In so doing it became the first of the Nature Partner Journals, a major open access publishing initiative from NPG (http://www.nature.com/content/NPJ/index.html). The publishing agreement established between NPG and the Primary Care Respiratory Society UK (PCRS-UK), in conjunction with the International Primary Care Respiratory Group (IPCRG), was, of course, a landmark for this journal—and in our editorial in March 2014 we expressed our delight at the announcement and our belief that the journal would benefit hugely from being published by a top international academic publisher.3 And so it has turned out to be. With apologies to both Epictetus and Aristotle, this last year has provided many opportunities for working ‘in harmony with Nature’1 and there really has been ‘something of the marvellous’2 as we have developed our relationship with the team at NPG… One year on, we thought it appropriate to review the events of 2014, to expand on some of the highlights, and to give you a flavour of our plans for the future.A year has now elapsed since the npj Primary Care Respiratory Medicine articles are therefore freely available on our journal website (www.nature.com/npjpcrm) and as default are published under the CC-BY Creative Commons licence, which provides the widest possible opportunities for re-use whilst authors retain copyright. New content is published as soon as it is ready for publication rather than waiting to be assigned to an issue.There were two major changes which emanated from the new publishing partnership. The first was the loss of the issue-based print version of the journal. All Nature Partner Journals are online-only, fully open access journals and are hosted on the nature.com web platform. All month on month, culminating in 15,441 site visits and 19,483 page views/month by January of this year. These figures comfortably exceed those from previous years .Though we understand that the loss of the print issue was a disappointment for some, for PCRS-UK members this gap has now been filled by the new society publication ‘Primary Care Respiratory Update’. However, most of our readers, particularly international readers, have for years read the journal online. The increase in traffic to the new journal website over the last 10 months has been quite extraordinary: there has been a 9% increase in page views and a 14% increase in site visitors —an integral part of open access publishing. The trend in academic journal publishing is very much towards open access, with some research funders (e.g. the Wellcome Trust in the UK) now mandating publication of research in fully open access journals, and an increasing number of open access journals for authors to choose from.The second change was the introduction of an Article Processing Charge (APC), to be paid by authors upon article acceptance—as is the case for all Nature Partner Journals. Understandably, authors will ask what they are getting in return for their APC… One of the main advantages of being hosted on the nature.com platform is that all authors who publish in npj Primary Care Respiratory Medicine benefit from maximum dissemination of content through one of the most prestigious scientific web platforms in the world. The dramatic increase in website visits over the last 10 months means that authors’ work is getting increased exposure and is being brought to the attention of a much wider audience than was previously the case; our readership is expanding all the time and so this is a benefit that will increase incrementally. Detailed article metrics are available for every published article, with daily updates on page views and social media activity . Our marketing team use online banner adverts across the nature.com platform as well as e-mail campaigns and social media adverts to highlight authors’ work, and our ‘Featured article’ is placed prominently at the top of the website homepage (www.nature.com/npjpcrm).Our APC currently stands at £2,650  for original research articles, and £1,000  for all other article types All of this means that article submission rates have remained strong and that authors are continuing to send us high quality manuscripts. We are delighted that this is the case.http://www.nature.com/authors/open_access/funding.html). In addition, the journal operates an APC waiver policy for authors from HINARI countries, and NPG will consider applications for the APC to be sponsored in instances where authors cannot pay the full amount for publication (http://www.nature.com/npjpcrm/open-access).Despite all the advantages of open access publishing, we fully understand that payment of an APC can be an obstacle to some. However, we are adamant that authors should not feel inhibited about submitting manuscripts to us simply because of the APC, especially if they consider our journal the ideal setting for their work. We as Editors, NPG our publisher, the PCRS-UK and the IPCRG are in complete agreement on this. Information about research funders and institutions that provide funding for open access is available from the NPG open access funding page (http://www.nature.com/authorguide/npjpcrm/npjpcrm-gta.pdf) shows that one type of article does not require payment of an APC: correspondence. As we stated in our first editorial as newly-appointed Editors-in-Chief in 2011, ‘critical discussion and feedback are the bread-and-butter of scientific progress, and we are very keen to see this encouraged’.4 We reiterate our belief in this sentiment, and therefore we’re delighted to receive correspondence relating to any article published in the journal within six weeks of that article being published. Once accepted for publication, correspondence will be published free of charge. Of course, the more correspondence submissions we receive, the more selective we will have to be in what we publish! For now, however, we encourage readers to put pen to paper , and in so doing you have a reasonably good expectation that your contribution will be published.A glance at our Guide for authors .Choosing the best articles, of course, involves high quality peer review, and we are proud to hear from various sources that the journal has developed a reputation for the quality of its peer review over the years. This is in large part due to our superb Associate Editors who handle the vast majority of manuscripts, but it’s also due to our reviewers  and our Editorial Board members (who regularly review papers and give of their time and expert advice frequently). Every quantitative paper undergoes a thorough statistical review by Gopal Netuveli, our Statistical editor. In addition, our Education section editors Hilary Pinnock and Jaime Correia de Sousa regularly commission high quality articles which are particularly relevant to practising clinicians in the primary care setting; in so doing, we are fulfilling the second of the journal’s two aims (http://www.nature.com/public/article-assets/npg/npjpcrm/reviewers/2014reviewers.pdf).We thank all of our editors, reviewers and Editorial Board members for their expertise and support: it’s a team effort, and we really are extremely grateful. Our tribute to the full list of 2014 reviewers was published recently on the journal website  editors5 that healthy competition amongst leading journals is to be welcomed since it reflects the dynamism in respiratory research. As they highlighted in their recent editorial, there is indeed a collegiate spirit in respiratory publishing. The respiratory journal editors meet twice a year to analyse developments and to discuss the challenges common to all medical journal editors, and there is always a mutually supportive atmosphere during these discussions. There have been times over the last 18 years when the support of our respiratory editor colleagues has been invaluable to the editors (past and present) of this journal, and for this we are very grateful indeed.The increase in our Impact factor this year, our reputation for high quality peer review and our quick manuscript handling times do indeed make this journal ‘highly competitive’. But we entirely agree with the npj Primary Care Respiratory Medicine has its feet firmly in two camps: respiratory medicine, and primary care. The journal publishes work from clinicians and academics working within any sector that impacts on the primary care management of respiratory and respiratory-related allergic diseases.6 and one of the largest ever European surveys of patients’ symptoms and experience of the disease.7 There were also a number of papers on various aspects of pharmacological management.9It seems invidious to highlight some papers as opposed to others, but in 2014 there were a number of papers that excelled, either in terms of website page views, or in terms of the social media activity and correspondence they generated. In asthma, we published a case-control study on its association with obesity in children,11 a paper on specialist nurse versus primary care diagnosis of COPD,12 a randomised controlled trial (RCT) of tiotropium in patients naïve to maintenance treatment,13 an RCT of a cognitive-behavioural manual versus information leaflets in terms of their effect on health status,14 and a paper from the PLATINO study on the criteria for selecting patients for spirometry.15 We do publish a number of qualitative papers, and two in particular focussed on patients’ experience of