Scientific editors shape the content of academic journals and set standards for their fields. Yet, the degree to which the gender makeup of editors reflects that of scientists, and the rate at which editors publish in their own journals, are not entirely understood. Here, we use algorithmic tools to infer the gender of 81,000 editors serving more than 1,000 journals and 15 disciplines over five decades. Only 26% of authors in our dataset are women, and we find even fewer women among editors (14%) and editors-in-chief (8%). Career length explains the gender gap among editors, but not editors-in-chief. Moreover, by analysing the publication records of 20,000 editors, we find that 12% publish at least one-fifth, and 6% publish at least one-third, of their papers in the journal they edit. Editors-in-chief tend to self-publish at a higher rate. Finally, compared with women, men have a higher increase in the rate at which they publish in a journal soon after becoming its editor. Using publication and editorial team composition records from more than 1,000 journals, Liu and coauthors uncover pervasive gender inequalities among academic editors. Only 8% of editors-in-chief are women. Nearly 6% of editors publish one-third of all their papers in the journal they edit, and this self-publication pattern is stronger among men editors. Elites reinforce their status via scientific publications5, and editors play a key role in this process by having the final say about what gets published7, thereby controlling the channel through which scientists receive prestige and recognition8. Moreover, editors themselves are scientific elites, who have gained recognition from their community as experts in their fields10. Therefore, characterizing the appointment and publication patterns of editors is key to understanding scientific elites.A recurring theme in the study of science is the accumulative advantage that elites enjoy in academia, be it highly cited scientists14, and elite status in particular19. In this vein, there has been widespread, yet fragmented, evidence showing that women are underrepresented on editorial boards28. Gender diversity on editorial boards is not only important in its own right29, but also has broader implications. An inclusive editorial board signals that the journal is open to all authors30, implying that the underrepresentation of female editors may create a vicious cycle that further deters women from participating in science29.Unfortunately, not all scientists have an equal chance of becoming editors. Women, historically marginalized in academia, face additional barriers in attaining scientific opportunities in generalCell, Nature and Science), the vast majority of editors are research-active academics, who perform editorial duties in addition to being a scientist. Such editors would benefit from publishing original research articles, as the evaluation of academics heavily relies on bibliometric outcomes31. Sometimes editors publish their findings in the journals they edit38, occasionally resulting in controversies42. Such controversies are fuelled by the possibility that the editors’ submissions are treated favourably, which may be considered as ‘an abuse of the scientific publishing system’42.While being the gatekeepers of science, editors also actively seek opportunities to publish. Although some editors are full-time professionals  before the start of their editorship and compare them with an average scientist. To this end, for every editor, we randomly select a scientist whose discipline and academic birth year—the year when their first paper was published—match that of the editor. Then, we compare the pair in terms of citation count, paper count, h-index, collaborator count and affiliation rank. Note that the attributes of the editor are measured before their editorship starts, implying that the measurements are not influenced by the potential boost in visibility associated with being an editor. Moreover, the scientist being compared with the editor has their attributes measured in the same year, implying that the pair had the same career length when the measurements were taken. Finally, it should be noted that those scientists may themselves include editors of different publishing houses, as would be expected from the average scientist in MAG whom those scientists are meant to represent.56—compared with just 20% for scientists , eight times more citations  and four times greater h-index (16 versus 3); see Fig. sts Fig. . Suppleme,j) denote an editor–journal pair such that editor e served on journal j. Moreover, let year y ∈ , we consider every e,j such that year e and their matched scientists at the year y. The results are depicted in Fig. Next, we analyse how the characteristics of editors upon the start of their editorship have changed over the past four decades. Specifically, let ; this holds across all disciplines except Sociology. Supplementary Fig. t4,685 = 6.27, P < 0.001, β = 0.28, 95% CI 0.22 to 0.34), with the editorial career length of male editors-in-chief being greater than that of their female counterparts in all disciplines except Engineering, Geology and Materials Science.Let us now examine the gender disparity across disciplines. Figure 47. In contrast, looking at the right panel of Fig. As we have shown thus far, women have been consistently underrepresented on editorial boards across disciplines over the past decades. Let us now investigate whether this phenomenon can be explained by gender differences in productivity, impact and career lengths, or whether additional hidden factors are at play. To this end, we use a randomized baseline model whereby each editor (or editor-in-chief) is replaced with a randomly chosen scientist who may have a different gender but is identical in terms of discipline and academic age . In other words, the gender composition of those with very high self-publication rates roughly reflects that of all editors. However, if we calculate the percentage of men, and the percentage of women, who fall among the top 1%, 2%, …, 10% of editors with the largest number of self-published papers . In other words, while men account for 84.8% of all editors, they account for 88.2% of the top 10% editors with the highest number of self-published papers.Finally, we check whether there exist gender differences in terms of self-publication rate, as well as the number of self-published papers. To this end, we first calculate the percentage of men, and the percentage of women, who fall among the top 1%, 2%, …, 10% of editors with the highest self-publication rates Fig. . We finders Fig. , we findTo further investigate the gender differences in self-publication behaviour, we introduce a regression model to estimate the temporal trend of an editor’s self-publication rate each year, while allowing a structural break of the trend to happen around the time that one becomes an editor. Additionally, the regression model controls for gender as well as journal fixed effects  they were editing; see Fig. Having analysed extreme editors, let us now focus on the three extreme editorial boards corresponding to the journals with the highest percentage of papers authored by their editors. The results are depicted in Fig. 57, the present findings reveal a persistent gender gap. Using an unprecedented dataset, our study contributes to the literature in two ways. First, we were able to examine the gender distribution among scientists and editors over the past five decades, revealing that the proportion of female editors persisted at about half that of female scientists, and that the proportion of female editors-in-chief has consistently been even smaller. Second, we were able to compare the gender gap across 15 disciplines, revealing that women have been consistently underrepresented among editors and editors-in-chief in every discipline other than Sociology. Furthermore, while gender disparity has often been measured in terms of impact59, productivity58 and career length47, we showed that, at least for editors-in-chief, gender disparity goes beyond what is predicted by these numbers, indicating a systematic role for non-meritocratic factors in the selection of editors-in-chief. This resonates with the past findings that women face a ‘glass ceiling’ in their professional careers60, and suggests that women face additional obstacles in being recognized as elite scientists in their respective disciplines. Overall, this study contributes to the literature advocating a more inclusive editorial board in particular, and a more inclusive scientific community in general61.Despite efforts to increase women’s representation on editorial boards65. Moreover, our unique dataset allowed us to understand how far editors can reach with their self-publication practice. Naturally, these findings raise the question: How much self-publication should be considered too much? Of course, there are perfectly innocuous explanations of why editors self-publish. Some may conduct research in a niche field with only a few alternative journals to publish in; others may be established scientists who self-publish their best works to boost the reputation of a young journal. Still, if there is anything that can be learned from recent scandals involving editors67, it is that the power enjoyed by editors can be exploited. For instance, consider those editors-in-chief who self-publish at high rates, despite being responsible for overseeing the review process of every submission, including their own. To an external observer, it may not be entirely clear how such articles are handled to circumvent the apparent conflict of interest. By providing an overview of the status quo of self-publishing practice, our study contributes to the discussion of whether self-publications should be governed with more transparency.We also showed that a substantial amount of editors publish in the journal they edit, and provided the first comparison, to our knowledge, of self-publication behaviour across disciplines and genders. As such, our study contributes to the line of research exploring gender differences in academiaOur study is not without limitations. First, our work comes with the inherent restrictions of observational studies. In particular, although we use standard techniques such as matching and randomized baseline models to further our understanding of gender inequality and self-publication patterns, it is hard to pinpoint the underlying mechanisms behind these findings; this constitutes a potential direction for future research. Second, all analyses are done using editor data collected from Elsevier. Although this is the largest publisher in academia, other publishers could also be explored, which is left to future studies. Lastly, to infer gender at scale, the only practical solution was to use algorithmic tools. Despite their advantages, such tools are not 100% accurate. Although we restricted our analysis to names that are classified with at least 90% accuracy throughout the study, manual classification is likely to be more accurate.There is more to the story of scientific publishing