PLOS One,Atmospheric Chemistry & Physics,PeerJ, andF1000Research, an observational overview is conducted. The overview relies on defined characteristics of open peer review. Results show that despite differing open peer review implementations, each journal retains editorial involvement in scholarly publishing. Further, the analysis shows that only one of these implementations is fully transparent in its peer review and decision making process. Finally, the overview contends that journals should clearly outline peer review and editorial processes in order to allow for open peer review to be better understood and adopted by authors, reviewers, editors, and readers of science communications.Open peer review, peer review where authors' and reviewers' identities are disclosed to one another, is a growing trend in scholarly publishing. Through observation of four journals in STEM disciplines, PLOS ONE,Atmospheric Chemistry & Physics,PeerJ, andF1000Research. These observations contribute to our understanding of scholarly publication and scientific communication, as we watch the evolution of scientific vetting and validity determination processes.In scholarly publishing open peer review (OPR) is an emerging form of peer review that incorporates disclosure of author and referee identities to one another. Although in its infancy, OPR has been adopted and implemented in a number of disciplines and their respective scholarly publications. In this article I provide some background on OPR, addressing controversies and divergent opinions. Next I describe, examine, and discuss OPR implementations at four different science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) journals:Unlike double-blind peer review, which is clearly defined, has clear parameters, and an arguably universal understanding by the scholarly community in how to implement it, OPR is approached and implemented in a variety of ways. There is no one universally accepted definition of OPR, which complicates investigations of its practices. As such, I rely on my previous definition, which broadly understands OPR as any scholarly review mechanism providing disclosure of author and referee identities to one another at any point during the peer review or publication process . This deBritish Medical Journal andBioMed Central. It should be noted that when I mention OPR, I discuss it as the formal process via which scholarly articles are vetted for publication.Other terms used to discuss OPR are peer-to-peer review and open review. Both these phrases insinuate OPR, but some have approached it as supplementary to formal peer review processes. For example, these review implementations rely on a community’s members to post comments on articles at pre-print servers, such as arXiv, or using comment features via journal websites, such asAtmospheric Chemistry and Physics with its launch in 2001, which is discussed later in this article.Mentions of OPR in scholarly literature date back to Michael McGiffert’s 1988 article, “Is Justice Blind? An Inquiry into Peer Review”, in which McGiffert argues, based on survey results, that editors should protect the identity of authors, but that editors, “...should leave referees free to decide for themselves whether or not to make themselves known [to the author]” p. 47,. Over tiFor many OPR addresses inherent issues in what has been the gold standard of double-blind peer review. Some see blind review processes as faulty in that referee anonymity allows for referee abuse. Others view OPR as a means to hold referees and authors accountable for their communications . It has BMC Pharmacology and Toxicology Editorial Board Members surfaced continuing concerns regarding OPR at the journal. Despite these concernsBMC Pharmacology and Toxicology decided to “...continue with open peer review atBMC Pharmacology and Toxicology because of the ethical grounds for doing so and because the potential benefits outweigh the negatives”, , the journal makes exceptions and waives publishing fees for unfunded research. Moreover, the APC fee model atPLOS ONE takes into account an author’s country of origin, and whether it is a high, lower middle, or low income nation. In this way the publication aims to make more viable open access publication for authors with disparate economic means.All articles published inPLOS ONE conservatively approaches OPR. The journal’s peer review process only exhibits a few OPR characteristics, and even then these characteristics are not consistently implemented. It does, however, always use a form of editor-mediation for reviewing and publishing its content. Each submitted article is assigned an Academic Editor, who then determines whether submissions should be considered for peer review, and who facilitates the peer review process. According to the journal’sreview guidelines, these Academic Editors may, “...conduct the peer review themselves, based on their own knowledge and experience; they can take further advice through discussion with other members of the editorial board; they can solicit reports from further referees”.Compared to the other journals I discuss in this article,PLOS ONE always occurs, other characteristics of OPR do not. Signed reviews are optional, but they are strongly encouraged. According to itspeer review guidelines, “If Peer Reviewers are willing, then they are also identified to the author at the time of decision.”PLOS ONE does not post reviewer comments to the web alongside published articles, so readers do not benefit from reading discussions that occurred about the topic prior to publication. In addition toPLOS ONE’s version of signed review, the journal enables a public commentary function for published articles. Although this technical functionality could be considered crowd-sourced reviewing, the journal does not consider post-publication public comments and discussions as part of a formal peer review process. One aspect of this crowd-sourced discussion process is thatPLOS ONE surfaces any media coverage of published articles by linking to them in an article’s comments section. The result is that the journal is able to create a record of the impact and conversation an article elicits outside of thePLOS ONE platform and community.While the editorial mediation of journal articles atAtmospheric Chemistry and Physics (ACP), the European Geosciences Union’s journal. The journal, which launched in September of 2001  for peer review and crowd-sourced discussion. On this platform reviewer comments and crowd-sourced comments are publicly available. After the discussion period for a paper ends, the ability to comment on the paper is turned off, and the journal editor makes a final publishing decision using submitted referee and public reviews. When the editor accepts an article for publication, the article is published atACP, where it will also link to its pre-print version including referee and public comments atACPD.ACP does not host public commentary on published articles. AlthoughACP views its peer review process as completely transparent  at the time they receive their referee reports and publication decision from the Academic Editor  may comment on any published article. Any author responses to referees are also public.AtF1000Research does not consider these statuses as equivalent to the accepted, accepted with revisions, and rejected statuses that one sees in closed review processes. Rather,as stated in the FAQs:The term Approved means that the referee thinks that the article is good and has either no suggested revisions or only minor revisions. The term Approved with Reservations means that the referee agrees that the article has scientific merit and is fundamentally sound but would like the author to make further changes to the manuscript. This is approximately equivalent to a request for major revisions or several minor revisions in a traditional journal. In every case, even when all referees approve of the article, future versions are welcome.In this publication model it is possible for articles to receive unanimous negative reviews. In this case, articles remain “published”, but are removed from the site’s default search. The site’s interface clearly delineates a work’s referee status and comments using icons to indicate: approved with reservations, approved, or not approved. It is important to note thatF1000Research publishes and attributes all referee responses and author comments, it adheres to a fully transparent peer review process. In addition to transparent reviews provided by pre-selected referees, crowd-sourced review occurs when individuals comment on published articles. The journal exhibits most other OPR characteristics; its reviews are editor-mediated, transparent, referee and author identities are disclosed, and reviews are signed. The only OPR characteristics not exhibited byF1000Research’s process are those related to review timing. Since all review atF1000Research occurs post-publication, the journal does not exhibit pre-publication and synchronous review characteristics. Once a work has been vetted by editors and is made public on the journal’s site, the journal considers it published. Because review occurs post publication, authors receiving critical feedback are encouraged to revise and submit updated versions of articles that will, again, be refereed. The journal uses CrossRef’s CrossMark identification service to assist readers in tracking these article versions and relationships. Even if an author publishes an updated article, previous versions remain published. In this way, publication atF1000Research is a good example of the iterative process of publishing and scientific knowledge and conversation.BecausePLOS ONE,ACP,PeerJ, andF1000Research. None of these journals have implemented OPR in the same manner, but they do exhibit many of the same OPR characteristics.I examined four journals using relatively OPR processes,F1000Research, this is as far as an editor’s work goes before an article is published, others, such asACP andPeerJ, allow editors to make final publishing decisions.Each journal exhibits a form of editor-mediation and each journal vets submitted articles prior to publication for basic quality, scope and adherence to author guidelines. While for some journals, such asPeerJ the Q&A section includes commentary on articles; it also includes other avenues for the public to engage in scientific conversations. AtPLOS ONE, however, commentary on articles occurs only after an article has been published, and also includes links to all media coverage of articles. UnlikePLOS ONE,PeerJ, andF1000Research’s crowd-sourcing implementations,ACP’s process only allows for crowd-sourced commentary prior to publication articles during the discussion phase of the OPR process. Crowd-sourced review, although a characteristic of OPR, may be weighed differently in a publication’s review process , whereasF1000Resarch PLOS ONE requires referees to disclose their identities. Since author/reviewer identity disclosure is a defining factor of OPR for the purposes of this overview, it could be argued that those articles where reviewer commentary is not attributed are not truly open peer-reviewed. The motivation for publishers to encourage rather than require openness most likely stems from their desire to encourage more authors and reviewers to participate in alternative peer review processes. Publishers may also be attempting to be mindful of different discipline’s accepted publishing practices. In my own view, by not mandating public attributed review, publishers are weakening the power of OPR. However, incremental steps in OPR implementation are necessary to encourage participation and to move OPR to a completely transparent standard in the future.Another commonality between these publications is their varying allowance, encouragement, or mandate for reviewers to sign their commentaries. Referees may choose to remain