There is a scarcity of novel treatments to address many unmet medical needs. Industry and academia are finally coming to terms with the fact that the prevalent models and incentives for innovation in early stage drug discovery are failing to promote progress quickly enough. Here we will examine how an open model of precompetitive public–private research partnership is enabling efficient derisking and acceleration in the early stages of drug discovery, whilst also widening the range of communities participating in the process, such as patient and disease foundations. An open access model of precompetitive public–private research partnership can reduce the risks and increase the speed of the early stages of drug discovery, while widening participation to new communities such as patient and disease foundations. The rate at which new drugs are being discovered has flatlined despite massive investment in research and development (R & D) and new technologies, and there is a common belief that the pharmaceutical business model might be flawed ,2. DespiIn the last decades, the pharmaceutical industry has accessed many innovative ideas and products through mergers, takeovers, and in-licensing. This trend follows the concepts of Open Innovation, as defined by Chesbrough ,6, in whwww.thesgc.org).On the other hand, there are several initiatives in the biomedical research area that are true to the public’s understanding of the term “open” and that practice a genuine open access or open source and precompetitive scientific commons approach. These projects appear to have had significant impact, and some have been transformational, including the Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms Consortium 1999; ), the In99; , theIt is important to reiterate that drug discovery is a long and intricate process with different types of challenges and thus different approaches. In the early hypothesis generation stages, it makes sense for different communities to join efforts to create novel, open research tools that can be used by everyone . This isThe SGC was formed in 2003 with the open access ethos as its core tenet and has since catalysed research in new areas of human biology and drug discovery by focusing to a large extent on less well-studied areas of human biology and disease. The SGC, strongly supported by its pharmaceutical industry partners, places all its research output and reagents, including industry-standard small molecule chemical inhibitors (probes) in the public domain without restriction on use. These are used widely to interrogate protein targets and signalling pathways to further our understanding of disease mechanisms, for instance.The establishment of a precompetitive and patent-free consortium has had many advantages; some were obvious and others unexpected. What was clear at the outset was that adhering to open access principles allowed cross-leveraging of public and private funds to explore novel areas of human biology in an organised way, thus reducing duplication and sharing the risks and costs that no single institution could bear alone. It was also clear that it would place the emphasis on the science and on accelerating the transfer of knowledge to the scientific community, rather than on commercial interests. The SGC has disseminated tens of thousands of cDNA clones and thousands of samples of several chemical inhibitors, with hardly any transactional costs. Hundreds of academic papers report the use of SGC-generated reagents, and across the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors, SGC reagents are used daily to advance internal drug discovery programs.What was less appreciated was the extent to which the consortium’s position would resonate with the academic and clinical communities. The SGC collaborative network now comprises of scientists in hundreds of institutions around the world—all of whom have committed to the open access principles and who contribute their ideas and results to the public domain. The value of this collaborative network and of the network of academics making discoveries with SGC chemical probes is difficult to quantify, but a rough comparator is the fact that industry typically budgets hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund and manage even a single collaboration. Given that the SGC collaborates with over 300 different laboratories and has disseminated over 4,000 samples of chemical probes so far, one may argue that its open-access network provides hundreds of millions of dollars of value.Epigenetics is an exciting area of biology that has gained a large degree of attention over the last few years, holding a vast potential for drug discovery . Howeverwww.thesgc.org/chemical-probes/epigenetics).Appreciating that the other proteins and protein families implicated in epigenetic regulation were likely important, in 2005, the SGC began to purify them and solve their 3-D structures. In 2009, after having made significant progress, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) approached SGC with the “outside-the-box” idea to design highly-potent, highly-selective inhibitors of these proteins using structure-guided methods and to provide them to the community without restrictions. The concept was that these probes would be rapidly used by the community to help define the roles of the proteins in human biology, as exemplified by past experiences with similar approaches in the field of probes for nuclear receptors . With fuThe open access model provided the framework to receive invaluable advice from scientists at GSK about the bromodomains protein family. Based on insights from GSK scientists, we initiated a collaboration on the role of the BRD4 bromodomain in NUT midline carcinoma—an incurable rare cancer. Within 11 months, a small molecule called SGCBD01 (aka JQ1) was designed, synthesised, and used to show that inhibition of BDR4 promoted both differentiation and apoptosis of patient-derived primary cells ,29.The rapid progress made with bromodomains is a testament to the power of open access, but the true value of open science emerged once SGCBD01 or JQ1 and additional probes by GSK (I-BET)  and PfizDiscoveries based on the use of small molecule probes are highly valued by industry and academia, and experience shows that availability of potent, specific, drug-like chemical compounds (probes) increases the chances of final success in drug discovery programs . The proIt is interesting to note that until early 2015, nine out of ten trials (GSK’s being the exception) were registered by either a small biotech or start-up company. In one notable example, the clinical candidate (CPI-0610) used in three different trials was developed in partnership with a nonprofit, patient-driven organisation—The Leukaemia and Lymphoma Society. As such, one could argue that the open model is challenging the established system by enabling a wider range of groups to easily and quickly access innovation. This leads to a more efficient route to attract incentives and rewards, especially in the fragile interstice of “valley of death” in drug discovery.The open access model has had system-wide impact in biomedical science and drug discovery. This is tremendously exciting, but what we are now interested in exploring is whether we can make a much bigger impact if the open access model is combined with the determination and focus of patient-driven initiatives.Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva  and Adult Polyglucosan Body Disease (APBD).Open access initiatives and patient and disease foundations share a common focus—to advance science toward a cure. For most patients and their families, issues of ownership and profit are irrelevant. This holds especially true for foundations of untreatable or rare conditions such as Could marrying the SGC open-access approach to drug discovery with the dedication and focus of disease foundations result in faster advances? We believe so.FOP United Kingdom, the foundation supporting research into FOP, worked with the SGC and its collaborative network on structure-based development of inhibitors for ACVR1, a kinase for which specific mutation has been identified of the disease ,41, as wMost recently, the SGC and CHDI Foundation have teamed up to discover and characterise new drug targets for Huntington’s disease (HD). In this first partnership of its kind, both have explicitly agreed not to file for patents on any of the collaborative research and to make all reagents and knowledge available without restriction . This isFinally, participation of patients and disease foundations is also pivotal for the establishment of anonymised primary cell and tissue open platforms. This will accelerate generation of robust, clinically meaningful assays to profile molecularly-targeted probes using phenotypic and biomarker readouts linking novel targets to new indications .One curious behaviour is that the scientific community has been giving a disproportionately large focus on earlier tools rather than exploring other open probes available so far, probably reflecting the established risk aversion we encounter in biomedical research . TherefoThe main tenets of precompetitive, patent-free and open-access research have enabled the establishment of a new dynamic ecosystem, not confined to biomedicine alone. The open access ethos ensures a high degree of crosstalk between sectors, including more than 300 academic groups, government agencies, biotech companies, start-ups, entrepreneurs, lawyers, economists, social scientists, and patients, all working together to expand the impact of open access drug discovery . The lasS1 Figwww.thesgc.org.The SGC’s Open Access model is transformative and encourages crossfields, cross-sector interactions to accelerate drug discovery and advancement of basic biology. This has resulted in the establishment of a network of collaborations and projects, covering a wide range of initiatives implemented alongside strategic partners. For a full overview of the SGC’s scientific coverage, please refer to • Human tissue platforms and Inflammation: exploring biology of novel proteins using patient-derived primary cells and tissues.• Target Enabling Packages (TEPs): generating open access “toolkits”  to allow exploration of novel, genetically validated targets.• Structural parasitology & neglected diseases: using structure-based methodologies and science to advance development of novel treatments [http://www.thesgc.org/sddc].• Rare diseases: expanding the understanding of structure and function of the associated proteins as well as the effects of disease mutations [http://www.thesgc.org/science/rare-diseases].• Patient & disease foundations: working together with focused networks of disease specialists to further increase knowledge in structural biology and functional and chemical spaces around implicated proteins .• Kinase inhibitors for human & plant sciences: facilitating the cross-sector use of open-access chemical probes targeting basic biology .• Open clinical proof-of-concept: expanding the precompetitive, patent-free model towards phase II clinical proof-of-concept .• Start-ups & incubators: creation of open access toolkits for pioneer biology and dynamic entrepreneurial communities have already resulted in creation of independent start-ups.• Ethics & economics: open-access model has created new paradigms around the philosophy and practical and economic aspects of discovering novel treatments and medicines.• Governments & policymakers: availability of a model that can expedite drug discovery and reduce its cost is of interest for governments, always under pressure to address societal healthcare needs.(TIF)Click here for additional data file.


