This commentary traces key milestones in that journey and announces the next chapter for this community and the critical work it produces. In 2010, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) began active funding of research projects in the use of EHD, followed quickly in 2011 by the establishment of the Electronic Data Methods (EDM) Forum with coordination through AcademyHealth. As the EDM Forum attracted novel ideas and offered collaboration opportunities, it grew over 2 to 3 years from a few hundred active researchers to several thousand engaged investigators, sponsors, end users, and stakeholders [eGEMs began publication as an open-source, peer reviewed online journal. Three commentaries among the initial papers noted the opportunity of that moment:To further support this emerging community, in January 2013 as part of the EDM Forum grant, Major advances in the availability of electronic clinical data (ECD) provide the opportunity to address questions that are important to the recipients, providers, and purchasers of health care; …As the professional society for the field, AcademyHealth supports innovation, adaptation, and learning to advance research itself. We are launching eGEMs in response to the expressed needs of our members and partners as part of helping our field “learn how to learn” and capitalize on the opportunities in the present research environment [Lisa Simpson, the CEO of AcademyHealth wrote: ironment .eGEMs noted: This focus is an effort to highlight innovative approaches that are advancing our knowledge on both technical dimensions  and non-technical dimensions  for the conduct of CER, PCOR, and QI [Erin Holve, the Project Director for the EDM Forum and the inaugural Executive Editor of , and QI .In order to achieve its goals, eGEMs should aim to promote rapid sharing of ideas, engage sponsors and potential users of research findings early in the process, develop metrics for success to guide research efforts, and recruit diverse contributors. Success would allow for not just the generation of new research, but also new science, which has the potential to significantly improve patient outcomes [I added: outcomes .These interacting themes of building community, learning how to learn collaboratively and faster, and seeking innovative and novel science have sustained the engagement of the researchers and knowledge seekers involved with this journal.eGEMs has actively contributed to this body of understanding. Between 2013 and 2019, eGEMs will have published over 260 papers featuring the work of more than 900 authors from over 500 institutions. eGEMs papers have been viewed or downloaded thousands of times—both from the journal’s own platform and from PubMed Central (PMC)—and have been cited hundreds of times by other researchers. Since its inception, the topic areas in eGEMs published papers have also expanded. The most viewed papers since the end of the EDM Forum grant in March 2017 reflects high interest in delivery system content including a special issue [here to access an interactive version of Figure A lot happens over 6 years! Progress with using EHD has accelerated and expanded the integration of EHD and advanced analytics into clinical and operational decision making. eGEMs published a substantial special issue [eGEMs will publish another special issue showcasing research that leverages data as a driver of health system transformation. Sponsored by AHRQ, the publication will highlight new data insights and capabilities that respond to rapid change in the way researchers, clinicians, patients, policymakers and others use data to transform health care.A few weeks ago, al issue  of 16 areGEMs community can attest, the research and learning environment is shifting rapidly. Systematic learning is increasingly organized around, and studies done, within systems of care delivery. Further, the linkage that eGEMs was created to fill is now morphing into a networked community of data users and customers. Their experiences are being synthesized and shared through forums from social media to Health Datapalooza. Finally, the work of the data community is increasingly sought by both long established and more recently developed peer-reviewed publications.At its core, scholarship is intended to foster change, and as the eGEMs has also transitioned from its origin as a grant supported journal to seeking self-support through sponsorships and article processing fees provided by authors. Now, given the advances in integration of health data methods into the wider field of delivery system science, AcademyHealth has partnered with the Elsevier journal Healthcare: The Journal of Delivery Science and Innovation, to debut a new publishing home for the critical work published in eGEMs. Insights in Analyzing Health Data is an ongoing section dedicated to data methods and applications within Healthcare and guided by select members of the eGEMs editorial board.I’m pleased that AcademyHealth is at the forefront in building the learning healthcare ecosystem, through strategic investments as well as sustaining and building partnerships to realize opportunity. Under the stewardship of AcademyHealth, eGEMs stakeholders, plus the editors of Healthcare, we feel that this is an excellent opportunity to sustain the commitment to the eGEMs community while also allowing AcademyHealth to turn its attention to other areas of the health care delivery research community where gaps remain.In testing the possibilities with AcademyHealth staff, several key eGEMs platform, but the legacy of eGEMs will be preserved. All eGEMs published papers will maintain their original DOIs and continue to be freely available through archiving on CLOCKSS and through PMC. Further, Healthcare has become an official journal of AcademyHealth offering both subscription and article processing charge discounts to AcademyHealth members as well as partnering with AcademyHealth to ensure work published in the journal reaches a broad spectrum of health services, policy and system researchers, practitioners and funders.We anticipate the final papers will publish in June on the eGEMs community and adapting to this dynamic health data ecosystem.In summary, as a desirable and innovative solution, I see this path forward as hitting the “both/and” of ongoing service to the eGEMs. We look forward to seeing more published work from this community in Insights for Analyzing Health Data!Finally, as Executive Editor, I’d like to extend my deep appreciation to our authors and readers, the volunteer editorial board and peer-reviewers, the original funders from AHRQ, special issue sponsors , and the AcademyHealth leadership, staff and Board of Directors. A special thanks to Lauren Adams and David Padgham for their close partnership during my tenure with hereTo learn more about this next chapter of the eGEMs community and for answers to frequently asked questions about this transition, please see the AcademyHealth website .


Journal Citation Reports (JCR), which is published annually by Thomson Reuters, includes 10 journals published by MDPI, including three that have received their first official Impact Factors—International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH), Materials and Nutrients.Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE).For the past three years MDPI has announced the newly released impact factors for its Open Access journals by the means of an annual editorial ,2,3. In The continued growth of the Impact Factors of MDPI journals provides further evidence for the citation advantage of the full Open Access publishing policy—which was instituted for all MDPI journals in early 2007 —over the


Bill Hanage is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health, where he studies fundamental and applied epidemiology using genomic and evolutionary methods. Bill spoke to us about the different types of selection that determine pathogen populations, asking reviewers to highlight positives of papers, and whether we’re closer to a causal framework for studying the microbiome. Pathogen evolution, mostly bacteria, and especially pneumococcus. On the applied side we’re interested in using genome sequences for epidemiology, reconstructing transmission trees , 2, and I think that people using genomes in epidemiology are going to start relating their work to clinical practice, but that this will be less straightforward than might be assumed. For instance, if we had good environmental sampling and detected a drug-resistant bacterium in a hospital ward, what should we do? Shut down the ward, at considerable expense? Resistance genes can be found in non-pathogens too, and the danger will depend on context; for example, whether the ward treats immunocompromised patients.Speaking about bacterial genomics and evolution more generally I suspect advances in technology are going to move us closer to actual ‘whole genome sequencing’ and away from the ‘high quality draft genome sequencing’ which is what people mostly do now. This might reveal a lot of rapidly accumulating variation in areas that are hard to assemble right now, and greatly expand the list of ‘contingency loci’ . These aThe major impetus I have to review papers is that any paper I publish will have needed some nice people to review it (even if they hated it!). So I try to review the number of papers that my own research output would require, reviewing one for each submission. Beyond that sometimes a paper looks just so interesting that I have to review it for reasons of curiosity. However, I have to turn down the vast majority of review requests I get, just because of the sheer volume.There are obvious problems, and I could write all morning about possible solutions and their benefits and drawbacks. One really simple thing that journals should do is to specifically ask reviewers for positives, which would help steer them towards a rounded view of the work, rather than a laundry list of things that they dislike. My answer to the first question above should make it clear that my lab is increasingly using preprints to get ideas and feedback earlier in the publication process. I am also impressed by attempts to make peer review portable, via things like the Peerage of Science initiative . It woulThe very first paper I reviewed was lacking a control, which meant all the results might have been the result of contamination with endotoxin. The journal wanted to publish it regardless. I requested to be removed from their list of reviewers and, sure enough, they’ve never asked me again Twitter: @BillHanageWebsite:https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/william-hanage/ and https://c2-d2.github.io/hanage-lab/