anonymous atACP does not consider papers posted to its pre-print space,ACPD, as “published”,PeerJ PrePrints is considered by its publisher a publication. Publishers’ definitions of when a scholarly work is “published” will continue to evolve as OPR processes evolve. It is unlikely that any definition will be uniformly held by all scholarly publishers.Two of the journals discussed above include article pre-print mechanisms. Pre-print servers and mechanisms introduce confusion into understanding publishing and OPR. Just when is something that is open to be read on the web considered “published?” WhereF1000Research exhibits what we should consider the gold standard of transparent and OPR processes. The publication’s process is completely transparent; it publishes all commentary with attribution and makes salient referee decisions. Moreover, the mechanism it uses to track and correlate article versions and updates enhances and opens scholarly conversations. Yet,F1000Research maintains its editorial voice via editor-mediation prior to an article’s publication and by suppressing from search results articles receiving unanimous negative reviews.Of the four publishers discussed, I maintain thatFinally, it should be noted that all four publications discussed in this article are open access publications. It is logical that open access journals are more open to the idea of experimenting with peer review processes, since they already embrace the ethos of openness in their publication models. It is possible that there are non open access journals using OPR, but I am not aware of any of these publications. In fact, I surmise that very few authors and reviewers who choose to write and review for non open access journals instead of open access journals, would resist implementations of OPR.Scholarly journals are beginning to challenge traditional peer review practices by implementing OPR, yet each OPR implementation differs. By observing four different implementations of OPR I conclude that few OPR journals implement truly transparent review, yet each implementation values editorial work. Further, I maintain that distinguishing between publicly available preprints and publicly available published articles unnecessarily muddies the waters in understanding OPR. As OPR implementations proliferate, it is pertinent for journals to clearly outline any peer review process so that readers, authors, and reviewers can fully understand peer review implementations, decision making processes, and to provide for editorial transparency.Future research is needed in a number of areas. First, we need to understand how scholarly communities and publishers define an article’s publication status. The fact that content appears readily accessible via the web does not mean publishers consider articles “published.” This inherent tension, based in a print publishing paradigm, will continue to introduce confusion to those searching for and reading scholarly research and writings on the web. Additionally, OPR occurring in non-open access journals should be investigated, as should OPR implementations in non-STEM journals. The issues raised in the first round of reports were not addressed and I therefore decide not to change the status of my initial assessment.I have read this submission. I believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard, however I have significant reservations, as outlined above. No further commentsI have read this submission. I believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard. Thank you for this interesting observation article and for the invitation to contribute my open peer review.As already noted by Peter Binfield, the definition offered is limited to only one of the identified OPR characteristics, namely whether the reviews are signed or not.It is not clear what is the difference between reviews “signed when the author receives them” and  disclosed reviews. It seems that in both cases the names of authors and reviewers are disclosed from the beginning of the review process.Is disclosure of the reviewer’s identity necessary to initiate a discussion between authors and reviewers? Perhaps what you refer to here is an infrastructure to allow multiple iterations during the review process, as provided for example by Frontiers. This is different from simply revealing the name of the reviewer.There is a clear distinction between an unsolicited comment on an article and a formal review process by expert peers that receive a review invitation either by an experienced editor or the authors themselves.Perakakis, P., Taylor, M., Mazza, M., Trachana, V. (2010). Natural selection of academic papers. Scientometrics, 85 (2), pp. 553–559, but I am not aware of any implementations. I repeat that I do not think we should consider crowd-sourced comments as equal to formal peer reviews.What is the alternative to editor mediation in peer review, if we consider that unsolicited commentaries do not constitute formal peer reviews? Is there another model where formal peer review is not editor-mediated? I know we proposed such model that we called author-guided peer review inAnd some other comments to consider:PLOS ONE clearly does not qualify as an OPR journal by any standards. Instead, I would be more interested to see a discussion on the implementation of OPR by Frontiers.I suspect there is a misunderstanding around the terms double-blind and single-blind review. The standard in most journals and disciplines is single-blind review where authors are blind to the name of the reviewer, but reviewers know the name of the authors. Double-blind refers to the process where neither authors nor reviewers are aware about the identity of each other.It is not entirely correct that PLOS ONE “waives publishing fees for unfunded research”. What they do is ask for proofs that authors cannot cover the APCs even from their own budget, sometimes even asking for personal financial records, which by the way I find unacceptable. Proving that there is no formal funding to publish the particular research is not enough to waive APCs.I definitely agree that a comparison table is needed.I detected that the references to the articles by Lawrence are missing. Please double check that all references are included.Thank you again for the opportunity to participate in this process that is very close to my ideal model of OPR and I will be looking forward to a revised version of your manuscript.In the beginning, the article tries to disambiguate different “flavours" or implementations of open peer review (OPR) by identifying a number of OPR characteristics. Regarding this effort I would like to note the following issues that I think should be somehow addressed in a future version of the article:I have read this submission. I believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard, however I have significant reservations, as outlined above. ACP views its peer review process as completely transparent , it is not."Correction of Erroneous Statement: "AlthoughNeither the cited reference nor the ACP journal web pages claim that the peer review process of ACP would be "completely transparent". There are good reasons to maintain an option for referees to remain anonymous, and this is also very clearly specified on the journal web pages as well as in the referenced article and in a more comprehensive review article . Thus, it would indeed be wrong to claim “complete transparency” for the open peer review process for ACP, but it is also wrong to insinuate that ACP or the cited article would have raised this claim. Please discard or correct the erroneous statement accordingly. Moreover, please complement or replace the reference to Pöschl 2004 by a reference to Pöschl 2012, because the latter is more comprehensive and up-to.date:Front. Comput. Neurosci.6:33. doi: 10.3389/fncom.2012.00033Pöschl U (2012) Multi-stage open peer review: scientific evaluation integrating the strengths of traditional peer review with the virtues of transparency and self-regulation.http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fncom.2012.00033/abstract ACP does not consider papers posted atACPD to be “published.” Because these papers are not considered published, their review is not synchronous.” Correction of Erroneous Statement: “It could be argued that synchronous review occurs, yetNeither the ACP journal web pages nor the articles providing an authoritative description of the ACP open peer review  have ever indicated that the papers posted in the ACP discussion forum, ACPD, would not be “published”. Well on the contrary, all relevant journal web pages emphasize explicitly that the discussion papers posted and reviewed/discussed in ACPD are publications with permanent public accessibility, archiving and citability. Also my articles explaining the concepts of interactive open access publishing and multi-stage open peer review  specify and emphasize that the discussion papers published in ACPD - as well as in the fifteen interactive open access sister journals of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) - are indeed publications. Thus, it is inappropriate to insinuate the opposite. Please discard or correct the erroneous statement accordingly.http://www.egu.eu/about/statements/position-statement-on-the-status-of-discussion-papers-published-in-egu-interactive-open-access-journals/ http://www.atmospheric-chemistry-and-physics.net/general_information/publication_policy.html http://www.atmospheric-chemistry-and-physics.net/review/review_process_and_interactive_public_discussion.html http://www.atmospheric-chemistry-and-physics.net/general_information/faq.html http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/alpsp/lp/2004/00000017/00000002/art00005 http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fncom.2012.00033/abstract  General Comment and Suggestion:F1000Research. However,F1000Research is a relatively recent follow-up on a series of earlier initiatives that have been pursuing open peer review and are reaching back into the last century. For example, see the British Medical Journal (BMJ), the Electronic Transactions on Artificial Intelligence (ETAI), the Journal of Interactive Media in Education (JIME) and other journals with open peer review as referenced in the recent “research topic”  on open evaluation (including open peer review) in the open access journal Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience: I understand and respect that the author prefers a fully transparent form of open peer review as implemented byhttp://journal.frontiersin.org/researchtopic/137  As detailed in my contribution to that collection of articles (Pöschl 2012) and confirmed by independent studies referenced/linked below, ACP and its sister journals are by most standards of scientific publishing more successful and more efficient than comparable journals with traditional or alternative forms of peer review: http://www.atmospheric-chemistry-and-physics.net/pr_acp_is_interactive_open_access_publishing_able_to_identify_high_impact_submissions.pdf http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2288/13/74 F1000Research would deserve the attribute “gold standard of open peer review”, and I would suggest to substantiate or drop this postulate.Overall, I see no well-founded basis for the claim that the particular form open peer review practiced byThanks to the author for an interesting perspective article on open peer review. Following an invitation to review this article, I would like to request a couple of specific corrections and add a general comment and suggestion.I have read this submission. I believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard, however I have significant reservations, as outlined above. The study applies the tools of content analysis to the stated editorial policies and procedures of a small number of journals in STEM disciplines adhering (to a greater or lesser