Surgical Case Reports: an international peer-reviewed open-access journal, published online by the Japan Surgical Society, in partnership with Springer. This new journal is devoted to original case reports and letters to the editor.It gives us great pleasure to announce the launch of our new journal, Surgical Case Reports fills this void. This exciting new journal is dedicated to the publication of high-quality case reports and aims to expand current knowledge in all surgical fields.Surgical techniques and perioperative management have advanced rapidly and become more specialized. For example, the archive of robotic surgery is representative of the progress of this exciting breakthrough, which has gained widespread popularity over the last decade. In addition, translational research has come to be a critical and core component of full-spectrum biomedical research and is becoming more important in all medical fields. Large studies on these aspects of surgery, as well as randomized control trials (RCTs) and meta-analyses have provided critical evidence. The guidelines and general rules for the diagnosis and management of various diseases such as malignancy are generally established based on this evidence. However, surgeons are encouraged to report very rare cases, unanticipated surgical complications, or adverse events and explain how they used their resources to resolve them. Surgeons also often report on innovative new ideas to improve procedures in their specialty. Thus, an excellent case report can provide important detailed information about an individual case, which would be lost in an RCT or large study . From caSurgery Today as its official journal. Surgery Today is a monthly journal, with an archive of 44 volumes to date. Because Surgery Today is published in English and documents the latest progress in all surgical fields, articles in this journal have been widely indexed. The number of submissions to Surgery Today has increased steadily to more than 1,200 per year; however, as the number of pages is limited, so is the number of papers that can be published after careful peer review. Until now, Surgery Today has included original articles, review articles, short communications, ‘how-to-do-it’ papers, letters to the editor, and case reports. It has been decided that the focus of Surgery Today will be original articles, so that more papers documenting recent surgical progress can be communicated to the world in a timely manner. Hence, we decided to establish a new journal: Surgical Case Reports [Since 1992, the Japan Surgical Society has been publishing Surgical Case Reports welcomes well-described reports of cases, which include the following:✓ New associations or variations in disease processes.✓ Presentations, diagnoses, and/or management of new and emerging diseases.✓ Unreported or unusual side effects or adverse interactions involving medications.✓ Unexpected or unusual presentations of a disease.✓ An unexpected association between diseases or symptoms.✓ An unexpected event in the course of observing or treating a patient.✓ Findings that shed new light on the possible pathogenesis of a disease or an adverse effect.✓ Movies of the author's surgical teaching or technical development.Surgical Case Reports also invites letters to the editor, which generally take one of the following forms:Surgical Case Reports or another journal.✓ A substantial re-analysis of a previously published article in Surgical Case Reports.✓ An article that may not cover ‘standard research,’ but is of general interest to the broad readership of ✓ A brief report of research findings adequate for the journal's scope and of particular interest to the community.Surgical Case Reports will be subject to immediate screening by the in-house editorial team and selected manuscripts will be sent for peer review. Accepted articles will be published online and indexed in PubMed.All manuscripts submitted to Surgical Case Reports will become a useful interdisciplinary journal.Open-access is a modern system of publication, which provides a valuable opportunity for both readers and authors to expose and share the publications. Based on this new form of publication, we anticipate that Surgical Case Reports.We hope that we have aroused your interest and that you will support this exciting new journal by submitting your next case report to


The dissemination of valuable and novel scientific information provides the pulse for biomedical publishing. Scientific journals catalog the contributions, thoughts, and opinions of researchers, investigators, and experts in the field. Authors consider the reputation and quality of a journal prior to submitting a manuscript for consideration. It is reasonable to think that readers also consider journal prestige as a factor in journal selection. The prestige of a journal depends on the validity, usefulness, and quality of the articles published. This article will define and examine the peer-review process as well as explore the roles and responsibilities of the peer reviewer.Aside from its use in scientific journals, peer review is the process by which grants are allocated, academics are promoted, textbooks are written, and Nobel prizes are won . A publication that has been peer reviewed gains respectability and acceptance and is considered a relevant contribution to the field. Publication in a peer-reviewed journal is an important criterion for admissibility of scientific evidence in courts of law . The basis of the peer-review process is the acceptance of written investigational findings from an author or group of authors that are then forwarded to a group of experts (referees) in the field for assessment of their quality, accuracy, relevance, and novelty . Traditionally, these experts are not paid for their opinions and are not part of an editorial staff.The goal of peer review is to determine if an article should or should not be published and to improve the article before publication . It is a process that entails filtering out manuscripts that are misleading, irrelevant, inaccurate, or that contain potentially harmful content . Once the peer-review process is complete , the editor of a journal bears responsibility for its content and may choose to agree or disagree with the opinions of the reviewers .The Cochrane Collaboration published a review concluding that there is little evidence to support the use of editorial peer review as a mechanism to ensure quality of biomedical research, despite its widespread use and costs . There are few published, randomized controlled studies relating to peer review; therefore it remains ill-defined.Despite its acceptance as a critical part of quality control, peer review is not a perfect process. In 2003, Science .The peer-review process can be time consuming, costly, subject to reviewer bias, and inept at identifying fraudulent manuscripts. A well-known example of the failure of peer review is the publication of two fraudulent papers by Hwang Woo-Suk concerning stem cell research in the journal In addition, there are no agreed-upon evidence-based guidelines as to what constitutes a qualified reviewer. A study examining the relationship of previous training and experience of journal peer reviewers to subsequent review quality determined that no identifiable types of formal training or experience predicted reviewer performance. The authors suggest that journals implement routine review rating systems to periodically monitor the quality of their reviews .Traditionally, the peer-review process has been conducted anonymously, with author and reviewer identities masked during the review process. Although this may protect reviewers from author demands and retaliation, reviewer anonymity is being debated and is under increasing scrutiny . Early evidence supporting blind peer review  was later challenged by studies suggesting that such a practice made no editorially significant difference to review quality, publication recommendation, or time taken to review, but did increase the probability of reviewers declining to review . It is possible that an open process may increase cooperation between reviewers and authors and lead to a decreased risk of reviewing errors .British Medical Journal adopted an open (signed) review system that remains in place today. Most recently, the journal has examined the effect of notifying reviewers