Journal of Clinical and Translational Science (JCTS). This new journal is not a recapitulation of our previous journal, Clinical and Translational Science, but rather a new journal with new goals and a new mission. Some of the differences can be seen in the advertising that you should shortly see in your in-box and some are less apparent. Therefore, let me elaborate. First and foremost, JCTS belongs to the ACTS. It will have the editorial freedom afforded all academic journals; however, the Association, through its Publication Committee, will oversee the activities of the journal; the ACTS will share in any positive margins accrued by the journal once the costs are met, and ACTS members and K scholars will be able to take advantage of special programs. Importantly, the structure of the Editorial Board and the diverse interests of its members point to a primary goal for the journal: to publish outstanding research in all areas of translational science—T1 to T4.Over the past 2 years, numerous members of the Association of Clinical and Translational Science (ACTS) have worked assiduously along with members of the editorial team at Cambridge University Press to launch the We will accept cascaded peer reviews for papers rejected by other journals. Authors must provide a point-by-point rebuttal to the reviewers’ criticisms and/or have, where appropriate, performed an additional experiment or experiments to address the reviewer’s comments. An editorial-level review may be performed; however, JTCS reserves the right to send the paper for additional review.When a K Scholar is the first author of a manuscript, the K Scholar will have the opportunity to speak with the Editor or with the Deputy Editor who handled the paper after receiving the reviewer’s comments and the Editor’s decision, so that they can fully understand exactly what needs to be done to make the paper acceptable for JCTS.Whenever possible, we will structure responses to the authors that specifically dictate those changes or new experiments that are required to make the manuscript acceptable. This will be an attempt to eliminate the sometimes interminable back and forth between authors and reviewers.We have expanded and reorganized the board with Deputy Editors and Senior Editors for: (1) Basic Translational Research, (2) Clinical Research, (3) Education, (4) Population Health, Community Engagement, Health Disparities & Health Policy, and Translational Research Design and Analysis. We believe that this outstanding group of translational scientists will provide fair and helpful reviews in their areas of expertise and help attract excellent papers. As we move forward, we will certainly need to expand our Senior Editor group and form an Editorial Board.With the help of Cambridge University Press, we hope to obtain PubMed indexing at the earliest possible time; however, in the interim, we will ensure that all papers that report work that was supported by National Institutes of Health grants will be submitted to PubMed Central and indexed in PubMed in a timely manner.All manuscripts will be published online in a timely manner and will appear with their final citation details.Finally, we intend to distribute the Table of Contents for each issue as widely as possible as well as taking advantage of social media to help publicize the findings of significant papers to the global scientific community.The goal of becoming a top-flight journal in the many aspects of translational research is audacious; however, we believe that the goal is achievable. First, there are important areas of translational research that do not have natural editorial homes: for example, health disparities research, community engagement research, and population health research. Second, some journals have become narrowly focused and/or Editorial Boards have become protective of areas of research that now occupy members of the translational science community—education of the translational science workforce being one example. Third, some journals are afraid to take on the tough issues that face the translational sciences. Finally, the enormous volume of manuscripts submitted from around the world to US journals has far outpaced the number of manuscripts that the existing high-quality journals in aggregate can accommodate. Therefore, many excellent papers are being left without a home. However, in order to rise to the top, we have to provide services that are both competitive and innovative. Therefore, we have taken the following steps:Most importantly, however, JCTS is now YOUR journal. We have provided opportunities for members of the translational science community to provide opinions through letters, brief reports, and review articles. By publishing in JCTS, you will actually be able to support the Association and all of its activities that benefit both investigators and trainees. Moreover, as the journal grows, we hope that many of you will agree to add your names to the Editorial Board and to the group of Senior Editors. This is an exciting time for JCTS and for the ACTS, and I am honored to serve as Editor. I look forward to working with all of you as we bring the vision for JCTS to a reality.


A preprint is a scientific manuscript uploaded by its authors into a public server prior to peer review or publication. The preprint contains the complete information of a scientific article and can be described as an ‘interim research product’ because it has not yet gone through the back-and-forth edits that typically occur during peer review. Rather, after a brief quality-control inspection by the preprint server to ensure that the work is scientific in nature and meets ethical standards, the manuscript is posted promptly  and can be viewed online for free by anyone. This allows for authors to receive prompt feedback from a far larger community of colleagues than the two or three experts who might typically review their manuscript. It also increases the visibility and speed with which research findings are disseminated and can help to counterbalance the effects of publication bias. Work posted as a preprint is frequently the same exact manuscript being submitted to a traditional, peer-reviewed journal, often simultaneously. In this way, preprints , can work in tandem with journal publications  as a communication system seeking to improve scientific research .Preprints have been standard fare in physics and other hard sciences for the past three decades. In fact, publication in traditional venues is at times viewed as a late formality in these disciplines, where the bulk of the intellectual exchange can happen long before publication, through commentary around the preprint. Much of that exchange happens through email and social media, rather than through the preprint server itself, which is in essence but a virtual repository providing a public ‘time stamp’ to the work. Compared to the preprints’ immediacy in jump-starting dialogue, the traditional peer-reviewed approach can feel painfully slow to scientists eager to get their work out into the public discourse arena.xiv, was started in 2019 [Compared to physics, the biological sciences have been slower on the preprint uptake, but a groundswell began in 2013, when the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratories launched bioRxiv. A further boost came in early 2017, when funding agencies encouraged applicants to include their preprint works in grant proposals. This invitation was supported both in the UK by the Medical Research Council  and the  in 2019 , 7. ConcDespite the availability of a number of preprint services, uptake remains low and uneven: for example, only 1.3% (1200) of the 93,000 papers added to PubMed in August of 2017 had been deposited as preprints . This raraison d’être is to answer questions worthy of being asked, design methodologically sound ways of answering those questions and sharing the answers with those who may benefit from them. At each step of the process, the researcher depends immensely on peers, both present and past. While some have pointed out that this idyllic set of processes is not reflected in actual practice [The researcher’s practice , it remaThere are several considerations that can inform a prospective author’s decision to upload a manuscript into a preprint archive:With the rapid expansion of journals in the past three decades , particuJournals have sought to reduce as much as possible the lag between submission and dissemination, providing rapid editorial decisions and early access to proofs and electronic copies. But the review and publication process does take time, and some have argued for time-to-publication bias in the selection of articles . OfferinPredatory journals have taken advantage of the growing popularity and demand for open-access publication. This puts academia at risk because it offers a compromised avenue to the literature. In the journal ecosystem and its overabundance of titles, an ill-informed consumer might be forgiven for massing reputable and disreputable journals together, taking information provided at face value and trusting the peer review process. One could argue that the ecological niche populated by predatory journals would not be as viable if authors were able to secure a legitimate place in the literature for their unreviewed work. Expanding free archiving services may help undercut the predatory journal business model.A special area of medical and psychiatric research, particularly in child and adolescent psychiatry, is that cultural context can strongly influence the clinical practices, and even the effectiveness of treatment. This is especially true when considering non-pharmacological treatments. As most peer-reviewed scientific journals only consider papers written in English , 15, ediAccess is the main issue that justifies devoting resources to preprint archives. Why bother at all? These archiving services are not heavily accessed and are not currently indexed on the main sources of academic literature. While Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) are assigned to each archived manuscript, currently they are only retrievable by means of actively informed search strategies. Therefore, while a manuscript may be archived, it may not be as widely accessed as articles that appear in peer-reviewed indexed journals. But as the practice becomes more widely adopted—as has been the case in many other branches of science– we can anticipate that it will become as natural to search a centralized preprint archive as it is to search multiple sources of peer-reviewed articles today. Additionally, searching preprint archives will offer researchers a glimpse into ongoing research, something not easily accomplished without the proper connections. It therefore benefits researchers to adopt the habit of searching preprint archives, as they offer an idea of what is to come and consequently what remains unanswered.The idea of registering intellectual property with a publicly accessible server is appealing, but without the scrutiny of an independent third party the degree of trustworthiness of the content may be called into question. Those supporting the practice can justifiably point to the number of articles appearing as preprints that then go on to be published in peer-reviewed journals: about 55% after 24 months . This raBiomedical journal publishers are warming to the idea of preprint archives , which shttp://arxiv-iacapap.org/). This repository gives child and adolescent mental health professionals the opportunity to upload clinical or research documents in their own language (with an abstract in English) that becomes freely available online. The quality of the articles is assured by formal approval of the national child and adolescent mental health organization to which the authors belong, and/or by IACAPAP. The IACAPAP ArXiv is one of several preprint services that investigators may consider when uploading their work for circulation and dissemination. Most peer-reviewed journals, though not all, have policies specifically allowing the use of preprint servers prior to submission. In some instances, journal submissions from the preprint server can even happen directly. Authors are advised to check with the specific journal to which they intend to submit to before uploading their work to a preprint repository.The International Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Allied Professions (IACAPAP) has developed a preprint archive specific to child and adolescent psychiatry (CAPMH and its editorial team certainly welcome, and indeed encourage, the use of preprint archives. We believe that any avenue that allows a researcher easy and timely access to sharing and disseminating findings should be encouraged and welcomed, as early access helps researchers better fulfil their raison d’être.