than statistics. Behind the numbers, some editors stand up for a more transparent selection of papers, and actively recruit board members from underrepresented groups, while others exploit their power to benefit their careers. After all, editors are humans. Our expectation of human behaviour in imperfectly transparent institutions determines the narrative: Is it reassuring that the majority of editors hardly self-publish? Or is it striking that 11% of editors-in-chief publish at least one-third of their papers in the journal they edit? Should we be satisfied with the increasing proportion of female editors over the past decades? Or should we be concerned that, despite all efforts to promote gender equality, women are still underrepresented among editors in nearly all disciplines? Either way, we hope our study, and the future work it may inspire, will contribute to a fairer, more transparent and more inclusive culture of scientific editorship.68. Each journal curates some or all of its past issues, and all of the articles that appeared in every curated issue. In addition to research articles, many journals list their editors on the Editorial Board page, which can be found in the first volume of each issue. These pages, which constitute the primary source of our editor-related data, were retrieved using the Elsevier Article Retrieval API69. In total, we collected 173,434 editorial board pages from 1,893 different journals. From these pages, we were able to extract the following information about each journal: title, issue, volume, discipline, publication date, editors’ names, editors’ affiliations and whether or not any given editor is an editor-in-chief. To retrieve the publication records of these editors, we paired them with scientists from the MAG dataset. In particular, an editor in Elsevier and a scientist in MAG are considered to be the same person if, and only if, they uniquely share the same name and affiliation. For details on how the name disambiguation problem is addressed in this study, see Supplementary Note e,j pair, the first (last) year of editorship is assumed to be the publication year of the first (last) issue of j in which e is mentioned as an editor. Moreover, the editorial career of e (as an editor of j) is assumed to span the period between the first and last years of editorship (inclusive), implying that any gap years (if they exist) are included in our analysis. Similarly, the academic career of any scientist s is assumed to span the period between the publication years of their first and last papers. As a result, the academic age of s in any given year y is s.Elsevier published 4,289 different journals in 2019, all of which are listed on ScienceDirect—a website operated by the publisherEditorials were then excluded from the publication record of each editor, to ensure that it consisted of scientific papers. To this end, we queried ScienceDirect to identify the type of each publication in Elsevier, and excluded over 13,000 publications falling under the following types: Book review, Conference info, Editorial, Encyclopedia, Erratum, News, Practice guideline and Product review. This left us with about 168,000 publications (co)authored by the 20,000 editors identified in MAG. Out of those publications, we randomly sampled 200 and manually verified that only two were, in fact, editorial pieces. Additionally, we manually examined all publications (co)authored by the three extreme editors considered in Fig. 71. Following other studies in the literature47, we use Genderize.io, which has been shown to outperform other alternatives70. This classifier integrates publicly available census statistics to build a name database, mapping names to binary gender labels. In our gender-related analysis, we only considered scientists whose first names were classified with a confidence of ≥ 90%.Several gender classifiers have been proposed to dateGenderize.io with confidence of ≥ 90%; let us denote this dataset by Egender. On the other hand, when analysing the publication patterns of editors, we considered a dataset consisting of the 20,000 editors who had a unique matching entry in MAG, denoted by EMAG. These two datasets are likely to exhibit biases as they were not randomly sampled from all 103,000 Elsevier editors, denoted by Eall. In this section, we aim to understand how these biases could affect our main findings.In our gender-based analysis, we considered a dataset consisting of the 81,000 editors whose gender has been identified by Egender to Eall in terms of the relative size of each discipline. We found that the two are highly correlated (r = 0.99); see Supplementary Fig. EMAG with Eall (r = 0.79); see Supplementary Fig. Eall, while others are overrepresented. As a result, the observed proportion of women in Egender may differ from that in Eall, and the observed proportion of editors in EMAG whose self-publications rates are ≥ 10%, …, ≥ 50% may also differ from that in Eall. As shown in Supplementary Fig. Egender, which could affect our gender-based findings, especially as Medicine amounts to more than a fifth of all editors in Egender. For instance, if this discipline happens to have fewer female editors than average, then our estimation of the gender gap (which is based on Egender) would be an overestimation of the overall gender gap . To estimate the gender gap in Eall, we multiplied the proportion of women in each discipline in Egender by the size of that discipline in Eall. Similarly, to estimate the percentage of editors whose self-publications rates are ≥ 10%, …, ≥ 50% in Eall, we multiplied their proportion in each discipline in EMAG by the size of that discipline in Eall. As a result, the proportion of female editors becomes 12.95% , and the percentage of editors whose self-publication rate is ≥ 10%, ≥ 20%, ≥ 30%, ≥ 40% and ≥ 50% becomes 27.21%, 13.79%, 7.71%, 4.88% and 3.66%, respectively . This suggests that the situation may be grimmer than originally estimated, as the gender gap seems to be larger, and self-publication seems to be more widespread, once we adjust for differences in discipline size.We start off by comparing EMAG is of Eall in terms of the editors’ publication patterns. As there are no available datasets that provide the publication profiles of all 103,000 editors in Eall, a practical alternative is to compare EMAG with a random sample of Eall, after manually identifying the publication profile of each sampled editor. Unfortunately, this approach also comes with its own limitations, as many editors do not have an online presence, making it extremely challenging, if not impossible, to manually identify their publication profile. With these limitations in mind, we sampled 500 editors from Eall and were able to manually identify the MAG entry of 264 of them using information available online; the set of those 264 editors is denoted by Emanual. Then, we compared EMAG with Emanual in terms of the confounders examined earlier in Fig. EMAG and Emanual in terms of paper count, collaborator count, h-index and percentage of editors whose affiliation is among the top 100; see Supplementary Fig. EMAG so that the distributions of all confounders are similar to Emanual. After re-sampling, we found the percentage of editors whose self-publication rate is ≥ 10%, ≥ 20%, ≥ 30%, ≥ 40% and ≥ 50% becomes 24.23%, 12.72%, 7.61%, 5.02% and 4.04%, respectively , and there is no significant difference between EMAG and Emanual in terms of those percentages using two-sided Fisher’s exact tests. This analysis suggests that the differences in the above confounders do not bias the estimation of the percentage of editors with high self-publication rates. Note that the aforementioned re-sampling is only done as a part of this sensitivity analysis, and does not affect any other result in our study.Next, we examine how representative In three parts of our study, we used matching techniques to compare editors against scientists with comparable attributes. This section provides detailed descriptions of each matching process.e,j pair, we compare e to scientists whose discipline and academic birth year—the year when their first paper was published—are the same as that of e.First, in our descriptive analysis .Second, as part of our analysis of gender disparity, we apply a matching technique Fig.  to test e in their own journal j can be explained by characteristics of e that are unrelated to e becoming an editor. To this end, given an e,j pair, we match e to a scientist s who is not an editor of j based on a number of confounders, including the rate at which they publish in j. Ideally, the rate of e and s should be similar up to year e becoming an editor of j). However, to increase the likelihood of finding a match for e, we do not require the rate of s to match that of e in year y such that e matches s in year y if all of the following conditions are met:e and s have the same discipline.e and s have the same gender; for details on how gender is identified, see e and s fall in the same bin. Here, affiliations are ranked based on the 2019 Academic Ranking of World Universities , and are divided into the following bins: ; ; ; ; ; ; .The rank of any first known affiliations of e’s first paper does not differ from that of s by more than 3 years.The publication year of e in years in y by more than 10%.The academic age of e published in j in years in y by more than 10%.The percentage of papers that e published in j up to years in y by more than 10%.The percentage of papers that There exists a year, Third, in our analysis of self-publication patterns, we apply a matching technique (top row of Fig. Further information on research design is available in the Supplementary InformationSupplementary Figs. 1–20, Tables 1–8 and Notes 1–2.Reporting Summary


Antibody Therapeutics. The valuable insights and feedback from our reviewers are essential in maintaining the high standards of our journal for serving the scientific community.We would like to take this opportunity to express our sincere appreciation for those who reviewed manuscripts for our journal We recognize that reviewing manuscripts is a demanding task that requires a significant amount of time and effort, and we are truly grateful to the reviewers for their dedication and commitment to this important role. Their generosity in sharing expert knowledge and expertise has been invaluable. We look forward to continued support and collaboration as we work together to advance the field of antibody engineering and therapeutics.Antibody Therapeutics in 2022.The experts listed below, as well as a number of other reviewers who would like to remain anonymous, reviewed manuscripts for Ab, OlgaAkiba, HirokiAn, ZhiqiangAngkasekwinai, PornpimonAntignani, AntonellaBhatia, HemaBooth, BrianBorth, NicoleCarter, PaulChen, ChunChen, LeiChen, XiaochengChen, XinChen, YuanzhiChen, YuxinChen, ZhoujiangChen, ZirongCho, Yong KuChow, Sih-YaoChuang, RayChung, JunhoFeng, MingqianFeng, ZijieFitzGerald, DavidFort, MadelineFu, YingGao, WendaGavin, MarcGe, XinGoswami, ArvindGui, XunGurusamy, BalakrishnanHe, XinHirasawa, NoriyasuHuang, HeHuang, JianHuang, LeiJiang, WeidongJung, Sang TaekKarunasagar, IddyaKathuria, SagarKlein, ChristianKu, ShermanKu, ZhiqiangLaber, JoshuaLi, NanLi, ShichangLi, ShuqiLi, WeiLi, XinxinLiu, DayouLiu, XiaoguangLou, YangMa, NingningMalm, MagdalenaMeng, FeilongMorris, ChristopherNarhi, LindaO’Mara, BrianOu, JianfaPelegri-O’Day, EmmaPirhanov, AzadyPolson, Andrew G.Prior, SandraQiu, YuRader, ChristophRai, PraveenRaina, DeepakRatnam, ManoharRosenthal, DeanSarangapani, PrasadShen, GuodongSun, YapingTustian, AndrewVasquez, MaximilianoWang, ZimingWilliams, JohnXia, NingshaoXu, JianqingYu, XinZhan, JinbiaoZhang, ShengZhang, WeiZhang, XiaoZhang, XuyaoZhang, YangZhao, ZhihuiZong, Shuai