that their signed reviews might be posted on the web. Their conclusion was that alerting peer reviewers that their signed reviews might be available in the public domain on the journal’s website had no important effect on review quality but was associated with a high refusal rate . Other journals such as Nature and The Public Library of Science are revising old review criteria, creating open access, and examining public review .Some journals have already considered transition to open peer review. In 1999, the One study examined the effects of adding a statistical peer reviewer and using a checklist of manuscript quality. The study showed a positive effect when a statistical reviewer was added to the field-expert peers, but no statistically significant positive effect was suggested by the use of reporting guidelines . Additional alternative methods of peer review such as open peer review without suppression of publication, postpublication review, a hybrid system , author-suggested peer review, author model of peer review, and peer review consortia have been discussed and explored in the literature .However ill-defined it may be, the peer-review process is still the gold standard that will continue to drive scholarly publication. Understandably, a large part of the responsibility for the success or failure of the peer-review process depends upon peer reviewers. A peer reviewer should be both a scholar and a scientist with complex analytical skills, which allows for the critical analysis of data in the interest of improved outcomes .Peer review can be time consuming and laborious; therefore, accepting the responsibility of peer review requires commitment on the part of the reviewer. It should be viewed as a professional responsibility, not to be taken lightly, given that the end result determines what is relevant, in print, to a specific body of knowledge. Just as editors and journals respect their reviewers, often acknowledging their contributions publically, reviewers should respect the editor and the journal by producing a quality of work that is consistent with the journal’s reputation and integrity.Just as a surgeon would prepare for surgery, a reviewer must prepare for a review. First, it is important to understand a selected journal’s mission and review criteria as they will be incorporated into manuscript review. Once an invitation to review is accepted, reviewers normally agree to complete the assigned manuscript review within a specified time frame. This is not only important to journals and editors who have publication deadlines, but to authors who eagerly await news of acceptance or rejection. Time is especially important in cases where the author is asked to consider recommended revisions prior to a final decision of acceptance or rejection. Second, reviewers must maintain confidentiality; using any information gained for self-interest or extracurricular professional discussion is unethical.Given that a reviewer’s authority to recommend a manuscript’s acceptance or rejection carries weight with an editor’s final publication decision, careful consideration of the manuscript and each individual section is required prior to any such recommendation. A fair analysis requires a reviewer to have undisturbed focus, a discerning eye for detail, and knowledge of appropriate sectional content (see Table 1). It is important to consider if the information is accurate, understandable, valid, useful, and transparent. Grammar is important, and errors can be pointed out; however, the main concern for the reviewer is relevancy of manuscript content.Table 2 provides a list of important questions to consider when reviewing a manuscript. A helpful resource to guide review is the CONSORT Statement. Updated in 2010, it provides guidance for reporting all randomized controlled trials . An additional resource is the EQUATOR Network (2012), an international initiative that seeks to improve the reliability and value of medical research literature by promoting transparent and accurate reporting of research studies.All reviewers are subject to bias. Gender, patriotism, and linguistic preference have been shown to affect peer review . Reviewers are more likely to favor manuscripts that are clearly written, are creative, demonstrate positive results, and have interesting titles, meanwhile rejecting manuscripts with negative results, multiple errors, and seasoned information . It is possible that senior reviewers may reject their juniors; manuscripts from more prestigious institutions may be more readily accepted than those from lesser-known institutions . Reviewers are responsible for disclosing biases that may hinder an impartial and balanced review. Lack of expertise in an area may not hinder review as useful comments may still be collected, but in this circumstance, the editor should be informed that a lack of expertise exists .Once the review is complete, reviewers offer scholarly input with the intent to improve the manuscript. Feedback should be constructive and the critique professional and positive. When a reviewer provides feedback that enables authors to revise and resubmit a publishable paper, the peer-review process is working as intended . Length of the review is not as important as detailed suggestions for improvement. The review should begin with a recommendation for rejection, acceptance with minor revisions, or acceptance with major revisions. The reviewer should comment on the manuscript as a whole, then provide input on each individual section. Suggestions should be clear and provide direction. Comments should be detailed enough to assist authors with revisions but not so detailed that the manuscript is rewritten . Reviewers should remember to comment on the appropriateness of the abstract and be certain it mirrors the content of the manuscript.Reviewing provides an opportunity for learning and gaining exposure to cutting-edge research . Reviewing is a skill that requires critical thinking; it will improve with time, practice, personal research, and writing. A good reviewer is competent, knowledgeable, unbiased, objective, punctual, consistent, ethically sound, constructive, and maintains confidentiality .Reviewers, like authors, can benefit from feedback; they should welcome input from editors and experienced colleagues. Feedback is important for both new and seasoned reviewers. Editors at a specialty journal in the top 11% of the Institute of Scientific Information’s bibliographic database (ranked by number of citations) performed a 14-year longitudinal study designed to evaluate change in the review quality of individual peer reviewers. The study found that over time most journal peer reviewers received lower quality scores for article assessment. Proposed reasons were cognitive changes, competing priorities, or escalating expectations . Although it is not common practice, results such as these suggest that ongoing self-evaluation by the reviewer and validated reviewer evaluation on the part of the editor are important factors for ensuring quality peer review.Reviewing is a professional privilege, and reviewers are advised to remember they are representing a journal and have responsibilities to authors (see Table 3), editors (see Table 4), and readers (see Table 5). Perhaps most importantly, reviewers are accountable to the medical community and the scientific body of knowledge impacted by their reviews.While it is not a perfect process, traditional peer review remains the gold standard for evaluating and selecting quality scientific publications. Additional research and the development of evidenced-based guidelines are needed to govern this process, which is expected to evolve in the future. Peer review is both an art and a science largely dependent on the quality of its review body. Competent peer reviewers are experts in their field accountable to authors, editors, readers, and the medical community. Peer reviewers act as advocates, or referees, for authors and enable editors to make quality publication decisions. Peer review is a professional privilege and responsibility that directly impacts what is accepted as important to a body of knowledge. Although the peer-review process can be time consuming and underappreciated, rewards such as mentorship, learning, exposure to cutting-edge research, and personal development make it a worthwhile investment.


