Open peer review (OPR) is a cornerstone of the emergent Open Science agenda. Yet to date no large-scale survey of attitudes towards OPR amongst academic editors, authors, reviewers and publishers has been undertaken. This paper presents the findings of an online survey, conducted for the OpenAIRE2020 project during September and October 2016, that sought to bridge this information gap in order to aid the development of appropriate OPR approaches by providing evidence about attitudes towards and levels of experience with OPR. The results of this cross-disciplinary survey, which received 3,062 full responses, show the majority (60.3%) of respondents to be believe that OPR as a general concept should be mainstream scholarly practice . Respondents were also in favour of other areas of Open Science, like Open Access (88.2%) and Open Data (80.3%). Among respondents we observed high levels of experience with OPR, with three out of four (76.2%) reporting having taken part in an OPR process as author, reviewer or editor. There were also high levels of support for most of the traits of OPR, particularly open interaction, open reports and final-version commenting. Respondents were against opening reviewer identities to authors, however, with more than half believing it would make peer review worse. Overall satisfaction with the peer review system used by scholarly journals seems to strongly vary across disciplines. Taken together, these findings are very encouraging for OPR’s prospects for moving mainstream but indicate that due care must be taken to avoid a “one-size fits all” solution and to tailor such systems to differing  contexts. OPR is an evolving phenomenon and hence future studies are to be encouraged, especially to further explore differences between disciplines and monitor the evolution of attitudes. Traditional peer review is generally 1) anonymous, with either the reviewer unknown to the author (single-blind review) or both author and reviewer unknown to each other (double-blind review); (2) selective, with reviewers selected by editors; and (3) confidential, with neither the review process nor the reviews themselves made public. This model has long been recognized to have significant flaws, accused of being unreliable   anonymou, taking In response to these criticisms, a wide variety of changes to peer review have been suggested . AmOpen identities: Authors and reviewers are aware of each other’s identityOpen reports: Review reports are published alongside the relevant article.Open participation: The wider community are able to contribute to the review process.Open interaction: Direct reciprocal discussion between author(s) and reviewers, and/or between reviewers, is allowed and encouraged.Open pre-review manuscripts: Manuscripts are made immediately available  in advance of any formal peer review procedures.Open final-version commenting: Review or commenting on final “version of record” publications.Open platforms: Review is de-coupled from publishing in that it is facilitated by a different organizational entity than the venue of publication.These elements are often complementary, and can be combined in various ways to produce a broad continuum of ‘openness’ in OPR. Each of these distinct traits are theorized to address one or more of the shortcomings listed above, but no trait is claimed to address all of them and sometimes their aims may be in conflict. Following , we can Unreliability and inconsistency:Open identities and open reports are theorized to lead to better reviews, as the thought of having their name publicly connected to a work or seeing their review published encourages reviewers to be more thorough. Open participation and open final-version commenting could improve the reliability of peer review by increasing the number of potential reviewers, especially from different disciplinary backgrounds . Some evidence suggests that open interaction between reviewers and authors could lead to improved reviewing accuracy.Delay and expense:Open pre-review manuscripts sharply reduce the time before research is first publicly available. Open platforms can help overcome the “waterfall” problem, where individual articles go through multiple cycles of review and rejection at different journals. In principle, open participation could reduce the need for editorial mediation in finding reviewers, but in practice any reduction of costs is questionable, as open participation can fail to attract reviewers and in any case, editorial mediation will continue to be necessary to facilitate discussion and arbitrate disputes. Open identities and open reports might actually exacerbate problems of delay and expense, as it seems invited reviewers are currently less inclined to review under such circumstances. Finally, open interaction–by necessitating more back and forth between reviewers and authors, and more editorial mediation–might lead to longer reviewing times.Lack of accountability and risks of subversion:Open identities and reports can increase accountability through increased transparency and by making any conflicts of interest more immediately apparent to authors and future readers. Open participation could overcome problems associated with editorial selection of reviewers . However, in opening up participation to the wider community, it might actually increase engagement by those with conflicts of interest. Where anonymity is possible, this may be particularly problematic. Moreover, lack of anonymity for reviewers in open identities review might subvert the process by discouraging reviewers from making strong criticisms, especially against higher-status colleagues.Social and publication biases:Open reports adds another layer of quality assurance, allowing the wider community to scrutinize reviews to examine decision-making processes. However, open identities removes anonymity conditions for reviewers (single-blind) or authors and reviewers (double-blind) which are traditionally in place to counteract social biases .Lack of incentives:Open reports linked to open identities enable higher visibility for peer review activities, allowing review work to be cited in other publications and in career development activities linked to promotion and tenure. Open participation could in principle increase incentives to peer review by enabling reviewers to themselves select the works that they consider themselves qualified to judge; in practice, however, experience to date suggests that reviewers are less likely to review under this condition.Wastefulness:Open reports make currently invisible but potentially useful scholarly information available for re-use, as well as providing young researchers a guide  to help them as they begin to do peer review themselves.The ideas behind OPR have been around since at least the mid-1970s , and theA crucial part of answering these questions is to adequately gauge the views of authors, reviewers and editors involved in scholarly publishing. This unfortunately currently constitutes an information gap, with a lack of research detailing stakeholders’ attitudes towards these different systems. What are current levels of awareness of various forms of OPR? What do editors, authors and reviewers actually want? What differences exist in attitudes between disciplines? What are the barriers that stand in the way of the uptake of such systems? What are the current levels of experience amongst stakeholders with OPR? To date no systematic analysis of these questions has been undertaken.http://openaire.eu) is a socio-technical digital infrastructure that brings together more than 50 institutions and organisations to foster the social and technical links that enable Open Science in Europe and beyond. In addition to operating an Open Access/Open Science support, outreach and advocacy network of 33 National Open Access Desks (NOADs) across Europe, OpenAIRE serves the public interest by increasing the visibility of research outputs and linking digital entities to enable navigation. OpenAIRE also undertakes a range of research and development activities to further the evolution of scholarly communications towards openness, transparency and interoperability. As part of these latter activities, between 8th September and 7th October 2016, OpenAIRE undertook a survey designed to aid the development of appropriate OPR approaches by providing evidence about attitudes towards and levels of experience with OPR amongst authors, editors and reviewers. We here present the findings of this research.OpenAIRE  , for exaGiven that most studies have been undertaken by publishers, it is perhaps understandable that incentivising and motivating reviewers has been a major feature of these surveys. Across studies, scholars gave their main reason for reviewing as being part of a reciprocal critical community , 23, 24.Previous studies suggest moderate but growing support for OPR. Mark Ware asked respondents to state their preferred option amongst four kinds of review, including open identities and post-publication review. At that time, he found a strong preference for double-blind review (56%), followed by single-blind (25%), with only 13% preferring open identities and 5% post-publication review. Indeed, many reviewers (47%) claimed open identities would make them less likely to review for a journal . Sense AHowever, Taylor & Francis Group’s 2015 survey of 7438 researchers shows stakeholders becoming a little more “open” to OPR. It found that views of open identities (“open”), open identities plus open reports (“open and published”) and open pre-review manuscripts (“post-publication review”) were quite similar, often rated between 5 and 6 out of 10. Editors in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) were less supportive than those in science, technology and medicine (STM) subjects, and editors and reviewers were less supportive than authors. Fewer than half of respondents said that publishing their reports or making identities open would incentivize them to review. The strongest deterrents were publishing the reviewer’s report, with anonymous publication only marginally less of a deterrent than publishing their named report .Running an updated survey for the Publishing Research Consortium in 2015, Ware found that attitudes towards OPR were changing and that support had grown such that 50–70% of researchers were either supportive of or neutral towards open identities review, with 35–55% also holding positive/neutral opinions of also publishing review reports. Ware noted that these levels of acceptance of open identities were in line with the