identifying and managing COPD exacerbations,16 and coordination of end-of-life care.17In chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), we published comparable papers on epidemiology, management and outcomes from the UK and Sweden,18 the diagnosis of interstitial lung disease,19 and the safety of domiciliary intravenous antibiotics in bronchiectasis.20Outside of asthma and COPD, there were notable papers on inappropriate prescribing of inhaled corticosteroids for respiratory tract infections,PCRJ archive to the nature.com platform, which was completed last month. This important development means that readers will have access on the nature.com platform to all articles published by this journal since 1997 to the present day.There are a number of projects that are coming to fruition over the next few months. The first is the migration of the old http://www.nature.com/authorguide/npjpcrm/npjpcrm-gta.pdf). In the meantime, please don’t hesitate to contact the Editorial office at npjpcrm@nature.com.The second is the development of our online pre-submission enquiry facility. As soon as this is established, if authors send in an abstract we will give them a rapid preliminary assessment within 5 working days telling them whether we’re interested in a submission; authors will then know whether or not it’s worth formatting their work according to our Guide for authors (www.nature.com/npjpcrm). In fact, this is an ongoing project, and the NPG web development team are constantly looking at ways to develop the journal website, making it even more attractive and helping readers navigate and discover relevant content. There will be increased use of photos and graphics to accompany each published article, and we may even consider a photographic competition with a prize for the best photo submitted by authors...The third is the development of the journal website  for their scrupulous attention to detail, as well as Emma Hedington and the marketing team for their success in aiding the dissemination of authors’ work and for spreading the news about We are also really grateful for the support we’ve received from the PCRS-UK Trustees (particularly Patrick White) and the Executive Committee, Anne Smith the PCRS-UK Chief Executive, and also the IPCRG Board and its Executive Officer Sian Williams.npj Primary Care Respiratory Medicine and a new publishing partner in NPG. We have every confidence that 2015 will prove to be equally good. Our final thanks, of course, must go to you, all of our contributors and readers, without whom there would be no journal...It truly does require a team effort to publish an academic journal such as this, and we are privileged to be part of it. 2014 was a really exciting year for the journal, with its transformation into


The central principle of open access is to make the results of research freely available to all, and as a pioneer of this model of scientific publishing, BioMed Central has always recognised that realising the full value of this accessibility depends on transparent reporting of the experimental work, as well as making the data available for others to analyze and re-use. This general principle is stated in our guide to authors, while referees who assess our research articles are asked to consider whether the methods are adequately reported, whether the data shown include the necessary controls and are adequate to support the conclusions drawn, and whether they have been able to assess the validity of the statistics. Authors and reviewers are also pointed to various internet-hosted reporting checklists relevant to different types of research.There is arguably a need for more, however. In the wake of recent concern about the unreliability and irreproducibility of a significant proportion of published preclinical research , 2, the BMC Biology, BMC Neuroscience, Genome Biology and GigaScience — will pilot the use of a checklist for our submitting authors [From this month four Biomed Central journals —  authors . This shThe difficulties of attempting a set of requirements that are not too dogmatic or unduly burdensome and are appropriate to the wide range of research we publish should not be underestimated, and there are arguably dangers in constraining all research to standards best applied to established fields and well defined systems. In developing our checklist, we have benefited both from the experience of authors with the checklists of other journals and from the advice of our Editorial Board, a selection of whose comments can be found in our blog .With the aim of not overburdening submitting authors whose papers meet the standards set, we do not ask for page and line numbers for each piece of information, but instead for confirmation that applicable requirements have been met, and/or for explanations where this has not been fully achieved. The checklist and authors’ answers in reference to it will play a part in our editorial assessment of whether a paper should be sent for peer review, and help avoid the situation where reviewers are hindered in their ability to assess a paper because information is missing. Reviewers will also see the authors’ answers and be able to advise us whether they are acceptable or not.During the pilot phase for the checklist, we shall be collecting feedback and monitoring the effects on the transparency of submissions and the reports of our referees, with a view to striking a sensible balance between enforcing rigor and impeding progress.Of course a checklist cannot itself guarantee reproducibility. By insisting on transparency it should make clear the degree to which the conclusions of each published study have been rigorously tested, but this does not rule out the possibility that subsequent studies may call these conclusions into question, and in such cases we recognize the obligation to publish a convincing rebuttal.


During recent years the scientific landscape has quickly changed due to technological advances and an explosion of ways to communicate. This new scientific landscape requires scientists to change their attitude from a mostly individualistic approach to collaboration within a group. The pace at which scientific research is performed has increased leading to a highly competitive environment characterised by the words innovative and excellence. To survive in this competitive world one needs to be multitalented and willing to invest time and energy, in particular at the start of one’s career. The optimal research career in the Netherlands requires publications in high-ranked journals and international training experience. However, one cannot stay abroad for too long, since the deadlines to apply for excellence grants (Veni innovation grant and Dekker programme of the Netherlands Heart Foundation) are strict and the young ones need to return to the Netherlands within a relatively brief period (2 to 3 years). The rather strict system was highlighted in the article ‘Science on the move’ , which iAlthough it appears that one has to be a super (wo) man, there are not only negative sides to this changing world. Nowadays, research can be done in a stimulating environment within national and international consortia, in which young people have the opportunity to discuss their science with multiple researchers who all have their own unique way of thinking. Due to collaborative research efforts, pathological mechanisms of disease can be studied from the molecular level to the patient. This not only requires a different kind of education, but also other social and communicative skills from young individuals who favour a career in science. Thus, the training of young scientists should be reorganised , 3. BuilYoung ICIN is a group of talented young scientists from the clinical and preclinical arena. A year ago, they joined forces in order to think of strategies to train and nurture the next generation of cardiovascular researchers. In coming years, Young ICIN will set up a scientific network of young researchers with clear national and international visibility. Our overall mission is to secure the future of excellent cardiovascular research in the Netherlands.What does this mean for the Netherlands Heart Journal? It almost naturally follows that a substantial number of Young ICIN members will be directly connected to NHJ. It was thought appropriate to involve them as associate editors, as it has been shown that young scientists are usually more ambitious about writing scientific papers and that they are sometimes even better reviewers than their seniors , 5. We eAs a result, the subdivision Associate Editors has been added to the Editorial Board structure, in which we have followed the policy of the European Heart Journal. As a next step, we have simplified the article categories to six main types of manuscripts: original articles, review articles, heart beats, editorial comments, rhythm puzzles, and letters to the editor. Heart Beat is a new category, replacing case reports and images. The freshly adapted Instructions for Authors will make this clear. Lastly, NHJ will engage in composing webcasts in conjunction with our educational institute, the CVOI, and our national society, the NVVC. All these challenges will broaden the scope of NHJ. To bring these challenges into reality, we have to rely on both the experience of the old generation and the eagerness of the young generation.