Nature Communications as the flagship Nature-branded open access journal.The transition to fully open access publishing establishes  Nature Communications has come a long way since our first submission five years ago. We have now published more than 5,000 papers, 2,000 in 2014 alone. Our editorial team has grown from just 4 to over 30 staff spanning three continents, and our expertise now covers the breadth of the natural sciences. This tremendous expansion, together with our growing recognition within the scientific community, would not have been possible without the trust of our authors and the boundless efforts of our referees and Editorial Advisory Panel, for which we are truly grateful.We believe in driving open access publishing forwards so that the widest possible audience can appreciate the high quality research we publish.Nature journals—a journal that enabled open access publishing while applying Nature standards of editorial evaluation and peer review was without precedent. However, the astonishing growth of open access content at Nature Communications suggested that demand was indeed high for a venue where rigorous peer review could be coupled with open access publication.The journal launched with a ‘hybrid' access model: authors could choose whether content was published for subscribers or as open access through the payment of an article processing charge (APC). This was a bold step for the Nature Communications will, if accepted, be published open access through payment of an APC. The default publication licence is Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY). This allows maximum re-use and discovery of a body of work—in the full spirit of open access—although other licence types are available on request.We are therefore delighted to announce that from today, 20 October 2014, all papers submitted to Naturally, we will honour the preference of authors whose papers have already been submitted, and they will continue to have the choice of subscription or open access options should their work be accepted. In addition, all subscription-access articles will continue to be available to subscribers throughout 2015.http://www.nature.com/press_releases/ncomms-report.html). In addition, most major science funders now explicitly allocate funds to pay for open access, but we acknowledge that some authors don't have access to such resources. Consequently, we offer APC waivers for authors from HINARI-eligible countries. We also provide a support service to help authors discover and apply for open access funding from institutions and funders worldwide (http://www.nature.com/authors/open_access/funding.html).We believe in driving open access publishing forwards so that the widest possible audience can appreciate the high quality research we publish. Independent analysis of our content has shown that by allowing unrestricted access to a paper at the point of publication, open access results in significantly more views and downloads (We hope you agree that moving fully open access is a positive step for our authors, readers and the communities we serve. As Nature Publishing Group's flagship open access title, and a premier multidisciplinary journal, we are as committed as ever to delivering a great service to our authors and readers by publishing some of the most interesting scientific discoveries. By making these discoveries accessible to everyone, we hope to further drive the endeavours and advances that they seed.Published: 20 October 2014


When the nature and direction of research results affect their chances of publication, a distortion of the evidence base – termed publication bias – results. Despite considerable recent efforts to implement measures to reduce the non-publication of trials, publication bias is still a major problem in medical research. The objective of our study was to identify barriers to and facilitators of interventions to prevent or reduce publication bias.We systematically reviewed the scholarly literature and extracted data from articles. Further, we performed semi-structured interviews with stakeholders. We performed an inductive thematic analysis to identify barriers to and facilitators of interventions to counter publication bias.The systematic review identified 39 articles. Thirty-four of 89 invited interview partners agreed to be interviewed. We clustered interventions into four categories: prospective trial registration, incentives for reporting in peer-reviewed journals or research reports, public availability of individual patient-level data, and peer-review/editorial processes. Barriers we identified included economic and personal interests, lack of financial resources for a global comprehensive trial registry, and different legal systems. Facilitators identified included: raising awareness of the effects of publication bias, providing incentives to make data publically available, and implementing laws to enforce prospective registration and reporting of clinical trial results.Publication bias is a complex problem that reflects the complex system in which it occurs. The cooperation amongst stakeholders to increase public awareness of the problem, better tailoring of incentives to publish, and ultimately legislative regulations have the greatest potential for reducing publication bias.The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12913-014-0551-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. ClinicalTrials.gov which had been completed prior to January 2009 133 (23%) provided no results either in published form or in ClinicalTrials.gov  don’t get cited […]. You do not go to a [grant] body with a negative result.” . Research shows that positive results are cited more often than negative results, and the impact factor calculation of journals depends on citations [An important identified barrier in the interviews was a itations ,75. Curritations .perceived lack of possibilities to publish. Several interviewees argued that in accordance with “the freedom of the press,” journals should continue to be able to select what they want to publish. Although several journals do exist for the sole purpose of publishing indeterminate or null findings, these must not be so well-known since several interviewees, in particular, researchers, suggested that such journals should be created. The interviewees as well as authors argued that public funding could separate the publication process from financial constraints and therefore facilitate the existence of such journals [Another barrier was a journals .Guidelines for Good Clinical Practice, such as The Declaration of Helsinki (DoH) issued by the World Medical Association [right to publication of research results when cooperating with sponsors.Authors and interviewees suggested different ways to foster the reporting of results. Several authors argued that it is an ethical responsibility to share all results . A similociation  and The ociation . They arociation  and the ociation  explicitethics committees to be in the ideal position to enforce the dissemination of trial results; they could require reports and send them to a central, comprehensive, and multidisciplinary registry which would have to be set up [Many authors considered e set up ,54,55. Ie set up . One intFunding bodies could also ensure that the results of financed trials are publicly disseminated [eminated ,50. Seveeminated  but thesAlthough trial registration is important for detecting publication bias, several authors and interviewees argued that another great need exists for full availability of individual patient-level data (IPD) of clinical trials: “We cannot rely on what people make available in tables, we already know that. So we also need access to the raw data, so that there can be an independent assessment of the same data” . In November 2012, the EMA stated that they are committed to the “proactive publication of data from clinical trials supporting the authorisation of medicines once the marketing-authorisation process has ended, which the EMA does not consider commercially confidential” . The EMAcompeting interests when it comes to publishing (or not publishing) IPD due to career or financial concerns. Researchers may be reluctant to publish results in a registry before publication in peer-reviewed journals, even if the journals would accept such pre-publication [privacy of patients if IPD were made publically available, especially regarding socially stigmatized or rare diseases. Special concerns were raised regarding misuse or manipulation which could occur through linkage of data with other data carriers [University and pharmaceutical industry researchers may have lication . Intervilication  were madcarriers . Some inreporting requirements are needed [www.cdisc.org) [Interviewees and authors argued that solutions for e needed ,83. Studisc.org) . One intmissing quality checks of publically available data as well as planned secondary analyses [technological systems are required that are more complex than those needed for the storage of pdf-formatted articles. Interviewees mentioned several examples of such registries, such as the Dataverse Network™ Project (http://thedata.org) [Another barrier interviews and articles identified to the usage of data repositories was analyses . To storata.org) .incentives for making IPD publically available. In contrast to concerns raised by pharmaceutical companies regarding competitive advantage losses, interviewees highlighted gains in reputation and credibility due to improved transparency. They mentioned increased efficiency in health care research due to aspects such as improvements in comparative-effectiveness analyses and validation of outcome assessments [fostering cooperation and exchange between researchers would be an important basis for sharing data. Journal editors also have a stake in credible and transparent research, and therefore support open access to data [Interviewees mentioned the following essments ,45. Inte to data .law which requires the publication of results, and IPD in particular, which is in line with data protection requirements [monitoring of compliance with a law and different mechanisms of enforcement were discussed in both the interviews and the articles  of material submitted for publication in scientific and technical periodicals”  aiming tbiased reviewers). Similarly, editors can be influenced by their personal beliefs and attitudes (i.e. biased editors) [Peer review is a highly subjective process; personal knowledge , privateeditors) ,28. Botheditors) ,38. One inconsistencies in the peer review process as one perceived barrier [Furthermore, we identified  barrier ,42. For  barrier . Consist barrier ,40 and m barrier ,37. Alth barrier ,42.enforcement of transparency through publication of abstracts along with an explanation for rejections [nforcement of objectivity through incorporation of opinions from a wide range of experts [statement of conflict of interest for reviewers and editors to identify personal relationships, academic rivalries, or personal, political, or ideological persuasions were proposed [fulltime, experienced professional peer reviewers and editorial boards to facilitate proper implementation of the peer review process [the introduction of training for peer reviewers and editors in scientific appraisal of the submitted manuscripts [raising of awareness that manuscripts with neutral or negative