Zoological Research (ZR) is now covered by Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-E), with full coverage to be backdated to issue 1 in 2016. This encouraging progress demonstrates that ZR has taken a critical step on the journey to becoming one of the top journals in the field.At the beginning of this new year full of exciting prospects and potential, we would first like to share our exciting news that ZR. It is your enduring support and faith that has helped in the sustained growth and advancement of ZR, which continues to evolve as an important and influential journal. Based on your contributions, the impact of ZR has maintained a healthy increasing trend during 2018. In 2017, our Citescore was 0.92 (Elsevier on 31 May 2018), thus ranking ZR within the top 20% (161) of the 841 journals listed in the General Medicine category. In addition, the mock impact factor of 2018 (according to current data provided by the Web of Science) has already exceeded that of 2017, up to 1.0.We would like to sincerely thank every author, reader, and colleague of Tupaia belangeri) as a novel laboratory disease animal model ; Creating animal models, why not use the Chinese tree shrew (Tupaia belangeri chinensis)? ; Molecular cloning, pathologically-correlated expression and functional characterization of the colony-stimulating factor 1 receptor (CSF-1R) gene from a teleost, Plecoglossus altivelis ; Advances and perspectives in the application of CRISPR/Cas9 in insects ; ZIKA — How fast does this virus mutate? ; and numerous others .Our current progress can also be attributed to the great effort made in promoting the journal’s influence. To ensure that the journal provides up-to-date and valuable research findings to academia, we insist on high-quality articles and special issues/collections with support from our esteemed authors and guest editors. Many recent feature articles have attracted considerable attention from peers worldwide, e.g., The role of wildlife (wild birds) in the global transmission of antimicrobial resistance genes ; Tree shrew , China), “Herpetofaunal Diversity in Indochina” ; “Special Issue for Primates and Primatology in China” ; “Mammal Diversity in Asia” , comprising authors from the US, Canada, Russia, Belgium, Cambodia, Brazil, Thailand, and others.ZR has also maintained active and regular participation in both academic and publication conferences, e.g., 1st AsiaEvo Conference, 8th International Symposium on Primate Research, Annual Conference of ScholarOne Users, and Development Forum of Science, Technical and Medical (STM) Journals of China. After successfully convening the Frontiers in Zoology Symposium for the last two years, ZR will announce the next symposium in February 2019 with the theme of “Protection and Utilization of Animal Resources”. We hope to see many in attendance at the conference, with all relevant information to be found on the ZR homepage.ZR’s editorial board members and generous readers and authors have all performed their duties impeccably and promoted the journal within academic institutes and to colleagues both inside and outside of China. Our efforts have paid off, with more than 60% of yearly peer reviewers now located outside of China, and the database of reviewers, authors, readers, homepage visitors, and WeChat followers seeing significant expansion. We would like to thank all the reviewers and editors for their patience and contributions, which have greatly helped in maintaining the high-quality manuscripts published in ZR.Importantly, ZR has had nine new editorial boards by the end of 2018. We are sincerely grateful for all the hard work of each editorial board member in guaranteeing the scientific value of the journal and maintaining its positive roles in academia. The 10th editorial board will commence at the start of 2019 and includes 53 outstanding scientists from 14 countries. To ensure a vibrant and effective team, we encourage scholars with passion and ideas for cultivating ZR into a more influential journal to join the team throughout the year. If you are interested in working with our team, please do not hesitate to contact us.Last but not the least, ZR is still young; however, it has shown great vitality, considerable potential, and a clear outlook in advancing the scientific spirit.Scientific journals are of considerable value and strategic significance. The Chinese government recently emphasized that the development of scientific journals is critical for advancing innovation in China, increasing the academic influence of Chinese scientists among international peers, strengthening the nation’s discursive power in promoting international scientific and cultural communications, and boosting the transformation and development of the scientific publication industry in China. Ensuring the continuing vibrancy and influence of Chinese scientific journals is not only the expectation of generations of Chinese scientists and publishers, but is also crucial for propelling scientific and technological advancement. Among the 5 052 (as of 31 December 2017) scientific/technology/medical journals of China, ZR as it grows, whilst remaining adaptable, motivated, and open to new ideas. ZR will continue to focus on publishing exciting results on: 1) Primates and Animal Models; 2) Conservation and Utilization of Animal Resources; and 3) Animal Diversity and Evolution. We further hope for your enduring involvement into the future. ZR is prepared to be challenged, stimulated, and inspired. Again, thank you all! May your new year hold great promise and many good wishes!It is an exciting time for SincerelyYun Zhang, Executive Editor-in-ChiefKunming Institute of Zoology,Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming Yunnan 650223, ChinaYong-Gang Yao, Editor-in-ChiefKunming Institute of Zoology,Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming Yunnan 650223, China