experiences of journals offering reviewers the choice to opt into open identities review systems .A very recent Elsevier survey of authors engaged in a pilot study of publishing review reports  has found that of reviewers who accepted the invitation to review and publish reports, 76% said that open reports had no effect on the wording of their review. Of those who declined, the vast majority (91%) said their decision was not influenced by the open review. A third of editors involved in the pilot said they identified improvements in the overall quality of the review reports .Finally, Nicholson and Alperin’s small survey (n = 79) of self-selected participants found that more than 75% of respondents believed that it would take no extra effort or only moderate extra effort to make their peer reviews suitable for public posting. Amongst their key motivations for doing so would be if tenure/promotion committees explicitly valued them and if their peers also published theirs .www.soscisurvey.de). Questions for the survey were developed through a review of the literature, discussion and feedback gained during the OpenAIRE Workshop “Open Peer Review—Models Benefits and Limitations” which took place in Göttingen, Germany on 7 June 2016  to see what kinds of things are acceptable to request as a reviewer and how detailed my review should be” .Three out of five, meanwhile, think that publishing reports will increase review quality. This perception is interesting, but whether or not open reports actually lead to improvements in review quality remains an open question. What evidence there is on this question, is inconclusive: van Rooyen et al.’s 2010 empirical study of the reviews themselves , found nJust over half of the respondents think allowing the wider community to contribute to the review process will improve peer review, versus 28% who believe it will make it worse. Similar numbers agreed that that “close circles of reviewers and editors hold back innovative research” (47%) and that all those with sufficient knowledge should be able to review, regardless of background (45%). This last point divided opinions sharply, however, with almost as many (38%) expressing disagreement. This sharp division of opinions is reflective of strong beliefs on both sides, with strong opposition between those who think opening participation can resolve possible conflicts associated with editorial selection of reviewers  and possibly improve the reliability of peer review by increasing the number of reviewers on the one hand, and on the other, those who see open participation as opening the gates to unqualified reviewers whose credentials and motives remain opaque. Perhaps the most fundamental question for open participation remains, however, whether people will take it upon themselves to review voluntarily. Our respondents agreed heavily (85%) with the commonsense proposition that reviewers are more likely to review if they are invited. As one respondent commented: “My skepticism centres around the fact that Open Peer review sounds to me like open comments on blogs newspapers etc. which generally attract a set of commenters who enjoy commenting not necessarily commenters who are qualified to comment” .Our respondents were heavily in favour of open interaction–peer review where direct reciprocal discussion between author(s) and reviewers, and/or between reviewers, is allowed and encouraged–with more than two thirds of respondents believing it will improve peer review and a scant 16% thinking it will make it worse. Faced with the statement that “increased interaction between authors and reviewers will result in better publications”, respondents were equally emphatic in their approbation: more than three quarters agreed, while fewer than one in ten disagreed. Given that in comparison to some other more radical elements of OPR, open interaction presents a fairly incremental change, this level of support suggests that this is presently a likely route for journals wishing to experiment with “open” peer review processes. However, as a reviewer of this paper has helpfully pointed out, although such systems might be welcomed by researchers, such interactivity would first need to be supported technologically by manuscript-handling platforms, but that functionality will only be developed when a critical mass of journals request it. Moreover, journals may be reticent as they fear such interactivity may increase the time and editorial overhead required for peer-review.should be made available in this way, 45% were against while less than a third (32%) were in favour. This view seems to be consistent across all research disciplines. A majority from the social sciences (54.5%), mathematics and statistics (62.1%), law and political sciences (60%), computer sciences / IT (60.8%) and other disciplines (52%) believe open manuscripts would improve peer review, while the disciplines that believe it would actually make peer review worse are agriculture and food sciences (62.8%) and health sciences (51.4%), chemistry (43.4%). Hence, although the plurality of respondents seepotential for improving peer review through open pre-review manuscripts, the plurality is nonetheless against actually making manuscripts openly available. That the results should be reversed in this way is somewhat puzzling, but probably suggests that while respondents saw the advantages of open manuscripts for peer review, they believed that advantage to be outweighed by other disadvantages, such as the dilution of the literature, e.g., “not sure about making papers available before peer review. What if the paper contains important mistakes but is already read by a large number of people before the reviews are made? [The] [r]eview process is also a filter to prevent bad quality papers to “pollute” the bibliographical research of scientists” . Another possible concern was that open pre-review manuscripts lead to the danger of being “scooped” . However, others argued that immediate publication actually protects against scooping .Respondents were almost evenly split on the question of whether manuscripts being made immediately available  in advance of any formal peer review procedures would improve peer review, with 36% against and 41% in favour. However, on the question of whether pre-review manuscripts Respondents were strongly in favour of allowing readers to review or comment on final “version of record” publications via comment sections, blog articles, online journal clubs or social media, with 55% for and just 16% against. But despite this, only a minority considers such commenting to be a formal part of peer review (29% agreeing and 51% disagreeing). This suggests that respondents still see peer review as a publication sub-process, with a core aim being to vet and improve manuscripts for publication, rather than as an ongoing phenomenon which continues after publication.Respondents tended to be more in favour than not of the proposition that open platforms  would improve peer review. However, it must be noted that more than half of all those who responded to this question either proclaimed themselves neutral (23.8%) or said they didn’t know (27.7%), indicating that this element is either poorly understood, or that respondents found its effects difficult to judge.This is perhaps reflective of the fact that ‘open platforms’ is a fringe OPR trait , which iThe results of this cross-disciplinary survey, which received 3,062 full responses, shows largely positive, but varied, attitudes towards OPR amongst authors, reviewers and editors. The majority (60.3%) of respondents believe that OPR as a general concept should be mainstream scholarly practice , as they also are for other areas of Open Science, like Open Access and Open Data. Younger generations were particularly in favour. We also observe surprisingly high levels of experience with OPR amongst our sample: three out of four (76.2%) of our respondents said that they had they had taken part in an OPR process as either author or reviewer or editor .There were high levels of support for most of the traits of OPR, particularly open interaction, open reports and final version-commenting. The high level of support for open interaction between reviewers and authors, a nominally secondary trait of OPR, should be investigated further. As this is, in some respects, an incremental change to peer review processes, this might be the first option for those journals looking to experiment with aspects of OPR.However, there seems to be a rather strong pushback against open identities, with 50.8% (1461 of 2878 respondents who expressed an opinion) believing that open identities will make peer review either worse or much worse. It is remarkable that open identities be the least favoured trait, as it is the OPR trait most commonly included in definitions (present in 110 of 122 definitions studied). Respondents see value in open identities but believe it could potentially open particularly younger researchers to consequences from aggrieved authors or lead to the dilution of criticism. Empirical research is needed to establish whether these concerns are legitimate—what is the prevalence of such reprisals from aggrieved authors? Are the criticisms in peer reviews conducted under open identities actually any more or less strong? In the meantime, one recommendation may be for those publishing outlets interested in implementing open identities to make it optional so that reviewers are able to choose whether or not to make their identities open. Taken together, these findings are very encouraging for OPR’s prospects for moving mainstream. However, more research is needed. OPR is an evolving phenomenon and hence future studies are to be encouraged, especially to further explore differences between disciplines and monitor the evolution of attitudes. Specific areas for further investigation into attitudes to OPR include:Are these findings of levels of experience with and attitudes towards OPR consistent across studies?Which specific OPR systems  do users most prefer?What measures might further incentivize the uptake of OPR?How fixed are attitudes to the various facets of OPR and how might they be changed?What are attitudes to OPR for research outputs other than journal articles ?How have attitudes changed over time? As OPR gains familiarity amongst researchers and is further adopted in scholarly publishing, do attitudes towards specific elements like open identities change? In which ways?To what extent are attitudes and practices regarding OPR consistent? What factors influence any discrepancies?