At a time when the debate on scientific integrity is gaining more space, the issue of predatory journals returns to the stage as one of the main actors. The discussion about predatory journals has become more prevalent in the scientific community due to the growing number of suspect scientific journals and the lack of a clear definition to define them . DespitThus, predatory journals typically have low or nonexistent academic standards for peer review, often accepting papers with little to no scrutiny. They may also charge exorbitant fees to authors, without providing the support or resources necessary to ensure high-quality publications . These There is a widely accepted consensus that predatory journals are deleterious to the development of ethical science based on scientific integrity. However, it is sometimes difficult to separate their egregious practices from those of, what is, in effect, a lucrative casino that the big publishers operate. Many of these publishers, such as Elsevier, Wiley, and Springer Nature have profit margins that exceed those of major tech companies like Apple and Google, with some publishers having profit margins of 30-40 % or higher (Buranyi, 2017[A significant number of big publishers charge fees that can reach thousands of dollars to publish an article in the Open Access system, which is an indisputably lucrative market for them. This system is anachronistic, unhealthy, and counterproductive for researchers who must pay to have their work published in journals deemed "more respectable" because they belong to large publishers. While many of these journals were originally established by respected scientific societies and feature peer-reviewed papers, they have become a 'big business' that primarily benefits the publishers instead of the researchers. What is even more outrageous is that researchers themselves work for free - considering it part of their duty to the academic community - as reviewers for these rich journals, while having to pay to have their papers published.Moreover, funding agencies, who pay for the research on which studies and articles are based, have to provide the funds not only for researchers to submit articles but also to pay for access to articles that support their work, becoming an unsustainable and irrational process from the researcher's point of view; Meanwhile the big publishers rack up profits made from the science developed in their countries. This practice is neither reasonable nor rational, yet the big publishers have the power to stifle the debate on the subject. How many articles can you find on the subject in leading journals produced by big publishers? You could probably count the number of good articles on the fingers of one hand.In respect of predatory journals, one way out to reduce their number would be for scientific societies to set up working groups and, using their expertise, better direct the researchers in their field, helping them to identify and avoid these types of journals. In respect of the big publishers, dialogue between the main actors involved in the publication process is urgently required to expand the reach and access to published science. What has become the "paper publishing market" is an untenable system that works against researchers, impoverishes science, and undermines the scientific ecosystem, thereby making society vulnerable by acting as a brake on scientific advancement.Therefore, it is imperative to open this Pandora's box and have researchers, funding agencies, scientific societies, and publishers sit at the table to find a more sustainable solution that prioritizes scientific integrity, ethical principles, and the security of scientific information. In a world faced by a growing number of challenges, we need a system that produces reliable data and encourages quality research, not a “big casino” run by wealthy players acting as the gatekeepers in respect of the publication of the results of scientific studies.The authors declare no conflict of interest.


Manuscript preparation and the (re)submission of articles can create a significant workload in academic jobs. In this exploratory analysis, we estimate the time and costs needed to meet the diverse formatting requirements for manuscript submissions in biomedical publishing.We reviewed 302 leading biomedical journals’ submission guidelines and extracted information on the components that tend to vary the most among submission guidelines . We estimated annual research funding lost due to manuscript formatting by calculating hourly academic salaries, the time lost to reformatting articles, and quantifying the total number of resubmissions per year. We interviewed several researchers and senior journal editors and editors-in-chief to contextualize our findings and develop guidelines that could help both biomedical journals and researchers work more efficiently.Among the analyzed journals, we found a huge diversity in submission requirements. By calculating average researcher salaries in the European Union and the USA, and the time spent on reformatting articles, we estimated that ~ 230 million USD were lost in 2021 alone due to reformatting articles. Should the current practice remain unchanged within this decade, we estimate ~ 2.5 billion USD could be lost between 2022 and 2030—solely due to reformatting articles after a first editorial desk rejection. In our interviews, we found alignment between researchers and editors; researchers would like the submission process to be as straightforward and simple as possible, and editors want to easily identify strong, suitable articles and not waste researchers’ time.status quo, and we urge the publishers and the editorial-advisory boards of biomedical journals to adopt them. This may also require support from publishers and major international organizations that govern the work of editors.Based on the findings from our quantitative analysis and contextualized by the qualitative interviews, we conclude that free-format submission guidelines would benefit both researchers and editors. However, a minimum set of requirements is necessary to avoid manuscript submissions that lack structure. We developed our guidelines to improve the The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12916-023-02882-y. Since the introduction of the first printed journal in 1665, the intent behind publishing papers has been to advance scientific knowledge by building on other scholars’ results and avoiding duplications –5. HowevWhen academic authors currently format a manuscript to adhere to a journal’s submission guidelines, it means that their documents should arrive in editorial in-boxes with a specific structure and length, following certain formatting for figures and tables, author information, reference style—the list goes on. In theory, the main benefit of such standardized formatting is that it facilitates the evaluation process at both the editorial and the peer-review stage . SeveralHowever, initial manuscript submission guidelines vary substantially among journals. This places a time constraint and financial strain on authors in terms of formatting and reformatting their articles . InformaAs the problematic nature of varying submission requirements has been raised several times –19 and rIn our exploratory analysis, we reviewed 302 leading biomedical journals’ submission requirements to estimate the time and costs needed to meet the diverse formatting requirements for an initial submission in biomedical publishing. To gain insight into the processes involved, we sought the experiences and perspectives of not only authors but also journal editors. Based on our findings from the quantitative study and the subsequent qualitative contextualization, in this article, we propose concrete suggestions for journal guidelines that will both decrease the time needed for submission and reduce the financial burden the current system imposes on academia.n = 181) and, from the remaining list, all that are non-biomedical journals (n = 427); we present the detailed selection process in Additional file n = 392) by decreasing CiteScore values and included the top 302 biomedical journals for review. The 302 journal titles were divided among all co-authors, who then manually extracted the eight components that we found to vary the most among submission guidelines: the maximum length of the title, running title, abstract, and manuscript text; the structure of the abstract and the manuscript; the maximum number of items (tables and/or figures) and references allowed; and the availability of a submission template on the journal’s website   family, Science family) usually follow the same formatting conventions, the vast majority of journals we analyzed had a unique set of requirements. We acknowledge that the selection process of leading biomedical journals  might bias our findings; however, we find it unlikely that selecting journals with lower average scores or selecting journals according to other criteria would significantly impact our conclusions regarding either the diversity or the variation in submission requirements.We categorized the requirements for maximum length and overall structure; where these were specified, running-title lengths tended to be between 50 and 59 characters 15%), title lengths were between 150 and 200 characters 13%), abstract word limits were between 200 and 300 words (65%), main text word limits were between 2500 and 4000 words (32%), the number of items were 6–7 (19%), and the number of references were between 45 and 60 (17%) , we calculated that ~ 230 million USD were lost in 2021 alone. Should the current practice remain unchanged within this decade, we estimate ~ 2.5 billion USD could be lost between 2022 and 2030—solely due to reformatting articles after a first editorial desk rejection. These estimates are depicted in Fig. We obtained average annual salaries in the European Union and the United States for PhD students , postdoctoral researchers 43,000 USD), assistant professors , associate professors , and full professors , and then calculated an 3,000 USDFor many authors, the first step in publishing a scientific article is identifying the most appropriate journal(s) to disseminate their research, and then formatting the manuscript according to the target journal’s submission guidelines. The percentage of papers rejected without peer-review can vary across journals, disciplines, and publishing models, with