results are of interest and value to the scientific community and study quality, not just positive outcomes, should be the focus [parts of a manuscript which should be subject to peer review to prevent reviewers from being biased by the results of the study: only the introduction and methods sections, everything except the results [The articles discuss several ways to overcome inconsistencies in the peer review process: jections ; enforce experts  or imple experts ; the incproposed ,49; usag process  and the uscripts ,42,49 ashe focus ,23,32. O results  or the p results .To our knowledge, our study is the first to provide a comprehensive analysis of barriers and facilitators of the publication of trial results as discussed in published literature and gained from interviews with stakeholders. Our approach enabled us to verify the results gained from the literature review, to use interviews to put results of the literature review into perspective and identify new insights not addressed in the literature. The most common barriers to trial publication included economic or personal interests, lack of sufficient funding for a comprehensive trial registry, differing legal regulations, and concerns over patient privacy. Important facilitators were incentives for the publication of statistically non-significant results (e.g. research funders adopt performance metrics including full dissemination of research and providing data sets), and laws for the enforcement of prospective registration and reporting of clinical trial results. A common theme in our analyses is the necessity of an increase in public and researchers’ awareness of the detrimental effects of publication bias on health care. A second overarching theme was that publication bias is a complex problem that demands mutual support within and across stakeholder groups. Such a manifold approach has also been recently highlighted .Our study has several limitations. First, because of the lack of empirical data on barriers and facilitators for the publication of trials, we had to focus on editorials and discussions that expressed the personal opinions of authors active in the academic and regulatory field. Interviews provided the opportunity to integrate perspectives of different stakeholders such as funders, ethics committees, and industry representatives that are not as well represented in the scientific literature as researchers .Second, our literature search covered only the time period up to May 2012. Many new articles on publication bias have been published since then. However, we believe that we captured more recent trends in interviews, conducted almost one year later .Third, we conducted interviews with all relevant stakeholder groups and consulted policy documents when stakeholders declined to be interviewed. Because each interviewee was an expert in a specific area, not all questions relating to publication bias could be posed to every interviewee. However, recurring themes across interviews suggest that the number of interviews was sufficient. Overall, the topic of publication bias has been a hotly debated subject in recent years. Although we have conducted a thorough literature review and a purposive sampling of interviewees, we may have missed some barriers and facilitators . Furthermore, two online portals were started in January 2014 by the pharmaceutical industry to gain access to results of clinical trials to researchers ,89, therOur study focuses on the European situation and the specific role of certain stakeholders . However, since pharmaceutical companies and academic research activities are subject to the norms of a globalised world, we also discussed barriers and facilitators on a global level  affecting the specific European situation. Nevertheless, we believe that the extent to which results can be generalized beyond the European context is limited, specifically in relation to current barriers and facilitators in trial registration in developing countries ,91. AlthFindings of our study also highlight several general and contextual issues that policy makers need to address to facilitate the publication of trial results. One recurring theme concerned the problems of differing health care and research systems worldwide . Several initiatives are currently underway to address these challenges and to build a basis for mutual exchange by creating common standards and procedures and promoting collaboration via the exchange of good-practice examples . The WHOur study used a novel approach in combining a systematic review of articles with qualitative interviews to identify barriers to and facilitators of four interventions to counter publication bias: prospective trial registration, incentives for reporting results in peer-reviewed journals or reports, policies regarding public availability of IPD and changes in the peer-review and editorial process. One important first step to overcome barriers of interventions to counter publication bias is to increase public and stakeholder awareness of the effects of publication bias on health care and patients through education. Furthermore, the cooperation between stakeholders to implement interventions to counter publication bias, using new performance metrics and therefore creating new incentives for researchers to disseminate their results and data and ultimately legislative regulations have the greatest potential for reducing publication bias.


The article considers available options to educate science editors in the fast-transforming digital environment. There is no single course or resource that can cover their constantly changing and diversifying educational needs. The involvement in research, writing, and reviewing is important for gaining editing skills, but that is not all. Membership in editorial associations and access to updated scholarly information in the field are mandatory for maintaining editorial credentials. Learned associations offer access to a few widely-recognized periodicals. There are also formal training courses covering issues in science writing and ethical editing, but no high-level evidence data exist to promote any of these. Networking with like-minded specialists within the global and regional editorial associations seems a useful strategy to upgrade editorial skills and resolve problems with the quality control and digitization of scholarly periodicals. Science editors play a central role in publishing reliable research data with potential implications for practice. To gain and maintain editorial credentials, they have to be actively engaged in research, peer review, and editing. The decades-long career in editing usually starts at academic and research institutions, where the researchers are exposed to writing and editing different types of papers, posters, dissertations, and monographs . SurrounIn the last decade, the publishing world has changed its landscape enormously. Functions and interests of those responsible for editing have broadened. This years’ global survey of 802 editors and publishers, organized by the International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers, revealed that the main topic of interest in the field were open access, new models of publishing, communication, social networking, and impact metrics . ImportaThe whole publishing industry is now oriented toward open access and archiving in digital libraries and institutional repositories, which have become the attributes of the advancement of science -9. More http://retractionwatch.com/) and the Jeffrey Beall’s list of predatory publishers and journals (http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/), the two powerful educational resources that shed light on the deficiencies of the current scholarly publishing. These resources also point to the crisis in the education of all stakeholders of science communication.The mainstream science community can also greatly benefit from the contribution of experts in digital technologies. Properly implemented digital technologies will allow to reduce waste in research and to enhance value of the evidence base . As a prCroatian Medical Journal and rebranded this small journal into a major educational resource for undergraduates, PhD candidates, researchers, and regional editors.A question arises as to whether formal under- or postgraduate training courses, or educational resources at all may help researchers, editors, and publishers to cope with the emerging writing and editing problems. Apparently, there is no strong evidence to promote any educational course or resource for editors. The global editorial community is diverse, and no single course or resource can cover their constantly changing and diversifying educational needs. But that does not mean that the system of education, aimed at improving editorial standards, should be abolished. On the contrary, regular topical courses for science editors with specific professional and language needs are currently strongly recommended . PrelimiScience Editor journal. The journal stands firmly along with a few traditional periodicals in the field: European Science Editing (EASE), Learned Publishing (Society for Scholarly Publishing), and Medical Writing . These are flagship academic journals for editors from all over the world. Members of the mentioned associations are subscribed to receive latest issues of the journals.The above mentioned and many other regional and global editorial associations have played an important role in uniting efforts of experts and publishing didactic materials for novice and seasoned editors . The CSEPublications  and Science Editing (Council of Asian Science Editors). These additions to the communication subject category may fill gaps in editors’ education and, as open-access sources, rapidly distribute scholarly information.Over the last two years, two open-access journals covering issues in editing and publishing were launched: Prestigious global editorial associations, such as the CSE, EASE, and WAME, have strict selection criteria and membership fees, which can be a limiting factor for a large number of editors from developing and low-resource non-Anglophone countries. In such circumstances, regional associations can be established to develop educational resources focusing on local problems . One of In conclusion, there are several channels for gaining editorial credentials by researchers. Those active in writing, reviewing, and publishing in most-impacting scholarly journals are likely to meet the ever-increasing criteria of skilled editors. Joining regional and global editorial associations and benefiting from their updated didactic resources is a way toward maintaining and upgrading editorial skills. Formal courses are important for basic and continuing professional development of science editors, but these have to be topical, considering the needs of specialists from certain professional, educational, and language background. One of the topics of global importance is how to run a quality open-access periodical satisfying ethical standards. No high-level evidence is currently available to advocate any specific short- or long-term course, or degree program, which necessitates more efforts for expanding the established networks of science editors and keeping them abreast of the developments in science writing and ethical editing through high-quality periodicals and regularly updated didactic materials.


