Sciences; SciSearch; Research Alert; Scopus; Google Scholar; IndexCopernicus; Journal Citation Report; Scirus; Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and Open-J-Gate, so authors may be assured of the prompt and widest possible dissemination of their results. We are also happy to note that as the Publisher anticipated in a previous Editorial , the movGeneral Editorial Board, which had remained essentially unchanged for the past 13 years since we started publication. We are extremely pleased to report that new names of the highest caliber have been added, while many of the luminaries already on our Board, including three Nobel Prize winners, graciously agreed to extend their relationship with Molecules. Also in 2008 we renewed the composition of our www.mdpi.com, where we offer an appealing new layout complete with graphical abstracts, powerful search and document export features and access to papers within 1-2 days of acceptance for publication, rather than on a monthly basis when the issues are released as was previously the case. In 2008, DOI numbers were added for all papers published in MDPI journals. Though all the pdf files of the papers published and indexed in many databases are still available from the www.mdpi.org server, complete sets of the all the papers are now available at www.mdpi.com. This progress can be duly attributed to Dietrich Rordorf and his software development and data management team members Marc Bigler, Robert Seibert and Daniel Schmutz.Finally, readers will have noticed our move to a new publication platform at lin@mdpi.org.In conclusion, as 2009 begins, we take this opportunity to offer our best wishes and thanks to our many authors, anonymous peer-reviewers and readers for their continued support of our efforts and our Assistant Editors Ms Felicity Wright and Ms Jely He at our Basel and Beijing offices, respectively, for their hard work handling the submission and peer review process. As always, we welcome your comments on these matters. Messages with a suitable subject header may be sent to


Over the past 40 years, Interventional Radiology (IR) has been the driving force for innovation and the continuous invention of new procedures. Ever since Charles Dotter defied sceptics and insisted that angiography could be used to actively treat patients, the revolutionary concept of “catheter therapy” sparked the development of a new area of medicine which was based on a minimally invasive image guided approach, finding its way slowly but surely into clinical practice.Today, many of the endovascular procedures invented by IR have entered routine clinical practice and are being continually improved. For the Interventional Radiologist who does not use a scalpel, innovation and refinement of endovascular techniques has always been, and continues to be, the only way forward. It is this spirit which makes IR so unique.I still remember the early days, with CIRSE meetings of less than 300 delegates in one lecture room, where new developments were discussed and the conversations continued outside the congress centre, in hotel bars, around swimming pools and during dinners. The flow of innovative ideas never stopped. In 1978, CVIR was established and provided ample room for case reports and small case series. Those were exciting and inspiring times. We were friends belonging to the same club, passionate about what we did and how Interventional Radiology was about to change the way patients can be treated.Today the CIRSE Annual Congress welcomes over 6500 delegates and Interventional Radiology has become an important discipline which cannot be ignored in any modern hospital. CIRSE’s official journal CVIR has become a very important, high impact journal covering the entire spectrum of Interventional Radiology. I can say that it really was a pleasure to have been actively involved in all these great developments.However, with the increase in abstracts received for the CIRSE congresses and the number of manuscripts submitted to CVIR, the chance to be accepted for presentation and publication has decreased. At the same time, the regulatory environment has changed and the call for evidence-based science has gotten louder. The podium for new ideas, small case series, first in man, hypothesis, short communications and study protocols, has become very small.CIRSE however, has recognized and understood how essential communication is for the continuous and stable development of IR and Endovascular Therapies. Our new journal, CVIR Endovascular will therefore offer a new low-entry podium for communications with your peers and is intended for all specialists working in the field of endovascular treatment.CVIR Endovascular is an open access journal, in-line with how IR’s have always communicated, openly sharing new information with everybody. The open access model of the journal will offer a fast and reliable way to disseminate knowledge, allowing you to reach readers around the world. It also means that your paper will be freely available for everyone immediately upon publication.Furthermore, CVIR Endovascular chose to introduce a new peer-review model. To encourage discussions, the journal has decided to have reviewer comments published together with the article and displayed for everyone to read and comment on. We believe that this will change the reviewer’s role from a “quick judge” to a mentor, allowing authors and readers alike to access useful additional information.It is important to offer this new publication opportunity within the CIRSE journal family. We have no page limitations and can reach out to the all medical specialists in the field of endovascular treatment.I therefore cordially invite all of you to use this new publication and to submit your mansucripts and case reports to CVIR Endovascular and thus help us to make this journal successfull as a forum where all endovascular groups come together.