Journals should publish referee reports and respond to well-founded concerns about papers after publication. The scientific community spends a significant amount of time on the peer review of manuscripts submitted to journals. Many of the referee reports written during this process contain insights, comments, suggestions and questions that help authors to improve their manuscripts. However, with the exception of a small number of journals, these reports are only ever seen by the authors of the manuscript and the editors of the journal. I read referee reports when they are available, and I find them to be very helpful. Hiding them is an enormous waste.Before journals moved onto the Web in the 1990s, anyone who wanted to comment on a published paper had to publish another paper in response, a process taking many months or even years. Some journals had special sections for short articles that challenged papers published in the journal, but many of these journals seemed reluctant to publish such challenges . Over the past decade, however, researchers have turned to other platforms to comment on and criticize papers that have been published in journals. These platforms include blogs and third-party websites such as PubMed Commons and PubPeer. A number of journals also allow readers to post comments at the end of articles.As with referee reports, I often read blogs and comments and find many—but not all—of them helpful. However, just as the scientific community is failing to take full advantage of the time and expertise that goes into referee reports, I feel that we are also failing to take advantage of the possibilities offered by post-publication comments on papers; indeed, many legitimate comments remain ignored by authors, journals and universities . By neglI often read blogs and comments and find many—but not all—of them helpful.Science in December 2010 —show that post-publication comments offer a fast and efficient method for raising concerns about potential problems in published papers. Criticisms of the arsenic life paper were first raised on blogs shortly after it was published online in ber 2010 , and theMay 2011 , shortlyMay 2011 , and theMay 2011 . Concernary 2014 , 2014b, ary 2014 , and botThese three examples show the potential of post-publication comments as a force for good . There have also been lengthy and sometimes heated/acrimonious debates on blogs about papers on topics as diverse as network inference/deconvolution algorithms  and striScience or a Brief Communication Arising in Nature) or a retraction. However, I feel that many of the legitimate concerns about papers that are being raised in blogs and other platforms are being ignored by journals, so there is a clear need to make sure that comments that satisfy some basic criteria (see below) are acted upon by journals. The peer review process, the reproducibility of published results, and the scientific community as a whole stand to benefit tremendously from a more inclusive consideration of post-publication comments. Here I propose how this might work.Of course, every post-publication comment on a paper does not have to lead to the publication of a formal challenge  to sign their reports. This would provide useful context about the paper (such as scientific caveats that are not reflected in the binary accept or reject decision) and would also, I am sure, lead to better reports. It would also give readers more insight into the quality and rigor of the peer review processes at different journals.-crucial controls that are missing-major inconsistencies between the data and the main conclusions-inconsistencies with the published literature that are not discussed in the paper-failures by readers to reproduce analyses described in the paper-errors in mathematical proofs.Second, journals should agree to consider non-anonymous post-publication comments submitted to certain platforms within a certain timeframe after the paper has been published. This timeframe could be as short as a few weeks or a month. Journals would be obliged to publish a response from the authors to all the substantive concerns contained in the comments. Concerns that would require a response would include the following:Comments that would not require a response would include: requests for more data and/or experiments that would extend the scope of the work; concerns over novelty or significance; and questions about issues that were raised, discussed and settled during the peer-review process. In the future I believe that journals should also consider anonymous post-publication comments if the commenter is prepared to reveal their identity to the journal editor in confidence. However, this is likely to be controversial so, in the first instance, I think we should focus on getting journals to consider non-anonymous comments. I would also encourage researchers who comment on papers on blogs and other platforms (such as PubPeer) to post their comments (or links to them) on PubMed Commons and on the paper itself .Publishing referee reports and requiring journals to respond to substantive post-publication comments would, I believe, bring benefits to the scientific literature and to researchers who make constructive comments. Authors and journals alike might be reluctant to commit to spending more time on a paper that has been published, especially if the paper had to be revised a number of times during the peer review process, but both have to take responsibility for the research they publish, and this should extend to dealing with substantive and legitimate questions and concerns. Online post-publication discussions about papers are becoming more frequent, and I believe this trend will continue. Authors and journals must get involved in these discussions for the benefit of all concerned.


Summary: DMM announces changes to its Senior Editor team and thanks its many reviewers. Journals do more than publish collections of research articles and reviews; they also create community, influence standards for community behavior and ‘provoke progress’ in a particular field” –“Vivian Siegel, Founding Editor-in-Chief at DMM.In 2008, then Disease Models & Mechanisms (DMM) Editor-in-Chief Vivian Siegel likened launching the journal to raising a child . Five yeWhen this new editorial team was established, it was done so with the intention that the Editor-in-Chief role would rotate. So, as of 1 January 2016, Monica Justice became Editor-in-Chief, with Ross Cagan stepping into the Senior Editor role. Ross and Monica will continue to work together – in collaboration with the publishing team in Cambridge, UK and the dedicated team of Monitoring Editors  – to buiEditor-in-ChiefMonica J. Justice Senior EditorRoss Cagan Monitoring EditorsSteven J. Clapcote Pamela Hoodless Tatsushi Igaki Elaine Mardis E. Elizabeth Patton Owen Sansom David Tobin The new team was charged with guiding the journal to become a platform for research that bridges the gap between basic biological insights and drug discovery and development. To this end, the team has taken efforts to ensure that high standards for translational impact are enforced while implementing fair and transparent editorial practices, and continuing to engage and inform readers with a diverse ‘front section’ comprising timely reviews, interviews and educational poster articles. Their vision for the journal – roughly summarised as helping it to become the ‘go-to’ journal for research using disease models  – has stDrosophila and rat. The Impact Factor and other journal- and article-level metrics are more than respectable. Importantly, we have focused on maintaining high standards for the quality of articles that we publish. The work must of course be sound, but it must also give significant new insights into the mechanisms, diagnosis and/or treatment of disease using model systems. We encourage authors to develop their studies beyond descriptive work, such as the characterisation of a model system without a demonstration of its utility, so that the work we publish will have a strong translational impact. DMM also plays a crucial role in promoting standards for reproducibility and proper reporting to ensure that the use of model organisms advances translational research in the most efficient and effective way . DMM will be there, sharing the highlights and commissioning timely articles from leading experts. We will also be attending the Allied GSA meeting in Florida in July 2016 (http://www.genetics2016.org/), in line with our goal to support collaboration across the different disciplines and model communities.Ross is still very much involved in the running of the journal with Monica [read their absorbing A Model for Life interviews to find out more about them ]. DMM's Table S1).The need for the broad scientific community of disease researchers and clinicians to communicate effectively remains. DMM has and will continue to strive to achieve this and improve the translation of basic research to the clinic. None of this would be possible without the many researchers who have submitted to and published in DMM, and the journal Editors, Editorial Board members and staff. Their names are public knowledge, but those of our reviewers are not. Many journals are undertaking experiments to improve or refine the peer review process, as well as holding conversations about how to best reward and recognise the vital work done by so many. We take a small step in this direction by publishing the names of all those who completed a review for DMM during 2015, with our sincere thanks for their expertise and for managing to fit one more task into their already busy schedules (


Another more contentious dimension is quality: is a given paper significant enough for the journal in question? A recent eLife editorial addressed this matter ; biological resources must be available from stock centers; relevant program code must conform to the Open Source Definition and be deposited in an appropriate public repository; and methodological advances must be comprehensibly described, along with details of the reagents and equipment, and their sources.Tools and Resources articles should fully describe the biological material, data and methods so that prospective users have all the information needed to deploy them within their own work.Tools and Resources is the same as that used for Research Articles, Short Reports and Research Advances. However, the selection criteria are different. Tools and Resources articles do not have to report major new biological insights or mechanisms, but it must be clear that they will enable such advances to take place. Specifically, these contributions will be assessed in terms of their potential to facilitate experiments that address problems that to date have been very challenging or even intractable.The peer-review process for The creative energy and painstaking work that go into the development of new research tools, and the extra mile that many researchers go to make these resources available and reusable by their communities, deserve recognition. We hope that this new article type proves to be an effective venue to celebrate these critical contributions to science.