Editors play a critical role in the peer review system. How do editorial behaviors affect the performance of peer review? No quantitative model to date allows us to measure the influence of editorial behaviors on different peer review stages such as, manuscript distribution and final decision making. Here, we propose an agent-based model in which the process of peer review is guided mainly by the social interactions among three kinds of agents representing authors, editors and reviewers respectively. We apply this model to analyze a number of editorial behaviors such as decision strategy, number of reviewers and editorial bias on peer review. We find out that peer review outcomes are significantly sensitive to different editorial behaviors. With a small fraction (10 %) of biased editors, the quality of accepted papers declines 11 %, which indicates that effects of editorial biased behavior is worse than that of biased reviewers (7 %). While several peer review models exist, this is the first account for the study of editorial behaviors that is validated on the basis of simulation analysis. The peer review system is a cornerstone of scientific research enterprise. The development of science in the last century is an partial endorsement of the value of peer review  Biased versus unbiased behavior: Biased behavior means that an editor will help to accept papers submitted by his friends (or members of same group such as co-authors) regardless of quality. Previous studies mostly focus on how to measure the effects of reviewers bias such as the rational behaviour on peer review, where editor’s bias and honesty are overlooked. (2) Number of Reviewers: Our aim was to test the impact of the number of reviewers on rejection rate and quality of published papers. With more comments from more reviewers, editors can easily evaluate and make a decision regarding a submitted paper. However, the cost of reviewing one paper also rises at the same time. Therefore, we want to measure the effect of different number of reviewers in our proposed model. (3) Decision Strategies: We explore three decision-making strategies for editors: Publish a paper based on ‘accept’ suggestion from all reviewers , Publish a paper based on ‘accept’ suggestion from any reviewer (P-any), and Publishing a paper based on ‘accept’ recommendation from majority of reviewers (P-majority). It also explores interactions effects between these strategies with different behaviors of reviewers. A set of rules govern the behaviors of these agents to simulate the peer review process .i is assigned a Our proposed model simulates peer review as a quality selection process where authors, reviewers and editors interact with each other. The authors write papers, submit them to editors for review. Our definition for the scientific quality of authors follows a Gaussian distribution. This means that the scientific quality of authors follows normal distribution at the very beginning, i.e. each author i is The paper entity is the basic unit of evaluation. The quality of submissions follows a normal distribution centred around author quality i will recommend declining a proposal that is either superior to his/her own work or below a minimum quality, i.e. Each submitted paper is sent to specific independent reviewers, randomly chosen by the editors. Each reviewer belongs to one of the following categories, i.e., the correct, the harried, and the selfish. The correct reviewers will fairly accept high-quality papers and reject low-quality papers. They will recommend publication only for high-quality papers, defined as those which exceed a minimum threshold mentclass2pt{minimThe editor, who matches authors and reviewers, might be an importance source of bias and influence in the peer review system. In order to simplify the discussion in this paper we assume that every submission is submitted to one editor. There may be situations in which the editor and authors share common friendship networks, where members belong the same group, such as a co-authorship network , as an indicator of occasional failures  and bias without rational reviewers (BW). These scenarios can help us to better understand the editorial biased behaviour with and without rational reviewers.Finally, in Fig. Figure Figure The numbers of low-quality papers published under BR and BW scenarios are shown in Fig. This paper focused on documenting the potential influence of the interaction of social forces between editors and reviewers in the peer review system using an agent-based model. We extended previous study by considering the effect of editorial behaviours on peer review. We examined the effect of editorial behaviours on the average quality of all published papers, the number of published papers and the number of low-quality papers published.Our proposed model confirmed that even a small fraction of rational reviewers may dramatically distort publication quality  of biased editors may do harm to the performance of peer review (11.01 %), which is worse than that of biased reviewers (6.81 %). Specifically when In reality, peer review is a complex social system. In this paper, we only focused on the quality selection aspect of peer review and the interactions between authors, reviewers and editors, which is lack of a sensitivity analysis for the parameters and simulations. In reality, peer review is a complex system and is not a one-step binary accept/reject precess. We ignored other potential benefits such as improvement of reviewing skills, improvement of manuscripts after reviewing and competition among conferences, etc. In addition to considering the above features of peer review systems in future, we also plan to simulate and analyze our model in more reality scenarios, e.g. with real peer review data.


At the beginning of each year, BiO takes the opportunity to thank its many reviewers for their contribution to the journal. The peer review process is the cornerstone of research publication in the biological sciences. As a publishing company, we are very aware that this vital component of the publication process is done, for free, by scientists worldwide. While we can assist our reviewers in every way possible, by providing online article submission and peer review systems, and having staff trained to support reviewers and answer any questions they might have, the article must be carefully read and the report composed.Submissions to BiO have steadily increased since its launch in 2011 and doubled since we announced our Impact Factor in June 2015. BiO publishes papers that have been accepted on the basis that they are technically sound and their conclusions are supported by the data shown. We do not require any assessment of the significance, relative importance or impact of a paper. However, the paper should clearly address a non-trivial scientific question. BiO has functionality that allows readers to comment on published papers, in the form of online eLetters, enabling the community to discuss the work.http://publicationethics.org/) and also supports the Think. Check. Submit. campaign (thinkchecksubmit.org), which provides a simple checklist researchers can use to assess the credentials of a journal or publisher.The advent of the ‘author pays’ model of scientific publication has led to the founding of many ‘predatory’ publishers that charge fees to authors often without providing effective peer review. Initiatives to help authors decide which journals are sound have been implemented. BiO is a member of OASPA (the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association) and is indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), an online directory that lists high-quality, Open Access, peer-reviewed journals. The DOAJ recently made all publishers reapply for inclusion, using more stringent criteria; BiO's reapplication was successful and the journal continues to be listed in the DOAJ. BiO is a member of COPE (supplementary information, for all their hard work and expertise.Unbiased independent peer review is at the heart of our publishing decisions, but there is always room for improvement, and we continue to monitor potential developments and the views of our community. In the meantime, we thank our reviewers, who are listed in the


Conservation science is a crisis discipline in which the results of scientific enquiry must be made available quickly to those implementing management. We assessed the extent to which scientific research published since the year 2000 in 20 conservation science journals is publicly available. Of the 19,207 papers published, 1,667 (8.68%) are freely downloadable from an official repository. Moreover, only 938 papers (4.88%) meet the standard definition of open access in which material can be freely reused providing attribution to the authors is given. This compares poorly with a comparable set of 20 evolutionary biology journals, where 31.93% of papers are freely downloadable and 7.49% are open access. Seventeen of the 20 conservation journals offer an open access option, but fewer than 5% of the papers are available through open access. The cost of accessing the full body of conservation science runs into tens of thousands of dollars per year for institutional subscribers, and many conservation practitioners cannot access pay-per-view science through their workplace. However, important initiatives such as Research4Life are making science available to organizations in developing countries. We urge authors of conservation science to pay for open access on a per-article basis or to choose publication in open access journals, taking care to ensure the license allows reuse for any purpose providing attribution is given. Currently, it would cost $51 million to make all conservation science published since 2000 freely available by paying the open access fees currently levied to authors. Publishers of conservation journals might consider more cost effective models for open access and conservation-oriented organizations running journals could consider a broader range of options for open access to nonmembers such as sponsorship of open access via membership fees.Obtención de