The Open Science Prize was established with the following objectives: first, to encourage the crowdsourcing of open data to make breakthroughs that are of biomedical significance; second, to illustrate that funders can indeed work together when scientific interests are aligned; and finally, to encourage international collaboration between investigators with the intent of achieving important innovations that would not be possible otherwise. The process for running the competition and the successes and challenges that arose are presented. Open data and open science can confer benefits to researchers, including increases in citation, media attention, and potential collaborations . While oTo encourage international partnerships in leveraging open research data, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Wellcome Trust (WT), and Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) partnered on funding the Open Science Prize (OSP). The importance of open data and open science for the NIH is reflected in its strategic plan , which shttps://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2015/10/20/2015-26392/announcement-of-requirements-and-registration-for-the-open-science-prize). The prize was open to any solution that exhibited the benefits of making research outputs open and usable and demonstrated new and innovative ways of enabling this. For NIH, the America Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science Reauthorization Act of 2010  provided United States funding agencies the authority to provide prizes and awards [The OSP utilized a prize competition as a funding mechanism .There are several aspects of the OSP that were notable. First, international collaborations among solvers were required, with at least 1 team member based in the US and 1 team member based outside of the US. Second, the prize competition was structured in 2 phases: Phase I sought the most innovative and promising ideas and proposed open science tools  and Phase II provided a grand prize award  for the best prototype of the Phase I finalists. Thus, not only could a diverse set of ideas come forth, but initial feedback could be given to the most promising ideas in the prototype phase. Third, an innovative funding model was incorporated for the OSP. NIH provided funds to the US member(s) of the teams selected for the awards per requirements in the America Competes Act, and WT and HHMI provided funds to the non-US member(s). Fourth, in an effort to invite broad input on the innovations, a group of advisors (see acknowledgments) with expertise in open science, health information technology, and/or biomedical research methods were selected to provide comments on the submitted applications and prototypes. In addition, the public was invited during a 5-week period to vote and comment on their favorite prototypes of the 6 finalists during Phase II of the competition. Public comments are posted on the OSP website. Fifth, to the extent practical with the resources available, all aspects of the competition were made open. For example, the executive summaries of all submissions were made public on the OSP Open Data Science Symposium organized by NIH. The teams were asked to develop written narratives summarizing progress to date and addressing key factors such as innovation, utility, feasibility and technical merit, and development and sustainability plan for their prototypes. These summaries, along with videos that many of the teams created, were publicly displayed on the OSP website, and the public was invited to cast their votes and provide input. During Phase II, 3,730 votes were received from voters representing 76 countries. The judging criteria for Phase II was similar to the criteria utilized for Phase I, but in Phase II, the emphasis was on the prototype developed as opposed to an anticipatory idea.The OSP received 96 submissions for Phase I of the competition, with entries coming from 45 countries spanning 6 continents . Phase Ihttp://www.nextstrain.org) in which the outputs of statistical analyses of viral genome sequences can be used by public health officials for epidemiological insights within days of genome sequences having been obtained from viral pathogen samples taken from patients. Nextstrain.org expanded upon the submitters’ prior work on influenza tracking (nextflu.org) to include many other viral pathogens. Using OSP funds, the team developed detailed phylogeographic analyses of viral movement, created a platform for rapid  data sharing of pathogen genome data with open source code, and constructed a database and associated parsing scripts to quickly consolidate emerging data from multiple sources.Based on the review of all information provided, the funders selected “Real-Time Evolutionary Tracking for Pathogen Surveillance and Epidemiological Investigation” as the grand prize winner of the OSP. “Real-Time Evolutionary Tracking for Pathogen Surveillance and Epidemiological Investigation” was developed by a team from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Washington and the University of Basel, Switzerland. The project uses an online visualization platform  through the reuse of open data. In taking such ideas forward, however, the following lessons learned may be instructive and helpful:Partnerships are always more time-consuming than first imagined. Though the benefits of collaborative working are significant—shared expertise, better reach, ability to leverage additional funding, etc.—funders should enter into these partnerships mindful that meeting the differing requirements/rules/ambitions of a group of funders is not always straightforward, and an ability to compromise and work through issues is key. It is also critical for funding partners to develop a strong shared commitment and understanding of what they are trying to achieve, as it creates a foundation for working through the challenges that arise and forges good personal/working relationships.A 2-step funding model is an effective way to encourage innovation whilst minimizing the cost. The benefits are 2-fold: the short-listed applicants receive funds in order to make the best case for support of their prototype, and the funders, judges, and advisors benefit from seeing the progress made between the 2 stages, which can inform the further selection process. However, it could be argued that having Phase I applicants provide detailed specifications of the technology to be developed may not have encouraged more innovative, off-the-wall, or high-risk ideas that if successful could have more impact. How to adapt the funding and review processes to encourage more innovation, particularly from groups outside traditional health research sectors, requires further discussion and deliberation.Public participation is a good way to increase the reach of the competition and generate interest and enthusiasm for open data. The nature of this competition means that engagement with and wider use of the tools is critical to their impact. Holding a public vote was an effective way to raise awareness of open science. It allowed a number of tools to be highlighted, not just the overall winner. It is important to strike the right balance when deciding the contribution that public voting makes to the determination of the eventual winner.Proposals at differing stages of development were received. Define clearly whether applications have to focus on a completely new concept (or tool) or whether an existing tool/service—which wishes to add additional new functionality—is also eligible. If both are eligible, it is important to consider how to tension the 2 types of applications against one another in the fairest and most transparent way.Setting a broad remit allowed a wide range of ideas to be proposed, but the 6 finalists naturally did not fully represent the breadth of ideas proposed. Consider establishing different categories—best new tool, best cross-cutting application, etc.—rather than having a single winner. Alternatively, consider refining the OSP funding model to create future global initiatives focused in particular areas .The international funding partnership increased both the global reach of the competition as well as the resources available. Expanding partnerships to include other international funding organizations with common interests in open data could further help to leverage resources and address intractable global health issues.Furthermore, it is recommended that funders consider ways to incentivize the sustainability of tools and technologies that leverage open biomedical data to improve biomedical research and public health. We encourage others to explicitly discuss international funding models and the sharing of resources to advance the use of biomedical open data.The OSP was useful to all 3 of the funding agencies in that it provided a range of exemplars that successfully demonstrated the benefits of open data for sparking innovation and generating new societal benefits. Prior developer challenges have emphasized the leveraging of open digital content to create innovative tools . The OSP took this concept 1 step further and encouraged international collaborations to solve global health issues by leveraging open digital content. OSP complements other funding initiatives focused on data-driven discovery  by focusing specifically on publicly available open data.#openscienceprize) views, the OSP garnered much interest from scientists and citizens around the world. The OSP has provided a pathway that agencies dealing with any type of open data can utilize to incentivize innovative, international team–based science.While market intelligence is typically a benefit of challenge competitions, the international aspects of this competition enriched each of the funding agencies’ understanding of new ideas emerging around the globe and of the mechanisms behind that. The 6 solutions that moved from Phase I to Phase II were exemplars of innovative and useful tools/platforms that leverage open data. Moreover, the other 90 entries provided insight into emerging areas of interest, such as community annotation and knowledge-extraction tools. The other way in which the competition was notable was in its ability to highlight the value of open health data to the broader scientific community. As evidenced by the submissions, press coverage, and Twitter (


Parkinson was an astute clinician who observed the tremor, abnormal gait, slowness and stooped posture of those with the condition that now bears his name. This journal aims to offer its readers other important new information and ideas on this disorder. The journal has been launched in partnership with the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation (PDF), a foremost research- and patient-based organization, and underpins the exciting new concept of journals that are now hosted online and available to any reader, virtually anywhere in the world—for free.It gives us great pleasure to welcome readers to the first open-access journal from Nature Publishing Group focused on Parkinson’s disease (PD). In the past 60 years since the founding of the PDF much has happened in the field of PD: there is effective treatment for many troublesome motor symptoms, with PD being the only neurodegenerative condition with a well-defined neurotransmitter deficiency underpinned by the five decades long success of levodopa therapy. In addition, we have witnessed advances in genetics, molecular biology, stereotactic surgery, and new horizons in therapy, as well as recognition of the key impacts of the non-motor aspects of PD. However, the list of ‘unmet needs’ in PD care and research has also continued to grow. This includes the fact that we do not have adequate animal models that replicate disease progression nor the specific neurons targeted in PD. To date, there are no proven effective treatments for some of the disabling motor and non-motor symptoms of PD, there are no proven neuroprotective treatments to prevent further decline, there are no means to reverse or cure the disease, and we still do not have a clear concept of the pathogenesis of this disorder.As editors, our not-so-modest goal is to contribute to hastening advances in understanding PD by providing a home where the results of the latest research on the disorder can be shared. We aim to focus on cutting edge research on both care as well as the science of PD, in particular, addressing these unmet needs. We will highlight work from leading workers related to key advances in basic science, genetics, and both motor and non-motor aspects of PD, as well as clinical trials of therapies, interventions, and multidisciplinary care in PD. The open access mechanism of this journal will allow and empower scientists, clinicians, and allied health specialists to provide new information on PD to a global community. A novel feature will be that lay summaries will accompany each article and thus attempt to ‘make simple’ and provide even complex research papers in a ‘user friendly’ format to all readers, particularly patients. The journal will thus serve not only the scientific community but also, equally importantly, people with PD and their care partners—empowering them with access to information that matters and is relevant to the struggle of living with PD.