Symbiotic microorganisms are omnipresent in nature, ubiquitously associated with animals, plants, fungi, protists, and all other life forms including humans, ranging from having parasitic through commensalistic to mutualistic associations, and affecting every biological aspect of innumerable organisms living on earth  is the only journal whose mission is to publish papers on animal-microbe, plant-microbe, microbe-microbe, and other forms of symbiotic associations. Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions  publishes a considerable number of symbiosis-related papers, though restricted to plant-microbe symbioses. The Invertebrate Microbiology section of Applied and Environmental Microbiology (https://aem.asm.org/) and the Microbe-Microbe and Microbe-Host Interactions field of the ISME Journal (https://www.nature.com/ismej/) are the suitable outlets for papers on microbe-insect symbiotic associations. Journal of Invertebrate Pathology does publish papers on insect symbionts, but the journal mainly focuses on parasites and pathogens . Environmental Entomology (https://academic.oup.com/ee) highlights Insect-Symbiont Interactions as a subject area.Inherently, studies on symbiosis are destined to be interdisciplinary, encompassing the fields of ecology, evolution, genomics, and cellular and molecular biology. Reflecting this, despite the large number of scientific journals published in the world, few focus on the publication of microbe-insect symbiosis studies. To my knowledge, Insect Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Journal of Insect Physiology (Fukatsu and Ishikawa, Personally, it has been a challenging task for me to find suitable journals in which to publish my own microbe-insect symbiosis studies. For example, dating back to the early 1990s for my master's thesis at the University of Tokyo, I wrote up three papers on a variety of bacterial and fungal symbionts of aphids. I finally published them in entomological journals, Frontiers in Microbiology to launch the Microbial Symbioses section in 2013. Since then, the Microbial Symbioses section has served as a home to numerous innovative, high-quality research studies, and commentaries on symbiosis. As a newly-appointed Specialty Chief Editor, I am highly motivated to build up an ideal platform for publishing microbe-insect symbiosis studies in the Microbial Symbioses section of Frontiers in Microbiology. To that end, I have contacted the world's most qualified experts who are actively working on microbe-insect symbiotic associations and interactions and have organized a launching Editorial Board for microbe-insect symbioses consisting of 14 Associate Editors as of September 2019. To my knowledge, no other scientific journals specialize in the publication of microbe-insect symbiosis studies. Though not as a journal but as a part of the journal section, I am aiming at manifesting such a publishing body of high quality and visibility, which offers prompt handling, fair and robust evaluation, and qualified publication of submitted manuscripts covering diverse aspects of microbe-insect symbiotic associations and interactions. The open access policy of Frontiers in Microbiology, together with the notable impact factor of 4.259, provides a good reason for consideration. I look forward to the very best works on microbe-insect symbioses being submitted to Frontiers in Microbiology.In this context, it was a laudable decision of The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and has approved it for publication.The author declares 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 reviewer JM declared a past collaboration with the author to the handling editor.


Numerous recommendations and guidelines aim to improve the quality, timeliness and transparency of medical publications. However, these guidelines use ambiguous language that can be challenging to interpret, particularly for speakers of English as a second language. Cultural expectations within the Asia-Pacific region raise additional challenges and several studies have suggested that awareness and application of ethical publication practices in the Asia-Pacific region is relatively low compared with other regions. However, guidance on applying ethical publication practice guidelines in the Asia-Pacific region is lacking. This commentary aims to improve publication practices in the Asia-Pacific region by providing guidance on applying the 10 principles of the Good Publication Practice 3 (GPP3) guidelines and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) criteria for authorship. Recommendations are provided for encore presentations, applying the ICMJE authorship criteria in the context of regional cultural expectations, and the role of study sponsors and professional medical writers. Ongoing barriers to compliance with guidelines are also highlighted, and additional guidance is provided to support authors submitting manuscripts for publication. The roles of regional journals, regulatory authorities and professional bodies in improving practices are also discussed.The online version of this article (10.1186/s41073-019-0079-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Numerous recommendations and guidelines have been developed to improve the quality, timeliness and transparency of publishing medical data  should be published in a timely manner. Publication in English is encouraged, when possible, to maximise accessibility within the region and around the world. English-language fluency should not be a barrier to publication in peer-reviewed journals, and many journals can recommend editing services to help improve writing quality.All data from phase 2, 3 and 4 studies should be published in a form that is publicly accessible, regardless of the outcome. Phase 3 data should be published within 18 months of the last visit of the last patient. Data can also be made available to the public prior to peer-reviewed publication via appropriate non-peer-reviewed methods, such as publication via a trial registry, preprint server such as bioRxiv, medRxiv or PeerJ preprints, or a publicly accessible database. This can minimise delays in public data dissemination, provide transparency by demonstrating the evolution of a manuscript as author comments are incorporated