Acceso Abierto a la Ciencia de la ConservaciónLa ciencia de la conservación es una disciplina de crisis en la que los resultados del cuestionamiento científico deben hacerse disponibles de manera rápida para quienes están implementando el manejo. Evaluamos la extensión a la cual está disponible para el público la investigación científica publicada desde el año 2000 en 20 revistas de ciencia de la conservación. De los 19, 207 artículos publicados, 1, 667 (8.68%) están libres para descargar de un repositorio oficial. Además, sólo 938 artículos (4.88%) cumplen con la definición estándar de acceso abierto en la cual el material puede reutilizarse libremente siempre y cuando se le dé atribución a los autores. Esto se compara pobremente con un conjunto comparable de 20 revistas de biología evolutiva, donde 31.93% de los artículos están libres para descargar y el 7.94% son de acceso abierto. Diecisiete de las 20 revistas de conservación ofrecen una opción de acceso abierto, pero menos del 5% de los artículos están disponibles por medio del acceso abierto. El costo de acceder al cuerpo completo de la ciencia de la conservación llega a estar entre los miles de dólares por año para suscriptores institucionales, y muchos practicantes de la conservación no pueden acceder a la ciencia de paga en sus lugares de trabajo. Sin embargo, iniciativas importantes como Research4Life están poniendo a la ciencia a disponibilidad de organizaciones en países en desarrollo. Urgimos a los autores de la ciencia de la conservación que paguen por acceso abierto en una base por artículo o que escojan publicar en revistas de acceso abierto, tomando en consideración asegurar que la licencia permita reutilizar siempre y cuando se proporcione atribución. Actualmente, costaría $51 millones hacer que toda la ciencia de la conservación publicada desde 2000 esté disponible libremente al pagar las cuotas de acceso abierto que actualmente impuestas a los autores. Los publicadores de revistas de la conservación pueden considerar modelos más rentables para el acceso abierto y las organizaciones orientadas a la conservación que administran revistas podrían considerar un campo más amplio de opciones de acceso abierto para quienes no son miembros, como el patrocinio de acceso abierto por medio de pagos de membrecía Nowhere is this more true than in conservation science, where the scale and rapidity of the biodiversity crisis has made effective translation of knowledge into action one of its most pressing goals . Although many interdisciplinary journals publish important papers in conservation science, for the purpose of this exercise we wanted to measure rates of open access in those journals with a primary focus on conservation—these are the trade journals of the discipline and represent a set of journals committed primarily to publishing conservation science. We scanned the scope statements for each of these journals to select those with a primary focus on conservation science. We recognize that there are always difficult cases that complicate any classification. This process yielded a set of 20 conservation journals for analysis , which requires that an article may be freely re-used for any lawful purpose providing attribution is given to the authors. Open access is particularly important for conservation science because it, for example, allows work to be reused, repackaged, or repurposed by individuals or organizations  in a way that can explain its meaning to end users without having to seek permission or make payments to license holders. This is similar in spirit to a Creative Commons Attribution license  currently offered to authors by many scientific journals. Creative Commons licenses form the basis of many journals' open access policies, and the CCBY website contains plain English summaries of the main restrictions associated with different kinds of licenses. If we were able to download a paper freely from the journal's official archive from a private computer not linked to a university network but it did not conform to our definition of open access, we classified it as freely available. Such papers either had additional restrictions attached to them  or retained all rights and had simply been made freely available online temporarily or permanently by the license holder. We classified all remaining articles as subscription access.We classified papers as open access, freely available, or subscription access and used these terms strictly as defined here throughout this paper. Our definition of We did not include access to journal articles via pre-print servers because these do not represent the final published version of the manuscript and can be hard for nonspecialists to navigate, although it is worth noting that preprint servers such as arXiv.org are major repositories of information in several disciplines including physics and mathematics and could play a role in access to conservation science if conservation articles reached a critical mass in such repositories. Many journal websites have an index page for all volumes and issues; clicking on each issue reveals which papers are freely downloadable via a marker beside open access articles. For those journals that lacked visual markers, we clicked on each article to determine whether or not it was downloadable and then inspected the license conditions for any downloadable papers.We experienced great difficulty in determining the precise license conditions associated with many freely downloadable papers, and despite extensive correspondence with publishers we remained unsure in some cases. We found many examples of publishers attempting to charge for reuse of papers marked by the journal as open access , and where this was the case and there was no clear license information to the contrary on the published version of the paper, we assumed that these papers did not meet our strict open access definition. However, if an open access license was clearly stated on the published version of the paper, we considered it open access even if a charge was being levied because correspondence with publishers suggested some charges were being requested in error during the period of our data collection. In other cases, the published version of the paper contained links to generic information about a range of license options offered by the publisher that did not specify the precise conditions associated with that paper. Thus, when classifying the papers, we considered them open access only if there was clear evidence that a paper conformed to our definition. When we were in doubt, we classified papers as freely available. Subscription access articles were much easier to identify with confidence because they were simply not downloadable from a private computer.The American Naturalist, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, BMC Evolutionary Biology, Development Genes and Evolution, Evolutionary Applications, Evolutionary Bioinformatics, Evolutionary Biology, Evolutionary Ecology, Evolutionary Ecology Research, Evolution, Genome Biology and Evolution, Heredity, Insect Systematics & Evolution, Journal of Evolutionary Biology, Journal of Human Evolution, Journal of Molecular Evolution, Molecular Biology and Evolution, Molecular Ecology, Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, Plant Systematics and Evolution). We also recorded the cost of downloading each journal article for a nonsubscriber and scaled this up by the number of articles that were not open access per journal to estimate the total cost in U.S. dollars of accessing the literature on an ad hoc basis. We also calculated the cost to a small institution of annual subscriptions by collating information on the cheapest available option to access the literature published in the 15 conservation journals that were not freely available.We considered only original research articles in our count. This included research articles, brief communications, literature reviews, essays, and research or technical notes. Letters, book reviews, commentaries, responses, obituaries, editorials, and errata were not included, although variability in the terminology used for individual items meant that some case-by-case decisions were needed to determine whether an item represented a piece of scientific research. When we remained uncertain, we counted it as a research article if it had an abstract. We repeated this process for a comparable set of 20 evolutionary biology journals . Among the remaining 15 journals, open access rates were very low, ranging from 3.15%  to 0.12% (Oryx); 16 journals had an open access rate below 5%  to $3000 . On this basis, it would cost $51,258,370 to pay the necessary fees to make all remaining conservation science published since 2000 open access under the current publication model and an annual average of $5,088,993 to cover the cost of open access fees for the science produced in the last 3 years (2011–2013).From a science user's perspective, the cost to download individual articles in the conservation science literature ranged from $31.50 to $45. Purchasing one-time access to all currently closed articles would cost $679,099. Subscriptions to online versions of all the conservation journals we considered that do not currently provide open access cost $26,919 per year for a small institution .Dissemination of peer-reviewed research ensures that research communities are able to build on and share existing knowledge with practitioners and policy makers, highlight important new discoveries, and avoid duplicating failed efforts in either research or implementation. Scientific journals play a central role in this and are the principal medium for disseminating research results across the global scientific community. However, there is ample evidence that access to scientific journals is highly divided between developed and developing countries . In devePLoS ONE, indicating that this need not always be the case. There are also clear indications that governments and institutions are becoming increasingly motivated to make the results of publicly funded research available to the taxpayers who funded it .We see 2 simple ways in which access