In their research reports, scientists are expected to discuss limitations that their studies have. Previous research showed that often, such discussion is absent. Also, many journals emphasize the importance of avoiding overstatement of claims. We wanted to see to what extent editorial handling and peer review affects self-acknowledgment of limitations and hedging of claims.Using software that automatically detects limitation-acknowledging sentences and calculates the level of hedging in sentences, we compared the submitted manuscripts and their ultimate publications of all randomized trials published in 2015 in 27 BioMed Central (BMC) journals and BMJ Open. We used mixed linear and logistic regression models, accounting for clustering of manuscript-publication pairs within journals, to quantify before-after changes in the mean numbers of limitation-acknowledging sentences, in the probability that a manuscript with zero self-acknowledged limitations ended up as a publication with at least one and in hedging scores.Four hundred forty-six manuscript-publication pairs were analyzed. The median number of manuscripts per journal was 10.5 (interquartile range 6–18). The average number of distinct limitation sentences increased by 1.39 (95% CI 1.09–1.76), from 2.48 in manuscripts to 3.87 in publications. Two hundred two manuscripts (45.3%) did not mention any limitations. Sixty-three  of these mentioned at least one after peer review. Changes in mean hedging scores were negligible.Our findings support the idea that editorial handling and peer review lead to more self-acknowledgment of study limitations, but not to changes in linguistic nuance. Spin is a term used to describe reporting practices that distort the interpretation of a study’s results [. Not mentioning  study limitations is one way in which readers can be misguided into believing that, for example, the beneficial effect of an experimental treatment is greater than the trial’s result warrant.One of the main functions of the editorial process  as employed by almost all serious scientific journals is to ensure that the research articles published are accurate, transparent, and complete reports of the research conducted.  results . Not menspin are inappropriate extrapolation of results and inferring causal relationships when the study’s design does not allow for it [In a survey among scientists, insufficient reporting of study limitations ranked high in a list of detrimental research practices . In a maw for it .Peer reviewers should spot and suggest changes to overstatements and claims that are too strong and point out non-trivial study weaknesses that are not mentioned. The peer review process may therefore been seen as “a negotiation between authors and journal about the scope of the knowledge claims that will ultimately appear in print” . SpecifiIn this study, we considered the discussion sections of randomized clinical trial (RCT) reports published in 27 BioMed Central (BMC) journals and BMJ Open. Using two software tools, we determined the number of sentences dedicated to the acknowledgment of specific study limitations and the use of linguistic hedges, before (manuscripts) and after peer review (publications). The limitation detection tool relies on the structure of the discussion sections and linguistic clues to identify limitation sentences . In a foWe also carried out a qualitative analysis of the two publications with the largest increase and decrease of hedging score, respectively. For these two papers, KK compared the before and after discussion sections to see what the actual changes were. The reviewer reports, consisting of the reviewer’s comments and the authors responses, were analyzed.n = 69) and BMC Medicine (n = 14) due to their exceptional number of editorial team members . Finally, using scatterplots and fractional polynomial functions, we visually explored if the effect on the changes in the number of limitation-acknowledging sentences was affected by the number of limitation-acknowledging sentences in the manuscript controlled for regression to the mean using a median split as suggested by Goodman et al. [We performed mixed linear regression analysis, for each manuscript-publication pair, of the mean changes in the number of limitation sentences and normalized hedging scores, with the journal as a random intercept. We repeated these analyses adjusting for the journal’s impact factor (continuous), editorial team size (continuous), and composition of authors in terms of English proficiency (three dummy variables representing four categories). English proficiency was derived from the classification of majority native English-speaking countries by the United Kingdom (UK) government for British citizenship application . Englishn et al. . We presWe used mixed-effects logistic regression analysis to assess the impact of the abovementioned factors on the likelihood of mentioning at least one limitation in the publication among those that had none in the manuscript. Sensitivity analyses consisted of restricting the data set to the journals with fewer than 20 editorial team members, at least 10 manuscript-publication pairs, and both of those restrictions simultaneously, respectively.Four hundred forty-six research articles were selected. Table The hedging-related differences were all very close to zero. A post hoc analysis inspired by the hypothesis that limitation-acknowledging sentences themselves might affect the average hedging scores confirmed the main analysis.The largest increase in hedging score was + 1.67 (from 3.33 to 5.00). The weighted hedging scores were 50 across the 15 detected sentences in the manuscript and 145 across the 29 detected sentences in the published paper, respectively. The largest decrease in hedging score was − 2.55 (from 6.85 to 4.30). The weighted hedging score was 192 across 28 sentences in the manuscript and 142 across 33 sentences in the published paper . Our automated approach showed that 33% of research reports do not contain limitation sentences after peer review. This is comparable with the finding of 27% by Ter Riet et al., which they determined with a manual approach. Goodman et al. found that mentioning study limitations is one of the poorest scoring items before and one of the most improved factors after peer review [could vs. may) somewhat interchangeably. This may explain our finding that the net change in hedging scores was very small.Our findings do not support the hypothesis that the editorial process increases the qualification of claims by using a more nuanced language. The small-scale qualitative analysis of two manuscript-publication pairs indicated that authors are asked to both tone down statements, that is, hedge more strongly, and make statements less speculative, that is hedge less. These phenomena may offset each other resulting in minimal changes in the overall use of hedges  to flag up particular paragraphs that might deserve more  attention. The limitation sentence recognizing software could for example be used to alert editors to manuscripts with zero self-acknowledged limitations to see if such omission can be justified. If reference values existed that represented the range of hedging scores across a large body of papers, the hedge-detection software could help inform reviewers (or even authors) that the manuscript has an unusual (weighted) hedging score and let them revisit some the formulations in the paper. We think that currently, no direct conclusions should be drawn from the numbers alone. Human interpretation will remain critical for some time to come, but a signposting role of the software seems currently feasible.all sentences in the discussion sections. A stricter operationalization of our objective would have required that we detect “claim sentences” first and then measure hedging levels in those sentences only. On the other hand, our approach to focus on discussion sections only is better than analyzing complete papers, because claims are usually made in the discussion sections. A strength of our study is the automated assessment of limitation sentences and hedges, limiting the likelihood of analytical or observational bias. Such automated assessment could also assist journal editors as well as peer reviewers in their review tasks. Our results suggest that reviewers and/or editors demand discussion of study limitations that authors were unaware of or unwilling to discuss. Since good science implies the full disclosure of issues that may  invalidate the findings of a study, this increase in the number of limitation sentences is a positive effect of the peer and editorial review process.A limitation of our study is that we only included reports or randomized trials that made it to publications. Acknowledgment of limitations among all submissions, including also observational studies, may be different than what we report here. Another limitation is that we only included open peer review journals of more than average editorial team quality. Blind peer review may lead to different results as may the case for journals with lower quality editorial team. Note also that the weight assigned to the hedges is somewhat subjective. However, our results were stable across weighted and unweighted hedges. Finally, one may argue that there is a discrepancy between our interest in overstated claims and what we actually measured, namely, hedging scores in Our findings support the idea that editorial handling and peer review, on average, cause a modest increase in the number of self-acknowledged study limitations and that these effects are larger in a manuscript reporting zero or very few limitations. This finding is important in the debates about the value of peer review and detrimental research practices. Software tools such as the ones used in this study may be employed by authors, reviewers, and editors to flag potentially problematic manuscripts or sections thereof. More research is needed to assess more precisely the effects, if any, of peer review and editorial handling on linguistic nuance of claims.


At the request of the authors and editors, the article titled “Overexpression of NTRK1 Promotes Differentiation of Neural Stem Cells into Cholinergic Neurons” [The corresponding author apologizes to the readers and editors of BioMed Research International.


Predatory journals (PJ) exploit the open-access model promising high acceptance rate and fast track publishing without proper peer review. At minimum, PJ are eroding the credibility of the scientific literature in the health sciences as they actually boost the propagation of errors. In this article, we identify issues with PJ and provide several responses, from international and interdisciplinary perspectives in health sciences. Authors, particularly researchers with limited previous experience with international publications, need to be careful when considering potential journals for submission, due to the current existence of large numbers of PJ. Universities around the world, particularly in developing countries, might develop strategies to discourage their researchers from submitting manuscripts to PJ or serving as members of their editorial committees. Research quality faces multiple threats, from improperly designed studies, ethical concerns, biased results, and growing publication costs to unfair judgment prior to scientific publishing. As strong evidence from research results might inform decision making, independently or as a chain with domino effects, in the field of health, all threats can affect the well-being of individuals and populations. The industry of research publishing is evolving according to broad available electronic means and increasing amounts of research to handle. A growing trend of open access (OA) publishing that shifts publication costs to authors has opened the door to money as a mediator that could even surpass quality assessment by peer review.Nature journal by Professor Jeffrey Beall [The term “Predatory Journals” (PJ) first appeared in PubMed in 2012, from a note published in the Predatory publishers have several strategies to “invite” scholars to publish in their journals that should alert researchers to this type of publication. One of the most common practices is to send and re-send hundreds or thousands of e-mails around the world, expecting to find some potential authors. Newer scholars from developing countries are particularly at risk of becoming the victims of these practices . As publJournal of Sciences or International Journal of Science, aiming to attract more submissions. Often only the first or early issues are available [Predatory journals are publications that exploit the OA model by asking authors to pay directly or indirectly for publication in the journal. These journals promise high acceptance rates and fast-track publishing and often report unauthentic impact factors. Predatory journals often publish papers in few days or weeks, much quicker than a standard peer review process, and typically have no editorial office or well-recognized institution/organization associated with the journal. Consequently the manuscripts have significant grammatical and typographical errors and the layout often looks unprofessional . Names ovailable 5. SometiRecently some researchers have proposed a predatory ranking metric called “Predatory Rate” (PR), which is based on 14 criteria such as editorial members, review process and publishing, announcements, open access policy, and publication charges. Each criterion has a weight ranging from 1 to 3, and PR is a continuous value between 0 and 1. APR equal to 0 means that the journal is possibly not a predatory one. A PR higher than 0 and lower than 0.22 suggest that the journal uses predatory practices. The remaining values indicate the journal is possibly a predatory one . HoweverShen et al. estimated that PJ published more than 420,000 articles in 2014, from around 8,000 active journals , and GutThe existence of PJ leads to a distortion of the published scientific literature, allowing the online existence of manuscripts that did not pass a rigorous process of peer review. In a study of PJ in nursing, as an example, the researchers found that many journal websites indicated that manuscripts were peer reviewed; however, the quality of those reviews was questionable, with some reviews done within one to two days and followed by rapid publication of the article without any editorial review or copyediting . The neg13Manca et al. identified 192 potential PJ in the fields of neurology and neurosciences, in addition to 59 potential PJ in the field of rehabilitation, with some of them  indexed in PubMed 17. In a http://www.scimagojr.com/).These journals also have negative effects on science integrity. They lead to spreading junk science  and can https://web.archive.org/web/20170103170903/https://scholarlyoa.com). Currently, the reasons for the disappearance of the Beall’s list are unknown. However, the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that it was starting to take action against a publisher that was accused of deceiving its authors [In January 2017, Beall’s list of predatory publishers and journals was no longer available . Fortuna authors . There iAuthors, particularly researchers with little or no previous experience with international publications, need to be careful about the selection of possible journals for submission of their manuscripts due to the current existence of large numbers of PJ. This is particularly important for authors from low- and middle-income countries where we see rapid progress in the global reach of health sciences and the striking limitation to accessing and publishing academic papers in these regions .While it is important to publish results of research – as well as an ethical duty to do so – authors should be aware of issues concerning publication ethics. Since it is likely that the number of PJ will continue to increase Figures  and 2, ihttp://thinkchecksubmit.org) that provides several recommendations to potential authors. Authors should look at the journal website and review some of the articles published in the journals to assess their quality; this quick review may be all that is needed to identify PJ. Authors should be aware of the large negative effects, on their careers and on global science, of publishing articles in journals that lack an adequate quality of peer review [Verification of indexing in well-known and high-quality databases, such as Medline, Scopus, and Journal Citation Reports, is an important step. There is an international initiative called “Think. Check. Submit.” . Individuals can report suspicious cases by using this portal, and experts inspect them and verify real cases of phishing.There are a number of scientific organizations, such as the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP), the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), and the Association of Learned & Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), among others, that might generate new approaches to stop the growth of PJ. There is the need for the development of collaborative list that highlight journals that have inappropriate processes for peer review. In addition, multiple indexing services need to identify those journals with questionable editorial processes. As an interesting example from another field, information security researchers have created a web portal entitled “PhishTank” (Universities around the world, particularly in developing countries , might dIn conclusion, PJ have shown an exponential growth in recent years, publishing a large number of articles from authors around the globe, with very low quality in the peer review process. Although there have been several initiatives to control or mitigate the negative effects of PJs on health research, it is a growing problem around the world. Unethical publishers create problems for authors particularly inexperienced authors . One int


