Strikingly, OAMJ authors showed a low understanding of soundness‐only peer review: two‐thirds believed OAMJs took into account novelty, significance, and relevance, although there were marked geographical variations. Author satisfaction with OAMJs, however, was high, with more than 80% of OAMJ authors saying they would publish again in the same journal, although there were variations by title, and levels were slightly lower than subscription journals (over 90%). Their reasons for choosing to publish in OAMJs included a wide variety of factors, not significantly different from reasons given by authors of other journals, with the most important including the quality of the journal and quality of peer review. About half of OAMJ articles had been submitted elsewhere before submission to the OAMJ with some evidence of a “cascade” of articles between journals from the same publisher.Open‐access mega‐journals (OAMJs) are characterized by their large scale, wide scope, open‐access (OA) business model, and “soundness‐only” peer review. The last of these controversially discounts the novelty, significance, and relevance of submitted articles and assesses only their “soundness.” This article reports the results of an international survey of authors ( PLoS One and Scientific Reports, published 20,395 and 24,318 articles in 2017, respectively. Second, OAMJs tend to have a wide scope, often covering an entire disciplinary area or more; for example, BMJ Open covers all of medicine, Royal Society Open Science covers all disciplines across science, engineering, and mathematics. Third, mega‐journals publish all of their output in an open‐access (OA) form, typically supported by prepublication article‐processing charges (APCs). Finally, OAMJs deploy an approach to quality assessment that limits peer review to cover technical or scientific “soundness” only. Judgments on an article's novelty or significance or relevance to a particular readership  are considered “subjective” and are not taken into account. For example:AIP Advances)The prepublication peer review process focuses on whether the manuscript is technically correct and original. Concepts of ‘timeliness,’ ‘significance,’ or ‘importance’ are evaluated by the community post‐publication through the implementation of online commenting and ranking tools. (PeerJ)PeerJ evaluates articles bbased only on an objective determination of scientific and methodological soundness, not on subjective determinations of ‘impact,’ ‘novelty’ or ‘interest..’  have over the last decade proved to be an important and at times controversial innovation in scholarly communication. OAMJs combine four major characteristics that their publishers argue enable them to contribute in new ways to research publishing Björk, . First, To add to these four primary features, Björk  identifiPLoS One, was launched in 2006, and particularly after 2011, when a number of other publishers set up “PLoS One‐like” titles , BMJ Open , and PeerJ .Several studies have charted the growth of OAMJs Björk, . OAMJ ouMedicine , AIP Advances (40.6% compared with 27.7%), and Scientific Reports , whereas Scientific Reports has a more even distribution of subjects  selected “quality of the journal” as the most important, with the “journal's OA status” (14.2%), “Impact Factor” (14.0%), and “speed of review and publication” (12.6%) the other commonly selected factors. Solomon  selected the journal's OA status as a reason for submitting, with the “BMJ brand” (50%), “speed of review” (37%), and “reputation of the journal” (34%) other notable factors. Interestingly, only 13% of authors stated that the JIF influenced their choice. Geographical differences may exist, however. Shin  were considered OA.RSC Advances, which was second only to PLoS One in terms of 2015 article output, was the only title included in this category.Broad scope subscription—similar to OAMJs in broad scope and size, but with conventional peer review policies and a subscription model. Subscription—generally narrower subject scope, conventional peer review policies, and subscription‐based publishing model . Journals not included in the DOAJ were assumed to be subscription titles.The survey was designed to compare author perceptions and behaviors for OAMJs with four other journal types. This was to enable us to address a number of key issues identified in the earlier phases of our research and to compare with other previously published results, particularly those of Solomon's  survey oFactors that influenced an author's choice of journal.Perceptions of aspects of the submission and publication process.Awareness of the peer review criteria used to assess the article.Whether the article had previously been submitted elsewhere, and, if so, whether resubmission had been at the suggestion of an editor or publisher.The likelihood of the author submitting another article to the same journal.A questionnaire was developed based on the early findings of the qualitative stages of the research and drawing on the literature  between the versions distributed to authors for the different journal types marked.Scopus. These 11 were augmented with an additional four mega‐journals that had been added to Scopus in the period since that earlier