some journals rejecting more than two-thirds of all first submissions at the editorial level ; this isScience (max. 4500 words) cannot be immediately resubmitted to The Lancet (max. 3500 words) or The New England Journal of Medicine (max. 2700 words). Such substantive differences in length also exist among the specialized journals, a specific barrier that was mentioned in our interviews. One researcher said, “For a typical manuscript, [reformatting takes] a couple of days … If you have to rewrite a lot because you have to cut 2,000 words, then it probably takes more time”.Sobani et al. estimated that the total time used to resubmit one article is ~ four hours for submitting authors . Others It could take a week [because] if we need to add an extra section, then we need to talk again between the different authors”. Reducing the word count is not the only challenge. Often, additional changes need to be implemented throughout the manuscript; e.g., the number of figures and tables, adjustments to the abstract text/structure, reference style, or the title. As one researcher put it, “When you need to reformat, it takes forever, because sometimes [journals] are really picky with some detail that you really have to follow, and they won’t send it out to review if it doesn’t fulfil their formatting criteria”. However, we did find that approximately 11% of the journals in our study provided a template on their website to guide authors with formatting.When significant rewriting takes place, the corresponding author will typically circulate a revised manuscript to any co-authors in order to obtain their approval for the new submission. In these cases, one of the researchers said, “Nature alone (desk-rejection rate: 92%). They concluded ~ 10,000 h of work time were lost per year, based on one hour of work per article to be resubmitted elsewhere  The editor hardly ever cares about how long [the text] is or how many figures it has on first instance”. The introduction of universal submission guidelines could also be a costly endeavor for journals/publishers, which could lead to resistance, as another editor noted: “It would be a very high lift to get all publishers together and agree on universal submission guidelines. And people use different submission systems that have different dependencies. […] If you’re an editor at one journal, you’ll know that in a way we’re at the tyranny of very clunky submission systems that are not very good. […] Changing that is very costly for individual publishers.”Both solutions have benefits and drawbacks. While universal guidelines would drastically reduce the burden on authors, this approach could force journals to lose their distinctive ‘look’ (house style) as well as remove flexibility specific to their subject matter or print format. But, in practice, it is unlikely to impact the editorial process. For example, one editor told us: “My understanding [is that] less and less journals […] have rigid format restrictions. I think most journals are […] moving towards initial-submission agnostic views”. Another said, “Some journals have introduced what they call ‘hassle-free’ submission [and] our journal is moving towards it”. Despite this development, the number of journals with free-format initial submissions is still estimated at only around ~ 5% of all biomedical journals  which are, basically, somebody’s whole PhD thesis just dumped there”. Another editor said: “Every so often somebody sends me an article that […] looks like […] somebody had a dictaphone in their hand and just spoke to it for 20 minutes and got someone to transcribe it”. For a format-free approach to be successful, this same editor reflected that, “It would depend on everybody submitting having a vague sense of what a scientific article looks like”. Thus, the key point in favor of a free-format approach was nicely summarized as such: “I like the articles to be standardly structured. But there is flexibility around that. It doesn’t always have to be the same. It should be recognizable as a scientific article.”With regard to a free-format approach, several editors raised concerns about the burden of having to review papers that were unreasonably long, poorly structured, or just badly written. For example, one editor noted, “recognizable as a scientific article”.Considering both options and taking the experiences of both researchers and journal editors into account, we propose a ‘golden middle’. Specifically, we believe that free-format submission guidelines are the way forward, but a minimum set of structural requirements is necessary to avoid the submission of manuscripts that are excessively long or simply not “Where we do a lot of checking is when the revised version comes back in. Because we have a strong commitment to revisions”. Similarly, another editor said, “We don’t bother with any format until we are inviting for revision. When we invite for revision, we are pretty confident. […] After peer-review, that’s when we make a commitment.”Our proposed minimum set of requirements, presented in Table As outlined in Table In the submission system, there are a lot of steps that we need to go through. […] You have to write the name, the address—things that you already have on the first page of the article. […] And the names are not recognized by the system. These are unnecessary things that really waste time.” These manual processes can also be prone to error, especially when manuscripts have many authors and/or funders. Oftentimes, following a submission of a manuscript, all co-authors need to register their profile on the journal-submission site, provide information related to expertise, keywords, and fill in other fields; e.g., the newly introduced mandatory diversity and inclusion surveys (which we fully support—after acceptance), and then proceed to approve the corresponding author’s submission. When a manuscript has multiple co-authors, such processes can cause significant delays. One of the editors we interviewed had had similar experiences on both sides of the editorial desk, explaining, “I’ve published articles […] where it is a bloody pain trying to work it out how to format it for [a journal], and jump through the ludicrous hoops of their content-management system. […] I’ve used most of the content-management systems or editorial management systems, and found that all of them tripped me up at various points”. Artificial-intelligence tools already implemented by some journals can automatically recognize and process these sections, which can save significant time for the corresponding author. If journals do not have the means to incorporate such tools, then we suggest requesting this detailed information only at the resubmission/acceptance stage.Furthermore, we recommend that online content-management systems incorporate auto-fill tools that require an initial upload of the manuscript file and then use the available information to populate fields in the system. Manually copying titles, abstracts, and key words as well as filling in authorship and funding information can substantially prolong the submission process. For example, one researcher explained, “I didn’t care what format they were in, I just cared about the science in the paper.”From our interviews, we were struck by how much alignment there was between the editors and the researchers. As we learned, researchers/authors would like the submission process to be as straightforward and simple as possible, and editors want to easily identify strong, suitable articles and not waste the authors’ time. Most editors emphasized that the manuscript’s scientific content and its relevance to the journal’s aims and scope were far more important than any formatting details. As one editor put it: “Based on this study, we urge publishers and the editorial-advisory boards of biomedical journals—who have the mandate to make these changes—to follow the increasing trend to adopt free-format initial submissions and to implement our proposed minimum set of requirements. In addition, we recommend that influential associations insist that publishers and journals adopt free-format first submissions with our proposed minimum set of requirements. Organizations that are likely to have a vested interest in the changes we are proposing are editorial associations , academic and university organizations , and certain funding bodies . Most important, large publishing houses are in the strongest position to make a meaningful impact by implementing our proposed guidelines across their portfolios of hundreds of journals.There’s a clamour [for reform] on Twitter. Every week there’s stuff going on about formats and submission. People do want them to be liberalized [because] it’s a waste of time”. Based on the results of our study, we believe now is the time to act and spark institutional change in the scientific community that will ultimately enable researchers and editors alike to use their precious time to advance science and not endlessly format papers. We would like to stress that we do not call for the abolition of journals’ unique house styles, formats, and designs; we simply believe that the simplified process of submissions that we propose here would drastically reduce the time and financial demands being experienced by an already overburdened research ecosystem. As one editor put it: “Just send [the article] in to us, and we’ll take a look at it. And if we like it, we’ll send it out for peer review. And if it meets peer review, we’ll send it back to you. And THEN you can put it into our journal’s format. I think that’s respectful of the authors’ time and effort.”We are not the only ones demanding this change. As one editor noted, “Additional file 1: Text S1. Selection process of the 302 biomedical journals for quantitative analysis. This document outlines the selection process used to identify the journals included in our quantitative analysis. It provides a list of all the journal categories that were excluded and describes how we arrived at our final selection of 302 journals that were included in the analysis.Additional file 2: Table S1. Initial submission guidelines for leading biomedical journals. This anonymized table presents the quantitative statistics extracted from the 302 selected biomedical journals. The data we collected from these journals include the maximum character count for the title and running title, the maximum word count for the abstract and manuscript body, the maximum number of items, the maximum number of references, abstract sections, main sections, and whether a template is available for authors.Additional file 3: Text S2. Interview protocol and questions for researchers and editors. This document contains a detailed description of the interview protocol used for the researchers and journal editors, including ethical considerations related to the qualitative aspect of our study and the informed consent form. The file also includes email templates that were sent to the researchers and editors we attempted to interview. It outlines the questions asked of the informants, as well as any follow-up questions.