European Journal of Psychotraumatology (EJPT)  launched T) Olff, . KnowingOver the years, we have been able to attract a rich content covering the whole range of topics related to psychotrauma. The journal has been indexed in major databases (Scopus being the latest); it has been included in PubMed Central and has received a Thomson Reuters Web of Science impact factor 2014: 1.602). It has, in short, become an important stakeholder in the publication domain —is the article by key representatives of evidence-based interventions for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD):Web of Science JCR in 2014 and 2015 were attracted by Southwick, Bonanno, Masten, Panter-Brick, and Yehuda  agreed on the development of a roadmap to assist European universities in the transition to Open Access.www.EJPT.net for more information.During the first years of the journal's existence, and with the support of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), we were able to run EJPT with no fees for authors. We also later received a grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft , which helped to keep the fees low. Also, since the journal is seen as a membership benefit, ESTSS has been sponsoring the journal since the start. However, we are now slowly transitioning to a journal with a business model that is not dependent on ESTSS or external funders. Compared to other big Open Access publishing houses, the fees are still relatively low, especially for ESTSS members.  We also welcome donations that we will use to waive fees for those who cannot afford to pay. Please visit In order to promote the implementation of research and the translation to  practice, we now introduce “highlights of the article” in the form of a lay summary with bullet points. The message covers the core findings and provides readers with a quick overview of the article. With this we hope to capitalize on the Open Access asset of the journal and reach those in other disciplines who may not be specialized in our type of research but for whom it would nonetheless be relevant; we will also reach those in clinical practice, patients and their families, decision makers, the media, or insurance companies, to name but a few.As there is a huge need for information on the right tools or instruments for trauma research or for the best clinical measure to assess patients’ mental health status, we have now introduced a new section on instruments or assessment tools. The aim is to create an authoritative multiple language resource to find the right type of measure for the right type of topic in the right language. Ideally, we would like to have these instruments through Open Access, freely available, without cost or complex copyright issues. Read more about this initiative here Olff, .From 2016, we will also adopt a gender policy. This means that we follow recommendations of the European Association of Science Editors (EASE) Gender Policy Committee, which works to advance gender- and sex-sensitive reporting and communication in science. Even though we know it is important to discriminate between sex and gender and that single-sex studies may bias our scientific knowledge, still most scientific publications fail to report on potential sex, and gender differences and similarities in studies that include both sexes (EASE).report the sex of research subjects,justify single sex studies,discriminate between sex and gender (mostly for human research),analyze how sex or gender impact the results, anddiscuss sex and gender issues when relevantIn EJPT, we will therefore ask authors at least to:With regard to another mission of EASE which is to “Encourage gender balance among reviewers, on editorial boards, and in editorial offices,” I am pleased to say we are doing quite well.Next year, we will publish a special issue on Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy—a treatment that is increasingly gaining not only popularity but also scientific merits. This issue will critically examine the state of the art with respect to EMDR therapy. We also aim to publish a special issue on the neurobiology underlying development and treatment of psychotrauma related-disorders; several papers are currently under review. This is an area in which we may wish to have stronger growth.Another quite different but an exciting area is that of Bayesian statistics (Van de Schoot, At its 10-year anniversary, ESTSS would like to present a journal with articles on the wide range of topics of psychotraumatology, from neurobiology to clinical aspects, which are highly cited and have major clinical and societal impact. We aim to have a financially sound business model with publication fees as the main income but which allows for waivers for those who need it so as not to exclude important contributions from our discourse. We hope to be collaborating with our counterparts worldwide, as we will succeed not by competition but by global collaboration. Psychotraumatology is too important for too many people to not connect and collaborate across all boundaries.Miranda OlffChief Editor


In 2014, the vast majority of published biomedical research is still hidden behind paywalls rather than open access. For more than a decade, similar restrictions over other digitally available content have engendered illegal activity. Music file sharing became rampant in the late 1990s as communities formed around new ways to share. The frequency and scale of cyber-attacks against commercial and government interests has increased dramatically. Massive troves of classified government documents have become public through the actions of a few. Yet we have not seen significant growth in the illegal sharing of peer-reviewed academic articles. Should we truly expect that biomedical publishing is somehow at less risk than other content-generating industries? What of the larger threat—a “Biblioleaks” event—a database breach and public leak of the substantial archives of biomedical literature? As the expectation that all research should be available to everyone becomes the norm for a younger generation of researchers and the broader community, the motivations for such a leak are likely to grow. We explore the feasibility and consequences of a Biblioleaks event for researchers, journals, publishers, and the broader communities of doctors and the patients they serve. Through a concerted effort, hackers gain access to the databases of six publishers that together control access to the majority of subscription-based biomedical journal articles. This group makes copies of every article from every journal and releases them into the public domain. Subsets of articles are mirrored in anonymous peer-to-peer networks, creating a decentralized and multiply-redundant repository that is accessible to any human or computer algorithm. The repository grows when its users begin to add new and missing articles, creating a self-sustaining system of frictionless, free, and universal access to published research. While there would be recourse against offenders and while the wider academic community may be unlikely to embrace illicit activity, a robust international article-sharing underground is created. Academics in wealthy countries generally enjoy the privilege of institutional subscriptions to many journals, but articles that require payment to read or download  are largely beyond the reach of everyone else and there is a substantial motivation to access this new resource.The potential for this form of guerrilla open access is rarely discussed , despiteThe likely consequences of such an event for publishers, journals, researchers, and the wider community are largely unknown. Speculating on the consequences of a leak and the plausibility of a decentralized article-sharing underground, we consider the current behaviors of the producers and consumers of biomedical research, the sizes and forms of recent data breaches, and the technologies underpinning anonymous sharing.Of the 23.6 million articles currently indexed by PubMed , the full text versions of just over 3 million are available for free via PubMed Central . This mePubMed indexes the bulk of all biomedical research that meets a minimum standard of quality but PubMed Central does not capture all of the articles that can be accessed for free. Other access options include library or personal journal subscriptions, emailing authors, a series of balkanized repositories like research-based social networks and institutional webpages , and payThe motivation behind the ethos that “all information should be free” has been explicitly built into the fabric of academia for at least 50 years . Where tScale is no barrier to a cyber-attack. From a database of over 7600 recorded data breaches , 21 invoOnce released into the public domain, articles may be difficult or impossible to recover because there are no technical barriers to leaking published research once it has been acquired. The software used for cleaning documents and anonymously disseminating them online are available ,7. The pThe publishing industry has experimented with a variety of open access models ,13. TradThe commercial risk of a massive data leak would be skewed toward traditional publishers with business models involving charging for access to published research, and journals that rely on traffic through their websites for advertising revenue. Such a scenario may also affect the community structure in some disciplines by redirecting readership away from journal websites, reducing interaction within societies . In a BiThe license given by subscription journals to authors typically allows them to share their published work by uploading versions of their manuscripts to government and academic institutional repositories, or personal webpages. Known as green open access, around 81% of published articles fall into to this category  [en masse civil disobedience from within academic communities.In contrast to the extraordinary expansion of the Napster music sharing network in the late 1990s, relatively few researchers are involved in guerrilla open access—sharing articles in contravention of the conditions of a publisher. Two sharing practices have recently emerged on Twitter. The first, #icanhazpdf , startedA massive leak would appear to have few or no direct negative consequences for individual researchers. The major impact would be increased access to their published works. Overall, the capacity to better link and synthesize research could also lead to improvements in automated literature discovery ,21, expaWhile access to published literature is problematic for researchers inside universities, the broader community faces formidable barriers. There is some evidence to suggest that the public want access to published research and are hampered by paywalls . EvidencIn the medical context, we know that health care workers are less likely to read peer-reviewed literature than they are to ask colleagues, use reference books, or visit websites via Google or Wikipedia . Among pAt the population level, the gap between research consensus and public understanding has major consequences for global health, where for issues including vaccination, homoeopathy, and climate change, there is a clear dissonance between what peer-reviewed evidence shows and what large sections of the public believe -28. WhilEven as open access increases, the motivations for a massive leak will persist because the archive of inaccessible research continues to grow. The threats are clear. Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden demonstrated that individuals can bring about tectonic shifts in the ability of government to maintain secrecy and the public attitudes toward clandestine programs, although at great personal cost to the leakers themselves. The entertainment industry navigated similar terrain over a decade ago, when consumers moved from recording onto cassettes from the radio to sharing on local and then global computer networks. That disruption left a legacy of file-sharing networks that have become increasingly secure and resistant to censorship. Today, instantaneous access to music, television, and movies is taken for granted by many, while the entertainment industry continues to flourish by finding legitimate and low-cost ways to reach audiences that would otherwise turn to illegal file-sharing services.From this view, biomedical publishing faces threats, but also opportunities. The current forms of illegitimate sharing in academia rely largely on personal networks or easily censored websites. Relatively few academics have started to explore broader forms of civil disobedience. Since open access has become a mainstream issue, academics and the public are beginning to expect free and immediate access to new research as the norm and not the exception. As forms of illegitimate sharing become more sophisticated and widespread, publishers face a situation reminiscent of the one faced by the entertainment industry more than a decade ago.We think that low-level civil disobedience  is by itself unlikely to lead to a critical mass of illegal article sharing. Large-scale leaks are a bigger threat because they could immediately influence the way published research is accessed. For this reason, publishers might see value in strengthening the systems already in place to detect and prevent unusually large volume downloads, or atypical systematic or ordered access to full texts.Prescient publishers may also consider alternatives that would minimize the motivation behind any illegal access and avoid the costs of a technical and legal arms race that may only delay the inevitable. Publishers may choose to deliberately release articles on their own terms, an approach that improved the reputation of and trust in GlaxoSmithKline when they responded to growing demand for access to comprehensive clinical trial data . They miFrom the limited evidence available in this area, it seems clear that a Biblioleaks event is technically feasible. There is some evidence that new forms of illegal file sharing are emerging among researchers and the broader community, suggesting that the current environment is similar to the nascent period of illegal file sharing. In that time, online users increasingly encountered the tools that provided free access to music, and fragmented communities began to coalesce into a global sharing network. If precipitated by targeted data breaches, a similar growth in underground article sharing could see negative effects for some publishers, disruptive changes to the way biomedical research is accessed by the public, the rapid development of new low-cost access options, and improved public engagement with medical research.


Structure Reports Online , with its founding Main Editors William Clegg  and David Watson . The first issue appeared on 1 January 2001 reporting crystal structure results across a wide range of inorganic, organic and metal-organic materials in a richly hyperlinked HTML format with access to the complete diffraction data, the submitted CIF, and the full checking output. As the only IUCr journal publishing short format articles for small molecule structures, Acta E, with its high standards of validation, proved very popular in the community. In 2008, the journal became open access. In order to make open access affordable to authors, the format of published papers was shortened, resulting in large numbers of papers being published, averaging around 4000 per annum in the five-year period 2008–2012. During this period, discussion of structure, its scientific significance or value to the wider community was barely presented in the published paper. This went against the vision of the founders of Acta Cryst. Paul Ewald, the founding Editor wrote in his inaugural editorial in 1948 ‘the results of crystal investigations should be presented to physicists, chemists, mineralogists, metallurgists and biologists in a form which enables them to grasp readily the implications for their sciences’. Ewald went on to write 66 years ago, ‘it is essential that the methods by which the results have been gained, and the data on which they are founded, should be fully published so that they may be subjected to the expert criticism necessary to assess their reliability’. This remains true even today. All of the Acta Cryst. journals must strive to keep this balance of high-quality data and structures with clear commentary on the scientific significance of the structural results to at least the relevant scientific community.At the start of the millennium, the IUCr decided to launch its first fully electronic journal, Acta B and Acta C have undergone a major change with significant strengthening of the editorial boards. As many of our readers will know, Acta B is now called Structural Science, Crystal Engineering and Materials while Acta C is now simply called Structural Chemistry. Both of these journals have already published a number of special issues, which have begun to define their broadened scope. These journals will continue to expand into new areas, covering all sub-disciplines that come naturally under their titles. We thus expect their impact and influence to grow over the coming decade. There will certainly be some overlap, as is the case for many of the other major families of journals, whether they belong to a commercial publisher (Nature and its family) or academic societies such as the American Chemical Society. It is important for us not to have gaps while providing choice to authors with some overlaps among our journals. The year 2014 has seen major changes across all IUCr journals, designed to ensure that the widest possible range of science that relies on structural information is reported. Both Acta Cryst. E, to be called Crystallographic Communications from January 2015, will be served by the five Main Editors. Luc Van Meervelt  joins Bill Harrison , Helen Stoeckli-Evans , Edward Tiekink  and Matthias Weil  to complete the board of Main Editors. A prestigious International Editorial Advisory Board consisting of Stuart Batten , Gautam Desiraju , Larry Falvello , Santiago Garcia Granda , Judith Howard , Simon Parsons , Ian Williams  and Chen Xiao-Ming  will guide the journal. The commitment of the IUCr and the community to this journal is clearly reflected by those who have agreed to serve as Main Editors and on the Editorial Advisory Board. In addition, the journal will continue to be served by an international board of experienced Co-editors who work extremely hard to ensure that the journal publishes quality papers while making the experience of publishing as easy and rewarding as possible for authors.Crystallographic Communications will publish two article types: a longer format than at present (Research Communications) and a short format (Data Reports) that is similar to current articles. Both of these will report crystal structure results across a wide range of materials with a clear obligation on authors to highlight the science behind the structures. We expect Research Communications and Data Reports to be covered by the Science Citation Index and the Data Citation Index, respectively. The comprehensive actions taken as part of the relaunch give us confidence that by the end of 2015, indexation will occur and the journal will be well on the way to having a respectable impact factor within 3 years. Each submission will be pre-screened by a Main Editor before being allowed to proceed for peer review. The Main Editors, working with the Managing Editor, will assign a Co-editor in the appropriate category after the successful pre-screening of a manuscript. Measures have been introduced to reduce self-citation and restrict the total number of papers that any author can publish in a year.Acta E has been the development of the Research Communication article format with new text sections designed to help authors bring out the science behind the structures and their determinations. The sections include Chemical context, Structural commentary, Supramolecular features, Database survey, Synthesis and crystallization and Refinement. Authors and readers will be glad to see figures included in the published Research Communication rather than being confined to the Supporting information. For the first time in the journal, individual reports are not limited to single structure determinations. In fact, authors are encouraged to describe the structures of two or more related compounds in a Research Communication. These changes will make Acta E the natural home for structure determinations with interesting science to report.A key step in realising our vision for the new Notes for Authors. We look forward to receiving submissions in the new formats from authors old and new from 1 July 2014. Crystallographic Communications will remain fully open access so that articles are accessible to all readers around the world irrespective of whether their institutions have access to the journal. The open-access fee remains very modest with waivers for authors where needed.You can see the first articles in the new formats in this issue of the journal, along with new Crystallographic Communications look forward to working with existing and new authors to harness the full potential of the structure-based science covered by the new journal through rigour, the quality of the structures and their significance for the broad science communities where these structures make an impact.I together with the distinguished Editorial Advisory Board and the board of Main Editors of the new journal