research. Appendix 2 shows these 15 OAMJs, along with some relevant bibliometric details.The sampling methodology used was based on a stratified cluster sampling process. The selection of mega‐journals was based on earlier research conducted by the project , which is a field‐weighted measure of journal citation rates, was used to identify journals of comparable impact to OAMJs. The selection of subscription and OA comparison journals was therefore based on the following steps, using data obtained from Scopus and Web of Science (WoS).Scopus that were also indexed in WoS, and data on the numbers of articles published in 2015 extracted.A list was compiled of journals with a single high‐level subject area and 2015 SNIP in OAMJs, trade journals, and book series were excluded, to give a total 10,879 journals with 2015 SNIP and nonzero 2015 citable outputs data.PLoS One, SAGE Open, Scientific Reports, F1000 Research, and AIP Advances  were identified .The mean and associated standard error of the SNIP was calculated for this set of journals, and journals with SNIP values within 3 standard errors of the SNIP for any of The resulting list was sorted by 2015 article output.Journals were considered OA if The largest subscription and OA titles were selected for each high‐level subject area, regardless of the OAMJ with which their SNIP matched, or their more detailed subject areas. Titles that appeared not to be English language titles were excluded from consideration.PLoS One, SAGE Open, Scientific Reports, F1000 Research, and AIP Advances), but any of the 13 OAMJ titles with a 2015 SNIP. This was done to ensure that the final sample would include large comparison journals for each subject area and journal type.After some trial and error, we determined that email addresses were easiest to obtain from the PubMed database. To maximize the number of authors we could invite to take the survey, author email addresses were collected using a bespoke automatic harvesting script. This extracted all available email addresses for articles published in the selected journals in 2015 and 2016. In the case of 18 of the 47 journals in the sample, corresponding email addresses were not available on PubMed; in these instances we attempted to apply a modified script to the specific journal websites. This was successful in nine cases. For the remaining nine titles a pragmatic solution was adopted of replacing the title with the next largest in that discipline area. At the same time, the potential list of journals was expanded by including titles with SNIP values within 3 standard errors of the SNIP for not just the initial five representative OAMJs . Author email addresses for articles published in these four journals were obtained using the same method described above.The selection of broad scope journals drew on our knowledge of the academic publishing market, along with a review of the top 50 journals by article output on The mailing software used (MS Outlook) limited batch invitations to 10,000, with one such batch email allowed per day. Time and resource constraints meant that we were unable to commit to the multiple additional days that would have been required to send emails to all authors for the largest titles. Instead, therefore, titles with more than 10,000 email addresses had a systematic random sample drawn, of up to 10,000. Appendix 3 shows the full list of titles included in the survey (as well as those for which we were unable to scrape email addresses), together with data on the manuscript management system used by each journal, the number of author emails extracted, the number of invitation emails sent, and the number of responses.The online questionnaire was created using the BOS Software package.No questions were compulsory, and some respondents chose not to answer some questions. Some processing work was done prior to analysis. Detail on the disciplinary scope of the article was collected in four broad disciplinary groupings: health sciences; life sciences; physical sciences and mathematics; and social science, humanities, and arts. Where respondents ticked “other” and gave details, these were checked and in some cases allocated to a different broad group. Cases where disciplines from two or more broad subject groups were ticked were assigned the category “Interdisciplinary.”https://dx.doi.org/10.17028/rd.lboro.7211924).The analysis was carried out using the IBM SPSS Statistics v. 22 analysis software . Confidence intervals are shown at a 95% confidence level. The fully processed data set is available in Figshare . Figure W = .886, p < .001).Respondents were asked to rate the importance of 14 factors in their decision to submit to a specific journal using a five‐point scale  of mega‐journal authors. However, this latter figure must be considered in the context of results for other journal types, all of which show a similar or greater proportion of “very” or “extremely” important responses. Relatively few authors appear to have considered the OA status of mega‐journals as important in their decision, although the proportion of OAMJ respondents who did say this was very or extremely important  is higher than for authors of articles published in OA and Broad‐OA journals .Across all