degree) to the principles of open peer review. To promote replicability of the study and/or comparison between the set of journals included in the current study and other sets of journals, the study might be revised to include a table documenting the degree to which each journal under consideration did or did not meet the stated OPR principles. While the study is limited to review of relatively new publications and publication models in a defined field, it might also be revised to suggest future research opportunities, e.g., the degree to which OPR principles are employed in more established journals, the degree to which OPR experiments are being explored in other fields.I have read this submission. I believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard. Thank you for your comments and feedback. The suggestion of a table, I think, will help to clearly communication these observations, so a revision will include one. One of the things that I have struggled with is how to represent what might be happening in other disciplinary communities. From what I have found, OPR seems to have started in STEM disciplines. I'm finding it difficult to wrap my thoughts and ideas around OPR in the humanities since humanities publishing is also changing with new ways to express scholarship, aka the digital humanities. In this way it is easier (for me) to begin observing and evaluating OPR in STEM publications. Again, thank you for your thoughts and comments, and I look forward to more comments after I re-submit this article. Thank you for an interesting article which overviews an emerging form of publication / peer reviewGeneral Comments:“any scholarly review mechanism providing disclosure of author and referee identities to one another at any point during the peer review or publication process”), but then goes on  to discuss it as if it also includes making those comments publicly available at the time of publication (something which is certainly considered part of OPR by many people). Therefore, the author either needs to expand their definition, or they need to word their commentary differently.At an early point, the author defines OPR as simply naming the authors and reviewers .They are implying that the community can read the comments upon publication. This is not the case  when using the narrow definition which the author has adopted , it is worth saying that at the time this article was written, PLOS ONE did not  regard (or promote) their commenting facility as a form of review. Instead they regard it as a way to enable “post publication commentary”. Same goes for PeerJ."One unique aspect of this crowd-sourced review process is that PLoS One surfaces any media coverage of published articles by linking to them" This isn't necessarily unique, PeerJ does this as well via the ability for any user to “add link”. Also, many other journals do this via their article level metrics provision.”PeerJ is an individual membership-based publisher in the biological and medical sciences.” At the time this article was written this was correct. However, since that time, the journal changed the description of its model to “publication plans” rather than “memberships””All works published by PeerJ are licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license” Correct at the time the article was written. However, since that time the journal has upgraded to CC BY 4.0”Based on information from PeerJ’s website, it is unclear whether author and reviewer identities are disclosed to one another during the review process.” I can clarify this – reviewers are encouraged to name themselves (~40% choose to do so). If they do so, then the authors are first made aware of their identities in the decision letter that includes the comments of that reviewer.”I examined four journals that boast open peer review processes, PLoS One,”. Actually, I am not sure that PLOS ONE would claim this fact (and the author themselves observes that very few elements of OPR are provided by PLOS ONE)”whereas F1000Resarch and PLoS One require referees to disclose their identities”. This is not the case for PLOS ONE (unless something has changed which I am not aware of). The default for PLOS ONE reviewers is to remain anonymous.I have read this submission. I believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard, however I have significant reservations, as outlined above. Thank you for your thoughtful comments. Your working knowledge of both PeerJ and PLOS ONE will benefit this article's revision, and I appreciate you offering this knowledge in your review.Regarding your note about OPR and the overlap with OA journals: yes, OA journals are generally more sympathetic and willing to try OPR. Since you ask it is clear to me that I have not adequately discussed this overlap in the article, which I will be sure to in a revision. Thank you again for your comments.


Peer review is one of the oldest and most respected instruments of quality control in science and it is at the heart of academic publishing. However, while publishing has evolved and adapted to the digital era, peer review remains stuck in its traditional format. The traditional model of peer review relies on undisclosed reviews in which the whole process remains hidden from the scientific community. Despite its importance, the current system lacks sufficient quality and transparency, and has been repeatedly criticized as prone to bias or even fraud. In addition, the traditional peer review process opposes the desired open collaboration for the benefit of science and society.In view of the fundamental role of peer review in the publication of research and the growth of scientific knowledge, it is essential to develop innovative ways to improve the process. Changes to the system are necessary and the open access movement provides a context to radically reform scientific publishing. During the last decade, open access journals have altered the scientific publishing landscape, making it cheaper and easier for researchers to access published articles. Nowadays, it is high quality open access journals that are leading the development of new approaches to peer review.As an advocate of transparency in the peer review process, during the last months I have been working with MDPI to implant a new system of open peer review, under which the peer-review reports and authors’ responses are published as an integral part of the final version of each article. This new model of publishing associated with the open access platform of MDPI result in one of the most transparent, unbiased, democratic and reliable assessment of research currently available. The move towards an open peer-review policy gives credit where it is due, but moreover provides valuable information to those reading the article, sharing the reviewers’ critiques of the manuscript and presenting all the necessary information for them to make an objective evaluation for themselves. Furthermore, the available information also benefits young students and scientists who can learn about the reviewing process of a manuscript, which will in turn help them to prepare high quality papers. Life is the first MDPI journal to make this courageous step towards open peer-review in order to demonstrate the rigorous, fair and efficient standard of the editorial work. The first paper published under this new policy was a manuscript written by a Nobelist and reviewed by three experts in the field . Life will therefore have the choice (after acceptance of their paper) to publish the reviewers’ comments and their responses along with the article. To protect the impartiality of the peer-review process, the identity of the reviewers will not be revealed to the authors until after a paper is accepted for publication.This transparent process will help to eradicate potential flaws associated with the traditional peer review route. As a result of this unique system, all reviewers will get their due recognition and respect once their names are published with the papers. If reviewers do not want to reveal their identities, we will honour that request and the reviewer’s report will be published “anonymously”. In an initial test phase, authors submitting manuscripts to Life and I invite you to submit your manuscript and enjoy a pleasant experience while working with our editorial staff.As highlighted in my previous editorial , this is


International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH) and was published online nearly one month after the submission to IJERPH. Our policy is to consider only original, unpublished articles that are not under review by any other journal, and all authors explicitly agree to this as a condition for processing their submissions. The authors have stated that the duplicate submission was caused by a lack of internal communication, for which they deeply apologize.At the request of the authors, the published article  will be MDPI is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics and takes the responsibility to enforce strict ethical policies and standards very seriously. To ensure the addition of only high quality scientific works to the field of scholarly publication, paper  is retra


BMC Psychology[BMC series[BMC Psychology is an open access, peer-reviewed journal that considers manuscripts on all aspects of psychology, human behavior and the mind, including developmental, clinical, cognitive, experimental, social, evolutionary and educational psychology, as well as personality and individual differences. The journal welcomes quantitative and qualitative research methods, including animal studies. It is journal policy to publish work deemed by peer reviewers to be a coherent and sound addition to scientific knowledge and to put less emphasis on interest levels, provided sthat the research constitutes a useful contribution to the field. In this editorial, Gordon Harold, Section Editor for Developmental psychopathology, discusses why this journal will be a valuable addition to the psychology milieu, and the aims of the journal.This editorial celebrates the launch of sychology, the newMC series journal BMC Psychology! An exciting and innovative new publication outlet aimed at the dissemination of cutting-edge research relevant to the field of psychological science and complementary disciplines.Welcome to BMC Psychology.Psychology as a discipline has a recognised and well-documented history, with many specialist academic journals in existence that capture the breadth of topics and specialist areas relevant to what remains a relatively young field of scientific enquiry. Since the inception of psychology as a scientific discipline at the turn of the 20th century, psychology has passed through many transitions on its way to becoming a recognised scientific discipline with relevance to all aspects of human behaviour and development. Uniquely, rather than evolve into a subject defined by very strict disciplinary-based boundaries across the course of its developmental history, psychology as a science benefits from a set of sub-disciplines that each offer specificity in terms of primary scientific enquiry, while also offering synergies across areas within the field of psychology as well as disciplines that fall outside the core boundaries of psychology . Indeed, psychology is, unlike many other scientific disciplines, a true interdisciplinary science. The strength of the discipline relative to other areas of scientific enquiry is that where links can be established with other disciplines, psychology as a subject area has the flexibility to adapt and accommodate new avenues of scientific potential, enquiry and application without compromising its core methodological and theoretical foundations. This potential is recognised and captured through the ethos and publication orientation of BMC Psychology, a forum is offered that encapsulates the interface between rigorous science, the