Publishing a scholarly article is the final and perhaps most responsible stage of research that takes time and requires enormous effort of all stakeholders of science communication. Reviewers and editors when they evaluate journal submissions and select items for publishing often ground their decisions on the novelty and originality of the topics, validity and power of statistical and other tests, quality of writing, structuring, and formatting each section of the manuscripts, originality and usefulness of graphical materials, and professionalism in analyzing scientific facts and conclusions. The evaluators also consider ethical issues and the adherence of authors to the guidance from editorial associations ,2. The aTo better guide authors and avoid wasting the efforts of all those involved in scholarly communications, it is required to regularly revise and upgrade journal instructions, inform authors about the journal’s scope, priority articles, peer review policy, code of publishing ethics, structure and content of different types of accepted articles, in-house style of editing and formatting, and accompanying documents required for each submission  5,6). P,6. P5,6)BOX 1Not all editors of newly launched journals regard the work on the instructions as critically important, and either copy them from other periodicals or prepare abridged versions that often lack details of the scope, priorities, and practised editorial procedures. At the same time, editors of some established journals overlook the importance of updating their instructions in line with the revised recommendations of major editorial organizations, thus hindering the journals’ development prospects.There are no universally acceptable instructions, encompassing all the necessary points and satisfying specific requirements of each discipline. Journals may choose to endorse their own set of the submission and publishing regulations. Large publishing corporations, such as the BMJ group, Elsevier, and Springer, develop general guidelines for the whole portfolio of their journals, with specific details being added to the online instructions by each periodical.Journal editors are supposed to develop and revise their instructions in compliance with the recommendations of editorial organizations and in line with the available evidence on appropriate editorial practice. A recent large survey, however, revealed that editors are often reluctant to change or enforce important elements in their instructions, thus creating a publication bias and distorting the scientific evidence accumulation . The wid®, a positive association was found between impact factor and frequency of referring to CONSORT in the instructions  guidance were found in only 7 (13%) journal instructions, while to PRISMA  – in just 1 (1.8%) . In a structions .BMJ, JAMA, Lancet, and the New England Journal of Medicine in 2010, found that the method of randomization was unclear in 37% and that complete adjustments for balancing factors were missing in 74% of trial reports . For reviews in journals of small professional communities, it is reasonable to mask the identities of both reviewers and authors to avoid any personal bias (double-blind review). In case of open review, which is becoming popular, the identities of both reviewers and authors are unmasked, and comments are open to the public. Some journals invite statistical reviewers to assess the reliability and power of statistical analyses. The external reviewers are usually chosen by the editors based on the reviewers’ academic credentials, publication records in prestigious databases, and previous contributions to the same journal, among other criteria . Some edThe updated guidance about authorship is another critical component of the instructions, which adds to the accuracy and transparency of research reporting . SeveralFollowing much debate over the ethics of research reporting, the 2nd World Conference on Research Integrity issued one of the major documents in the field – the Singapore Statement on Research Integrity , which wh-index ranging from 82 to 211. A specific reference to the renewed four criteria was present in only 8 (18.2%) instructions, while 6 (13.6%) contained general links to the main webpage of the ICMJE recommendations without a direct link to the authorship criteria.In practice, however, not all journals have revised the authorship criteria in their instructions. Such revisions will probably take more time and will require promoting the awareness of the authorship issues. As an example, we scanned online instructions of 44 rheumatology journals and found that statements on authorship were present in only 13 (29.5%) journals . Of thesEditors and publishers, who seek transparency and reliability for their scholarly publications, should instruct authors how and where to disclose potential conflicts of interest (COI). To capture the authors’ COI, they can be asked to fill in specific structured forms or to list financial and nonfinancial conflicts in the online submission system . The polIn 2010, the ICMJE developed a form for disclosure of potential COI, which was widely endorsed by biomedical journals . The autCroatian Medical Journal in 2009 and 2010 revealed that various sections of 85 (11%) manuscripts, mostly from China, Croatia, and Turkey, had more than 10% text similarity with other published sources  publication of research studies and case reports in such journals may distort the records in bibliographic databases and affect the reliability of systematic reviews with secondary qualitative and quantitative analyses . ProcessIn the past decade, many traditional journals switched to the open-access publishing model and related amendments in their instructions were followed . The opeThe whole concept of open-access publishing is now moving toward a comprehensive access with visibility of the journals in the digital databases such as PubMed Central. Journal instructions should inform the authors whether the publication charges are directed to the digital archiving or whether there are charges for color printing and distribution of reprints. The journals may survive the global competition and improve further by fairer, diversified, applicable to the local circumstances, and transparent financial policies ,69, whicJournal instructions are important and need to be properly structured, linked to the available guidelines from editorial associations, and regularly revised and enforced to avoid unethical and erroneous publications. Each scholarly journal, be it a standalone or a part of a major publishing corporation, has to develop its own guidance for a specific group of authors. The web location and revision date of the instructions have to be clearly marked to inform not only the authors, but also reviewers, indexers, and those involved in related research studies. With the current digitization trends, many journals minimize the descriptions of technical formatting and provide more space for ethical guidance and policy statements of the global editorial associations . General


Fluids and Barriers of the CNS (FBCNS) and the International Brain Barriers Society (IBBS) with mutual benefits to the journal and to society members. This is a natural progression from the appointment of two new Co-Editors in Chief: Professor Lester Drewes and Professor Richard Keep in 2013. FBCNS provides a unique and specialist platform for the publication of research in the expanding fields of brain barriers and brain fluid systems in both health and disease.This editorial announces a new affiliation between  Fluids and Barriers of the CNS (FBCNS) is now affiliated to the International Brain Barriers Society (IBBS). IBBS is an international scientific and educational organisation that encourages and advocates basic and clinical research on the biological barriers in the central nervous system. Furthermore, IBBS promotes the dissemination of new knowledge about CNS fluids and barriers to scientists, physicians, patients, policy makers, public and private funding agencies and other concerned parties. The international society was founded in 2008 and is led by an international steering council headed by Professor Lester Drewes, University of Minnesota. The Society is an advocate for research into the neurovascular unit/blood–brain barrier and blood-cerebrospinal fluid barrier (NVU/BBB and BCSFB) and associated fluids. It promotes dialogue and exchange between scientists through affiliated conferences such as Cerebrovascular Biology, Blood–brain Barrier Consortium (Oregon), Gordon Research (Barriers of the CNS), Signal Transduction in the Blood–brain Barriers and others. It also awards bursaries