mega‐journals W = .747, p < .001). There was, however, notable variation between OAMJ titles for some factors . For example, a large proportion of PeerJ authors  placed high value on the journal's OA status. PeerJ also had the highest proportion of very or extremely important responses for the Cost of Publication factor, perhaps because of the journal's innovative use of both institutional and individual membership models . It is notable that the other journal with high scores for this factor—Royal Society Open Science —does not currently levy an APC at all.A test of Kendall's coefficient of concordance for the relative importance placed on factors for author groups by mega‐journal title again showed relatively high levels of agreement  and Medicine  were the most likely to have viewed JIF as an important factor in their choice of driver, and it is perhaps unsurprising that these two journals had the highest JIFs of all mega‐journals for the years covered by the survey. Authors of articles published in journals without a JIF were unsurprisingly much less likely to have viewed JIF as an important factor.There was also variation in the importance placed on JIF by OAMJ respondents. Authors of articles published in A final point to note regarding these results is that most respondents identified numerous factors as being “very” or “extremely” important. Across all respondents, 71.3% rated 7 or more of the 14 factors this way, and 36.0% 10 or more. This supports earlier findings in the literature that authors are evaluating potential journals against a range of criteria, and that decisions on publication venues require a balancing of these factors.p < .001) for all factors, this is to be expected given the large sample size of the survey. However, Cramer's V for all factors was found to be <.150, indicating very weak effect sizes.OAMJ authors' responses to questions regarding factors influencing journal choice were also analyzed by discipline. Although chi‐square tests (excluding interdisciplinary responses) showed statistically significant differences between disciplines  of respondents from these countries rating JIF as “very” or “extremely” important, compared with 60.7% (±1.3%) of mega‐journal authors from other countries. American and British authors were the least likely to consider the journal's JIF. U.K. mega‐journal authors were much more likely to view the OA status of the journal as a “very” or “extremely” important factor in their choice of journal  than authors from any other country , perhaps reflecting U.K. funder requirements for the OA dissemination of results. Although these funder requirements do allow for Green OA dissemination of research outputs , during the period covered by this research most of them  expressed a preference for Gold OA and also funded the payment of APCs . Chi‐square tests revealed statistically significant differences between journal types (p < .001) for all aspects, again with relatively small effect sizes . The results suggest that most authors were satisfied with most aspects, although in many cases the proportion of OAMJ authors who rated each aspect “good” or “excellent” was slightly lower than for other journal types  of PLoS One authors and 12.7% (±1.8%) of Scientific Reports authors rating this as “poor or “very poor.” It was also notable that PLoS One, which requires authors to publish raw research data alongside their article, received the lowest ratings for Ease of preparing supplementary research data and material, with only two thirds  of authors rating this process as “good” or “excellent.” In comparison, 85.1% (±2.2%) of authors for the four other mega‐journals that operate a similar mandate  rated this aspect as “good” or “excellent.”It is also interesting to note that Novelty/originality of the research.Relevance/interest of the subject matter.Importance/significance of the research.Scientific/technical soundness of the research.Clarity of argument and expression.The survey asked all respondents to indicate whether the journal in which their article was published considered each of five specific criteria during the peer review process:Given that the mega‐journal model ostensibly excludes all but scientific and technical soundness from the evaluation process, it was extremely surprising to find that a clear majority of all OAMJ authors surveyed believed on submission that their article would be reviewed for one or more of novelty, relevance, and significance. As Figure Importance/Significance. Although it is possible that respondents interpreted the terms Novelty/Originality and Relevance/Interest at their most basic level—that the journals determined that the work was not plagiarized, or completely beyond the scope of the journal—it is difficult to see how this could be the case for significance. Given how fundamental the notion of “soundness‐only” peer review is to the mega‐journal approach, it is noteworthy that for almost all mega‐journals, a majority of authors believed that the significance or importance of their work was to be considered prior to publication. In fact, only 18.5% (±1.0%) of mega‐journal authors said that they did not expect their work to be reviewed for significance, but to be reviewed for