Bioinformatics has therefore banned them as a reviewer. Our investigation also suggests that the reviewer has behaved similarly in reviewing for other journals. This case has alerted us to how the peer-review system is vulnerable to unethical behavior, and prompted us to clarify the journal’s policy on when it is appropriate for reviewers to request citations to their own work, and to suggest how some of the current weak points in the peer-review system can be mitigated, so that this behavior can be detected more quickly and efficiently.A case was recently brought to the journal’s attention regarding a reviewer who had requested a large number of citations to their own papers as part of their review. After investigation of their most recent reviews, we found that in every review this reviewer requested an average of 35 citations be added, ∼90% of which were to their own papers and the remainder to papers that both cited them extensively and mentioned them by name in the title. The reviewer’s phrasing strongly suggested that inclusion of these citations would influence their recommendation to the editor to accept or reject the paper. The reviewer was unable to provide a satisfactory justification for these requests and Peer-reviewers are typically selected based on their expertise in the areas of research associated with newly submitted manuscripts. They are among the most likely to be familiar with prior publications pertinent to the submission, and reviewer feedback on the completeness and accuracy of a manuscript’s reference list is desirable and welcome. It is therefore not unusual that one or a few requested citations may be to the reviewer’s own research. However, reviewers should be aware that a rigorous scientific justification for the inclusion of a new citation must be provided. Since it is easy to provide a tenuous justification for inclusion, as this reviewer often did , it should instead be stated why the authors would be remiss or the paper weaker if the citation were not included. Likewise, editors and authors should be aware of the imbalance of power that exists in the review process, and should ensure that any citations added in response to a reviewer comment are relevant and important.Citations have been called the ‘currency’ of science, meaning that they could be considered a quantifiable and objective metric of the impact of a scientist’s research. Specific metrics, such as the H-index, are intended to reflect this and scientists therefore have an incentive to try to improve their H-index. Indeed, the reviewer we caught requesting extensive citation of their work has a webpage that includes prominent mentions of both their high H-index and past awards they received from Thomson Reuters for being a highly cited researcher. When a reviewer agrees to review a paper with the intention of inflating the number of citations to their work, this is a conflict of interest and an unethical manipulation of the peer-review system.until a pattern is established, and a decentralized peer-review system is not amenable to detecting patterns. Editors may overlook requests, authors seem reluctant to bring it up explicitly to the editor, reviewer comments are anonymous and scattered across different editors and different journals, and even editors that spot such patterns may not even be aware what options they have, and therefore take the least-energy option of no longer inviting that reviewer. Because accusing someone of unethical conduct is a serious matter, the editors and authors involved are hesitant to do so, particularly if all they have is one instance to base their actions upon.One might ask how this reviewer got away with submitting multiple reviews containing coercive requests for citation before being banned. The shortest explanation is that excessive self-citation demands are generally not seen as an ethical problem Bioinformatics, it is likely that this reviewer will continue to review for other journals after this editorial is published. Readers have no doubt noticed that this reviewer is not mentioned by name. This is because we have concluded that we have an obligation to maintain peer-reviewer anonymity, and thus, we can only alert others to the general problem. We debated this last point extensively, and have raised the issue with the COPE as a case report to be discussed.Combined, this creates a system whereby such behavior can persist for a very long time. Even in the rare event that such misbehavior is detected, there is no global solution. Following the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the first step is to contact the reviewer for an explanation. If it is unsatisfactory, then bring the matter to the attention of their immediate supervisor. This second step is only effective in a well-organized academic system, which was not the case here. Despite the actions taken by Motivation. Reviewers should properly motivate their requests for citations and specify how strongly they feel about the addition of references. For example, saying ‘the authors’ review of the field is incomplete, they should add the following references’ is vague, whereas ‘similar studies on the use of X for the purpose of Y were published prior to this one and are needed to alert readers to prior art’ is specific. The less specific a reviewer is regarding motivation, the less weight their request should be given.Moderation. Reviewers should refrain from requesting substantial numbers of references. What is ‘substantial’ will vary by the type of article, with review articles expected to be better in their coverage and short two-page application notes expected to include only the most relevant references. We propose a general rule of thumb to define ‘substantial’ as requesting addition of more than one reference per printed journal page of the paper. In the event the authors’ citations of pertinent prior research is highly incomplete, a reviewer should simply say so and then point them in the right direction with a few citations and let them do the rest.Communication. If a reviewer notices another reviewer has requested excessive or unmerited citations and this has not been commented on by the editor, they should feel free to share their observations and opinions directly with the editor. Reviewers should be cognizant they are also in a position to recognize patterns of abuse from their fellow reviewers.Specific suggestions for reviewers:Document patterns. Manuscript handling systems should include a checkbox for each reviewer that asks ‘did this reviewer request citation to their own research?’ Editors with a concern about reviewer’s citation requests could then see what percentage of reviews returned contained self-citation requests.Brief but clear guidelines. Instructions should be kept simple and clear. As a result of this case we have updated our reviewer guidelines to state that requests for citations should include ‘a brief, yet specific, rationale as to why their inclusion is merited. This rationale is particularly important if the reviewer requests citation of their own papers.’Specific suggestions for journals:Voice concerns. Although adding multiple references in response to a reviewer request might seem like an ‘easy’ way to satisfy at least one of the reviewers, each unmerited citation clutters your paper and rewards unethical behavior. Don’t be hesitant to include in your response that you have considered the suggestion and feel they are not necessary. In the event the reviewer responds negatively, you should contact the editor for guidance. This is in accordance with the Ethical Guidelines for Reviewers published by the Committee on Publication Ethics  Specific suggestions for editors handling papers:Vigilance. The ultimate responsibility in preventing this behavior lies with the editors handling the papers. Careful consideration of the referee reports to detect unethical behavior, including unjustified requests for citations, particularly citations of the reviewer’s own work, is important and all efforts should be made to prevent such requests being made to the authors. Importantly, when a reviewer requests substantial self-citation, this should be reported to the journal so they can investigate whether or not this is part of a pattern, as in the specific case discussed here. Bioinformatics acknowledges that their editorial controls have failed for some time in this particular case, and sincerely apologizes to our authors, referees and readers for not detecting this sooner.Specific suggestions for authors:This phenomenon of reviewer-coerced citations is not new , but alsConflict of Interest: none declared.