and improve the quality of the manuscript by soliciting broad feedback from the scientific community prior to, or in parallel with, formal peer review at a journal. This approach should not compromise the ability to submit to a peer-reviewed journal, but the publication policy of any target journal should be checked in advance.Publication of data generated as part of multinational studies that are relevant to the Asia-Pacific region is often delayed due to subgroup analyses being published after the primary analysis, but any delays should be minimised. Therefore, it is recommended subgroup analyses, including those in Asian populations, be planned in advance to help expedite publication.2.Reporting and publication processes should follow applicable laws  and guidelines .In some cases, patient populations in the Asia-Pacific region may be distinct from those assessed in international studies. For example, clinically relevant differences in efficacy, safety and/or pharmacokinetic properties may exist between Western populations and those in the Asia-Pacific region. Under these circumstances, clinical researchers based in the Asia-Pacific region are encouraged to expedite the presentation of their data at regional conferences and to strive for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.All stakeholders should be aware of any relevant local laws that apply to clinical studies and the dissemination of research findings, such as the ‘Korean Sunshine Act’ , The Philippines Department of Health’s guidelines on pharmaceutical marketing and promotions (Administrative Order N.2015—0053) and Indonesian Sponsorship for Healthcare Professionals: Regulation 58. Relevant local self-regulatory activities, such as the Medicines Australia Code of Conduct and the Japan Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association’s Transparency Guideline for the Relation between Corporate Activities and Medical Institutions, should also be considered. Stakeholders based in the Asia-Pacific region should also be conscious of, and respect, laws that extend beyond national borders, such as the United States of America (US) Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1997, US Sunshine Act , General Data Protection Regulations  and the UK Antibribery Act 2010.https://www.ismpp.org/gpp3-translations).In addition, several key guidelines have been translated into languages that are used in the Asia-Pacific region. For example, the ICMJE guidelines are available in Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Persian, as well as several European languages. Chinese and Japanese translations of the GPP3 guidelines are also available .Authors in the Asia-Pacific region are encouraged to consult the EQUATOR guidelines, which provide an effective checklist of key requirements for manuscripts. However, translations into Asian languages can be difficult to find, which represents a potential barrier to non-native English speakers. Furthermore, translations are not universal . See Case Study 1 in Additional file Journal and congress requirements should be studied in advance of submitting research for publication. Timely access to international or overseas congress data is limited in the Asia-Pacific region. Therefore, encore presentations at regional and national Asia-Pacific events should be considered for data that are of high interest. However, there are several key considerations in doing so.The possibility of an encore presentation at a later date should be raised with all authors at the time of preparing the primary publication. This may be streamlined by providing a single authorship agreement that relates to the primary publication and any encore publications, subject to the ICMJE authorship criteria , journal editors and authors must be sought , 18. App4.Publication planning and development should be a collaboration among all persons involved  and reflect the collaborative nature of research and the range of skills required to conduct, analyze, interpret, and report research findings.The publication of Asia-Pacific data derived from global studies should be planned in advance to limit any delay in the dissemination of relevant data in the region. These plans should be prospectively communicated and approved by key stakeholders to streamline the publication process. Collaboration and engagement between stakeholders globally, and within the region, is encouraged to optimise publications outcomes. For example, individuals involved with publication planning in the Asia-Pacific region should strive to integrate their plans with those of colleagues in other regions. Collaboration may help expedite publication and provide an external perspective on the value of all data—positive, negative or inconclusive. This also helps avoid duplicate publication. In particular, authors should remember the value of publishing data that are not clearly positive and should not conflate positive study results with a positive reputation.5.The rights, roles, requirements, and responsibilities of all contributors  should be confirmed in writing, ideally at the start of the research and, in all cases, before publication preparation begins.Examples of how publication professionals in the Asia-Pacific region can play an active role in publication planning are provided in Case Studies 2 and 3 in Additional file The ICMJE and GPP3 guidelines clearly indicate the expectations of authors of manuscripts published in peer-reviewed medical journals. Furthermore, the Joint Position Statement from the American Medical Writers Association (AMWA), the European Medical Writers Association (EMWA) and ISMPP, which is available in multiple languages, including Chinese and Japanese, provides an overview of the role of professional medical writers in the development of medical and scientific publications .All authors should be informed that they are required to meet all four of the ICMJE authorship criteria before work on a publication begins  [Sponsors or professional medical writers involved in the manuscript development process should provide authorship agreements in a language that will be readily understood by each of the authors. Alternatively, the agreement should be written in ‘plain English’ that would be readily understandable for authors