to conservation science could be radically improved in the short term. Most immediately, we as conservation scientists could begin placing more emphasis on ensuring our work is made open access, either by choosing to publish in wholly open access journals or paying the open access fee as a matter of course for new papers. Of course, some grant giving bodies do not permit recipients to use funds to pay open access fees, the applied nature of many conservation science projects might deter applicants from budgeting for such fees in grant proposals, and conservation grants often have small budgets. Journals could also consider marketing their open access options much more vigorously to authors, who would in most cases perhaps be more prepared to pay for open access rather than obscure and usually optional page charges for which there is no tangible return. Ensuring our conservation science is open access will maximize its chance for real world impact, something that personally motivates many conservation scientists, and is becoming increasingly important in research assessment exercises around the world. Metrics that report on how many papers each conservation scientist has made publicly available could be produced and sit alongside an author's H-index and other bibliometrics such as Altmetric, which provides a score for published articles based on the level of online discussion and sharing (http://www.nih.gov). Professional societies that run journals, such as the Society for Conservation Biology, could play an important role in this, for example, by including options to sponsor open access in membership fees. This is undoubtedly a delicate area for those societies who rely heavily on the revenue stream from their journals, but the impact of taking bold decisions might not be as dramatic as one might expect. For example, the New Zealand Ecological Society funded a transition of their flagship journal  to open access, and there has been no perceptible negative consequence for membership so far .There are many researchers who cannot afford open access fees, and they should not be disadvantaged. In these cases, sponsorship from conservation organizations, benefactors, or the publishers themselves could be appropriate. Indeed, research councils are beginning to require open access publication or preprint posting  avenue for improving open access is to negotiate lagged free access to the conservation science journals. Publishers profit from a journal largely because of its reputation for quality, and professional subscriptions are primarily driven by those who need access to the current science delivered in the most recent issues. So, although there is clearly a commercial benefit to having this latest science behind a paywall, there is perhaps a lesser business imperative in constraining older science in the same way. Indeed, our data show that lifting the paywall after 2 years contributes enormously to making evolutionary biology freely available Fig.b, and coWhatever the solution to improving access to conservation science, it is clear that we must take immediate action to make our science more accessible and therefore more likely to be used to solve real world conservation problems. Obviously the issue of open access is but one cog in a larger machine that turns conservation science into conservation action, but it is time to get our house in order within the field of conservation science. Conservation is one of the few scientific disciplines that depend on practitioners for success. It makes sense to provide those who undertake the practice of conservation access to everything we know.


The determination as to whether a manuscript should be refused or accepted is an important job of the editors that is accomplished through a “peer review” procedure. This procedure dates back to the 17th century, although it was not given to all submissions by medical journals until the mid–20th C. Referable to the elaboration of science and specialization, and besides the impulse to publish among academics, the number of articles has increased, so journals need to select the highest quality manuscripts from the large number of submissions for publication [The general routine in most journals is that the editor in chief or the editorial team appraise all submissions, and then separate them into suitable or unsuitable manuscripts regarding the scope and strategy defined previously for the journal. Thus, in this step, many submissions might be declined or rejected. After that, suitable submissions are sent out to external reviewers. Finding interested and professional scientists or investigators to accept the review invitation is not easily carried out and sometimes is a difficult process. Because of this problem, the range of reviewers is reduced and the journals may not have enough choices to replace reviewers who perform poorly or slower.When a reviewer  exhibits a good or acceptable review, his or her advice can influence the editor’s decision on selection of the best manuscripts for publishing. In addition, a critical review process is able to make a submission better and add to its transparency and accuracy for the readers. Today, the query is: “Who is a good reviewer?” or “What is a good peer review process?” According to a literature review on this topic and also personal experience, there are a bit of criteria by which a good reviewer is identified. Some of these are summarized in Figure Regrettably, there have been only a few surveys in which the peer critique process in diverse journals has been assessed or statistically analyzed. A reason might be ascribable to the complexity of this challenging operation. The limited available documents show that a good peer review process has to discover a path toward improving the reporting quality of published papers ,5. PeoplPeer review has its own defects such as being slow and unreliable, not necessarily objective and consistent, sometimes displaying bias against certain authors, or even misuse such as stealing the ideas or applying a critical review to halt or at least slow down publications by rivals . LikewisIn the single review model, disclosing the author’ name may sometimes, intentionally or unintentionally affect the decision of reviewers in a positive or negative aspect. The reviewers should be trained to report objectively with more attention to context. This is specially important in bio-medical specialty and pharmaceutical journals, as the results of bias might be harmful.The reviewers may be biased when they see reports of negative information. Not only authors may avoid publishing negative results, but also editors and reviewers might think that such resolutions will be considered too dull to read by the journal readers. This bias should be taken into account by scientists in all the roles of author or editor or reviewer.Publishing in scholarly journals usually takes time to complete internal and external assessment of the articles. But sometimes these tasks are done with a delay originated from the journal editorial office or reviewers or the editors. Most of the time, delays originate from the time required to get a suitable reviewer who agrees to review and then by the reviewers who fail to complete the review on time. The reviewers should be selected from the professions who are reliable and well-known in the field of study and adhere to ethical rules. But there is no such guarantee to find the best reviewers who could meet the required journal desires. Therefore, this part of the task is always complicated .It has been observed that sometimes peer reviewers request authors to cite their publications, either appropriately or via compulsive self-citation to highlight the reviewers’ work. In order to evaluate this circumstance, peer reviews for manuscripts submitted in 2012 to the Journal of Psychosomatic Research were evaluated. Totally, there were 616 peer reviews , of which 444 recommended for revision or acceptance and 172 rejected. Surprisingly, the results showed that there were 122 peer reviewer self-citations (29%) and 306 citations to others’ work (71%) of 428 total citations. Furthermore, it was observed that self-citations existed generally in the review articles which were recommended for revision or acceptance  compared to rejection . The authors concluded that the percentage of self-citations with no rationale  was higher than for citations to others’ work  [Offering a thorough review is not easy, particularly for new reviewers, who simply receive an invitation letter from a journal with short or no counselling or preparation. The reports should be clear, concise, and exact. The report should aid the editor decide whether to admit the manuscript (the main purpose) and the comments to the authors should help them improve the manuscript even if they are rejected and sent to a different journal. Usually, comments for authors are briefly written especially when the reviewer feels the paper has valuable points, but needs major revision to deserve publication. Regrettably, there are reviewers who attempt to conceal behind the anonymity and write a critical report  that should be censored before being transmitted to the authors. Surely, such gratuitous rudeness and personal criticism have never been more appropriate. Reviewers are urged to write their report using an acceptable manner and timbre that they would wish to meet if they were in the position of author .Efficiency of training the reviewers had been already assessed by a randomized trial, in which three groups of reviewers were included: 1- who got nothing; 2- who had a daily face-to-face training plus a CD-ROM; 3- got only the CD-ROM. The results showed some improvements associated with those who had training, although the consequences of various groups did not show a significant difference . It indiIn the big world of science, researchers, academics and students are all under pressure to publish more and in order to meet the ever-increasing publication activities, thousands of new publishers have sprung up globally, and the number of online and subscription journals has increased exponentially . But the