I am excited and somewhat daunted by the task of getting this journal off the ground. Editing a journal is like having a baby – you only decide to do it a second time when you have forgotten how hard it was the first time. It might be a crazy idea to open a new journal, when we are spoilt for choice where to send our work. Fortunately, 14 out of 15 reviewers approached by Cambridge University Press disagreed with that and thought that there was a need for a new, broad-based, high-quality, open access journal covering the full range of Evolutionary Human Sciences; so here it is.I want to publish papers on anything to do with human evolution broadly defined, from human and primate phylogeny to physiology, genetics, demography, behaviour, cognition, language and culture. Evolutionary models are helping us understand classic topics in anthropology, like social organisation, kinship, warfare and witchcraft, in a new light. Evolutionary theory is informing psychology, medicine and public health, including why we harm others or ourselves. New species of hominin keep being unearthed. Collaborations between phylogeneticists, linguists and archaeologists are enhancing our understanding of our migrations and our cultural evolution. Advances in our ability to decode ancient and modern DNA are quite simply revolutionising our understanding of our own origins.One reason I wanted this journal to exist was because, for someone like me working on human behavioural ecology and cultural evolution, there was always something not quite right about most of the journals on offer, however excellent they were. If you publish in social science journals there is little or no evolution, and if you publish in biology journals most of the work is on other species and humans are the outlier. The more specialist human behaviour journals don't necessarily cover the full range of human evolutionary studies. Nor are they open access. From the haven of my desk in London, with UCL's comprehensive online library at my fingertips, I was lucky enough not to have to worry too much about access, but having spent time working elsewhere, most recently in western China, the benefits to students and researchers of just being able to download something without any hassle became painfully obvious.Evolutionary Human Sciences was unclaimed. Why did such a journal not exist? Well, most of us know the history of evolutionary studies in the social sciences. Suffice it to say that the social sciences rejected evolutionary thinking en masse, and some rejected science altogether. However, the field of evolutionary social sciences began to create itself, without waiting to be invited to anybody else's party. A few anthropologists chose the path less trodden into evolutionary anthropology. Others entered the field from zoology, archaeology and psychology, a few from linguistics and philosophy . The evolutionary study of human behaviour has been growing as a discipline in North America since the 1970s, but for a long time most of us in Europe were slightly isolated and just had to get on with it by ourselves. Diverse behavioural scientists with an interest in evolutionary approaches found each other, and gradually in Europe we accumulated a critical mass. So, many years after the same process had begun on the other side of the pond, we created our own institutions for evolutionary social scientists, of which I hope this journal will become one.Cambridge University Press were astonished that the name The more biological and physical areas of the evolutionary human sciences, like paleoanthropology and genetics, have deep roots and their own long-established societies, conferences and journals. We nonetheless encourage those of you researching in these fields to send your work to this journal too; and I especially urge you to consider sending us the more interdisciplinary studies that are emerging. Links between parts of genetics, archaeology and anthropology are proving astonishingly productive. Human evolutionary biology is a hotter topic than ever. New centres, new departments, new institutes, new academic societies and new conferences have opened up to keep up with it all. EHBEA is one such institution, that I am very happy to be associated with, which is affiliated to this journal. Indeed, if you join EHBEA you will get a significant discount on our publication charges, when they eventually come into effect.Our field still faces plenty of challenges. The ethics of studies on human subjects are a matter of continual negotiation with the public. The replication crisis has hit evolutionary psychology particularly hard, but no area of our science can be immune from error. We are asked to examine our biases in science as in life (some unreplicated studies were just sexist or racist nonsense). We welcome open science and ask contributors to provide data and code where possible; and we offer the opportunity for registered reports. However, this is not as straightforward as it seems. Some non-experimental areas of the human sciences will be particularly hard to replicate in this formal way, and even controlled laboratory experiments are proving inconsistent – the human phenotype is just so damn variable and everything we do is context dependent!Incidentally, reviewer number 15, who did not recommend CUP start this journal, agreed that it was a nice idea, but feared for the future of any new journal venturing into the competitive brew of academic publishing. Open access journals are, at least in part, a public good, and we all know what happens in public goods games. Even son number 2 commented “mum this journal thing sounds like a pretty altruistic venture”. It is sobering to remember that to play fair, you and your co-authors should, between you, review at least two papers for each one you write. Those experiments that showed that images of eyes on a computer screen were enough to make people donate to the public good have, unfortunately, not been replicated. There are, however, plenty of experiments showing that we care about our reputations, so please be a good science citizen (and fortunately the ScholarOne software keeps track of just how much reviewing everyone has been doing). Seriously though, I will need your support for the journal to flourish. I know you are too busy, but review our papers please (it need not take long). Send us your best work. And enjoy our final product.We are sneaking onto the scene quietly and will publish any papers as soon as they are ready. Our formal launch will be at the 2019 EHBEA (European Human Behaviour and Evolution Association) conference in Toulouse in April, where you can meet the editors. We are starting with the relatively conventional formats of research articles, reviews, and registered reports. I am planning to add new formats in due course, and all suggestions are gratefully received. Don't hesitate to contact me on any matter and help us steer the journal in directions you want. Thank you in advance to all our wonderful editors and reviewers and authors for being part of this project. I am really looking forward to seeing this journal grow into something that you will hopefully all value.


Due to technological advancements and improved medical management of adolescents and young adults (AYAs) living with renal disease, there has been an exponential increase noted in the number of patients advancing from the paediatric to the adult nephrology healthcare setting. Subsequently, more AYAs are required to undergo the process of healthcare transition from paediatric to adult healthcare services. This process can be a challenging period for young people and families and is often associated with a decline in physical and psychosocial health outcomes of AYAs with renal disorders. To ensure a successful transition, AYAs must develop the ability to manage their renal condition, including the medical and psychosocial aspects of their condition, independently. Despite significant research into the transition from paediatric to adult healthcare for this unique patient cohort, the transition period remains a challenge at times. This scoping review aims to map, explore, and understand the interventions that are currently available to offer positive perceptions and experiences of transition for both AYAs living with renal disorders and their families.A systematic literature search will be conducted of PubMed, PsycInfo, CINAHL, ASSIA, EMBASE and Web of Science databases from the year 2000 to present. Two independent reviewers will screen the peer-reviewed literature obtained and assess them against the inclusion criteria to determine their inclusion eligibility. Data will be extracted and synthesised using a template refined by the authors. The scoping review will be undertaken in accordance with PRISMA-ScR guidelines. Data will undergo a formal critical appraisal using recognised appraisal tools.Through mapping this knowledge, the scoping review will aim to identify interventions that are currently available and identify gaps within the literature. This evidence may support the development of transitional care interventions in the future, promote patient satisfaction, and improve patient outcome measures and experiences. The number of young people advancing from paediatric to adult nephrology care has increased dramatically in recent years, and patient survival rates have increased by 85–90%  and families when moving between paediatric and adult health services .4. Understand the experiences, barriers and facilitators recognised by young people living with renal disorders, of current transition interventions.5. Identify research and knowledge gaps in the literature.The scoping review question guides and directs the review stages. In this review, the population, concept, and context (PCC) framework will be utilised, which has been recognised as an effective framework for a scoping review by the JBI (What interventions are available to support the transition of care (Concept) from the paediatric to adult healthcare setting (Context) for adolescents and young adults living with renal disorders (Population)?A systematic literature review aims to obtain as many relevant studies as possible on a particular topic, using a thorough, objective, and reproducible search . Being sEligibility criteriaThe inclusion and exclusion criteria is developed through the generation of a PCC table , as recoPopulationThis scoping review will include AYAs living with any renal condition, encompassing any chronic or rare renal condition, patients who are currently on renal dialysis, and renal transplant recipients. Though this scoping review will specifically search for interventions to support AYAs with the healthcare transition, studies that refer to families, caregivers, healthcare providers, healthcare transition programme managers in the clinical setting and policymakers involved in the transition process alongside the AYAs will also be included, given the critical and invaluable role that they play in the transition process.AgeStudies will be included if they refer to AYAs between the ages of 12–24 years old, who are either (a) preparing for the transition process, (b) currently undergoing the transition process, or (c) having undergone transition from the paediatric to the adult healthcare setting. This age range is deemed appropriate, as 13/14 years old is the recommended age to commence the transition process, and through the inclusion of patients up until the age of 24 years, we can retrieve results from patients who may have completed the process . FurtherGenderStudies that refer to male, female, and non-binary young people with renal disorders will be included in the review. This will avoid gender bias . Gender ConceptThis review will examine the concept of transition, which may be defined as the individualised, well-planned process whereby adolescents move from paediatric, family-centred health services to adult, person-centred health services . Nonetheless, studies that refer to interventions provided in a community setting by healthcare providers from secondary or tertiary healthcare services will be included. This decision has been made, as this scoping review is part of a larger PhD study examining healthcare transition in secondary or tertiary healthcare settings. The results of this review will feed into the primary research study, which focuses on how healthcare professionals from secondary or tertiary health services can support young people and families living with renal disorders with healthcare transition.Geographical locationGoogle translation services. However, literature that is obtained but not in the language of choice (English), and that cannot be readily translated due to resource limitations, will be excluded , including a limited amount of time and funding to undertake the review as part of an academic degree. Furthermore, the inclusion of primary, peer-reviewed studies has been selected, as the authors seek to understand how the interventions identified were developed. Developing this understanding of the theoretical and methodological underpinning of the intervention’s development will support the authors in the next phase of the research study. Nonetheless, the authors recognise the importance of including grey literature in scoping reviews. Given that the authors primary PhD study will be conducted in the context of the Irish healthcare setting, national grey literature will be sourced