who speak English as a second language. Authorship agreements should also be in place for all authors prior to commencing work on a publication. This may also include defining the roles of the lead or first author and corresponding author. An example of details to consider including in an authorship agreement, and why, have been previously published and can be found online (rms.pdf) .Potential authors should be identified at the outset of developing a manuscript. Lead authors may wish to avoid defining authorship seniority until the time of submission, once relative contributions to manuscript development are clear, allowing for discussion and mutual agreement. Ideally, consensus should be reached among the authors regarding seniority.Authors and study sponsors should consider, develop and proactively communicate processes for managing situations where a proposed author does not meet the ICMJE criteria. Setting expectations at the outset may assist in ensuring engagement and contribution from all authors. If an author has not met the criteria to qualify for authorship, then the steps necessary to meet the ICMJE authorship criteria should be reiterated and the prospective author given the opportunity to fulfil those criteria. Alternatively, the prospective author may be offered an acknowledgement.Stakeholders must also be mindful of competing priorities. For example, in situations where following up with senior authors may not be culturally acceptable, a desire to avoid delays in submitting a manuscript for publication should not override the need for input and approval to submit from every author. It is important to remember that senior authors may wish to offer comment and expert insight prior to submission and that submission is dependent on their approval. However, all stakeholders need to be adaptable to different authors’ methods of working and communication.A case study on effective multinational collaboration in publication development in the Asia-Pacific region is provided in Case Study 4 in Additional file 6.All authors should have access to relevant aggregated study data and other information  required to understand and report research findings.7.The authors should take responsibility for the way in which research findings are presented and published, be fully involved at all stages of publication and presentation development, and be willing to take public responsibility for all aspects of the work.ANDExplaining the roles and responsibilities of authors prior to developing a publication is essential. If a group discussion among the authors and other stakeholders will be used to formally initiate publication development, informally approaching individual authors in advance to ensure their understanding of their role and responsibilities  may be helpful.All authors should contribute to the development of publications and approve the final version before it is submitted, as recommended by the ICMJE. As noted in GPP3  and the In situations where authors are not comfortable providing feedback to their colleagues, an intermediary, such as a professional medical writer or representative of the study sponsor, may assist with collating and incorporating feedback from individuals. Any feedback requiring discussion among all authors can then be anonymised. The lead author may be asked to adjudicate on any conflicting comments. Alternatively, authors can provide consolidated comments representing the views of more than one author as part of the revision process.If an author has no comments during the review process, they should clearly communicate that they have thoroughly reviewed the manuscript. Some stakeholders may wish to use technology to electronically track the opening and review of documents, but should advise authors in advance if such technology is used.The scope of ‘drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content’ has not been clearly defined, but proposed definitions of what constitutes a substantial contribution to the development of a manuscript have been published . In the Authors should be reminded that, by accepting authorship, they are jointly responsible for the validity of the research and the integrity/accuracy of the data included in any publication. Therefore, all authors, regardless of seniority, should have access to all data related to the study. For speakers of English as a second language, care should be taken to ensure that any translation or English-language editing service maintains the integrity of the publication. Academic discussion, led by the lead author or professional medical writer, should be encouraged to resolve any disagreements. If an impasse is reached, an author may wish to consider politely declining authorship.Guest, honorary or gift authorship to authors who do not meet the ICMJE criteria must not be permitted. While such authorship is commonly offered to Heads of Department and other senior researchers within the Asia-Pacific region, these authors must provide a ‘Substantial contribution to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work,’ if performed under their supervision, in addition to critically reviewing and approving the submission of any resulting manuscript. The US National Institutes of Health have provided a useful tool for assessing whether a supervisor qualifies for authorship in this regard . LikewisIt should be made clear how all authors have contributed to the supervision, conception, analysis and/or interpretation of the research, for example, through contributorship statements in the cover letter and manuscript (see Statement 8). Even if these senior researchers are ultimately responsible for the research nominally performed under their supervision, this, by itself, does not qualify the researcher for authorship. Likewise, all individuals who qualify for authorship should be named as authors of a manuscript, including employees of study sponsors or junior researchers who have met the ICMJE criteria.Some study sponsors may have policies that require an employee of the sponsor be a named author. The involvement of the study sponsor in the manuscript development process should not be understated. Furthermore, in some instances, a professional medical writer may qualify as an author according to the ICMJE authorship