Open access (OA) medical publishing is growing rapidly. While subscription-based publishing does not charge the author, OA does. This opens the door for “predatory” publishers who take authors’ money but provide no substantial peer review or indexing to truly disseminate research findings. Discriminating between predatory and legitimate OA publishers is difficult.We searched a number of library indexing databases that were available to us through the University of California, Irvine Libraries for journals in the field of emergency medicine (EM). Using criteria from Jeffrey Beall, University of Colorado librarian and an expert on predatory publishing, and the Research Committee of the International Federation for EM, we categorized EM journals as legitimate or likely predatory.We identified 150 journal titles related to EM from all sources, 55 of which met our criteria for OA . Of these 55, 25 (45%) were likely to be predatory. We present lists of clearly legitimate OA journals, and, conversely, likely predatory ones. We present criteria a researcher can use to discriminate between the two. We present the indexing profiles of legitimate EM OA journals, to inform the researcher about degree of dissemination of research findings by journal.OA journals are proliferating rapidly. About half in EM are legitimate. The rest take substantial money from unsuspecting, usually junior, researchers and provide no value for true dissemination of findings. Researchers should be educated and aware of scam journals. Dissemination of findings is the very core of every research endeavor. Publication through peer-reviewed literature educates the research community. It is also used to quantify the impact of individuals during career progression. In fact, publishing in high-quality peer-reviewed journals remains the prime metric of success for academicians, especially early career researchers focused on promotion and tenure.Publication of research without proper scientific review is a detriment to society,Predatory publishing is often confused with open access (OA), though they are distinctly different. Legitimate OA publishing benefits scientific communication, especially in LMICs, where researchers lack institutional support for access to literature.British Medical Journal (BMJ) editorial, Jocalyn Clark and Richard Smith argue for firm action to address predatory publishers and educate researchers of the pitfalls of predatory publishing.5One might argue that more OA data and research dissemination serves the public good. Furthermore, OA journals, even predatory ones, may provide an outlet for publication of papers not deemed especially timely or interesting, or showing significant positive effects. In a Science.In 2013, John Bohannon conducted a “sting” operation, to expose the lack of peer review in predatory OA journals, and published his story in the journal There is little in the peer-reviewed literature on the topic of OA publishing and submission processes.Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado in Denver, has long enlightened the scientific community about predatory publishing.A researcher from the IFEM Research Committee (BH), a journal editor (ML) and a university medical librarian (LM) collaborated to summarize the current state of potential indexing for OA journals, as well as collecting web resources to discriminate between legitimate and predatory OA journals. We defined as OA a journal that did all of the following:The authors retained their own copyright to the material published.The entire content of the journal was available free of charge to consumers wishing to read the articles.The journal used a form of Creative Commons License.We conducted searches between January 1 and June 10, 2016 from these directories, indexes, databases, and publishers including the US National Library of Medicine (NLM) Catalog: journals referenced in the NCBI  Database, PubMed Central®, Google, Scimago Journal and Country Rank (SJR), Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Thomson Reuter’s Web of Science, and EBSCOhost title lists. We are confident that we identified all the world’s OA journal titles in the EM subject discipline. We used search terms: (emergencies OR emergency OR ER) AND (open access OR OA OR PMC) to pare these down to only OA EM-related journals.Google works with publishers to index articles, theses, preprints, book chapters, abstracts, and technical reports from all research disciplines and make them searchable on Google Scholar. However, while these services readily retrieve individual papers, it is challenging to retrieve EM journal titles. We performed a comprehensive Google search, and then pared results to identify a list of OA EM journals. We then removed duplicates, included only journals that are 100% OA, and publish in English. We excluded any partial OA (a stated embargo period during which readers would need to pay for access) or inactive titles.We then scrutinized the journals, searching their websites and applying Beall’s criteria to identify and clarify which were likely to be “predatory” journals.As this paper did not involve human subjects, approval was not obtained.We present our comprehensive findings of OA journals that relate to EM, and are likely to be either legitimate or predatory. We first divide our results by each index we searched to identify OA EM journal titles. We then present journal titles  from BeaNext, we present a list of OA journals with the word “emergency” in the title that are archived in PubMed Central with full paper deposition and no or one-month embargo period . These aThen, we present a list of legitimate OA journals in EM, along with the well-recognized indexing services in which they are contained . By virtThe three authors agreed with the designation of OA journal in all cases. After scrutiny of the websites, this became very clear by the description, copyright agreement and Creative Commons licenses. The authors also were entirely in agreement regarding the titles listed in The United States (US) NLM Catalog includes journals in all NLM collections and databases . We found 127 titles in PubMed, PubMed Central, and MEDLINE, but only 17 are fully OA and contain the word “emergency,” “emergencies,” or “ER” in their title. See California Journal of Emergency Medicine” changed its name to “Western Journal of Emergency Medicine” and has remained fully OA. Two titles dropped their names and merged with a new name . Since then, only a few selected articles are open access  to be included in PubMed Central. Therefore, they are all clearly legitimate and not predatory journals.PubMed Central is a US NLM repository and archive of OA full-text (not just abstract) scholarly articles. Our search identified 17 journals that are in “full participation” of OA. One title, “n access , leavinghttp://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php?area=2700&category=2711), we selected “Medicine” as the subject area and “Emergency Medicine” as the subject categories in all regions and countries for 2015 journals. The results returned 72 journals. We then selected the “Display only Open Access Journals” box, yielding 17 titles, but only 12 were fully OA journals that met our inclusion criteria . With our truncated search for title word, “emergenc*,” we located 33 titles in EM, with 11 of them fully OA  through 375 databases. EBSCOhost houses titles by subject category. We reviewed and included only two relevant EBSCO databases, CINAHL  and Academic Search Complete that would most likely index EM titles. Our reviews identified 63 journals that contain the word “emergency” or “emergencies” in the title, but only 10 qualified as completely OA .EM World and EM Resident) that would not be expected to achieve indexing or undergo formal peer review. These were then compared with titles from established indexing services worldwide described above  and examined the first 15 pages of results. These contained 150 sites that were linked to library journal directories, publishers and independent journal websites. After thorough review, we identified 57 (38%) initially determined to be OA journals. Two were excluded  as known EM magazines .One of the major markers of a predatory OA journal is the absence of indexing in any recognized reference index. Twenty-five of these 55 titles 45%,  were notWe found that the most recent list of predatory OA journals from Beall updated January 7, 2016, contains 923 publishers from all scientific fields, each of which publishes multiple (3–30+) journals (33% increase over 2015) and 882 stand-alone journals (74% increase over 2015).We did identify 16 “medical” journals among the 882 stand-alones. *” in their titles.The major biomedical indexing services identified by the authors are listed in Given this disturbing trend in OA publishing, the IFEM Research Committee sought to provide guidelines to identify potential predatory journals, and summarize Beall’s criteria for determining predatory OA publishers. We present the report here:1. Choose to submit your research to journals that you would normally find interesting and relevant. Although these may be among the most discriminating, if successful, this will increase the chance that your research will be disseminated to the community you want to reach. This may result in changes to practice or policy, providing the most impact for your work.2. Reach out to colleagues and mentors to see in which journals your body of work will best fit. Mentors have an understanding of historical trends in the scientific community in general, and EM specifically. The university librarian can be a valuable resource to find legitimate impact factors of the journals you are considering, and the distribution of these journals to academic communities. Beware, however, that impact factors (as well as peer-review processes) can be fabricated. Beall published a new list in 2015 of 38 “Misleading Metrics” companies that purport to gauge a journal’s impact factor, and provide scholarly metrics at the researcher and article level.103. Be honest about the methodological flaws of your own work. It is unlikely that good reviewers will not identify them. If the reviewers do not see the same limitations as you have, this is a red flag that you have sent your work to a predatory journal. Be concerned if you do not receive any critical feedback and your article is accepted, as this rarely happens with legitimate peer review.4. Look up the journal title in the NLM Catalog: Journals referenced in the NCBI Databases.Emergency Medicine: Open Access, in the NLM Catalog. It further shows that the journal was found in PubMed and PubMed Central. However, after thorough review, we found only one citation in PubMed (PMID: 25035816) as well as PubMed Central (PMC: 4098070) for the entire journal. This occurred when the authors of the paper from Taiwan chose to deposit the article to PubMed Central.However, this does not guarantee legitimacy of the journal. In the present study separate from the IFEM Research Committee guidance, we found the journal, 5. If claiming to be an OA journal, is it in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) ? This is a sort of “whitelist” of legitimate journals that must meet specific criteria for inclusion.126. Is the journal transparent and following best practice in editorial and peer-review processes, governance, and ownership? The best way to discern this is by reviewing the journal documents and governance, likely available online at the website, or reaching out to the journal leadership. Legitimate journals should have a robust list of policies and procedures on their website, including human and animal subject policies, OA license type (something like Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0), conflict of interest and informed consent.7. Read the articles in the journal before submitting an article. Warning signs include grammar errors, poor quality science, poorly maintained website with prominent misspellings and grammatical errors.8. Is the name of the journal incongruent with the journal’s mission? Is the name of the journal excessively broad? Does the name of the journal make sense?9. Are there clear policies on plagiarism, authorship, and copyright on the website?10. Is the impact factor clearly stated? Is it too good to be true (> 2)? If not readily available, journal impact factors can be found in the ISI Thomson Reuters Journal Citation Reports (JCR),11. Is the journal found in PubMed Central? PubMed Central allows publishers to deposit their OA journal contents for permanent archival without cost upon application and fulfilling features of legitimate and respectable journals for two years of publishing.11Identify if the publisher is genuine. This requires some research evaluating the publisher’s content practices and websites. Below are some of the aspects of the journal that may provide clues to a predatory publishing journal.Submit work to publishers with enlightened copyright policies. Determine whether you can post and share your work once published. One of the main advantages of OA publishing is that the author maintains their own copyright, and therefore ability to use the material in other scholarly works. SHERPA/RoMEOComplete an analysis of the publisher’s content, practices, and websites according to ethical standards established by membership organizations. Numerous organizations have provided comprehensive ethical standards for publishers. Three are listed below.Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA)15Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)16International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers (STM). 17Consider asking the following questions when reviewing the publisher’s website.Does the journal clearly identify an editor-in-chief and an editorial board?Do the editors/editorial review board have academic affiliations and appropriate credentials for the journal scope and topic?Does it provide specific and detailed instructions and guidelines for authors?Are policies and practices fully stated?Are author fees reasonable and are they clearly stated up front? OA fees to the author range from $300 to more than $4,000 USD. Wolters Kluwer, a legitimate publisher, openly lists fees for hundreds of their journals on their website.18Do they offer discount or waiver for junior authors or authors from LMICs who can’t afford to pay the author fee?Can you find the publication fee easily identified on the website, or is it hidden many screens back with obscure navigation?Does the publisher ask the corresponding author for suggested reviewers? This is, in general, a negative feature of a journal, and implies it does not have enough legitimately qualified and dedicated reviewers to perform this important scientific service to the profession or specialty.Does the publisher engage in excessive use of spam emails to submit manuscripts? Specific targeted requests for papers to an established author are legitimate, and they come one at a time from the editor. Conversely, blanket solicitations addressed to “esteemed author” and similar salutations are markers of predatory OA journals.Do the publisher’s officers use email addresses that end in .gmail.com, .yahoo.com, or some other free email supplier?Does the publisher have excessive advertising on the website?Does the publisher have no membership or industry association? In particular, legitimate journals have membership in multiple indexes.Emergencias,” the Spanish language legitimate journal has a fake journal by the same name. A predatory journal, OA Emergency Medicine imitates a legitimate journal, Open Access Emergency Medicine from Dovepress. “Hijacked” journals are further challenging to decipher given their ability to mimic legitimate peer-review outlets.21In truth, it can be difficult to distinguish between legitimate and non-legitimate journals. Beall has written about predatory open access journals since at least 2011. His website now has a section on “Hijacked Journals,” which lists predatory/fake journals meant to look and sound like the titles of legitimate ones.Within Beall’s list in 2015, we identified only nine journal titles from medicine that might tempt an EM author to submit . Howeverhttps://www.biomedcentral.com/) and PLoS (https://www.plos.org/ Public Library of Science). Legitimate OA publishers charge authors to cover operational costs and management of peer review. These predatory OA publishers request high fees in exchange for quick, OA publication online, without robust editorial and publishing services or widespread indexing. Peer review is cursory at best, or sham at worst. Unfortunately, junior scholars at even well-resourced universities and scientists/institutions in LMIC are most at risk for these practices. These researchers may unknowingly submit to predatory journals, only then receive an invoice after the paper is “accepted,” and not have the means to pay the fee.Even with the guidance contained in the IFEM Research Committee report, and the list of likely predatory journals above, it can be difficult to identify predatory OA journals. Increasing numbers of “predatory publishers” take advantage of the “pay to publish” model used by legitimate OA publishers such as BioMed Central . In addition, future research is needed to determine the true nature (legitimacy) of each non-indexed OA journal that we identified in Emergency Medicine and Health Care  and the Japanese Journal of Trauma and Emergency Medicine (https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/browse/jjtem) are legitimate, reputable journals that were found in our Google search, but were not indexed in any of the databases/directories that we selected for review. The landscape of publishing changes weekly, so there may be new legitimate and OA journals. Finally, we only searched for journals in English.We did not include words such as “trauma” and “disaster” and their variations in our searches. As a result, our study did not include possible predatory/hijacked journals that contain those words in the journal titles, e.g., The novice scholar in EM should be cautious when submitting work to OA journals. This article educates and enables discrimination between legitimate and predatory OA journals. Legitimate ones disclose publishing fees freely, perform meaningful peer review, and then disseminate scholarship to the world without cost to the reader. Predatory OA journals hide fees, disclose them after acceptance, perform sham peer review or none at all, accept (nearly) all submissions to generate revenue, do not cooperate with publication retractions, and are not indexed sufficiently to allow other researchers to find the work. The number of these predatory journals and publishers is expanding rapidly, and threatens the integrity of scientific research and publishing.


As veterinary pathologists, we have a broad knowledge of disease processes in an array of species with variable physiology and response to disease. The breadth of areas where veterinary pathologists are active has led us to sub-specialize in particular species, organ systems, infectious agents, or sub-disciplines, such as forensic science. We are a group with tremendously diverse interests and expertise that includes basic and clinically applied research, drug discovery and preclinical toxicologic testing, diagnostic testing and quality assurance, public health and governmental policy, public outreach, and education. Our diversity of interests is both a strength and a challenge. Should we strive to maintain a unified discipline or divest into defined subspecialties? How should we define ourselves as pathologists? What core skill sets and competences should we include for certification and how do we prepare our trainees for the future? Should we have one international certification? Finally, how do we make our trainees aware of the many opportunities available to them?The American College of Veterinary Pathologists is addressing these challenges in part by revising the structure and content of the specialty board examination. A working group has also been established to develop a “strategic plan for the future.” This group convened at the 2015 annual meeting and, in its initial discussions, recognized that (1) veterinary pathologists must adapt and respond to the changing needs for our stakeholders and (2) a renewed importance should be placed on research in training programs.Our field is defined by the juxtaposition of descriptive and mechanistic explorations of disease processes. Identifying abnormalities and characterizing known and emerging diseases is a critical facet of what we do. Salient examples include the pathologist’s role in recognizing the emergence of West Nile virus in the United States  and elucThe genomes of several animal species have been sequenced and annotated, including dogs , cats,2 The burgeoning field of biomedical engineering has rapidly morphed from basic research into translational medicine, with the application of engineering principles to cancer diagnostics, drug delivery, imaging, and infectious disease detection, to name a few applications –15. ThisThe introduction of powerful advanced techniques, such as imaging flow cytometry –21 and hUnlike human medicine, our diagnostic activities are not federally regulated. Veterinary diagnostic laboratories do not have to follow Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments regulations.Pseudogymnoascus destructans (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis)  , emphasiThe scope of this section of Frontiers in Veterinary Science is pathology – the study of disease – at a genetic (or epigenetic), molecular, cellular, tissue, organism, and herd level in animals. The scope encompasses the study of factors that contribute to disease, such as the aforementioned environmental changes. Our focus is animal health. Through improving animal health, we improve the health and well-being of humans, whose lives are intricately tied to and reliant on the animals that serve as food, companions, and workers. We accept various manuscript typesOpen-access: this makes our research available to everyone.Rapid publication: with high expectations for productivity for early career pathologists, there is an urgent need for rapid publication. Fast turnaround times are only available through non-traditional publication avenues, such as open-access online journals. The average time from submission to online publication is around 2–3 months for Frontiers.Minimal stylistic editing: write your manuscript in active voice and your own style. Tell us your story.Copyright: authors retain copyright through a Creative Commons License. If you are a member of Linked-In, Research Gate, Loop, or other professional networks, this allows you to post your articles or use your data without obtaining permission from a publisher.A collaborative interactive open review process: this can eliminate the frustrations, misconceptions, and seemingly endless revisions that inevitably accompany one-dimensional reviews. With Frontiers, authors discuss their rationale, clarify points, and address reviewers’ concerns through an online interactive forum with reviewers and the associate editor. Reviewers work with authors to help improve manuscript quality. Should your manuscript be accepted, the names of reviewers and associate editor are published. This encourages constructive, informative critical review.Assessment of impact: Frontiers has a tiered impact system, which takes advantage of the best of social networking and media. Impact is not only based on citations but also number of downloads, page views, etc. A question that remains to be answered is: Does this method works better than that already in use?So why publish in Frontiers in Veterinary Science?Our goals with Veterinary Experimental and Diagnostic Pathology are to publish high-quality research that showcases the breadth and strength of veterinary pathology and to advance our discipline. In doing so, we maintain our relevance and inspire our successors. Can we accomplish our goal? Only if you, the investigators, readers, and reviewers support this vision, ask the questions, and conduct the studies, then publish your results after collaborative, respectful, and thoughtful review. Why don’t you join us? I invite you to submit.The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and approved it for publication.The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.