potential for practical and clinical application, as well as core knowledge development and dissemination relating to all aspects of human behaviour and development, including animal studies.One of the key contemporary challenges for most areas of modern science is to move from what may be described as distal-level enquiry to proximal-level application. In other words, there is an increasing demand and need for the product of scientific enquiry to move from the static pages of remote scientific journals to real world applications, public awareness and impact through the translation and dissemination of such science. This poses both challenge and great opportunity for the field of psychology. Through the development of As Section Editor for the Developmental Psychopathology section of the journal, I am very keen to promote the scientific objectives of this realm of psychological science in concert with core objectives of the journal. The field of developmental psychopathology constitutes the scientific study of normal and abnormal adaptation and psychological development across the lifespan. The subject area takes a rigorous research orientation to examination of primary theoretical questions, with a bottom-line practice and policy orientation to primary scientific outputs. To have this area of psychological science represented “under one umbrella” in company with an expansive set of complementary subject areas and specialist disciplines across the field of psychology emphasises the forward thinking, ambition and novelty of this newly established journal – a journal of relevance to students, established researchers, practitioners, policy makers and educators alike.BMC Psychology is an open access, peer-reviewed journal that considers manuscripts on all aspects of psychology and human behaviour, including developmental, clinical, cognitive, experimental, social, evolutionary, and educational psychology, as well as personality and individual differences. The journal welcomes submission of articles that employ quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods approaches, as well as studies that utilise non-human subjects . A common denominator across all areas and topics of interest to BMC Psychology, however, is rigour and relevance; both in terms of the scientific quality of studies published as well as the potential for public, practice and policy impacts of study findings where relevant.As the journal profile outlines, BMC Psychology and other psychology journals is that BMC Psychology will be open peer review. "Open peer review" [One of the key distinguishing factors between  review"  means thBMC Series are open peer review, as the publishers consider it supports and enhances transparent and impartial publishing. It also encourages reviewers to provide a thorough and constructive review. In a 2006 trial conducted by Nature[All of the medical journals within the by Nature one the BMC Series also offers some additional benefits. Not only can the journal production team and editorial boards find a manuscript the best possible home within the series according to its scope, but with a simple transfer, outstanding and broad interest pieces that fit the criteria of BMC Medicine[BMC Psychology, but is still sound science, then we can offer a transfer to BMC Research Notes[Being part of a broader family of journals comprised by the  Medicine may be orch Notes – in allrch Notes, and encBMC Psychology!We welcome submission of your work and the contributions you can make to help further advance the field of psychological science through the pages of


Another journal? Surely not. Yet of course another journal is needed. It is manifestly and glaringly obvious. But I can see why some may question the reason. After all, by 2009 there were known to be more than 25 400 scholarly peer-reviewed journals in the scientific, technical and medical (STM) field, producing about 1.5 million articles each year [Yet reading patterns are changing, and although researchers read more than they ever did—approximately 270 articles each year—they spend less time physically at the task. In the mid 1990s, the mean reading time for a single article was 45–50 min, a figure that has reduced to ∼30 min now . This haInto this mix comes open access (OA), the process of making original research articles freely accessible to readers on the web. There is now a global shift in this area with a study funded by the European Commission, suggesting that OA has reached a critical tipping point with ∼50% of scientific papers published in 2011 now being available for free . FurtherThe US White House appears to be going down a similar route. The Office of Science and Technology Policy has directed each federal agency that spends more than US$100 million each year on research and development to support increased public access to the results. This is a major shift in policy. The intent is to use a 12-month post-publication embargo period as a guideline for making research papers publicly and freely available .Web of Science and/or Scopus are approaching the same scientific impact and quality as subscription journals, particularly in biomedicine and for journals funded by APCs [Criticisms of OA, certainly in the past, have been the quality of the peer review and a lack of the prestige required by academics should they publish. The so-called article processing charge (APC), where the author might pay for publication, has also been a worry. An APC might be sought on either submission or acceptance. Yet such a worry seems strange. Very little in life is for free, and publishing is no exception. Even subscription-only journals must recoup their costs, although traditionally do so at the reader, rather than the author end of the spectrum. The costs are perhaps more hidden—maybe as part of an association’s membership fee, possibly a library subscription, or even requesting author payment for colour images. Indeed, some well-established subscription journals have chosen to charge their authors a paper-submission fee anyway, so there is a balancing process between subscription and OA journals presently underway. Already, results indicate that OA journals indexed in  by APCs .Authors’ perceptions of journals also change over time. Publications that were once specialist are now regarded as generalist. Indeed in those distant days when surgery of the musculoskeletal system formed part of a general surgeon’s repertoire, orthopaedic surgery itself was seen as a subspecialty area. Now it, too, has become subdivided into many subspecialties.Journal of Hip Preservation Surgery (JHPS), has been welcomed with open arms. It is testament to the success of a rapidly developing subspecialty field.The development of journals, numerous though they are, appears to parallel changes in medicine and surgery. New techniques emerge, some successful, some not. For those that succeed, research naturally amasses and journals surely follow. So it is no surprise that this new journal, JHPS makes perfect sense. Never has the timing been better for a new journal to appear, never has the choice of subspecialty been so apt and never has an interest been so keen.For many the journal’s arrival is not before time as the art—yes, let us call it an art—of hip preservation is developing a huge momentum. Position those two words, hip preservation, into an indexing system, and almost instantly 826 references will appear . Take 10JHPS. Remember that this journal was created for you, in many respects by you, evidence of the clear success of hip preservation.Welcome then to this, the first editorial for our new baby,


Several questions arise immediately when a new scientific journal emerges from the ground: why a new journal? What makes this journal special? Will the peer-review process be handled in a rigorous and fair manner? Will the journal be visible and accessible to all? How fast will the publication process be? What will be the cost of publishing in the journal?The neuroscientists and clinicians working in the field of cerebellar research and ataxiology are living in a fascinating period: the recognition by the scientific community of the specificity of their activity. Neglected for many years, the field of cerebellar ataxias is now evolving as a well-circumscribed neuroscience and clinical discipline. Disorders of the cerebellum present with specific symptoms and signs, have a specific natural course and particular mechanisms in terms of pathogenesis. It can be predicted that most university centers in the world will host an ataxia unit in a decade from now. Indeed, numerous clinical disorders affect the cerebellum at any stage of life, either in an acute or in a chronic way. Cerebellar operations spread from motor to cognitive and behavioral aspects , 2. WithCerebellum and Ataxias will consider not only scientific reports, but also clinical cases of the numerous forms of ataxias affecting children and adults. Case reports and clinical series, as well as reviews, commentaries and teaching images with a take-home message will be welcome.Cerebellum and Ataxias aims to publish very high quality articles in the field of cerebellar research and ataxias. The international group of experienced and renowned editors will ensure the rigor of the peer-review process. They have a strong personal experience in cerebellar research and ataxias. All of them are referees for the highest-ranking scientific journals in the world, and are thus very familiar with the peer-review process. They all know that critical and independent evaluation of the manuscripts is essential to building a journal that (a) will impact quickly on scientific literature, and (b) will be useful and meaningful to scientists and clinicians. Importantly, Cerebellum and Ataxias aims to interact closely and very fairly with authors, acting with efficiency and transparency [Cerebellum and Ataxias will be invaluable to students, scientists and clinicians having an interest in the cerebellum and diseases affecting its functions. We aim to build a journal where readers will find easily both practical and theoretical information impacting on practice, including therapies.sparency . Many Phhttp://www.biomedcentral.com/inst/). Authors are invited to check whether their institution is member, since the APC might be fully or partly covered. It is one of our goals to try to maintain the APC as affordable as possible.The open access model has a great advantage: the copyright of published articles belongs to authors. This model is associated with an article-processing charge (APC). Several funding agencies cover the APC. In addition, the list of institutions with BioMed Central membership is continuously growing (see Cerebellum and Ataxias will work very closely with its cousin journal The Cerebellum, whose editor Martijn Roelandse plays an instrumental role in its development. The two journals will be complementary. As such, in addition to direct submissions to Cerebellum & Ataxias, manuscripts originally reviewed by The Cerebellum can be transferred directly, should the authors request it, to Cerebellum & Ataxias. This will avoid delays in publication and the cumbersome task of resubmitting the same materials.We are extremely lucky to work with a top team at BioMed Central. We express our warmest thanks to the editorial staff, especially Nandita Quaderi and Elizabeth Bal, for their expertise, their high degree of professionalism and their continuous support. Cerebellum and Ataxias will face a challenge: to rapidly establish itself as an online platform allowing readers to get immediate access to the fast pace of changes in the field of cerebellar disorders. We aim to succeed in this challenge of building an ultrafast and meaningful source of information for the cerebellum community, and even more. On behalf of the Editorial Board, we now look forward to your submissions and feedback!