to young scientists enabling them to attend conferences.We are very pleased to announce that Fluids and Barriers of the CNS originally started as Cerebrospinal Fluid Research and subsequently expanded coverage into its current format in 2011. Thus FBCNS provides a unique publishing platform for all research promoted by IBBS. For the first time, researchers have a journal dedicated to publishing their work in molecular, physiological and pharmacological aspects of brain fluids and barrier systems. Many diverse neurological disorders are associated with abnormalities and/or malfunction of the brain barriers and fluid systems. Recently, the journal has published on such diverse topics as barrier function in cerebral malaria [th century [FBCNS[FBCNS provides an excellent forum to publish and discuss these new ideas. malaria , neuroin malaria , gene ex malaria , intrana malaria , fetal/n malaria ,8 and ad malaria ,10. In t century  has beenry [FBCNS. These aFluids and Barriers of the CNS has an international Editorial Board comprising almost sixty distinguished researchers from eighteen different countries. Fourteen of these members also comprise the steering council of the IBBS and the journal is delighted that IBBS president Lester Drewes has recently become Co-Editor in Chief of FBCNS. Readers will find reciprocal links on both websites which will increase exposure and be mutually beneficial for both organisations. Society members will receive a discount on the article processing charge for papers published in FBCNS and will receive regular email updates from the journal. FBCNS offers members a route to fast publishing with full high-quality peer review.Fluids and Barriers of the CNS is proud to be an Open Access journal: publication is online only and available to anyone in the world with internet access. This is particularly important for disseminating knowledge world-wide and ensuring rapid communication for research. Articles are free to read, to copy and distribute and the author retains the copyright. The cost of open access publishing is met by the author, their institution, or their funding source: many funding bodies insist on open access publishing and provide enabling funds. For those unable to meet the charge, the publisher and editors have access to a limited number of waivers. There are other great advantages for open access publishing: there is no page limit, no extra cost for colour, no restraints on back-up material such as raw data files, and most importantly very good exposure to the scientific community.FBCNS. Even with our stringent peer review, we also ensure a rapid peer review process, such that the average time from submission to a first decision is less than 4 weeks. In turn, every effort is made by the editors to clarify differences of opinion between the reviewers, and avoid multiple rounds of review where appropriate. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who have helped us with this critically important function in the past few years.An essential element in the publishing process is quality peer review. For this, we rely on members of our editorial board as well as on other experts in the field. We aim to only publish papers based on sound and high quality research. A constructive and carefully-considered review almost always results in an appropriate response from the authors and an improved end product. There have been many online start-up publishers in recent years but the quality of the published product is totally dependent on a rigorous peer-review process as practised by FBCNS has increased steadily with 47 articles in 2013 and the first 5 months of 2014. In 2013, we published a collection of fourteen articles on Emerging Models and Novel Techniques for BBB and BCSFB studies which were guest-edited by Elizabeth de Lange, Britta Engelhardt and Danica Stanimirovic (http://www.fluidsbarrierscns.com/series/brain_barriers). These have received much attention and been highly accessed by our readers, some receiving around 5000 accesses since publication last year [Hydrocephalus: Promoting Research for Improved Outcomes, also with highly accessed papers [Scientific output in the areas of blood–brain barrier and cerebrospinal fluid has increased by 100% and 60%, respectively since we started publishing in 2004. The number of publications in ast year . This red papers ,20. In tFBCNS benefits from high visibility worldwide with its access and readership continuing to grow enormously in recent years; over the course of 2013, we had an average of 25,000 accesses per month, and December 2013 saw a record of 31,000 accesses. In addition to our international readership and Editorial Board, we are pleased with the level of international collaboration demonstrated across our published content. This international collaboration can be demonstrated by the proportion of articles that have been produced by researchers from several countries, which is currently 40%, as indicated in data provided by SCImago . Using available data, an unofficial Impact Factor of 2.95 has been calculated for the journal. Whilst this is only an estimate, this is also encouraging for a relatively new journal, and we hope for the actual Impact Factor to be announced in the near future. Fluids and Barriers of the CNS aims to be a first choice for investigators publishing on any topic related to the normal and pathological fluids and barriers of the CNS. The new affiliation with IBBS will help towards that end.As an open access journal,


Science cannot progress without scientists reporting their findings. And yet researchers have given control of this central pillar of the scientific process to science publishers, who are in the business of serving the interests of their journals; these are not always the same as the interests of science. This editorial describes the problems with the process of preparing and publishing research findings, and with judging their veracity and significance, and then explains how we at Faculty of 1000 are starting to tackle the ‘deadly sins’ of science publishing. I was, for many years, a typical science publisher, taking advantage of an unusual set of circumstances and making money while not helping (possibly even hurting) science, even though at the time I did not quite grasp how much. Then, when the web arrived in the 90s, I had a partial conversion. The web made many things possible and we started by creating an online community for scientists (BioMedNet) and an associated web magazine (HMS Beagle).BioMed Central and the first open access repository,PubMed Central in the year 2000. I was the only publisher in that group; the others were scientists, including David Lipman (of NCBI and the inventor of PubMed), Harold Varmus (the then head of NIH), and Pat Brown and Mike Eisen (both outstanding scientists). We all took a very big risk and were attacked by many scientists, scientific societies, journals, publishers and others for the open access approach. It still surprises me that the whole scientific community accepted and supported (or simply paid no attention to) a longstanding state of affairs that has made accessing the findings from other’s research difficult or impossible (and expensive) for many scientists, as well as for others who are interested in them.Soon afterwards, we realised that it was now possible and important to open up access to research articles that were normally locked away behind subscription barriers. There was a small group of key individuals involved in launching the first open access publisher,I started to realise how central a role science publishers play in the life and inner workings of the scientific community. It is a truism to say that science cannot exist without scientists reporting their findings, and these findings being used to develop other’s research; as it is often said, we stand ‘on the shoulders of giants’. Through the combined efforts of hundreds of thousands of researchers finding truths – large and small – science moves forward towards an ever greater understanding of the world in which we live. Yet researchers have given control of this central pillar of the scientific community to science publishers, the journals they publish, and the professional editors they employ, some of whom are in the business to serve the interests of their journals; these are not always the same as the interests of science.I am pleased to say that the concept of open access is finally gaining ground, and I do believe it will, in time, become the norm in life science publishing. This is due  to the funders who decided to support it, and in this there may be a lesson for the future. However, the success of open access only addresses one of many ‘sins’ that plague the science publishing industry. In this editorial, I will describe the problems involved in the process of preparing and publishing research findings, and in judging their veracity and significance, and try to explain the ways in which my colleagues and I in the Faculty of 1000, alongside over 11,000 scientists (as F1000 Faculty Members), are starting to tackle the other ‘deadly sins’ of science publishing.I find it incredible that researchers who wish to publish findings in the fields of biology and medicine are accustomed to a delay that regularly runs anywhere from 6 months to 1 year before their results become public. Who benefits from this delay? Why is no one complaining? Findings that might be useful in research today will be all too often hidden for an inexcusably long time. Why are there no demonstrations of scientists in front of journal offices with placards saying “No to Delay”, “Down with Journals”, “Out with Editors” ? BecauseScientists should not need journals or editors to decide what should be published. Scientists read articles, not journals. Current search methods, encompassing Google Scholar, PubMed and many others, generally enable us to find the article that we want to read very rapidly, and search technology continues to improve as more industries switch to the digital medium. PubMed looked