criteria  and should be given authorship.Instances of authorship being offered for sale, which have been reported in the Asia-Pacific region, are not acceptable under any circumstances .8.Author lists and contributorship statements should accurately reflect all substantial intellectual contributions to the research, data analyses, and publication or presentation development. Relevant contributions from persons who did not qualify as authors should also be disclosed.Defining the scope of the ‘intellectual contribution’ of authors to research, including supervisors, mentors and other potential contributors, may be difficult, although many medical journals require authors to define individual contributions in the manuscript and/or cover letter. Some journals provide examples of authorship statements to guide authors. The US National Institutes of Health has provided a useful pictorial guide of demonstrating what contributions may support a claim to authorship and the strength of such claims . This ma9.The role of the sponsor in the design, execution, analysis, reporting, and funding (if applicable) of the research should be fully disclosed in all publications and presentations of the findings. Any involvement by persons or organizations with an interest  in the findings should also be disclosed.The GPP3 publication provides statement templates that may be used to disclose funding sources for research, statistical analysis and professional medical writing or editing support .9.The 10.All authors and contributors should disclose any relationships or potential competing interests relating to the research and its publication or presentation.ANDTransparency regarding any relationships or potential competing interests relating to the research on both an individual and institutional level should always be encouraged since disclosing potential or perceived conflicts of interest is unlikely to negatively impact the chance of acceptance for publication . Discloshttp://www.icmje.org/conflicts-of-interest/). Defaulting to authors having no conflicts of interest is not recommended because failing to declare potential conflicts of interest is more likely to result in a negative outcome both during the peer-review process and post-publication compared with making appropriate declarations [Conflicts of interest have not been uniformly defined but include financial, personal, social or other interests that may be perceived as directly or indirectly influencing the conduct of the author with respect to manuscript development , 24. Thearations . OfferinMany journals do not require acknowledgement of individuals providing English-language editor services or the source of funding for any such support. However, this support should be disclosed, as required for any other professional services used during manuscript development.Financial compensation for authoring a publication or presentation is discouraged, although authors may be reimbursed for reasonable publication- or presentation-related out-of-pocket expenses, such as travel, accommodation and congress registration expenses.All authors in the Asia-Pacific region should be encouraged to register for an ORCiD identifier to facilitate clear identification of individual authors. Cross-cultural differences in the use of first versus last names in the Asia-Pacific region versus Europe and North America can make identifying common authors across multiple manuscripts difficult.Data sharing requirements have been introduced by the ICMJE and many journals require data sharing statements to be incorporated into manuscripts . AnecdotGuidance on how data will be shared is lacking. Principles for sharing data that are not curated in the English language are an ongoing concern, which may make compliance particularly onerous for researchers in the Asia-Pacific region versus other regions worldwide. As such, it remains unknown how researchers should interpret and manage any data sharing requests, and what potential barriers to data sharing may emerge. Data sharing requirements may also need to be considered as part of the publication planning process.Institutions and researchers need to be vigilant regarding submitting to, remunerating and recognising the legitimacy of so-called ‘predatory’ or ‘pseudo’ journals . There ithinkchecksubmit.org, are available to help researchers assess their journal choice [In general, researchers should be wary of unsolicited communications offering opportunities to publish or suspiciously low publication fees , 30, 31.l choice , 33. AccJournals, medical publication professionals, research institutions and leading researchers in the region need to provide greater leadership regarding ethical publication practices. Several studies of the disclosure requirements for journals in the Asia-Pacific region have illustrated inconsistent practices, with a relatively high proportion of journals having no conflict of interest policy or requirement for disclosures within published manuscripts –36.Efforts to translate relevant guidelines into languages commonly used in the region are encouraged to improve the accessibility, understanding and application of ethical publication practices. To support this, bodies developing guidelines should consider allocating a translation budget to ensure timely production of high-quality translations. For example, readily accessible translations of EQUATOR Network guidelines would represent an important step in advancing data reporting in the Asia-Pacific region.A level of self-regulation and education is required to achieve improved acceptance and application of ethical publication practices in the Asia-Pacific region, possibly driven by research integrity champions . Some stThere is a lack of awareness and understanding of international guidelines on ethical publication practices in the Asia-Pacific region. This commentary provides practical guidance for authors in the Asia-Pacific region to align their publication practices with their international peers and improve the quality of their publications. This is the first tailored practical guidance for the Asia-Pacific region and aims to act as a foundation from which to build improved ethical publication practices in the region.Additional file 1:Supplementary Appendix (DOCX 22 kb)