The Journal of Neuroscience and eNeuro, but many are puzzled about the difference between them and which journal would be more appropriate for a specific submission. While the journals will be evolving continually, and more differences are likely to appear over time, we would like to start to outline the similarities and differences between the two journals here.Most of our readers know that The Society for Neuroscience now publishes two journals, eNeuro is a fully open-access, on-line journal. eNeuro publishes articles upon acceptance and does not have formal volumes or issues. JNeurosci maintains a print edition that is published weekly, and the on-line issue parallels the print version. Articles in JNeurosci are available freely 6 months after publication, and authors can pay an additional fee to make their article open access immediately. The second difference is functional: eNeuro can be more experimental in the review process and try new methods to increase the rapidity and transparency of review.The first difference between the two Society for Neuroscience journals is structural: eNeuro and JNeurosci, but both journals have a procedure for coming to consensus, particularly when reviewers have disparate views about a manuscript. The review process at eNeuro is innovative and involves a double-blind procedure that maintains the anonymity of both the reviewers and the authors. Identifying information is removed before the review process, and authors are asked to eliminate information from the body of the manuscript that identifies the laboratory. After the manuscript is reviewed, reviewers are invited into a consensus review process mediated by the Reviewing Editor to make sure that the decision is reached as a full consensus between reviewers and editor. The Reviewing Editor then provides a review summary laying out exactly what changes or experiments would be needed for acceptance, or why the manuscript was rejected. The Journal of Neuroscience uses a tiered review process in which a Reviewing Editor invites the reviewers, evaluates the reviews, and makes a recommendation on whether or not the manuscript is acceptable for publication to one of the Senior Editors. The Senior Editors handle papers from overlapping subsets of the Reviewing Editors, providing a level of consistency for decisions on manuscripts across broader areas of neuroscience. Increasingly, the editors at JNeurosci are using a consultation process adapted from that used by eNeuro to reach consensus between reviewers with differing recommendations, or to consult among editors about manuscripts that are not sent out for formal review. The goal of these consultation processes is to provide a more rapid decision to the authors, as well as a more focused idea of what would be needed for a revised manuscript to be appropriate for publication.The system for peer review is different at JNeurosci focuses on mechanistic studies that provide in-depth understanding of novel findings in neuroscience. JNeurosci has no upper or lower limit for the number of figures, but the reviewers and editors are asked to identify the most significant findings of the manuscript and to evaluate how the findings will change thinking in the neuroscience field. eNeuro has no constraints on the length of the paper or the number of figures, and is interested in publishing novel, but not necessarily mechanistic, findings that are of potential broad interest. As part of the process of differentiating the role of the two journals, the Brief Communication format, which focuses on important new observations that do not yet have a mechanistic underpinning, has been moved from JNeurosci to eNeuro. Along with important novel observations in neuroscience, eNeuro encourages the submission of papers on new methods, commentaries, negative results, important replication, and failure to replicate studies. Importantly, eNeuro does not accept papers that would require >3 months of work to be appropriate for publication, so if many more experiments are required, the paper might be recommended for re-review as a more in depth study at either journal.At both journals, all editors are respected, working neuroscientists who publish articles in areas related to those they handle, and who, therefore, have firsthand knowledge publishing articles in neuroscience journals today. In terms of content, JNeurosci and eNeuro publish studies across the breadth of the neuroscience field and are focused on technical excellence, the format, review process, and types of articles published already differ substantially between the two journals. We anticipate that JNeurosci and eNeuro will continue to evolve, both by strategic decisions based on ongoing discussion between the editorial boards of the journals, and as a result of the natural evolution that occurs as authors choose where to submit their work. Both journals welcome input from the neuroscience community on how to provide options for publishing rigorous and insightful research, and on how these two Society for Neuroscience journals can best serve the field.Although


Cancer Imaging[At the launch of r Imaging on its nr Imaging, our newCancer Imaging was, and remains, the journal of the International Cancer Imaging Society (ICIS) [Cancer Imaging. These articles were made available to participants in the course as a hard copy and subsequently online to members of the Society. Since Fellows of ICIS are only admitted by nomination and review of their track record of scientific contribution to the imaging of cancer, these reviews were highly respected by virtue of the reputation of the authors within their field of expertise. Accordingly, they have generally been well cited by other authors, leading to Cancer Imaging achieving both Pubmed listing and a respectable impact factor for a small and specialised imaging journal. Indeed its impact factor was higher than a number of better-known and much longer-established general imaging journals. Understandably, we are keen not to degrade this element of our publication. Towards this end, we have engaged an editorial board that has a high level of expertise in various specific domains of cancer imaging. We will be inviting each of them to commission review articles on a periodical basis to update advances in their field. Our focus will also be to enlist current and emerging opinion leaders to look beyond what is known and currently available to where there are exciting developments that should be the focus of new research.When deciding how we are to move forward, like Janus, the Roman god of beginnings and transitions, it is also important that we look back on the successes and failures of the past. y (ICIS) . InitialCancer Imaging increased, there was an increasing interest for both members of ICIS and other imaging specialists to publish original research articles in the journal. Extending the journal content to include original research would also help fulfil the society’s aim to stimulate research in the study of human tumour behaviour as well as promoting education in oncological imaging. While the prior publisher provided an opportunity for authors to publish their research as open access publications by payment of a fee, many opted not to pursue this option. This perhaps led to some excellent articles being less widely read and less often cited than they might otherwise have been. It is a natural hope of researchers that their peers will appreciate their hard work, observations and experience and many see citations as tangible evidence of this. By aiming to only accept original research articles that are of a high standard and guaranteeing that once published, all articles will be freely available, we expect that these articles will be read and cited more often.As the reputation and visibility of As an entirely open access journal there are, of course, potential pitfalls. With a seemingly ever-expanding range of open access journals on ever more specialised subjects, one can wonder where medical publishing is heading and how this will impact the quality of the published literature. A case could be made that where a charge is levied on the author for publication of their article, there may be a financial incentive for the publisher to accept manuscripts regardless of quality whereas limiting publication to only the highest quality manuscripts is desirable when the costs of publishing are borne by the members of a society or a publisher relying on advertising revenue, which may be influenced by its impact factor. Indeed, in a recent celebrated example, a significant proportion of open access journals accepted a completely fabricated article. Therefore, convincing prospective authors to submit manuscripts with the kind of scientific rigour that will provide the journal with an ongoing reputation for quality and, in turn, enhance its impact factor, is a challenge for new entrants into the open access arena. Nevertheless, there are open access publishers that take the process of open access very seriously and it has been argued cogently that it is editorial process and not the manner in which publishing is financed that matters .Cancer Imaging. For example, there will be an expectation for numerical observations, even those as apparently straightforward as diagnostic sensitivity and specificity, to be reported along with 95% confidence limits. Oncological imaging is a rapidly developing field and the editorial board anticipates a need to develop new benchmarks for judging articles in novel areas of research. One such example is the emergence of imaging biomarkers, a field in which even a cursory review of the imaging literature reveals lack of clarity both the use of nomenclature and the requirements for biomarker qualification. Cancer Imaging aims to be a leader amongst imaging journals in this regard by holding strictly to established definitions for prognostic, predictive and surrogate end-point (response) descriptors for biomarkers [One of the great challenges for an editorial board, and particularly for an editor-in-chief, is to establish the benchmarks by which articles are judged. The noted statistician Martin Bland has argued that “bad statistics leads to bad research”. For the promotion of good research, the editors-in-chief will therefore seek to maintain statistical rigour for articles published in Cancer Imaging and hope that prospective authors will give us the opportunity to demonstrate that the new editorial board and publisher will be able to deliver decisions expeditiously and allow rapid publication of articles that meet our requirements. In recommending Cancer Imaging as a journal that prospective authors should consider as a vehicle for communicating their original research or to share their experience in the application of imaging techniques within oncology, it is important that we, as Editors-in-Chief, can reassure them that our focus is on the highest principles of medical publishing.All members of our new editorial board  are highFinally, it is the role of the Editor-in-Chief to determine the priorities regarding the type of research that should be published. With a plethora of imaging journals available to the would-be author or an imaging specialist trying to keep abreast of developments in their field, why would they choose Cancer Imaging? The first and most cogent reason it that it focuses on a disease that 1 in 2 males and 1 in 3 females will contract before the age of 85 and that represents the major cause of disability-adjusted life years lost in most developed countries. Additionally, imaging plays a pivotal role in the diagnosis of cancer but increasingly in the selection, planning and monitoring of cancer therapies. As healthcare costs are increasing, there are ever more stringent conditions for reimbursement being placed on investigations that are either perceived to be of high cost or that are being used more frequently than previously. If purely for the purposes of cost containment, this may be at the expense of patients’ rights to quality healthcare. Accordingly, we believe that we have a responsibility to cancer patients to promote the best possible investigations and to justify investment in imaging technologies to achieve optimal patient outcomes. However, we must also recognise that these need to be performed within the context of societal expectations regarding efficient use of fiscal resources. Therefore, we will strongly encourage manuscripts that address areas of clinical need in cancer management; that assess how imaging results impact management choices; or, that provide insights into cancer biology with prognostic and particularly, therapeutic implications. While there has been a long tradition of judging imaging tests by their sensitivity, specificity, negative and positive predictive values compared to a reference standard, such studies are often subject to selection bias in cancer populations. We will place a low priority on manuscripts that seek to compare one imaging test with another on these dimensions on the assumption that imaging tests are more often complementary than competing. We contend that more important questions relate to the sequencing of investigations and how best to use one or more tests to arrive at the optimal management plan in terms of both likelihood of efficacy and cost.Cancer Imaging.With these thoughts, we again welcome new and existing readers and authors to