Additionally, we recommend that universities and research institutions articulate expectations about author roles and responsibilities to provide a point of common understanding for discussion of authorship across research teams. Furthermore, we propose that funding agencies adopt the ORCID identifier and accept the CRediT taxonomy. We encourage scientific societies to further authorship transparency by signing on to these recommendations and promoting them through their meetings and publications programs.In keeping with the growing movement in scientific publishing toward transparency in data and methods, we propose changes to journal authorship policies and procedures to provide insight into which author is responsible for which contributions, better assurance that the list is complete, and clearly articulated standards to justify earning authorship credit. To accomplish these goals, we recommend that journals adopt common and transparent standards for authorship, outline responsibilities for corresponding authors, adopt the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) ( Publications are an important measure of research productivity for scientists across all disciplines, so much so that the quest for authorship status invites gaming the system in ways detrimental to both scientists and the research enterprise. Calls for reform of the authorship system have gone unheeded , perhapsThe notion of authorship implies both credit and accountability . HoweverSeveral authorship practices deemed detrimental to research –8 and soEach author is expected to have made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; or the creation of new software used in the work; or have drafted the work or substantively revised it; AND to have approved the submitted version ; AND to have agreed both to be personally accountable for the author’s own contributions and to ensure that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work, even ones in which the author was not personally involved, are appropriately investigated, resolved, and the resolution documented in the literature.As the first step, we recommend that journals adopt the following statement as a best practice for crediting all authors of a paper:This statement is adapted from a similar one developed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors that is widely used within the medical publishing community. The statement has been generalized to encourage broader adoption.i) ensuring that original data/materials/code upon which the submission is based are preserved following best practices in the field so that they are retrievable for reanalysis; (ii) confirming that data/materials/code presentation accurately reflects the original; and (iii) foreseeing and minimizing obstacles to the sharing of data/materials/code described in the work. The CA should be responsible for managing these requirements across the author group and ensuring that the entire author group is fully aware of and in compliance with best practices in the discipline of publication.As a second step, journals should clearly articulate their expectations for corresponding authors (CAs). Appropriate roles for the CAs are as follows: ensuring that all listed authors have approved the manuscript before submission and that all authors receive the submission and all substantive correspondence with editors, as well as the full reviews, verifying that all data, materials (including reagents), and code, even those developed or provided by other authors, comply with the transparency and reproducibility standards of both the field and journal. This responsibility includes but is not limited to:  have certified the author list and contribution description: that all authors who deserve to be credited on the manuscript are indeed identified, that no authors are listed who do not deserve authorship credit, and that author contributions, where they are provided, are expressed accurately.Our third recommendation is that journals commit to use and where appropriate, extend the CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) taxonomy  as, in oUniformity of declarations across journals is in the authors’ best interests because such statements will not need to change if the same paper is rejected and submitted to another journal or if the same research team with similar roles submits a follow-up study to the same or another outlet. Moreover, confirming the authors’ contributions as the manuscript is finalized is likely to create a more accurate record of what transpired than asking participants to recall the information post facto .The CRediT taxonomy’s standardized vocabulary and consistent framework should facilitate authorship discussions among contributors to a study. In this regard, it is important to note that the taxonomy includes but is not limited to traditional authorship roles. It is intended to describe authors’ contributions within the framework of authorship standards, not to define such standards. Adopting the CRediT taxonomy would also help alleviate some of the confusion across disciplines and cultures regarding the meaning of author order . These dWe recommend that the CRediT taxonomy roles be embedded within author metadata rather than solely as a separate paragraph of text, often linked only to author initials. Journals’ adoption of the CRediT taxonomy in both human- and machine-readable forms, as part of the publication and its metadata, will facilitate transparency of author contributions in different contexts, via syndication, indexing, and abstracting services, and possibly future applications across journals. We recognize that full implementation will require some further development of common schemas and standards across journals, organizations, and communities.A handful of journals currently use the CRediT taxonomy, and we realize that adoption by all journals is an aspirational goal. However, now is the time, in the early phases of journal experimentation with attributing contributions to authors, to champion this standard and its widespread adoption. Use of the CRediT taxonomy need not be the only way for a journal to capture how each author earned the right to be listed [e.g., additional information, including further details on roles and contributions, can be captured in the acknowledgments  have emerged to uniquely identify different funders of research, and a multistakeholder collaboration is ongoing to establish standard PIDs for institutions. At the same time, some fields have adopted PIDs for samples. Development is under way to explore or extend PIDs for repositories and instruments that would lead to further transparency and integrity. We encourage journals not only to follow these developments but also to prepare for wider adoption when standards emerge.Journals are ill-equipped to mediate authorship disputes or set expectations for authorship within project groups or teams. Universities and other research institutions should develop, post, distribute, and regularly review and update their policies on authorship. This process should actively involve faculty/investigators, postdoctoral scholars, graduate and undergraduate students, staff, and any others making important contributions to scholarship in the sciences. The same researchers should engage in open conversations at least annually to familiarize new employees (including foreign visitors) with the norms of the field. Questions answered by these policies would include how the organization or a research team within it decides which contributions warrant first authorship, coauthorship, acknowledgments, or no mention. The value of early discussion of authorship has been demonstrated . BecauseWere they to adopt ORCID iDs as the preferred/default system for their principal investigators, funding agencies could easily tip the scales toward widespread acceptance of a truly international standard for uniquely identifying scholars. If every investigator supported by United States and international funding agencies was required to use an ORCID iD, the standard would become the norm. A positive step in this direction was the recent decision by the European Commission to recommend the adoption of ORCID iDs as its preferred system of unique identifiers for its ninth Framework Program . AnotherAdditionally, it would be helpful if in requests for bibliographical references in support of an application as well as in progress reports, funding agencies were to accept—or better yet, require—that representation of the applicant’s contributions to the work be expressed via CRediT roles. By importing citation formats in more complete CRediT terms, it would make clear the applicant’s contribution to collaborative research. An added bonus for funding agencies would be the ability to mine the CRediT files for needed reviewer expertise .In the near future, another role for funders may be to underwrite efforts to seamlessly integrate the CRediT taxonomy, ORCID iDs, journal metadata, and scholarly archives—including public archives—into the public record.Through editorials in their journals, special sessions at their meetings, and policies in their own publishing programs, many scientific societies have strongly endorsed efforts to increase transparency. We suggest that they build on these initiatives by organizing special sessions on the topic of integrity in authorship at scientific meetings to discuss issues relevant to each society. Each organization should consider how the society can move briskly in its own journal publishing program to implement the recommendations in this paper.We recognize that the path we have outlined is a work in progress. While a leap forward in authorship transparency, our proposals leave a number of vexing issues unresolved. The CRediT taxonomy provides a summary or snapshot of contributor roles, but does not allow for additional detail on exactly what each author did, including microattributions for figures, models, or datasets . To addrWe also recognize that additional development is needed for export of CRediT roles to ORCID records. This step should be undertaken as soon as is practical.www.nasonline.org/about-nas/Transparency_Author_Contributions.html, where it will list those journals that commit to setting authorship standards, defining responsibilities for corresponding authors, requiring ORCID iDs, and adopting the CRediT taxonomy. The site will also include those funding agencies that adopt ORCID iDs and accept the CRediT taxonomy. Our goal is to use this TACS website not only as a mechanism to measure growing transparency in authorship, but also as a resource for sharing and exchanging best practices in authorship policies that can inform discussions at university and research laboratories and departments.The National Academy of Sciences has created a TACS (Transparency in Author Contributions in Science) website at


The field of microbiology has experienced significant growth due to transformative advances in technology and the influx of scientists driven by a curiosity to understand how microbes sustain myriad biochemical processes that maintain Earth. With this explosion in scientific output, a significant bottleneck has been the ability to rapidly disseminate new knowledge to peers and the public. Preprints have emerged as a tool that a growing number of microbiologists are using to overcome this bottleneck. Posting preprints can help to transparently recruit a more diverse pool of reviewers prior to submitting to a journal for formal peer review. Although the use of preprints is still limited in the biological sciences, early indications are that preprints are a robust tool that can complement and enhance peer-reviewed publications. As publishing moves to embrace advances in Internet technology, there are many opportunities for preprints and peer-reviewed journals to coexist in the same ecosystem.  A preprint is an interim research product that is made publicly available before going through an official peer review process with the goals of soliciting feedback, accelerating dissemination of results, establishing priority, and publicizing negative results –5. Autho–Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, as the journal will not consider articles posted as preprints under a CC-BY license. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) encourages authors to post preprints under the CC-BY or public domain licenses  to obtain doi’s that make the work citable. As these possibilities increase, the preprint landscape risks becoming fractured.In 2013, two preprint servers, bioRxiv (pronounced “bio-archive”) and PeerJ PrePrints, were launched as preprint servers for biologists that would parallel arXiv . Accordilicenses . The flelicenses . With br10.1128/mBio.00438-17.1FIG S1 FIG S1, DOCX file, 0.4 MB.Screenshot of the preprint for this paper at bioRxiv. Download Copyright © 2017 Schloss.2017SchlossCreative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.This content is distributed under the terms of the 10.1128/mBio.00438-17.2FIG S2 FIG S2, DOCX file, 0.5 MB.Screenshot of a preprint by the author hosted at PeerJ PrePrints. Download Copyright © 2017 Schloss.2017SchlossCreative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.This content is distributed under the terms of the http://www.prepubmed.org), which seeks to index preprints from numerous sources. A more organized effort is being initiated with funding through ASAPbio to create a “Central Service” that would aggregate preprints in the life sciences , since microbiology-related research could offer insights to individuals seeking to engage in inappropriate activities. Second, for researchers engaging in research that involves human subjects and other vertebrates, it is critical that assurances be made that institutional oversight committees have been consulted and have approved of the research. Third, there is significant concern regarding researchers disclosing potential conflicts of interest that could affect a project’s experimental design, analysis, and interpretation of results. Finally, recent expansions in scientific publishing have revealed numerous cases of plagiarism or misconduct. Again, while hoping to maintain the efficiency of the preprint format, traditional microbiology journals have screening procedures and oversight committees that address these issues. Similar efforts need to be implemented by preprint servers. As preprint usage continues to expand, many of these problems may also grow, similar to the experiences within the traditional publishing industry as it expanded.Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Science, Nature, Journal of Infectious Diseases, and Cell Press. Each takes a generally permissive stance toward posting of preprints prior to submission. Comprehensive lists of journals’ attitudes toward preprints are available online and are regularly updated , Bioinformatics (n = 237), or Genomics (n = 231) category.To analyze the use of preprints, I downloaded bioRxiv preprints on 17 April 2017. I chose to analyze bioRxiv preprints because these preprints are amenable for submission to ASM journals and there were 9,780 bioRxiv preprints compared to the 2,911 preprints that were available at PeerJ PrePrints on the same date. The code used to analyze these preprints and the rest of this article are available as a reproducible GitHub repository at n = 1,735 total) have posted a single preprint and 4.6% have posted three or more preprints. Corresponding authors that have posted microbiology-affiliated preprints are from 67 countries and are primarily affiliated with institutions in the United States (46.2% of microbiology-affiliated preprints), United Kingdom (12.9%), and Germany (4.6%). As the preprint format matures, it will be interesting to see whether the proportion of authors that post multiple preprints increases and whether the geographic diversity among those authors is maintained.As the total number of preprints has grown exponentially since the creation of bioRxiv, submission of microbiology-affiliated preprints has largely followed this growth . AlthougAs stated above, preprints offer researchers the opportunity to improve the quality of their work by adding a more formal and public step to the scientific process. Among the microbiology-affiliated preprints, 197 (9.3%) had been commented on at least once and only 48 (2.3%) had been commented on more than three times using the bioRxiv-hosted commenting feature. Although the hosted commenting is only one mechanism for peer review, this result was somewhat disturbing since the preprint model implicitly depends on people’s willingness to offer others feedback. In spite of the lack of tradition within the scientific community to comment publicly online about colleagues’ research results, I am optimistic that this will change given the possibilities of new media ; the advantage of the centralized commenting is that it is easier for the authors and others to integrate the feedback with the preprint. It is possible that incentives for open commenting and reviewing could shift the trend. Importantly, authors do appear to be incorporating feedback from colleagues or editorial insights from journals, as 545 (25.9%) microbiology-affiliated preprints were revised at least once. Among the preprints posted prior to 1 January 2016, 31.3% of the Microbiology category preprints, 35.6% of the microbiology-affiliated preprints, and 33.6% of all preprints have been published. As noted above, not all authors submit their preprints to journals. This would indicate that the “acceptance rates” are actually higher. Regardless, considering that these acceptance rates are comparable to many peer-reviewed journals , these results dispel the critique that preprints represent overly preliminary research.mBio published since 2013 was 5.0 . Of all scholarship tracked by Altmetric, the median Altmetric attention score for preprints posted at bioRxiv ranks at the 87 percentile . A controversial, yet more traditional metric of impact has been the number of citations an article receives. I obtained the number of citations for the published versions of papers that were initially posted as preprints. To allow for a comparison to traditional journals, I considered the citations for preprints published in 2014 and 2015 as aggregated by the Web of Science . Although it is impossible to quantify the quality or impact of research with individual metrics, it is clear that the science presented in preprints and the publications that result from them are accepted by the microbiology community at a level comparable to more traditionally presented research.Measuring the impact and significance of scientific research is notoriously difficult. Using several metrics, I sought to quantify the effect that broadly defined microbiology-affiliated preprints have had on the work of others. Using the download statistics associated with each preprint, I found that the median number of times an abstract or PDF had been accessed was 922  and 301 , respectively. These values represent two aspects of posting a preprint. First, they reflect the number of times people were able to access science before it was published. Second, they reflect the number of times people were able to access a version of a paper that is published behind a paywall. To obtain a measure of a preprint’s ability to garner attention and engage the general public, I obtained the Altmetric attention score for each preprint . The Alt Science . Among tPeerJ. While the article was under review, we received feedback from an academic scientist and from scientists at Pacific Biosciences that the impact of the results could be enhanced by using a recently released version of the sequencing chemistry. Instead of ignoring this feedback and resubmitting the paper to address the reviews, we generated new data and submitted an updated preprint a year later with a simultaneous submission to PeerJ that incorporated the original reviews and the feedback we received from the academic scientist and Pacific Biosciences. It was eventually published by PeerJ (mBio. During that time, the abstract was accessed 189 times, and the PDF was accessed 107 times. This process engaged 3 commentators on bioRxiv, 61 people either tweeted or retweeted the preprint on Twitter, 2 people on the paper’s GitHub repository, 1 person on a blog, and 2 via e-mail. Compared to the two scientists that eventually reviewed the article, the preliminary round of informal peer review engaged a much larger and more diverse community than had I foregone the posting of a preprint. By the time that the final version of the paper was submitted on 21 April 2017, the preprint version of this article had an Almetric attention score of 58, which placed it in the top 5% of all research scored by Altmetric and the abstract and PDF had been accessed 2,152 and 512 times, respectively. Although there are concerns regarding the quality of the science posted to a preprint server, I contend that responsible use of preprints as a part of the scientific process can significantly enhance the science.Posting research as a preprint gives an author great control over when their work is made public. Under the traditional peer review model, an author may need to submit and revise their work multiple times to several journals over a long period before it is finally published. In contrast, an author can post the preprint at the start of the process for others to consume and comment on as it works its way through the peer review process. A first example illustrates the utility of preprints for improving access to research and the quality of its reporting. In 2014, my research group posted a preprint to PeerJ PrePrints describing a method of sequencing 16S rRNA gene sequences using the Pacific Biosciences sequencing platform . At the by PeerJ , 43. Sinby PeerJ , 45. As A lingering question is what role traditional journals will have in disseminating research if there is broad adoption of preprints. Edited peer-reviewed journals offer and will continue to offer significant added value to a publication. A scholarly publishing ecosystem in which preprints coexist with journals will allow authors to gain value from the immediate communication of their work associated with preprints and also benefit from the peer-reviewed, professionally edited publication that publishers can provide.mSphere. mSphereDirect is a publication track of the journal that capitalizes on the opportunity offered to couple preprints with rigorous peer review. mSphereDirect actively encourages authors to post their papers as preprints as part of an author-driven editorial process where an editorial decision is rendered within 5 days and publication in mSphere within a month (–PLoS Genetics and Genome Biology, have publicly stated that they scout preprints for this purpose (The professional copyediting, layout, and publicity that these publishers offer are also unique features of traditional journals. An alternative perspective is that preprints will eventually replace traditional journals. Certainly, this is a radical perspective, but it does serve to motivate publishers to capture the innovation opportunities offered by preprints. By adopting preprint-friendly policies, journals can create an attractive environment for authors. As discussed above, a growing number of journals have created mechanisms for authors to directly submit preprints to their journals. An example is offered by the ASM, which earlier this year launched a new venture from  a month . As the  a month –22. Thes purpose , 48. PreSince the first microbiology-affiliated preprint was posted on bioRxiv in November 2013 , an incr


Molecular Oncology has become fully Open Access in 2017 joining the other FEBS journals on the FEBS Press platform and Wiley. From January 2017, all articles in Molecular Oncology are published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), allowing readers to access the journal irrespective of speciality, host institution or location.http://febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/hub/journal/10.1002/ (ISSN)1878-0261/index.html.The journal will continue to highlight new discoveries, approaches, as well as technical developments, in basic, clinical and discovery‐driven translational cancer research. Priority is given to work that significantly advances our understanding of disease processes leading to human tumour development and establishes novel concepts of clear clinical significance in diagnosis, prognosis and prevention strategies. We publish Research articles, Science Policy reports, Reviews (by invitation only) and Thematic issues (by invitation only). Science Policy reports, Reviews and Thematic issues are free of charge. For more information, see http://febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/hub/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1878-0261/editorial-board.html), will help shape the future development of the journal.To keep abreast of new developments, we have recently appointed Ulrik Ringborg  as Senior Associated Editor and four new members of the Editorial Board: Christopher Lord , Daniel Peeper , Stefano Piccolo  and Joan Seoane . Their expertise, together with that of the rest of the Editorial Board (In the new Open Access format, we expect the editorial team to continue to apply the same rigorous standards of peer review and acceptance criteria, ensuring that the journal remains the high‐quality publication we have come to value greatly.Molecular Oncology and if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.We very much hope that you share our excitement for these new developments for Finally, we would like to thank Elsevier for the continuous support and encouragement we received during the past ten years. In particular, we would like to thank Adrian Klinkenberg, Carl Schwarz, Lucia Muñoz Franco and Olaf Meesters with whom we worked closely together for various periods of time during the development of the journal. Also, our thanks extend to Mary Purton from FEBS Press as well as members of the Wiley team for the much‐appreciated help and advice received during the transition period.