Zoological Research (ZR) received its first impact factor based on citations in 2018 for indexed papers published during 2016 to 2017. Although the new impact factor (1.556) is modest, it ranks ZR at 52 among the 170 SCI journals (quartile 2) in the Zoology category. This excellent result is not only a reflection of your enduring support, but also in recognition of our efforts to boost ZR from a Chinese-language only journal in 1980 to an English-language only journal of international standing by 2014.On 20 June 2019, Clarivate Analytics (2019) announced its Journal Citation Reports of 2018. From this,  ZR has aimed to publish the latest advances and scientific findings in the field of zoology. This goal has remained unchanged for the past four decades and has allowed ZR to become a respected platform that encourages fair and open scientific discussion. We hope that the rigorous and meaningful science published in ZR will reach ever wider audiences as such outstanding research deserves international recognition. It is for this reason that we continue to publish via open access.From its original founding by a group of first-generation zoologists in “New China”, With the official announcement of our latest impact factor, we have witnessed a boost in submissions from researchers across the world within the zoological field. In addition to the recently announced impact factor, we also believe this increase to be a reflection of our reputation as a prompt and well-respected platform for the dissemination of cutting-edge and high-quality research. As such, we wish to emphasize the journal’s unique areas of interest and warmly welcome submissions with a research focus on: (1) Primates and Animal Models; (2) Conservation and Utilization of Animal Resources, and (3) Animal Diversity and Evolution.ZR also continues to maintain its academic publishing integrity and reinforce its publishing policies . Most recently, ZR amended the ethics requirements regarding submissions involving field animal surveys and sample collection, as well as animal material import and export, which applies to all submissions since 01 June 2019. From that date, all submissions must clearly state whether “all applicable international, national, and/or institutional guidelines for the care and use of animals were strictly followed; all animal sample collection protocols complied with the current laws of XX (country name)…” or not; and “permission/document/series numbers for conducting scientific field surveys and/or material transfer agreements” must be provided .ZR offers a chance for successful and fast publication for those authors whose work is of a suitably high standard. Authors can submit their manuscript along with a point-by-point reply to the issues and comments raised by the reviewers. Such submissions will be fairly and promptly evaluated by ZR editorial board members and experts in the field, and, if accepted, be guaranteed fast-track publication.In addition, for papers that have encountered problems with previous peer review, ZR authors must disclose all potential COIs and all reviewers and editors must follow the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) in handling potential COIs. Reviewers and editors must declare all COIs relevant to the work under consideration  to avoid potential bias and, furthermore, must not use knowledge of the work they are reviewing before its publication in furtherance of their own interests .Peer review is an effective and vital measure to ensure the academic quality of publications. However, the improper handling of conflicts of interest (COIs) during manuscript review can introduce bias in evaluating research findings. Thus, ZR. With strong support from our editors, reviewers, authors, and readers, ZR will continue to progress and improve. We hope that the pride we feel in publishing your excellent research is shared in return. Should you have any exciting work or constructive suggestions you would like to share, please do not hesitate to contact us.Receiving its first impact factor is another stepping-stone along the evolutionary path of


Journal of Insect Science (JIS), it seems like an excellent time to share updates and goals for 2019.As I look back on the first nearly 4 yr as editor-in-chief of the JIS now has an impact factor of 1.324, the highest in its history, and has the fastest submission to publication time of any ESA journal. Our dedicated subject editors work to maintain efficiency because we know that you, our authors and readers, want to see your work published with expediency and science made available as quickly as possible.Journal of Insect Science.This coming year we have set several goals. One of the most important for me personally is to increase the percentage of women subject editors to reflect the percentage of women in ESA. Women have been under-represented for decades and all ESA journals will be striving to rectify that imbalance, including the We will be starting two new areas of emphasis within the journal in 2019. The Entomological Society of America’s Medical, Urban, and Veterinary Entomology Section initiated a proposal to launch a subject section within JIS where Standardized Protocols will be published. MUVE wishes to encourage the creation of standard protocols that can save all entomologists time and reduce duplication of effort; as JIS is a fully open access publication, MUVE felt that JIS was an ideal place to publish such protocols and make them immediately and widely available. A special issue has been in preparation for the past few months that will be the flagship for this new area. Included with that issue will be instructions for authors that will ensure uniformity for reporting in all manuscripts, enabling the reader to know that they will consistently see complete and replicable protocols and results, and that they will not have to search through innumerable journals to find standardized protocols.Another new section, Molecular Entomological Genetics, will be headed by Dr. Margaret Allen of the USDA, an entomologist with a robust background in molecular genetic insect science from Sanger sequencing to genetic manipulation. Dr. Allen will serve as the interface between the community of scientists wishing to publish molecular genetic research  and the JIS subject editors. Dr. Allen will provide editorial guidance for journal policy on genetic data sharing, data archiving, and quality control. We aim to provide a focused venue for entomologically relevant molecular genetic research and ensure JIS articles are of the highest quality and credibility.I strongly feel that JIS is continuing to fulfill and build upon Henry Hagedorn’s vision when he established JIS as an open access journal back in 2000. He wanted a platform for all insect scientists, from all regions the world, to have a dynamic and forward-looking journal to publish in. I think that by expanding the journal with these two new sections we will strengthen the importance and prestige of JIS, which will in turn allow us to better serve the entomological community.