Dear Sports Medicine and Exercise Researchers,Sports Medicine - Open, a new peer-reviewed, online-only, open-access journal designed to provide an avenue for publication of original research in the field of sports and exercise medicine.It is with great pleasure that Springer announces the launch of Sports Medicine - Open is a sister publication of Sports Medicine, which has been published since 1984 by Adis and is now part of the Springer journal portfolio. The original Sports Medicine journal has been a leading publication in sports and exercise medicine for 30 years and has consistently been one of the most highly ranked vehicles for publication of review articles in the field. This focus on reviews has left little scope for the inclusion of original research, although Sports Medicine regularly receives submissions of original research articles. The launch of a sister journal to Sports Medicine, publishing original research, aims to provide the first top-tier open-access avenue for these papers. Given the well-regarded Sports Medicine brand and the community of top-tier researchers that support the journal, we believe that Sports Medicine - Open will fill a gap for our target audience of sports medicine practitioners, physiotherapists, exercise scientists/physiologists, team doctors, and trainers.Sports Medicine - Open will have similar aims and scope to those of the original Sports Medicine journal but with a different, complementary focus. Specifically, Sports Medicine - Open aims to publish original medical and scientific research in the following areas:Sporting performance enhancementMedical syndromes associated with sport and exerciseInjury prevention and treatmentExercise for rehabilitation and healthThe application of physiological and biomechanical principles to specific sportsSports Medicine - Open will also consider publication of a smaller number of high-interest, definitive reviews. To ensure consistency and continuity of the editorial services associated with the original Sports Medicine journal, Sports Medicine - Open will be managed by an expanded team based on the editorial staff responsible for the original journal. Thus, authors will enjoy the benefits of publishing in a journal following the strong publishing practices of Sports Medicine, with the same editorial and publishing expertise and experience associated with that journal.Easy article submission, peer review, and tracking processesShorter time to publicationUnparalleled article visibility, worldwide reach and discoverabilityConvenient, global, online access of readers to their workSpringer publishes more than 2,200 journals, including over 500 in its Medicine Journal Collection. The successful integration of the Adis portfolio of journals into the Springer production systems and custom-built platforms  means that authors now have:Sports Medicine - Open journal from its inception.These benefits of the Springer organization will flow into the new Sports Medicine - Open, please submit your manuscript to us for an assessment. With the support of both the community of researchers who publish review articles in the original Sports Medicine journal, and the large number of other readers and followers of the journal, we believe that we can quickly establish a journal that provides a high-quality, open-access option for researchers in the field. We ask you, particularly if you are a ‘friend’ of the original Sports Medicine journal, to keep Sports Medicine - Open in mind when considering where to submit your original research.Therefore, our final message is a simple one: if you have an original research article in the sports and exercise field that you believe would be a candidate for publication in Yours sincerelyRoger Olney and Steve McMillan, Editorseditorial@sportsmedicine-open.com


Nature Communications celebrates its 10,000th published article and introduces changes to improve our service to authors and readers Nature Communications, our 10,000th published research article—an incredible achievement for a journal that is just over six years old. Together, these thousands of papers have received more than 97 million page views and have been quoted in over 22,000 news pieces according to Altmetrics. Needless to say, we are extremely grateful to our authors, for publishing some of their best work in our journal, and to our reviewers, without whom this success would not have been possible.A few weeks ago we celebrated a milestone at Along with the rapid growth, the journal has changed considerably over these years. We launched the journal with four editors, and at that time each of them had to oversee a wide range of subject areas given the breadth of our scope. Now, our editorial team is made up of more than 60 editors based in three offices across the world—in London, Shanghai and New York. The breadth of expertise and nationalities among our team is a vivid reflection of the diversity of content in our pages. To accommodate and thrive in this dynamic environment, we have adapted our internal structure and workflows to better cater to the needs of our authors. In our editorial department, we organized ourselves into small thematic teams of editors, led by team managers, that cover areas such as neuroscience, cancer research, fundamental physics, Earth sciences, organic chemistry and more. These editorial teams represent centres of expertise and ensure a consistent and expert handling of manuscripts across disciplines. As a result of the expansion of the editorial team, we have taken the decision to disband our Editorial Advisory Panel, who were a huge support in the early years of the journal. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all the scientists who contributed their time and expertise during their tenure on our panel.We aim to provide an excellent service to our authors, tailored to the needs of each of the research areas that we cover.Looking outward, we have now begun to adapt our web site to a more modern look. Initially designed for a journal with a small number of published papers and created at a time before smart tablet devices came on the market, our online presence had failed to catch up with the changing demands of our authors and readers. In the next few weeks, we will be moving the majority of our users to a new design, which is optimized for different device platforms and hopefully will improve the discoverability of our content.http://www.nature.com/ncomms/browse-subjects. Furthermore, our output now also appears on Nature's subject category pages at http://www.nature.com/subjects, along with that of our sister journals. These pages allow cross-journal subject browsing and provide readers with the option of subscribing to subject-specific RSS feeds of cross-journal output.The benefit of an online-only journal is that we can publish any paper fulfilling our editorial criteria, irrespective of other limiting factors such as page budgets, but this raises important problems of content discovery. Ours is a large journal, which published 3,193 articles in 2015 alone, and it is of utmost importance for us that each and every published paper receives the online attention that it deserves, and can be accessed and discovered by as many readers as possible. To improve the discoverability of our content, we now provide a more structured way to browse our papers by subject area at In addition, we are also aiming to highlight some of our best content on our web site. An example is the featured image, which now stretches across the top part of the web page. Going forward, we welcome suitable suggestions from authors of our newly accepted papers to feature on this prominent slot of our home page.We hope you like our new face online and these initiatives. In particular, we welcome feedback so that we can continue to improve our service to you—reader, reviewer and author—and to increase the impact our papers make to science and society at large.Published online: 18 Aug 2016


Colombian journals need to be characterized as having an editorial guideline oriented towards achieving international standards and have the best conditions to be accepted in databases, repositories, and bibliometric indices. Deployment of proposals should encompass aspects of policy research, training and technology necessary to induce a significant change in the diffusion and dissemination of knowledge. Open access principles, the use of open source, protection of intellectual property and recognition of the formation of the editor must be the basis of a policy of national publications.The journals need to implement a medium-term strategy to improve the diffusion of national scientific production. These changes should aim to implement high-quality editorial processes, and article level metrics that measure the usage and impact of individual scholarly activities published in the country. The national bibliographic database, Publindex should encourage the use of Open Source platform for publishing Open Access Research Articles. Peer-reviewed academic journals will strengthen because these web tools will allow optimization of the editorial workflow from the receipt of the manuscript to its publication. The complexity of the editorial processes along with the demand of editing standards may encourage the use of the open-source platform   The use of Digital Object Identifiers, (DOI) Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors and Publishers of Ethics Committee Publications, COPE  The adhesion and planned implementation, with clear goals of  Finally, reactions, protests, fear and criticism in anticipation of more competitive models can affect scientific journals, institutions and researchers when changes are made to appear. A proposal to define a policy that is consistent with the needs of everyone involved should adhere to the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment,DORA It is necessary that Colciencias and Colombian universities adhere to this initiative since it will be the roadmap for the actions required to improving the quality of national publications. The commitment of our researchers and journals will define the harmony for the modernization of the editorial process and, above all, aspire to become a model for other institutions and researchers. These actions would fulfill the mission of the University, which is transforming society.