and included in the discussion of the scoping review, to compare the international interventions sourced with those used within the Irish healthcare setting.Search strategyCINAHL Plus with Full Text,PubMed,Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts,PsycINFO,Web of Science andEmbase on the 2nd March 2023. This identified articles relevant to the topic. Free-text words and subject headings/index terms were located from the titles, abstracts, and the main texts of articles and were used to develop the search strategy  social sciences databases, includingPsycInfo andASSIA; and (3) the multidisciplinary database,Web of Science.To ensure a comprehensive mapping of the literature, a broad range of databases will be searched. The databases that will be searched include: (1) health databases, includingSearching more than one database will ensure that the results portray the breadth of evidence available. Furthermore, the databases selected encompass health, social sciences, and multidisciplinary databases. These databases have been chosen strategically, as transitional care requires a multi-disciplinary approach, and must include not only physical support, but also psychosocial support  being consulted and adjudicating. Furthermore, if any missing data is noted within papers, the authors will be contacted by the primary author (MK). This will ensure maximum retrieval of full-text papers when the full report of the study is not easily or readily available online or from the library.A pilot test of the literature obtained (n=100) will be undertaken usingIn scoping reviews, data extraction is often referred to as “data charting” . Data chThis tool may be further refined in the subsequent review during the data charting process, as the review progresses. Modifications will be detailed in the scoping review for transparency in reporting. The data that will be charted includes details surrounding the population, concept, context, study methodology, quality appraisal, and findings that are pertinent to the review’s aims and objectives. We will also chart information on the interventions including their use and whether the intervention was co-designed with AYAs and families. The preliminary data charting process will be undertaken by the primary author (MK) and will be audited and reviewed by the fourth author (SS). Once both the first and fourth author reach consensus on the data charting table, it will be made available for all authors involved in the review through the utilisation of a shared Google drive. The table will be discussed with all other reviewers to seek their feedback and make further refinements, as necessary. This will be an iterative process until all authors reach consensus.Quality appraisalThough optional, for the scoping review a quality appraisal will be undertaken, using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT) . QualityIn line with scoping review guidance, the results of the literature search and screening process will be presented within a PRIMSA-ScR flow diagram  will present the scoping review findings to these teams and population groups and seek their feedback and perspectives on the transitional care interventions located from the literature. The primary author will strive to present the findings of this scoping review, through oral and poster presentations, at local, national, and international conferences, as can be facilitated. Following completion of the scoping review, the author will strive to publish the review in a peer reviewed journal, such as the Journal of Pediatric Nursing. Publication in a peer-reviewed academic journal is an excellent means of reaching and sharing findings with relevant academic, clinical and research audiences  On page 4 (Background) there are a few places where paragraphs start with "Moreover" (used twice) and "Hence". Typically you should not begin a paragraph with these words as they are used to build on an argument. I recommend removing these words and adjust the first sentence accordingly. 2) Under "Objectives" you use the word "To" before understand for your forth objective. I would remove the "To" for consistency.Is the study design appropriate for the research question?YesIs the rationale for, and objectives of, the study clearly described?YesAre sufficient details of the methods provided to allow replication by others?PartlyAre the datasets clearly presented in a useable and accessible format?Not applicableReviewer Expertise:I do research in health service delivery with a focus on models of care that support improved care integration. I have done research in the area of transition from paediatric to adult care for children and youth with complex care needs.I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard. The authors would like to thank you once again for your invaluable feedback on this scoping review protocol. We have taken your feedback on board and made the relevant changes. The primary author (MK) has revised the scoping review protocol and made relevant grammatical and sentence structure amendments throughout the entire scoping review to ensure clarity. Thank you for the opportunity to review this scoping review protocol. I think the review will be an important addition to the transition literature.and the improved management…” I would remove the “the” and maybe add “…and improved disease management.”In the introduction, the second sentence “...the” and “of patients” in this sentence “…and improved life expectancy.”Also remove “Hence, more patients are required to undergo the this healthcare transition.” Please remove the “the”.In the sentence “Experts in…” I am unclear why the author is including the specific disciplines listed. Maybe you could say that you will, include “researchers from various academic disciplines who have conducted research in this area.”In the methods section in the second paragraph, “Under Aims and Objectives, I felt like this section was very broad. I am also unfamiliar with presenting a protocol this way . I am wondering why the authors do not mention that descriptive papers could be included as this would provide the authors with information on existing programs or interventions. If this were to be included, there would not be a “methodology”. Scoping reviews typically cast a wide net. If the goal is to map the literature on programs or interventions that support the transition from pediatric to adult healthcare for this population, the research methods or findings from a particular study could be important (would be included if present) but is it the main goal of this review? Are the authors more interested in mapping the existence of programs or are you only interested in studies that look at experiences, barriers, facilitators etc.? Please find below some feedback and edits.clarify the concept of transitional care.” My concern here is that this is really beyond the scope of this review. This could be a stand alone concept analysis. Upon reading through the rest of the protocol, I do not see any mention of this and wondering what data will be extracted to address this objective. If you do want to keep it in, then you need to extract data around how authors from included articles define the concept.What is the evidence base…” I am unclear what you mean by evidence base for this context?The research question asks “Why is grey literature being excluded? I think later on you say that it will be due to time constraints. Given scoping reviews are meant to cast a wide net, I think it is important to include grey literature if possible.Under the context section, I am unclear if programs or interventions offered in community would be included? If not why? Again, if you are interested in capturing programs that support this transition, I would think you want to be broad so you do not miss any?I am unclear why the authors will be doing quality appraisals. This is not typically done with scoping reviews.Search results from EndNote...” The authors provide a list for data extraction. I am wondering why each step is capitalized?Under study selection section, in the paragraph that starts with “The screening process needs to be better clarified. The authors note that 2 reviewers will be used for initial title and abstract screening, but it also needs to be clear that there needs to be 2 screeners for the full text screening as well as the data extraction process.A pilot testing of literature obtained...” I am unclear what is being referred to here. Please clarify.In the paragraph that begins with “In the paragraph on data charting, please include a specific list of what data will be extracted . In the table for data extraction, I would not have a separate category for experiences as this would be included in findings. Typically, when we do scoping reviews, we are interested in mapping existing programs, but we also include (often as a secondary concept) and findings on experiences, barriers, facilitators etc). I also see that one aim is to “Is the study design appropriate for the research question?YesIs the rationale for, and objectives of, the study clearly described?YesAre sufficient details of the methods provided to allow replication by others?PartlyAre the datasets clearly presented in a useable and accessible format?Not applicableReviewer Expertise:I do research in health service delivery with a focus on models of care that support improved care integration. I have done research in the area of transition from paediatric to adult care for children and youth with complex care needs.I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard, however I have significant reservations, as outlined above. The authors sincerely thank you for taking the time to provide valuable and insightful feedback for the proposed scoping review. We have taken all your suggestions and made the relevant amendments to the scoping review protocol. We are in agreement that your suggestions and feedback have enriched and strengthened the scoping review and express our appreciation. Below, we have provided a response to each piece of constructive feedback in order: 1. The authors have revised the background section to ensure grammatical errors are corrected and that the appropriate terminology is utilised and is consistent throughout. 2. As recommended, the second paragraph of the methods section has been revised to include only various multi-disciplinary researchers with expertise in healthcare transition. 3. The aims and objectives of the scoping review have been revised completely in version two to improve the manageability of the scoping review. The authors recognise that this section was initially very broad and have revised it as recommended.i.e., what specific methodology or methods were used or studies that refer to experiences of named and described interventions. This will help to inform the next phase of the primary researchers overall study. Nonetheless, descriptive studies that provide information on existing programmes or interventions will be included and acknowledged in the scoping review's discussion section. 4. The authors have decided to only include primary, peer-reviewed research studies so that they can understand how such programmes or interventions were developed or experienced by the end-users, The scoping review aims to understand, map, and synthesise what interventions are available to support the healthcare transition. However, the scoping review will also map the qualitative studies, which refer to experiences, barriers, and facilitators of named interventions.  5. The aim that was initially proposed surrounding clarifying the definition of transitional care has been removed. The authors recognise that this may be beyond the scope of the review and that it may be more appropriate to undertake a concept analysis to truly understand the concept.evidence base” in the review question, as they wanted to ensure that the posed review question appropriately addressed all aims of the review. For example, to ensure that the scoping review question encompassed not only identifying the available interventions but also the studies that refer to experiences of such interventions. Therefore, the authors aim to synthesise all the evidence on the interventions to support the healthcare transition within the context of nephrology services. Nonetheless, the authors have taken your feedback, clarified the research question, and removed the phrase “evidence base”. 6. The authors initially utilised the phrase “etc., within the discussion section of the scoping review to contextualise the interventions that are identified and the experiences of these interventions within the context of the Irish healthcare system where the primary author’s research study into the area will be undertaken. 7. The authors recognise the importance of mapping the full extent of literature available for the scoping review. As acknowledged, the primary researcher is bound by time constraints to complete the scoping review promptly as a component of their academic degree. Therefore, the authors have decided to include national grey literature surrounding transitional care, including policies, models of care, 8. The authors focus specifically on interventions offered within secondary and tertiary healthcare services, as the primary author’s research study will be conducted in this area. Therefore, the results of the scoping review will be utilised to inform the subsequent phases of the research study. Nonetheless, at least one community-based intervention was recognised from the full-text screening process and will be mentioned in the discussion section of the review. 