scientific soundness. It is also striking that of the 74.1% (±1.1%) of OAMJ respondents who said that review criteria had been very or extremely important in their decision about where to publish, two‐thirds  thought that the journal reviewed for significance.Perhaps most surprising are the findings relating to the evaluation of n = 5,650; χ2 = 463.73, 28 df, p < .001), with a moderate effect size (Cramer's V = .203). PeerJ  had the fewest authors believing significance to be an assessment criterion, with figures for Biology Open  and F1000 Research  also low, although the relatively small sample size for these journals means the confidence intervals are high. In contrast, despite having operated a soundness‐only model for more than 10 years, and being undoubtedly the best‐known mega‐journal, 61.6% (±2.7%) of PLoS One authors appeared to be unaware of the journal's peer review model, a similar proportion to Scientific Reports . Authors publishing in BMJ Open  and Medicine  were the most likely to think that the journal would consider the significance of their article.Some OAMJs appear to have had more success in communicating their approach to quality control to authors. A chi‐squared test concerning whether the OAMJ was believed to review for significance revealed significant differences between OAMJ titles . Respondents from Taiwan , Brazil , India , and China  were the most likely to have believed significance was a criterion for publication, whereas authors from Germany , the United States , and the United Kingdom  were the least likely.Analysis by country was also revealing. A chi‐square test revealed statistically significant differences between responses for OAMJ authors from the 16 countries with more than 150 responses  and F1000  had the lowest rate of resubmissions, whereas around half of both Scientific Reports  and PLoS One  authors said they had previously submitted their articles elsewhere.An important goal of the survey was to better understand the proportion of mega‐journal articles that had previously been submitted to another journal, and whether the eventual submission to an OAMJ was on the suggestion of an editor or publisher from the original journal, that is, a cascade process. Figure PeerJ and PLoS One) understandably have relatively low cascade rates. Results for publishers with larger portfolios suggest considerable differences in the rates of cascade, with BMC Research Notes  and Medicine  showing higher proportions of articles coming from publisher suggested resubmissions than BMJ Open  and SAGE Open . Scientific Reports  was also found to have a relatively low cascade rate, a result which is of particular interest given previous suggestions that the journal's high JIF may be a consequence of articles originally submitted to more prestigious titles cascading to Scientific Reports. However, this figure should be viewed in the context of the large size of the journal: 18.9% of 2016 output represents more than 3,800 articles. The results for Nature Communications  show that 44.6% (±2.8%) of articles had previously been submitted to another Nature journal, also suggesting that the publisher has implemented effective cascade practices for their more selective broad scope journal.Wide variation was found in the proportion of articles that were resubmitted at the suggestion of an editor or publisher. These figures indicate the extent to which publisher cascade policies are funneling articles rejected by other titles within the publisher's portfolio to a mega‐journal. Those mega‐journal publishers with few other titles . The experience of most authors appears to have been positive, with 82.4% (±1.0%) of OAMJ authors saying they would be “quite” or “very” likely to publish another article in the journal. This is broadly comparable to the responses from authors of articles published in other types of journal, although the figure for subscription journals  is noticeably higher. As Figure PeerJ  and BMJ Open  achieved the highest positive results. Despite receiving marginally worse ratings for aspects of the submission and publication process, both Scientific Reports and PLoS One have high proportions of authors saying they would be likely to submit again . For all 15 OAMJs, and for all types of journal, a slightly higher proportion of respondents said they were “quite” or “very” likely to recommend the journal to colleagues than said they were likely to submit again themselves!The final questions asked participants how likely they were to submit another article to the same journal, and how likely they were to recommend the journal to colleagues . The fact that mega‐journals are OA often mattered less to our respondents than these other factors, although there is some geographical variation, with more U.K. authors citing OA to be important than others, probably reflecting the robust OA funder mandates in the United Kingdom . A future study could usefully examine whether submissions to this journal from Chinese authors decline correspondingly.Linked to perceptions of quality, the JIF has often been seen as important in author choice of journal , and the available answer options for each peer review element were unambiguous . Thus, although there were potentially