Through funding agency and publisher policies, an increasing proportion of the health sciences literature is being made open access. Such an increase in access raises questions about the awareness and potential utilization of this literature by those working in health fields.N=336) and public health non-governmental organization (NGO) staff (N=92) were provided with relatively complete access to the research literature indexed in PubMed, as well as access to the point-of-care service UpToDate, for up to one year, with their usage monitored through the tracking of web-log data. The physicians also participated in a one-month trial of relatively complete or limited access.A sample of physicians  increasing open access to research, (b) improving awareness of and preparation for this access, and (c) adjusting public and open access policies to maximize the extent of potential access, through reduction in embargo periods and access to pre-policy literature. Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), and Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP); and academic publishers offering open access titles, from Springer and Elsevier to Oxford University Press [In 2008, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) adopted a Public Access Policy that requires recipients of NIH research funding to make all resulting peer-reviewed journal articles freely available online within a year of publication. The NIH Public Access Policy is part of a global trend toward public or open access in scholarly publishing. This trend involves not only new open access policies adopted by research funding agencies, including the NIH, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Wellcome Trust, and Gates Foundation. It also comprises open access publishers, such as Public Library of Science (PLOS) and BioMed Central; journals providing full or partial open access, including ty Press . While sAs a policy leader and major funder of health research, the NIH has, through its Public Access Policy, placed health literature at the forefront of the move toward open access to research. As well, the NIH allows researchers to budget as needed for the Article Processing Charges that apply to many open access journals in the medical and public health fields. To assess the potential public implications of this growing access, this study examines the extent to which two groups working in the field of health—physicians and public health non-profit, non-governmental organization (NGO) staff—use this literature as part of their professional practice when they have free access to it. Provided with relatively complete online access to research literature indexed in PubMed for up to a year through a study web portal, participants’ research access was tracked, including the publication status of articles accessed, in terms of two dimensions of the NIH policy’s implementation timeframe: 1) the NIH policy’s initial 12-month embargo period (during which those subject to the policy are not required to provide public access for up to 12 months after publication) and 2) the period prior to the policy’s adoption and implementation. Though specific timeframes differ, variable constraints on research article access across publication dates—from the most recent to older articles—are common to many open access policies. The study also considers participants’ prior awareness of the NIH Public Access Policy, if any.The NIH policy is intended “to advance science and improve human health” , with thThis study contributes to a much needed body of knowledge, given that a “dearth of research” remains on the use and value of public access to peer-reviewed research articles . ResearcThe study utilizes 1) quantitative analysis of web-log data on all participants’ usage of the study web portal to access research resources; and 2) qualitative data from surveys and/or interviews regarding research practices, tailored to the study’s two principal participant groups . In this paper, we report on the quantitative analysis of web-log data and its overarching policy implications, as well as participants’ policy awareness. We will examine qualitative material on participants’ research uses and practices in future papers, with attention to the particularities of the participant groups studied and to broader issues raised by participant discussions of research challenges and priorities. The Stanford University Institutional Review Board approved this study and participants consented to participate through the study’s portal (described below).The study examines the use of research by two participant groups, who provide an opportunity to assess open access policies on a wide spectrum of health practice, ranging from patient care to public health advocacy and policy change. The study sought two groups for whom research is a potentially relevant tool in carrying out their professional mandates to promote health, including preventative medicine and the advancement of health equity.From March 2013 through June 2013, we enrolled subjects in the study’s two arms: 1) physicians practicing in the United States (U.S.) and 2) public health non-profit NGO staff in the U.S. Recruitment materials advertised free access to the Stanford University Library’s online research resources. Physician participants were told that the study would provide them with 11 months of free access to the Library’s entire collection of biomedical research and one month of limited access. NGO participants were informed that they would receive 12 months of complete access. All participants were informed that their access to this research literature would be recorded throughout the study.We recruited 336 physicians via professional organizations, list-servs, and social media . Physicians could enroll immediately at any time using a weblink included in all communications. Upon registration, we verified the physicians’ licensure through the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ National Plan and Provider Enumeration System. Among these participants, 185 (55.1%) reported having had prior access to a point-of-care research summary subscription service, such as UpToDate and DynaMed. As well, 29 (8.6%) had email addresses ending in.edu, indicating an educational affiliation with potential access to research articles through an academic institution, although this did not prove to be statistically significant factor in participant’s research article views.We recruited 92 public health participants from 46 organizations by emailing U.S.-based non-profit NGOs addressing an array of public health issues, from environmental health and homelessness to primary care and patient advocacy. Recruitment sought to include organizations working at a range of levels, from those focused on local communities to those oriented toward municipal, regional, state, national, and, occasionally, international scales. Hence study participants came from both community-based organizations (CBOs) and national research and advocacy organizations. Of the 65 public health NGO staff that completed online surveys, 47 (72.3%) reported having previously used PubMed in their work.Participants registered for the study via a custom web portal, created by Stanford software developers . The porA proxy server recorded participants’ portal sessions in a standard web-log format, and a relational database housed the log data. All session data, including timestamps, unique session strings, search terms, requested resources (identified by PMIDs), referring pages, and IP addresses, were recorded. Data collection began whenever a participant clicked into the portal. The record includes clicks to view research abstracts, research articles, and UpToDate entries. Abstracts and research articles could be accessed through PubMed or UpToDate. An article’s PMID number enabled identification of year of publication, publication type, journal title, article title, and PubMed Central (open access) status. Multiple clicks by a participant on the same resource within a 30-minute session counted that resource view only once. Articles that were already open access, independent of our study enabling Stanford Library access, were determined by checking for their inclusion in PubMed Central (PMC), PubMed’s free full-text subset, within 24 hours of participant article access.N = 336) to two groups. In the first month, MD1 (n = 168) had complete library access; MD2 (n = 168) acted as a control, with library access limited to UpToDate. While MD2 participants could click to view articles, they only saw those that were currently open access . This arrangement was reversed for MD1 and MD2 in month 12 . Participants were not initially informed of their group, though the consent form detailed the study design. Participants in both groups were notified after their first month as to which group they had been assigned and that everyone at that point had full access to journal articles available through Stanford University Library. Upon completion of the online component of the study, we conducted semi-structured phone interviews, approximately 30 to 60 minutes in length, with 38 physicians about their priorities and use of journal articles in clinical, research and other professional practices, as well as their awareness of the NIH Public Access Policy and prior PubMed use.To establish whether complete access affected research use and how such use related to the use of UpToDate by physicians, a trial design was introduced by randomly assigning the physicians  Participants’ awareness of the NIH Public Access Policy; 2) Extent of participants’ research article access during study; 3) Publication dates and access rights of research articles viewed; and 4) Physicians research article and UpToDate access during treatment and control periods. When interpreting the data, it is crucial to keep in mind the differences in sample size and fields of practice of the participant groups studied. For that reason, the results for MDs and for NGO staff are reported separately.This study assumes that greater public awareness of this new stream of research access, and similar open access policies, is likely to correlate with greater research investigation and use that is important to professional practice in an array of contexts.Though this study began more than six years after the adoption of the NIH Policy in April 2008, the majority of all participants had never heard of the policy and its potential relevance in meeting their research needs .Although 336 physicians signed up at the study’s web portal to participate, only 115 (34.2%) viewed one or more research articles through the portal over the course of the 11 months of full access to the literature, while 145 (43.2%) used the portal without viewing any research articles, and 76 (22.6%) did not use the portal after registering . PhysiciThe cumulative percentage of article views by participant illustrates the relative distribution of light to heavy users among physicians with 11 months of access and public health NGO staff with 12 months of access .Among the public health NGO staff, the majority or 62 (67.4%) viewed one or more research articles during their 12 months of access, while 16 (17.4%) never accessed the site. Among the reasons for non-use of the portal, three NGO staff were associated with an organization that dissolved shortly after their registration to the web portal. Other reasons for low or non-use include parallels with reasons given by physicians, as well as changed work plans.The 115 physicians who viewed one or more research article, viewed 5,984 articles in total, with a mean of 52 articles per physician over 11 months, working out to 1.2 articles per week on average . The 62 Over the course of the study, the monthly total of article views varied up and down .While the physicians viewed fewer articles on average and cumulatively than the NGO staff, physician use was marked by outlying heavy users