9. Though optional in a scoping review, the authors have decided to undertake quality appraisals on the research studies identified. This has been recognised as a step that will enhance the review by providing the reviews readership with the quality of the studies obtained and will ensure that the results of the studies obtained are reliable and trustworthy, as it is proposed that this scoping review will be presented to and discussed with academics and healthcare professionals, young people, and families with experience of healthcare transition. Furthermore, this scoping review will inform the next phase of the research study. 10. The capitalisation has been removed to ensure consistency in writing. Furthermore, key concepts have been clarified in line with your recommendations. 11. The screening process has been completely revised to improve clarity. Two reviewers will undertake the complete screening process independently (title and abstract & full text screening). The primary author (MK) will conduct the preliminary data extraction independently due to resource and time constraints to complete the scoping review as part of an academic degree. Nonetheless, this process will be closely supervised and audited by the fourth author (SS), who will supervise, clarify, and agree on the data charting table before sharing the table with all other authors, refining the table based upon their feedback and reaching a consensus on the data that has been charted. 12. The pilot testing of the literature refers to a pilot testing of the screening process, with the inclusion and exclusion criteria inputted to ensure consistency between reviewers undertaking the screening process. If required, relevant amendments or modifications to the criteria can be made at this stage 13. A specific list of the data extracted during the data charting process has been included. Minor amendments have been made to the data charting form as the review process has progressed.  The authors have included a separate category for experiences in the data chart because some literature that will be included may solely focus on the experiences of an intervention, whereas other papers may describe the intervention and how it was designed but not refer to the experiences of the intervention. The goal of this scoping review is to map the evidence for intervention to support AYA with kidney disease from pediatric to adult transition. The authors will use Arskey and O'Malley's approach, which is is a strength, and will seek input from important stakeholders for step 6. Will AYA or their family caregivers provide feedback? The introduction was comprehensive. It would help to move the purpose up earlier to guide the reader. Also, there is a notable absence of parent/family caregivers perspectives and acknowledgement of the support they provide across domains for the AYA transition. Are the authors planning to evaluate only AYA-focused interventions or those that incorporate family, as well? This is noted in the inclusion/exclusion criteria, but it would help to make some mention of it in the introduction. The databases noted in the quality appraisal section do not match those noted in the search strategy. Even though the preliminary search is the only one noted in the search strategy, this section should reflect the breadth of what is planned. Both sections should match. For stage 5, will the authors also collate the demographic data of the studies to account for which areas are represented or not and for which voices are overly-represented or missing? I was not clear if this was to be part of the basic descriptive analysis. This is a thoughtful and comprehensive protocol. As noted earlier, there are a few sections that need clarification. I wish the authors well.Is the study design appropriate for the research question?YesIs the rationale for, and objectives of, the study clearly described?YesAre sufficient details of the methods provided to allow replication by others?PartlyAre the datasets clearly presented in a useable and accessible format?Not applicableReviewer Expertise:family, pediatric palliative care, pediatric oncologyI confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard. The authors would like to thank you for your time providing feedback on our scoping review protocol. We value your feedback and suggestions for improvement and have made all relevant changes as required in the updated version two. We concur that your feedback has greatly enhanced the quality of the scoping review and express our gratitude. We have included all responses to your constructive feedback below, in order: 1. Step six of this scoping review will seek stakeholder input through an expert reference panel comprising multi-disciplinary healthcare professionals in nephrological transitional care and academia. Furthermore, the authors recognise the importance of involving families and young people experiencing the phenomenon in providing feedback. Therefore, the scoping review results will be presented to PPI groups, comprising AYAs and parents/caregivers, and their feedback will be sought on the interventions sourced. 2. The introduction has been restructured, with the purpose of the scoping review made explicit earlier. Amendments have been made to the background section, with some content restructured or removed. This decision has been made for the following reasons: 1. To enhance the readability of the review and to ensure that the purpose of the review is not lost, and 2. Congruent with your feedback surrounding the absence of families within this protocol, the authors have provided a space for a dedicated paragraph acknowledging their support during this process. 3. Though the authors are searching primarily for interventions available to support the healthcare transition for AYAs, the authors agree that healthcare transition does not solely involve or impact upon the young person, but must also support families. Therefore, the authors anticipate that the interventions sourced will also acknowledge and incorporate families. Hence, any intervention that refers to families or familial support or the work that healthcare professionals must do to support the AYAs will be included. 4. The preliminary search has been revised and repeated using the same databases noted in the search strategy. Both sections now match. 5. The authors plan on collating the demographic data as described to provide information surrounding areas that are well or under-represented within the literature as part of the descriptive content analysis, using frequency accounts and a narrative account. The "PAGER framework", developed by Bradbury-Jones et al. 2022, has now been included to summarise the results systematically based on patterns, advancements, gaps, evidence for practice, and research recommendations. Areas that are poorly represented could be identified as a gap in the literature and may also provide direction for research recommendations in under-represented areas. Reference:10.1080/13645579.2021.1899596 Caroline Bradbury-Jones, Helen Aveyard, Oliver Rudolf Herber, Louise Isham, Julie Taylor & Lisa O’Malley (2022) Scoping reviews: the PAGER framework for improving the quality of reporting, International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 25:4, 457-470, DOI:


Europe’s Journal of Psychology has a long history of pushing boundaries in psychological publishing, being an early journal adopting a diamond open access model, allowing for the sharing of information to a wide range of audiences by a wide range of authors. As I am taking over the editorship of this journal, I want to continue this legacy and continue to push boundaries with this journal. With this will come a number of changes that aim to stimulate new ways of how we do research. These changes can be summarized under three key points: Exploration, Replication, and Reflection. Since the inception of EJOP it has published more than 800 articles from 1458 unique authors across 70 countries. This represents a substantial level of diversity, which is made even more compelling by the fact that nearly one fifth of all articles in EJOP have been authored by cross-national author teams. In the future we want to carry forward this diversity, specifically encouraging submissions from areas historically underrepresented in psychological journals .Raising the unexpected, curious, and thought provoking to the eye of the scientific community is in my opinion one of the cornerstones of the advancement of science. By being presented with empirical observations that make us question our held beliefs we can grow simultaneously as individual researchers and as scientific community. While a large focus since the replications crisis in psychology has been ensuring the robustness of the cumulative psychological corpus , many reIn line with this come the first two concrete changes for EJOP that will be relevant for all authors going forward. First, we now require all articles to fulfill Level 3 of our Open Science practices as outlined on the EJOP website. In practices this means that all studies submitted for review in EJOP require their data, code, and materials to be made available in a form which allows other researchers the ability for unrestricted access and reuse with proper attribution. This means we will no longer publish quantitative studies which do not allow for computational replication of a study without input from the original authors. To support authors and reviewers in ensuring the highest quality of their data, data-dictionary, and code as well as the plain language statements, we will create additional junior editor positions in EJOP who will oversee the application of these processes, for which we encourage applications to the editor. We are cognizant of the heterogeneity of research approaches and fields, especially in qualitative research . We therSecond, notwithstanding the previous point about the value of curious exploration as basis of scientific progress, to build psychology as a discipline we require a modicum of understanding how robust our findings are and what are the boundary conditions of our observed effects. While much has been written in the main-stream psychological literature about the failures to replicate highly visible studies these approaches only cover a small sub-section of our total field. Even more, it is often unclear why an effect was not replicated; was there genuinely no effect, was the observed effect in the original study time-bound or culture bound? Without systematic investigation of the limits of our own effects and systematic study what determines these limits it is highly likely that psychology will continue to deliver unreliable findings or will be forced to substantively reduce its scope of investigation.With this in mind come the second set of concrete changes to EJOP. We now invite registered replications of published psychological research. Authors can either pre-register at any reputable repository of choice or authors can submit a registered report to EJOP which will be reviewed and can be accepted in principle prior to the commencement of the study. To support coherent coverage of the psychological literature  as well as about statistical techniques and advances. We will place an especially strong focus on publications which support readers in the practical implementation, beyond theoretical considerations, with code, protocols, and other concrete implementations. We believe that EJOP as a Diamond Open-Access Journal is uniquely placed to allow both authors and readers to disseminate and access this crucial information without the barriers often faced by many researchers aiming to access information in the literature.Finally, in line with our mission to make psychological science accessible to all researchers, either as readers or as authors, we also want to ensure that research in EJOP is accessible to the public. While our Diamond Open Access model allows interested general public readers access without traditional barriers, this does not mitigate the barriers often experienced through lacking accessibility of the scientific content. This lack of accessibility can lead to the spread of misinformation based on published articles which are mischaracterized or reduce the informational impact science can have on the general public. To address this, we will we now require all published studies to prepare a plain language statement in addition to an abstract which summarizes the research in a form accessible to the general public. We hope that by providing research in both a way that is without monetary barriers and accessible to a broader public we can support a more evidence based public discourse. To support authors in the creation of these plain language statements we will create junior editor positions who will support and oversee this process. For these positions we explicitly encourage applications especially from researchers and practitioners with a background in communicating science effectively.Overall, our hope is that these changes will help EJOP to continue to grow, fulfilling its legacy of a journal open to all, while also addressing the new challenges psychology and the wider society haven been facing since the near 20 year of its inception.