a small number of respondents who did not interpret the question as we intended (as is the case for any survey), we are confident that our results reflect a real and significant level of confusion among researchers about the peer review policies of OAMJs.Although mega‐journal publishers have argued strongly for soundness‐only peer review and the issue has been hotly debated , but may have some merit in maintaining author satisfaction over and above the pragmatic compromise it appears to be. However, it is notable that rather than “soundness‐only peer review,” this constitutes a system of “soundness‐only acceptance.”There is also a dilemma here for OAMJ publishers and advocates. Peer reviewers of OAMJ articles often include comment on novelty, significance, and relevance in their reviews, and although this is not what OAMJs require, authors seem to value highly the quality of peer review currently offered by OAMJs. If publishers pare down peer review reports to exclude judgments of factors other than soundness, there is a danger authors would view these reports less favorably, and their desire to publish in an OAMJ may diminish. There is then an apparent risk in OAMJ publishers attempting to limit peer review reports more strictly to soundness only unless they can ensure that authors clearly understand the value of the model—something that is not the case at present. The current response by OAMJ publishers to this problem of eliminating judgments of novelty, significance, and relevance from Nature title to Scientific Reports may still result in the latter publishing high‐quality articles. Although the proportion of cascade articles published in Scientific Reports  was lower than some other OAMJs, the journal's very large size means this equates to more than 3,000 articles per year. Scientific Reports' high JIF compared with other OAMJs (even those that can cascade from high‐JIF titles) is also likely to derive from other factors, particularly the reputation of the publishers, incentivizing both article submissions, and also citations.One factor that may contribute to a lack of author understanding of OAMJ peer review criteria is cascade. In addressing RQ4 , we found that 47.8% (±1.3%) of mega‐journal articles had previously been submitted elsewhere, a result close to the one reported by Solomon . Although the survey results alone do not explain the rationale of authors who choose to submit articles rejected by traditional journals to mega‐journals, our other work  believing the journal considers importance/significance among its criteria compared with 68.9% (±1.3%) across other OAMJs. It seems that a higher proportion of PeerJ authors understand and support the model it sustains. PeerJ authors also tend to be more satisfied with their experience , although some other OAMJs also show very high rates in this area. Interestingly, although PeerJ has a wide scope covering all of life and health sciences, our previous bibliometric analysis showed that it has a disproportionate number of articles in the areas of ecology and computational biology  , although overall levels of satisfaction of the experience of the production process were high across all titles, there was some variation. Some of this may relate to particular journal requirements, such as that of submitting data—an issue that merits further research. There were also relatively low levels of satisfaction for The variation in responses we observed across different mega‐journals relating to all of our research questions supplements our earlier findings indicating that there is no such thing as a “typical” mega‐journal  OAMJs have proved to be successful regardless of author misunderstandings of the model, if success is judged in terms of levels of willingness of authors to contribute to the journals and levels of satisfaction with the experience. On the other hand, our previous research has demonstrated that many mega‐journal publishers in launching OAMJs were aiming to change the way scientific communication was done (Wakeling, Spezi, Creaser, et al., Although variations in responses associated with different mega‐journals reinforce the notion that such journals represent a heterogeneous group, nonetheless some broad conclusions can be drawn from our study. The increasing number and size of mega‐journal titles demonstrates that the first two of four criteria for defining OAMJs—large scale and broad subject coverage—have been accepted by subdivisions within the academic community, although concerns remain about their relationship with specific disciplinary communities. Similar conclusions apply, albeit with some geographical variations, to their OA nature. However, soundness‐only peer review—arguably the most distinctive and radical feature of OAMJs—is still widely misunderstood in the community. It will be interesting to see when, or even if, this situation will change.Appendix 1: Copy of the questionnaireClick here for additional data file.Appendix 2: Mega‐journals selected for the studyClick here for additional data file.Appendix 3: Journals in sample, and distribution and response ratesClick here for additional data file.Appendix 4: Factors influencing choice of journalClick here for additional data file.