in every month but the 5th and 11th  and public health NGO staff , who viewed at least one article, the majority saw less than 20 articles over the course of the study. Approximately 10% (n = 17) of the physicians and 18% (n = 14) of public health NGO staff viewed over 100 articles. Among the journals with the most article views, the physicians  and somewhat less by the public health NGO staff (42.4%) were viewed within 12 months of being published . In addiNonetheless, a number of the articles viewed within 12 months of publication were already open access, whether from publishers depositing articles in PMC early or due to being published in open access journals. Here, 20.8% of the articles viewed in this 12-month period by physicians and 32.2% of those viewed by public health NGO staff were open access . Similarp<0.001). The two most active public health NGO organizations in article views subsequently reported, when queried by email, that they had no greater awareness of their higher use of open access articles nor had they sought out open access articles specifically.Among the participants in this study, the public health NGO staff viewed a higher proportion of open access articles (38.9%), compared with physicians (22.59%) (Chi-square test t-test) than when they only had partial access (MD1 in month 12 and MD2 in month 1), which was limited to articles that were already open access , those who looked at articles viewed significantly more abstracts and articles (using a paired n access . Howevern access .SD = 7.5) over the 11 months, which is significantly more (p = 0.027) than those who graduated after 1991 and who accessed approximately 12 articles (SD = 5.7) over the same period.Neither gender nor having had prior access to DynaMed or UpToDate significantly affected physicians’ viewing of research articles over the course of the study. However, on average, physicians who graduated prior to 1990 accessed approximately 32 articles (Given that the majority of both physicians (76%) and public health NGO staff (66.2%) prior to participating in the study had not heard of the NIH Public Access Policy or were uncertain about its mandates, there is a clear need and opportunity for the NIH and other federal agencies to better publicize and explain public access policies. This seems especially true given that this study took place approximately six years after the NIH policy’s adoption. The Public Access Policy opens up to the public some 90,000 new health articles each year , and it More effective and targeted publicity of the NIH Public Access Policy would help make the most of the policy in its current form, a theme addressed in the policy literature . It woulOur findings attest to how, for a portion of the participants, their research interests were not satisfied by article abstracts alone nor, in the case of the physicians, by, in addition, a clinical summary service such as UpToDate. On average, a third of the physicians viewed research a little more frequently than once a week, with those who graduated prior to 1990 viewing significantly more articles than those with a more recent graduation date, while two-thirds of the public health NGO staff viewed more than three articles a week. While a click to view an article does not necessarily mean that an article was read, it does provide evidence of interest in full-text article access among a sizeable portion of each of these two groups, interest that extended across the year of access. The results of the trial in months one and 12 for the physicians also suggest that complete access leads to more viewing of research than current partial access and that this additional viewing of the research does not take away from the time given to consulting UpToDate but is supplementing that service. In addition, NGO participants’ spike in research use in the last month may be due to “warehousing” of articles for future use. Indeed, some participants mentioned that they intended to compile article libraries on topics relevant to their organization’s work, suggesting the longer-term value of full-text research access to organizational development.In assessing web-log data, it is also important to consider the diverse tasks and wide variation in work cycles that may shape research use frequencies. Research access for potentially infrequent tasks—such as developing or updating patient or public policy guidelines, preparing testimony for public hearings, or grant writing—may nonetheless matter greatly to the quality and outcomes of the work. Sporadic use, from the standpoint of third-party evaluations of web-log data, does not necessarily mean insignificant use.The participants in this study demonstrated the potential importance of public access to a wide range of research, in terms of publication date. An unfortunate shortcoming of the current NIH Public Access Policy is that it neglects to address public access to articles that were published prior to the policy. Between a fifth and a quarter of the articles viewed were published prior to the policy’s adoption in 2008. Access to older biomedical and public health articles can enable publics to read and evaluate “classic articles” , includimaximum embargo, some publishers allow for reduced periods, while others make 12 months their policy: “All Elsevier proprietary journals, where the author has identified themselves as being NIH funded, will submit the accepted author manuscript on behalf of the author, to PMC to be made publicly available 12 months after final publication” [Similarly, this study has relevance for assessing the potential implications of initial embargo periods in policies such as the NIH Public Access Policy. Nearly half of all articles viewed by participants would be subject to the policy’s maximum embargo of 12 months, if the research were funded by the NIH. Our results show a reduction (4.9% for MDs and 15.3% for NGOs) in the proportion of open access articles viewed in the initial 12-month period (compared to the period from 2008 to within 12 months of viewing). This suggests that embargos are having an effect at this point on what is publicly available. While the NIH states that 12 months is the ication” .tailor its plan as necessary to address the objectives articulated in this memorandum, as well as the challenges and public interests that are unique to each field and mission combination”  [The policy implications of these findings on how the embargo period relates to physician and public health NGO staff use of the literature go beyond the NIH Public Access Policy. The 12-month embargo period was also included in the U.S. government’s most recent policy statement to all federal agencies on “Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research,” in a 2013 memorandum issued by the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Significantly, this recent policy statement includes a stipulation that an agency may make exceptions to the maximum 12-month embargo period, to “s added) . In addis added) . ResearcAlso important are mechanisms for encouraging compliance with open access policies, including mandates such as the NIH policy. In 2012, it was reported that compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy had reached 82% . At thatEnvironmental Health Perspectives  did not appear on the physicians top-twenty list, while the NGOs viewed articles in the open access British Medical Journal (BMJ) and PLOS ONE more frequently than physicians.This study’s finding that NGO participants’ view a greater proportion of open access articles, compared with that of physicians, appears to be due to the journals they consulted. For example, among the top twenty journals they viewed, Looking ahead, studies could investigate variations in open access publishing across health topics and professional fields, for a more fine-grained analysis of health research availability. The differential use of open access research by the two populations, and among the physicians based on year of graduation, in this study suggests the relevance of further investigations on needs, interests, and usage of research. In addition, research into the distinct and overlapping bodies of literature accessed by different professional communities via larger indices such as PubMed could suggest the challenges as well as possibilities for joint learning initiatives between the clinical medical and public health fields, as recommended by the Institute of Medicine  and otheThis study must be considered within the context of its limitations. As this study provided no formal training or orientation to physicians or the majority of public health participants, searches performed with unfamiliar research resources may result in difficulty in finding relevant research. Both the study’s web portal and the research resources it featured (PubMed and UpToDate) may have presented learning curves and/or technical challenges to participants, interfering with research access and use. Though designed to be easy to use and access, it did require participants to have Internet access and keep the study informed of their current email addresses and access capabilities. Over the course of the year-long study, some participants and organizations experienced staff turnover that in turn impinged on study participation.The web-oriented aspects of the study also present potential limitations. The extensive use of social media for recruitment of physicians creates possible bias toward attracting individuals already reliant on and comfortable using technology. Additionally, social media recruitment might under-recruit older participants or participants from regions reported to lack consistent access to technology ; howeverIn light of the growing proportion of the literature that is publicly available, including via funding agency and publisher policies, these study findings underscore the potential utilization of open access to research by publics working to advance health through clinical medicine and the public health field, including the NGO sector. This study demonstrates that given a high level of research access and an awareness of that access, a sizeable portion of the physicians and public health NGO staff who participated in this study viewed full-text articles. Such article access facilitates fuller engagement with research developments across fields. Our findings also bear on the structure and implementation of the NIH Public Access Policy and similar initiatives. Based on the high proportion of articles accessed that had been published within the prior 12 months, it is clear that such embargoes represent a substantial potential impediment to research access. Together, these findings suggest the need for transformed models of public access to research, rather than inconsistent and occasional access. We trust that these results will encourage further tuning of policies, as well as the training and education of students in related professions in the utilization of the coming access. Given the demonstrable public value and public right to more fully benefit from this federally funded research, it is vital that funding agencies, legislators, researchers and publishers continue to explore ways of extending access to research that can serve the public good.Better identification of policy stakeholders, coupled with tailored, pro-active leveraging of communications media, are both crucial to more effectively publicizing the NIH Public Access Policy. For example, studies of research dissemination by the public health field have called for “the need to change the way such information is disseminated so that it reaches different users in the most appropriate way,” including through “previous identification of the audience and taking advantage of all channels of communication to assure that the information is communicated and marketed—not merely disseminated—to those who need to know” . LikewisS1 Screenshot(TIF)Click here for additional data file.