Along with other academic librarians, I have been tracking predatory publishers and monitoring their evolution. The aim of my work has been to help researchers avoid becoming victims of these exploitative and dishonest publishers and to show how they are threatening research. In this article, I will describe predatory publishers, identify how they operate and hurt researchers and science, and show dermatology researchers how best to avoid them.You have probably received spam e-mail solicitations from previously unknown publishers inviting you to submit a manuscript to one of their journals, join an editorial board, or, perhaps, complete an ad hoc peer review of a scholarly manuscript. In fact, if you are like most researchers in the biomedical sciences, you have probably received such e-mails on a daily basis. Most of these spam e-mails come from what I have termed The early 2000s saw the emergence of the open-access movement, a social movement that argued for and promoted the transition to open-access publishing for academic journals. Under the successful, subscription journal publishing model, library subscriptions were the chief method to finance the publication of scholarly research. Open-access introduced a new method of financing journals in the form of author fees. In most cases, with the use of this publishing method, journals are freely accessible, and the publishing costs are covered by fees charged to authors upon acceptance of their articles for publication.In theory, the idea is great: no-cost access frees academic and medical libraries from having to pay subscription charges, and published articles are accessible to anyone, anywhere, with internet access. Indeed, there are many open-access journals using the author-pays model that are ethical and successful. Although it does have weaknesses, the model itself is not the problem. The problem is the abuse of the author-pays model for profit, leading to the profusion of predatory publishers. Thus, while the open-access publishing model was born with noble intentions, many such initiatives have unintended, negative consequences, and open-access publishing is no exception.predatory publisher (In this case, the downside is the built-in conflict of interest inherent in the open-access publishing model. Publishers who employ the model generate increased revenue if they publish more papers. This is great for the publisher but bad for science. The conflict of interest is in stark contrast to the demands of peer review, which, if performed honestly, often results in papers being rejected for publication. Marginal publishers realized this profitable weakness soon after the open-access movement started and began to seek as many manuscripts as possible for publication to maximize their income. Realizing this, I coined the term ublisher .Frequently, when new predatory, open-access medical publishers appear, they launch with a large number of journals. Typically, they use a template to create a home page for each journal and try to have one journal for each major medical specialty. As a result, many low-quality and predatory open-access publishers include a dermatology journal among their titles.The predatory publishers know that medical researchers often have research grants and that they frequently use this funding to pay author fees. That is why medical researchers are targeted by so many spam e-mails: predatory publishers want a share of their grant money.Predatory publishers operate like counterfeit scholarly publishers. Many pretend to be scholarly societies, associations, or institutes when in reality, they are merely a privately held microbusiness, often operated from a dwelling. Many hide their business locations, or use virtual office companies to make it appear as if they are based in an Anglophone country. They promise a fast publishing process, and some even optionally charge a separate fee for an expedited review process of a week or two. Some add researchers' names and university affiliations to their editorial boards without the permission or knowledge of these researchers. They try to exploit the names and affiliations to attract article submissions, which is their bread and butter.For much of its history, science has relied on a gentleman's agreement  to goverBoth agreed to employ peer review and the scientific consensus to demarcate authentic science from pseudo-science to maintain the academic record's integrity. Thus, there have been scientific journals focusing on astronomy but none on astrology. No human activity works perfectly all the time, and peer review is no exception. However, the gentleman’s agreement has completely broken down with the advent of predatory journals, which can be used to promulgate any scientific thesis all while bearing the window dressing of science. This breakdown is harming science.Predatory and low-quality journals enable the publication of pseudo-, activist, and conspiracy-theory science. Medical science has been particularly hit hard, with journals now devoted to unscientific medicine such as Ayurveda and homeopathy. Activist science seeks to promote a political or social cause, such as denying anthropogenic global warming. Conspiracy theorists have used open-access journals to promote the chemtrail conspiracy theory, namely that governments use airplanes to spray chemicals into the atmosphere.Some have used pay-to-publish journals to falsely prove the efficacy of medicines they have developed. For example, several articles have been published in predatory journals promoting an unapproved drug called GcMAF. It is clear that the authors of those articles exploited the easy or automatic article acceptance in the journals where the articles were published. The Belgian Anticancer Fund has done work to inform the public about GcMAF .Publishing in a predatory journal or voluntarily serving on the editorial board of one can hurt researchers' careers. When such articles or editorial board services are recorded on one’s curriculum vitae, it can actually hurt a researcher’s chances of earning promotion and tenure. External reviewers may take note of one's publication in easy-acceptance journals, penning evaluations that hurt a career rather than help it .Author fees may prevent some researchers without grants from publishing in predatory journals , especiaEasy acceptance, open-access journals also hurt academic evaluations. Some researchers exploit the quick, easy, and cheap publishing process that so many predatory open-access journals now offer. Too many academic evaluation systems have not kept up with the changes in scholarly publishing and rely too much on academic evaluation by means of counting one's number of publications. Such systems enable dishonest researchers to easily outperform their honest counterparts, who submit their work to journals where the bona fide peer review process takes longer and the risk of eventual rejection is higher. This miscarriage of academic evaluations results in a deep resentment among honest researchers toward those who publish with easy-acceptance journals.In their article, "Caught in the trap: The allure of deceptive publishers," nursing researchers Researchers should avoid the temptation to submit their work to easy-acceptance journals. The long-term damage of such a decision can hurt one's career and stigmatize research carried out later. Stick to known publishers and journals, and be skeptical of any publishing-related solicitation you receive through e-mail .No research is more important to humans than medical research, and it deserves to be published in top-quality journals that professionally manage peer review and add value through copyediting and promotion of published articles. Aim for the top. Do the best possible research and share it with colleagues by publishing it in the top journals in your field.


The ubiquity of multispecies communities on Earth makes it imperative that they be carefully studied, often through the application of multidisciplinary approaches. This new journal clearly aims to serve as the home to the most exciting and innovative manuscripts in these areas. Backed by the outstanding publishing infrastructure and reputation of Nature Partner Journals, npj Biofilms and Microbiomes will in all likelihood get off to a fast start. At least, such is my hope. But do we really need another journal to publish work on biofilms and microbiomes? Do we not already have enough high quality journals that cover these areas of the microbial sciences? In the spirit of full disclosure, I did ask myself these—and many related questions—when Staffan initially approached me with the invitation to serve as Associate Editor. Obviously, in the end I agreed to serve as Associate Editor. Herein I would like to outline my reasons; these go way beyond the scientific aims and scope of the journal. Rather, I was most swayed by what I see as the need to revitalize the scientific publishing process. In the end, I felt convinced that the Editor-in-Chief and Associate Editors could greatly shape the process of publication in this journal. In that way this new journal can join in with several other publications that, in my view, are bringing back sanity to a process that I feel has gone largely awry in the life sciences in recent years.By now you, dear reader, will have had an opportunity to read our Editor-in-Chief Staffan Normark’s comments on the aims and scope of this new (and exciting!) journal ‘First and foremost, I am convinced that we live in an era of open access and online-only publishing. This new journal adheres to these principles using the model set forth for all Nature Partner Journals. But while open access publishing is of prime importance, it is also essential to recognize that the medium is susceptible to predatory practices. Thus, there is a need to make certain that the highest scientific rigor be applied to the review process in this new journal. Here I have no doubt that it is key to have the backing of such a well-established and reputable consortium, the Nature Publishing Group.A second strong conviction I have is that scientific publications should be both peer reviewed and peer edited. While it is wonderful that we, the editors of this new journal, will have the assistance of a great support staff, it will be practicing scientists who will be making the key decisions on submitted manuscripts. In addition, at least as far as I am concerned, I will not simply be editor for the manuscripts I handle for the journal. I will have a role of reviewing editor, providing in-depth comments along with my recommendations to the Editor-in-Chief. In the spirit of full transparency, I will also reveal my identity as reviewing editor to the authors irrespective of the decision reached on their manuscript.npj Biofilms and Microbiomes be done in a way that the authors get a clear sense of how their submission was evaluated. For every manuscript I handle, I aim to provide as a review a single consensus opinion, reached at by consultation among the reviewers and the Associate Editor. I hope this will eventually become routine for all submissions to the journal.For authors submitting manuscripts to journals, the review process often has the feel of a ‘black box’. Their work goes in and some time later comes out with a decision based on some comments that do not always make complete sense. My hope is that the review process in One key aspect that I will push for in the review process will be the elimination of what Hidde Ploegh referred to as the ‘wasteful tyranny of reviewer experiments’. If enough additional experiments are really required, that should be grounds for rejection of a manuscript. But, I will not tolerate anonymous reviewers requiring additional experiments simply because they are possible and because they would be a nice addition.http://am.ascb.org/dora/). The journal impact factor has a number of well-documented deficiencies as a tool for research assessment, as such I make a commitment to attempt assessing the potential impact of individual articles based on my experience. Each article published in npj Biofilms and Microbiomes will also display a range of individual article metrics, allowing readers to judge each article according to its own unique impact across a broad range of criteria.As a final note, I would like to add that I am a strong supporter of the San Francisco Declaration of Research Assessment (DORA—It is because there is still much work to be done in the area of scientific publishing, along with the exciting new discoveries in the areas of biofilms and microbiomes, that I have enthusiastically agreed to serve as Associate Editor of this new journal.