One of the most common complaints by the authors against the editors is their failure to update them about the developments regarding their submitted manuscripts. It is alleged that some editors keep sitting on the manuscripts for weeks and months without providing any initial feedback. We in the Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences most often check all the new submissions within two weeks, at times may be within ten days and authors of those manuscripts which are not accepted for further processing due to various reasons after initial screening and editor’s triage, are informed accordingly. We take the decision after reading the abstract most often and after going through the full manuscript in a few selected cases. They are also conveyed the reasons for such a decision.The percentage of such manuscripts which are not processed further varies from 70-80% which may look rather high but since we have too many submissions as compared to the number we can handle due to human resource and financial constraints, we believe it is better to give feedback the authors as soon as possible so that they can submit their manuscripts to some other journal. Editors have given these process different names i.e. desk rejection, sudden death rejection, immediate rejection, initial triage and editor’s triage. Publishing a quality peer reviewed journal in limited resource countries is a very stressful and frustrating job.“not accepted for further processing” rather than desk rejection because many a times the papers not accepted for external peer review are of very good quality but since the journal cannot handle all the submissions, they are rejected.The percentage of rejection after initial screening or editor’s triage will vary from journal to journal keeping in view their human, financial resources and other facilities.More recently this topic of desk rejection was discussed in detail on the WAME list serve.Has the desk rejection increased?How long a manuscript does stays with the journal before a letter of desk rejection is generated?What process is involved in desk rejection?During the discussion it was also pointed out that it is the amazing number of authors who do not read the aims and scope of the journal, instructions for authors before making submission. Editors have no other option but to reject those papers with numerous flaws in methodology, some would filter quality of writing. Some papers require complete re-write to improve English language and Grammar. Many manuscripts require proper copy edit before these papers are sent for external review but many journals may not have this facility. Journals with high rate of submissions, high impact factor have highest rate of rejection after initial screening and this desk rejection rate is increasing. Moving from e mail to online submissions direct on the journal website has on one hand significantly increased the submissions but it has also increased rejection after initial screening as the manuscripts are not found suitable for the journal for various reasons.Some use the term “Primary Editorial Rejection” but the process is the same. In Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences, final decisions in all such cases of rejection after initial screening is taken by the Chief Editor or another senior editor, section editors who have been entrusted the responsibility of further handling of the manuscripts. Some of the most common reasons for this rejection without external peer review are as under:Author’s failure to follow instructions on the journal website.Too lengthy manuscripts with too many tables, illustrations.Poor English and Grammar.Failure to upload proper Letter of Undertaking signed by all listed authors regarding exclusive submissions.Too many authors with strong suspicion of gift authorship.Already too many papers in the same specialty are under process and pending.Paper being more suitable for a specialty journal rather than a general medical journal.Papers dealing with local problems which are more suitable for local publication by the authors in their own country.Not falling within the scope of the journal.Poor literature search, very old references.Too many submissions than the journal can handle due to human and financial resource constraints.Clinical trials which are not registered.Failure to provide Ethics Committee, Institutional Board approval of the study protocol.Editor’s bias also plays a role. They prefer those manuscripts on topics which are of interest to them. For example in Pakistan Journal of Medial Sciences, we prefer manuscripts like RCTs, epidemiological studies, innovative surgical procedures, innovations in medical education, medical ethics, patient safety and so on while KAP studies, survey reports, case reports, narrative reviews have a very low priority. Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis are also preferred provided the topic is interesting and they are not too lengthy.Previous history of the submitting author. Some refuse to learn from their previous mistakes, withdrawal after getting their papers peer reviewed and then submitting it to some other journal, failure to pay publication charges and asking for waivers after acceptance of manuscripts though they are supposed to make such requests at the time of submission.It also depends on the number of manuscripts a journal includes in an issue. In case of online only journals, they can include a very large number of manuscripts but for those journals that have to produce print issue as well in addition to online issue, it is very expensive.Regulatory bodies in many countries do not give importance and same weightage to manuscripts published in “only Online Journals”, hence the editors have no other option but to keep the number of manuscripts accepted for further processing and publication limited to a number which they can easily handle and manage.A study by Meyer HS et al published in Academic Medicine in 2018 had highlighted the following reasons for immediate rejection of papers after initial screening: 7Ineffective study question and/or design;Suboptimal data collection process;Weak discussion and/or conclusions;Unimportant or irrelevant topic to the journal’s mission;Weak data analysis and/or presentation of results;Text difficult to follow, to understand;Inadequate or incomplete introduction;Other publishing considerations;Issues with scientific conduct.Manuscripts had, on average, three or more reasons for rejection. These reasons are quite similar to our own findings as well as the points raised by other distinguished editors in the discussion on WAME list serve.st 2014. Of the 902 papers which reached the end point on decision were considered. They rejected 552 out of this 902 papers after initial screening. The most common reasons for this decision were commonality of subjects, non-compliance by the authors, flaws in methodology. Other reasons they listed included plagiarism, poor drafting, having published on same topic, inconsistency in data, mismanagement, black listed authors, ethical issues and out of scope of the journal.Writing in an editorial, Garg A et al from Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research reported that they did retrospective analysis of one thousand manuscripts submitted to their journal since August 1If the topic is interesting and there are chances of more citations, we do ask the authors to rectify the deficiencies and resubmit the manuscript. The facility of fast track processing is offered in a few selected cases just to help those who have either to appear in Fellowship Exam of CPSP or defend their PhD Thesis. Even in those cases the authors have to make a request, justify it and convince the editor. If their request for fast track processing is accepted, they get peer review report within ten weeks after complete submission but there is no guarantee of acceptance and publication. Most often we do not accept requests for fast track processing unless we have looked at the manuscript because, we have noted that many authors are under the false impression that by paying fast track processing fee, they can increase the chances of acceptance of their manuscripts. This is not true and the decision on acceptance is purely based on the quality of the manuscript and not the author’s ability to pay.Yet another problem that the editors in Pakistan face is the decision by Higher Education Commission as well as Pakistan Medial & Dental Council besides medical institutions which prefer publication of manuscripts in Impact Factor Journals. In Pakistan we have just three biomedical journals i.e. Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences, Journal of Pakistan Medical Association and Journal of College of Physicians & Surgeons Pakistan which are covered by Clarivate Analytics USA Web of Sciences and enjoy Impact Factor. Hence, they are under too much pressure. The solution lies in improving the standard of the journals and getting more and more Pakistani biomedical journals in the Web of Science to earn Impact Factor. Editors of quite a few medical journals in Pakistan are currently striving hard to earn this and hopefully in the coming few years, more Pakistani medical journals might get covered by Web of Sciences. HEC as well as PM&DC are also taking initiatives to help the journals through different ways including arranging training courses but still a lot more needs to be done. One of the important steps which institutions like the HEC needs to take is provision of facility of generating XML files for submission on PubMed Central. This will ensure that more and more Pakistani medical journals are visible on the PubMed. Increased visibility will lead to increased citations which will go a long way in increasing our contributions to the world medical literature.


Preventing Chronic Disease (PCD) addresses issues of importance in chronic disease research and practice, issues based not only on external input we receive from experts in the field of public health, but also from our associate editors and editorial board, senior leadership in the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, our dedicated and talented staff, and our readers. The targeted steps we have taken have helped us to recruit the best researchers in the field, including experts who ensure our published articles meet the highest scientific standards, thereby delivering quality content to our growing readership and finding ways to expand the scope of the journal’s expertise. We are excited to see many of the plans we initiated over the past few years come to fruition.We have been fortunate this year to secure additional expert members for our editorial board and our team of associate editors. These experts add breadth and depth to our content areas of specialization and represent an impressive mix of expertise in geospatial epidemiology, health economics, program planning, implementation evaluation, health systems research, and community trials. They have made enormous contributions to the quality of the science PCD publishes, have acted as mentors in guiding authors through the peer-review process, and have provided valuable input on relevant and timely content areas. In turn, PCD has worked to ensure that our associate editors receive active and useful critiques on manuscripts. Our editorial office has taken steps to carefully refine PCD’s pool of peer reviewers, ensuring that associate editors receive timely and high-quality feedback for authors.Science Citation Index Expanded edition of Journal of Citation Reports.These efforts undoubtedly contributed to the journal’s new impact factor of 2.028, an impressive jump from the 1.862 of the previous year. PCD is also seeing success through increased article downloads and webpage views. Data from 2018 indicate that 54,906 PDF articles were downloaded, and PCD’s website had 998,086 views . The goal of SAC is to advance understanding and dissemination of statistical methods and testing in the public health field and to contribute to the growing body of knowledge of statistics that can be applied to understanding what may contribute to decreasing chronic disease and improving the health of individuals across their life span. PCD’s SAC members will be volunteers with training and expertise in statistics and biostatistics who will assess peer-reviewed articles to determine the appropriateness of research and evaluation questions, selection of the study sample, suitability of statistical tests, analysis of data based on research design, distribution of data, and type of variable under examination. SAC members will also assess whether reported findings are accurate and logically aligned with the results presented and discussed in articles. Volunteers selected for SAC will serve a 3- to 4-year renewable term and will be guided by an appointed chair and co-chair. SAC members will provide guidance to peer reviewers on how and what to assess in their reviews of manuscripts that present complex statistical content. Please visit The response to our recruitment efforts for SAC has been tremendous. We are excited about the direction the journal is moving in and by the support and commitment it is receiving from professionals in the field. We hope to continue to position PCD for success, measured not only by the journal’s impact factor and citation, uptake, and outreach data but also by intrinsic qualities such as the positive response and support we receive from other public health professionals. Should you or someone you know be interested in becoming a SAC member, please submit your brief biography via email to pcdeditor@cdc.gov for consideration. PCD will welcome your interest and participation.PCD is committed to serving as a valuable resource to promote dialogue among researchers, evaluators, practitioners, and policy makers working in public health worldwide. PCD will continue to take the necessary steps to identify and publish timely content, improve the quality and reach of its publication, draw in the best expertise to publish statistically accurate research that moves the field forward, and provide updates on the journal’s steps in bringing all of this to pass.