some time ago to see whether there was a correlation between the decision of a searcher to open an abstract (thus indicating an interest in the article) and the Impact Factor of the journal. They were surprised to find that the probability of clicking on an article from a journal was strongly correlated with the number of articles published by the journal per unit of time, rather than with the journal’s Impact Factor. Of course this makes sense – the reader scans the list of citations in a search result looking for titles that suggest they might contain something relevant to their question, and often does not even consider in which journal they are published.Following the advent of the web, journals ceased to be important for readers but maintained importance for authors who wanted to get the reflected benefit of the Impact Factor (I will come to this poisonous issue later), which can play a major role in deciding their future as a scientific researcher. As a result, researchers and authors voluntarily relinquish control over this process  to journals and their editors who make decisions for their own reasons.The editors who exert control over the publication process decide what and when to publish , but may not always be experts in the specific topic of the individual paper to really make this decision. They rely on the undisclosed advice of secretly appointed referees, who may do their work poorly (nobody but the editor will know), and may have obvious conflicts of interest .It has become an oft-mentioned complaint that the peer review system is ‘broken’. It surprises me, then, that no one seems to be in a rush to decide exactly what component is broken and how to fix it. Perhaps the main problem is recognising who peer review is for. Currently, in most cases, peer review is done for journal editors to help them decide what not to publish. Authors need and benefit from peer-review, which at its best is one of the most amazing examples of a community-wide, altruistic action. And yet in most cases, the authors do not know who is reviewing their work; they learn of the comments through the editors without necessarily knowing the context of the comments; and will often be refused publication even when reviewers have useful comments and consider the work good.In addition, the reviewers’ comments often provide a useful commentary on the work and related research, are well written and can sometimes contain useful insights, that under the traditional peer review system may be partially censored before being seen by the authors and which are rarely available to the reader. The often significant efforts of reviewers disappear, and the reviewer gets little direct benefit for their work. Why do researchers accept it? Let’s add a placard to the demonstration in front of the journal offices: “Out with secret peer review” .We are facing a potential crisis of irreproducible results. Many research articles do not include sufficiently detailed materials and methods, and lack the data necessary to be able to judge the analysis that led to the conclusions that have been made. Including the data on which results are based within the narrative of an article is difficult for authors and for publishers. Most publishers do not insist, or are prepared to publish partial data, often in a difficult-to-use form. Often referees make recommendations about an article without having practical access to the relevant data. The reproducibility problem is complex and it will be a major challenge. Providing complete data and details of the way it was obtained has to be a part of this task.Behind the inappropriate and unfair way the peer-review process is conducted by journal editors lies a reason – the journals fight as hard as they can to increase their Impact Factor. This metric was invented by a great innovator in library science, Eugene Garfield, who founded Current Contents, Citation Index and the infamous Impact Factor. He meant it to be a tool for science librarians as a measure of the journal’s total citations, and was not meant to say anything about the quality of an individual article. He now openly hates its misuse.DORA, 2013) echoed these sentiments and was signed by many reputable scientists, journals and institutions, but nothing has changed. The fact that using the Impact Factor is the wrong way to decide people’s research funding, jobs and careers is now almost universally accepted. Yet despite that, it is still in use, whether used in the capacity of a scientist being judged by this approach, or by someone sitting on the judging committee. How can we explain this?The Impact Factor has become an easy way for committees deciding on a scientists’ future to judge the standard of their research. Everyone involved in the research ecosystem has now become slaves to it, even though many feel it is unfair, misleading, imprecise, and just plain wrong. The recent San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment  and write a short recommendation explaining why the chosen articles are interesting to them (to them . To-dateF1000Prime serves to provide an effective way for a researcher to receive a frequent update of the papers that members of the Faculty found commendable in their field of research, or in a new field they need to explore. The assessment of the articles is not a reflection of the Impact Factor of the journals they were published in, but an individual assessment of the article by a named expert. In a sense, this is a type of post-publication peer review of the world’s scientific literature – the Faculty choose and comment on articles after they have been published.F1000Research is an author-led publishing platform for biological and medical research that makes no editorial decisions, performs no secret refereeing, and removes the delay in publishing (About two years ago, we started publishing research articles in a completely new way.lishing . We are,To avoid delay, we publish immediately. Following submission, we conduct a quick internal hygiene check: does the article come from a scientist in a scientific institution, does it look like a science article in its format, and does it conform to the ethical standards demanded of a biological or medical article? If these basic checks are passed, the article is then published and becomes citable, although clearly labelled as ‘awaiting peer review’.Publication then triggers peer-review; authors choose referees from a list derived from our Faculty at the time of submission. If they cannot find an appropriate expert in the subject of the article, they can make a suggestion and we verify the appropriateness of the referee. To ensure the peer review status of any article is always clear, we have developed a new dynamic citation format, now being introduced by PubMed and other bibliographic listing agencies, that includes both the version numbering and the refereeing status .Peer review is open, transparent and author-led: referees receive the request through us from the author, and are asked to make one of three determinations: approved, approved with reservations, or not approved. These are accompanied by a detailed peer review, which appears online alongside the article, together with the referee names and affiliations. The authors can publicly respond to the referee reports, and this commonly results in the submission of a revised article together with a short summary of the changes. The new version is published and independently citable. The referees respond to the new version, and this process continues until the authors do not find it necessary to provide a new version.There is no ‘final article’ and nothing is ever removed, so readers can see the whole history and the conversation between the referees and authors. We make no editorial decisions, although our staff are always available with help and advice to both authors and referees. Once an article has passed peer review, it is listed in PubMed and other major bibliographic databases. We have found it surprisingly easy to find referees in this new process and they tend to write better comments, probably because their work is seen by readers. All referee reports are also made independently citeable, and are in fact cited. In this way, we believe that referees make a significant contribution to scientific discourse.Finally, all of the data on which the article is based must be provided. We go to great lengths to ensure that we get the relevant data underlying the article, even if it is very large, and in a format that can be practically used, working with many groups to provide useful tools to view and manipulate different data types. We know that authors can sometimes be reluctant for different reasons to provide their data, but clearly neither referees nor readers can judge the veracity of findings without access to the data. There is an increasing suspicion that a large proportion of published research cannot be reproduced and verified, and we all need to work together to change that.F1000Workspace, a set of tools designed specifically for researchers in biology and medicine, to help them to collect and manage references, annotate and collaborate with co-authors and colleagues, write research articles and grant applications and prepare them to meet specific journal and institutional requirements, and to submit them for publication (Finally, we have just launchedication . We offeF1000Research, where the article will become visible within a few days, after which the open and transparent refereeing starts. We believe the F1000Workspace will make a significant contribution to the process of preparing and writing research articles and other scientific documents.We are working on a special one-click process that enables authors to publish inOur goal with the new F1000 integrated set of services is to work towards removing the sins that currently beset the communication and discussion of new scientific discoveries. I hope that striving for this goal will be proof of my full conversion from sinful publisher to good citizen of the research community.