Archives of Endocrinology and Metabolism (AE&M) are completing its first year. Despite its name in English and the mandatory use of this language for all articles, the former “Arquivos Brasileiros de Endocrinologia e Metabologia” remains the official Journal of the Brazilian Society of Endocrinology and Metabolism. I believe that such change will progressively increase the knowledge and interest of endocrinologists around the word on our journal, which, without losing its Brazilian origin and identity, will become more and more an international publication. Consequently its impact factor, unavailable during two years due to its name change, is expected to augment, leading to the increase of submissions of good original basic, translational and clinical research, in a healthy vicious cycle. In order to pursue the increase of the impact factor, original and review papers should be privileged, in detriment of case reports. As a matter of fact, many medical journals increased its impact factor restricting the acceptance of case reports. On the other hand, many journals are dealing specifically with this kind of medical article.The During 2015, 416 manuscripts have been submitted to AE&M. From them, 71.4% were original research, and the remainder consisted of case reports (18%), review articles (5.5%), brief reports (4.6%), letter to the editor (0.2%), and consensus statement (0.2%). From the total of submitted manuscripts, 306 came to a decision, and 79 have been accepted for publication (26%).Regarding the number of manuscripts per country, Brazil submitted 146, Turkey 61, China 16, India 11, Iran 10, Argentina 9, Portugal 8, Italy 7, Romania 5, and Egypt 4. Additionally, the following countries also submitted articles: Algeria, Bulgaria, Chile, Colombia, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Taiwan, Tunisia, USA, and Venezuela.In this second year of my task as Editor-in-Chief of the AE&M, I intend to strengthen the relationship with colleagues of other countries, asking for reviews and mini-reviews. For this purpose I expect to count on the international editorial board of our journal.Last but not least, I would like to acknowledge and warmly thank all my Associate Editors for their outstanding collaboration, as well as the Brazilian and International reviewers for their time and expertise, selecting manuscripts which enriched the quality of our AE&M.


In many situations, there is a need to retract something, even in the scope of science, involving publications, for example. Retracting published scientific texts is not a new fact; it has been a reality in the academic/scientific environment for years. The word “retraction” derives from Latin “   . In turn, retraction of a publication is a statement published by one or more authors of an article or book, withdrawing or disavowing their participation in performing the research or recording the results of their study in writing   . A retracted publication can be an article or book retracted in its entirety or in full by one or more authors or by an authorized representative. The author identifies a previously published citation and retracts it by means of a formal publication, authored either by himself/herself, the editor, or another authorized agent   . When unethical behaviors such as data fabrication, lack of the participants’ consent, methodological problems, cloned data and plagiarism are suspected and/or confirmed, among other situations, what was published should be retracted. But it is also the case when the article is misleading and lacks a theoretical framework to support the assertions made and when there is bias, conflict of interest, and tendentious data   . Publication retractions occur when the scientific findings are no longer considered reliable due to misconduct or scientific error, plagiarism of previously published studies, or violation of ethical guidelines   . However, in some assessments there is feedback with weak opinions that hardly help to improve the quality of the article under evaluation. Most of the times, peer reviews requested by the editors contribute to clarity and quality of an article submitted to a journal, oftentimes detecting errors and incorrect interpretations   . Therefore, it is noticed that this practice is becoming increasingly more common, due to the pressure to meet publication deadlines and to editorial failure previously identify problems with the submitted, approved and published texts, including cases of plagiarism and research data fabrication In addition to the aforementioned, one of the possible problems in relation to retracted texts is the possibility of them being cited by other authors, before the due retraction. For example, it is important for Nursing researchers to request that their graduate advisees evaluate the references of their dissertations/theses to identify possible retraction cases.  . A researcher examined the extent of the problem in the Nursing field, identifying 23 systematic reviews that included retracted studies. Considering a clinical discipline such as Nursing, professionals strongly rely on systematic reviews to inform their care and treatment decisions; thus, if a retracted study is included, integrity of the review should be questioned Scopus, National Library of Medicine and Embase, among others. Retracted articles are found in databases that are traditionally used by researchers in Nursing, such as In the scope of national Nursing journals researched on the web, some retractions by both authors and editors were identified: acknowledgment of verbatim copy of a scientific article by other author, without due credit; identification of an article that had already been published in the same journal; failure to attribute authorship to all individuals involved in the reported and published experience; duplicate submission of a text published in a national journal and its subsequent publication in an international journal; total retraction and removal of an article from circulation due to noncompliance with the good practices for responsible use of the information, among other problems.https://retractionwatch.com/), a database that catalogs study corrections made in several journals worldwide, revealed some situations that required retraction from Nursing researchers, as shown below. The search on the Retraction Watch website ( A study published in 2008 referring to 12 years of research on Nursing education was contested/criticized more than 10 years after its publication and citation by several other authors and is still under contestation and awaiting responses. Retractions/Erratum notices referring to Nursing researcher that published articles as first author, most of them duplicates, use of data without ethical approval, parts of the article that had already been published by the author himself and by his research group, as well as several texts containing these retractions, had already been cited by other authors.The clinical value of honey on venous ulcers was tested in a study that had to be retracted by the journal that published it, after an investigation uncovered “errors in data analysis”, although it had already been cited 38 times; more recently, the same authors submitted another article, which also required retraction.An article on the growth hormone published in 2013 that analyzed inefficiency in the use of devices for administering this hormone was retracted upon request of the very pharmaceutical company where the authors worked.A controlled randomized study on Pediatric Surgery was retracted in 2021, after a reader raised doubts about the methodology described in it. Based on the observations made by the reader, several other problems were found in the article, including lack of clarity on sample size calculation, generating mistrust in the interpretation of this study and in its explicit recommendations for the practice. Problems of this nature might and probably should, have been detected during the peer review process, which was not the case.An author had his article from 2019 retracted in a Nursing journal after the editors learned that the researcher had used unauthorized data obtained from the university where he had graduated as a PhD. However, the article had already been cited seven times before being retracted.The topic is valuable and worthy of other reflections that may show several of its aspects. The scenario points to weaknesses that still exist in editorial systems, favoring the publication of articles with ethical infringements such as data collection frauds, omissions, plagiarisms, real and/or ghost authors and conflicts of interest, which subsequently had to be retracted, in all knowledge areas, including Nursing. The problems affect authors, reviewers, editors and readers, who eventually detect the problems and inform the authors and/or the journal, thus weakening the Nursing science.  , which is an essential element and should be built and supported on its own scientific process and progress. Retractions are self-correction and correction mechanisms inherent to science


Dear Readers,With this April issue, we are pleased to announce that POCUS Journal has been recently indexed on PubMed, providing us with the opportunity to reach a wider audience and showcase our high-quality scholarship to the global medical community. We are thrilled to join the ranks of other top-tier journals indexed on PubMed and are committed to continuing to publish articles of the highest quality that advance POCUS in medicine. We are the only free, open-access, peer-reviewed POCUS journal in the world. We have the best managing editor in the business, Julia Herr, who we all owe a debt of gratitude for her efforts to bring us into the PubMed era. We are also grateful to Courtney McNamara, Barkha Sirwani, and Braeden Hill for their help in this process. Dr. Casey Glass of our Editorial Board played a large part in this process as did POCUS Journal founder and former editor-in-chief Dr. Amer Johri. We would also like to thank our publisher Cinquill and our advertisers for their support. The April issue of POCUS Journal hosts numerous outstanding case files/case reports as well as innovations in POCUS curriculum. We are also delighted to showcase a variety of research from around the world, a review article on diastolic dysfunction, and a research protocol. Please find our author guidelines here: https://pocusjournal.com/author-guidelines/Sincerely,Benjamin T. Galen, MDEditor-In-Chief, POCUS Journal