Welcome to Human Reproduction Open. As the first fully open access ESHRE journal to join a group of highly successful print and online allied journals, HROpen seeks to deliver a journal for the future, with the intention of informing and engaging a new type of reader.The 21st century communication is all about access and immediacy. The traditional paper-based scientific journal is limited by the technology which created it over 600 years ago—the printing press. The internet has raised expectations in all aspects of life. Science and medicine are no different. No longer are people prepared to wait for knowledge to be collated and released in the neat packages of journal issues. HROpen will ensure that they do not have to.Scholarship is not—and should not—be the preserve of the exclusive few who can afford subscription charges. Among those who have been too often shut out by the existing models are scholars without the support of wealthy institutions (often in developing countries) and lay audiences (often patients and their relatives). Open access journals in general, and HROpen in particular, hope to bring research and evidence to groups like these, who often have so much to benefit from it.Do we really need another journal in Reproductive Medicine? We will always need tools which are more efficient, agile, environment friendly and customized to our needs. We are lucky to be living at a time of accelerated scientific discovery and output covering the full spectrum of research in our field, from laboratory science through translational medicine to social science, ethics and philosophy. In HROpen, we offer a high-quality open access journal in reproductive medicine which harnesses the full potential of the internet to deliver scientific knowledge which is current, personalized and fit for purpose. Our vision is to create a shared repository for scientific and clinical knowledge for patients and clinicians which can facilitate joint decision-making.As in journalism, academic publishing tends to favour novelty and is biased towards informing its readers what is new. Yet, with relatively few exceptions, knowledge advances slowly, in incremental stages, through debate, challenge and ultimately acceptance. Scientists have always been aware of this. When, in 1676, Isaac Newton remarked ‘If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants’, what he meant was that getting to the truth was an iterative process, building on previous advances. While discovery is critical to all scientific thought, we are beginning to accept the fact that validation of the truth through replication is just as important. As curators of scientific knowledge, journals owe it to their readers to not only report what is new but also whether these new findings are valid in other settings and laboratories and fit for clinical application. Replication is hard and can be frustrating, not least because the results can be difficult to publish, but it remains an important component of scientific advance. Sign posting in science is becoming increasing popular—but while most randomized trials are registered and their protocols published, this is not the norm for laboratory-based studies. HROpen will publish high-quality research which is scientifically sound, advances the literature on a clinically relevant topic and is worthy of publication even where it may not be the first of its kind. The journal will also be open to submissions that enhance scientific thought as well as governance by publishing research protocols and pilot studies alongside phase three trials and high-quality systematic reviews. To put these findings in wider perspective, HROpen will educate, stimulate and challenge its readers through a series of commissioned reviews by respected experts in the field.The purpose of reproductive medicine research must be to improve clinical care through greater understanding of the underlying biological processes and designing interventions which are safe, and effective. Our patients are increasingly conducting their own research into their conditions and attempting to identify strategies which are effective and consistent with their own values and preferences. Their searches are not fundamentally different from those undertaken by clinicians and readers of this journal but they remain fundamentally disconnected. Navigating headlines and search engine results without the skills needed to separate opinion from scientific fact can often lead to incomprehension, frustration and lack of trust in the medical care provider. At a time when all major funding bodies are insistent on patient involvement in the planning and execution of research, it is fundamental that research output should be available to patients in a format which is simple, unbiased and context dependent. HROpen is the first journal in our field to offer a lay summary of new research papers explaining the meaning and relevance of the science. We hope that the open access format will allow patients to access these summaries and empower them to decide for themselves whether each paper highlights an association, offers convincing proof of causality or the success of an intervention.HROpen will publish well-conducted studies addressing clinical, biological, environmental, ethical and social aspects of reproductive medicine in its wider sense—beyond the relatively narrow confines of infertility and assisted reproduction. Our primary aim is to increase global access to scientific thought in our field and break down the barriers between formal scientific publication and sources of clinical information for lay people. We wish to venture beyond the narrow confines of traditional metrics and are keen to embrace a variety of alternative ways of assessing the reach and impact of our articles. We strongly believe that to have genuine impact, scholarship must be made available to all, in a format which is accessible for all. I believe that HROpen will be able to do just that.


Nanobiomedicine (NBM). This unique open-access scientific journal will be available at no charge to both readers and authors, and aims to publish up-to-date expert reviews, scientific manuscripts, technology reports, perspectives, opinions and editorials in the rapidly emerging field of nanotechnology and biomedical research.It is a great pleasure to present the first volume of This feature will enable the clinical and scientific community to publish their latest ground-breaking research, up-to-date reviews, perspectives and opinions quickly and at the same token, readers around the globe will be able access them online as soon as they are published.The journal will cover a broad range of topics, and at times selected themes, from translational and clinical applications that address the challenges and advances in diagnostics, to the delivery of therapeutics, to the monitoring of human diseases both in academia and industry. The fields that interface with nanotechnology and biomedical research include, but are not limited to, bioengineering, biophysics, biochemistry, physiology, pathology, nanotechnological applications in diagnostics, therapeutic application, vaccines, drug discovery/delivery and regenerative medicine.As our first task, the Editors-in-Chief have and will actively expand our Editorial Board and develop collaborations/partnerships with international societies through the conferences, meetings and webinars we will be attending, including recruiting scientific experts who understand how discovery moves from lab to the market, and will look to attract contributors and participation from a more global audience. These experts will serve as the central hub of the nanotechnology and biomedical research community and provide us with guidance on the latest advances.Nanobiomedicine's manuscript processing and peerreviewing is conducted entirely online. The Editorial Manager facilitates the manuscript processing time, thereby reducing costs and allowing for a better experience for our authors and reviewers. We have received numerous positive comments on this evolving electronic system, and we are indebted to our publisher, InTech, for managing this program for us. For more information, please visit our new manuscript submission system at http://www.intechopen.com/journals/show/nanobiomedicine/submit-your-paper. In addition, we are looking to expedite the acceptance to publishing time for our authors and will request informal opinions from our Editorial Board for borderline cases.Nanobiomedicine will continue to work on partnering with other scientific societies, and academic and industry leaders to develop and advance the nanotechnology and biomedical research field and to allow free access to the readers.Nanobiomedicine's Managing Editor, Ms. Petra Nenadic, and her team for their continuous support, passion and dedication all of which helped bring this project to fruition. In addition, we would like to thank our highly-renowned and respected Associate Editors and Editorial Board members from all over the world, whose areas of expertise range from nanofluidic systems, to nano-scale drug delivery, to nanoimaging, and who act as both bridges and catalysts to new research in their respective fields of nanotechnology and biomedical research.We finally would like to thank InTech Open Access Publisher for supporting the initiatives of this journal and acknowledge


Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), part of the National Institutes of Health. Work in his lab combines genetic and imaging techniques to study neural circuits required for sensory guided behavior in zebrafish. In this interview Harold shares his thoughts on the changing field of neural development, pre-publication review, and ‘Darwinian experiments’ of peer review.Harold Burgess is a Senior Investigator at the  My lab decodes neural circuits involved in sensorimotor processing, and how the functional development of these circuits is altered by disease-related gene mutations. Specifically, we study the neuronal pathways that link sudden threatening stimuli to startle responses, and how transmission along these pathways is influenced by environmental conditions and behavioral state. We use larval-stage zebrafish for these studies because their small size and transparency lets us image the entire brain using a standard confocal microscope—that way we can systematically analyze brain structure and function rather than just characterizing candidate neurons or areas.Around 15–20 years ago, many labs that were leaders in studying neural development started applying their molecular genetic expertise to the functional analysis of neural circuits for behavior. In part, I think this was motivated by the feeling that many of the key molecular players in neural development had been identified and the excitement of moving into a fresh field. Over the last few years, large patient cohorts and next-gen sequencing approaches have started to provide really solid leads into genetic changes linked to neurodevelopmental disorders—and, perhaps no surprise, many of them are old friends from the neural development field. I think that the opportunity to link genotype to phenotype at the level of neuronal pathways closely linked to behavior will inspire a resurgence of interest in studying the functional development of neural circuits.I generally review papers simply out of a sense of fairness. I multiply the number of papers I anticipate submitting in a given year by three, and try to ensure I review at least that number of manuscripts each year! Occasionally I’m also invited to review a paper with an abstract too cool to pass up—those papers usually move to the front of my to-do list and get a blazingly fast review.We seem to be in the middle of a great Darwinian experiment in peer review—there has been tremendous diversification in the publishing world and there’s now a large ecosystem of journals with very different approaches to review. As labs submit and review papers under different paradigms, perhaps a consensus as to an optimal system or systems may emerge. I’m a fan of the opportunity to post research pre-publication, for example, on the bioRXiv server. We’ve received really useful feedback that has helped strengthen the submitted paper.Most of my experiences as an author have not cultivated a love for humanity. To satisfy reviewer number 3 I’d have to board up the lab and hide under a rock in the arctic tundra. My best experience was when our studies unexpectedly led to a study of muscle development. The courteous criticisms by the reviewers of that paper were so appreciated I was briefly tempted to switch fields!http://ubn.nichd.nih.gov/.