Voluntary peer review is generally provided by researchers as a duty or service to their disciplines. They commit their expertise, knowledge and time freely without expecting rewards or compensation. Peer review can be perceived as a reciprocal mission that aims to safeguard the quality of publications by helping authors improve their manuscripts. While voluntary peer review adds value to research, rewarding the quantity or the volume of peer review is likely to lure academics into providing poor quality peer review. Consequently, the quantity of peer review may increase, but at the expense of quality, which may lead to unintended consequences and might negatively affect the quality of biomedical publications. This paper aims to present evidence that while voluntary peer review may aid researchers, pressurized peer review may create a perverse incentive that negatively affects the integrity of the biomedical research record. We closely examine one of the proposed models for rewarding peer review based on the quantity of peer review reports. This article also argues that peer review should remain a voluntary mission, and should not be prompted by the need to attain tenure or promotion. Trustworthy peer reviewed publications enable clinical practice guidelines to be developed and updated . Even afAmerican Economic Review, which pays 100 US dollars for timely peer review reports, it is not surprising to assume that the monetary value that was not charged (by peers) to publishers to perform peer review is in the range of at least 150 million US dollars, had researchers been paid 100 US dollars per peer review report , was not accompanied by a substantial increase in the rate of publications  free will, and add a layer of pressure. Arguably, pressurized peer reviewers are unlikely to improve the quality of peer review. Early manifestations of the “publish or perish” mandate made publications a mandatory requirement for tenure in many countries (EC Pulmonology and Respiratory Medicine, Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health Care and Journal of Tobacco Stimulated Diseases (The Publons model, which offers academics recognition for their activity in providing peer review, and rewards them for the number of peer review reports, should not ignore the fact that peer review has been and should remain a voluntary task (The pressure to peer review is similar to the pressure to publish, and the latter has led to publication bias and compromised the objectivity and integrity of research (Publons awards the number of papers that have been peer reviewed by displaying the number of verified reviews, the number of reviews in the last six months, and the number of verified editors record for each reviewer. Thus, quantifying peer review activity may be erroneous and unfair to experts in a niche field because they are likely to receive very few invitations to peer review by virtue of the fact that very few articles are published in their narrow field. Conversely, a researcher who is one of few experts in a rather popular field may get more review invitations because there are not many reviewers available in that field.It should be cautioned that the competition between peer reviewers striving to boost their Publons profiles with more and more reports might increase peer review fraud, or dishonesty, or at least compromise the quality of peer review and its products. Altman remarked that the pressure to publish created a temptation to behave dishonestly when “all too often the main reason for a piece of research seems to be to lengthen a researcher’s curriculum vitae” (Pressuring or inducing academics into creating a list of peer review reports raises serious questions about the quality of such peer review and the value that such an action adds to biomedical research. To encourage researchers to participate in efficient peer review, we recommend eliminating sources of pressure, preventing violations of researchers’ rights, protecting vulnerable early career researchers from being pressured or induced into providing non-expert peer review, and encouraging and rewarding quality voluntary peer review (


The China Association for Science and Technology (CAST) and AAAS/Science are proud to be publishing the first batch of articles in Research, the inaugural Science Partner Journal. Research will publish fundamental research in the life and physical sciences as well as important findings or issues in engineering and applied science. The journal will initially publish original research, reviews, and editorials. Topics of particular interest include, but are not limited to, biology and life sciences, micro- and nano-science, artificial intelligence and information science, new energy studies, mechanical science and engineering, environmental science, emerging materials research, and robotics and advanced manufacturing.The goal of Research is to publish high-quality papers on cutting-edge topics and to establish an international platform for academic exchange, collaboration, and innovation. We expect these published papers to make significant impact in the research community. Outside of the pages of this journal, CAST is also planning to organize an annual international conference on topics relevant to Research, first occurring in China and then moving to other countries in future years. With leading experts invited to be keynote speakers, scientists from all over the world will gather together at this conference to disseminate and exchange their new research achievements. Research, led by Professor Tianhong Cui from the University of Minnesota as the international Editor in Chief, was established together with fifty-five experts from ten countries spread across the disciplines that the journal hopes to cover. The editorial board members are all leading experts in their research domain, including Charles Lieber from Harvard University, John A. Rogers and Yonggang Huang from Northwestern University. The Editor in Chief and the editorial board members will be responsible for a high-quality peer review of submitted articles. A group of four managing editors from CAST in Beijing along with individuals from the AAAS/Science Office of Publishing aid in the daily peer review process, production coordination, and marketing efforts for this new journal.The editorial board ofresearch@cast.org.cn if you would like to learn more about becoming a reviewer or being involved in the editorial board.As the product of international collaboration itself, we know that the success of Research will be the result of the global community of scientists who read, cite, and work with this new journal as authors, editors, and reviewers. We hope that you enjoy reading these articles and future content, and consider submitting your paper to the journal. Please also reach out to the journal's Editorial Office at Tianhong Cui


PLOS Medicine team would like to express our appreciation to the Editorial Board members, guest editors, and reviewers who participated in the manuscript assessment process for the journal in 2018.PLOS and the  PLOS Medicine team would like to sincerely thank all of our Editorial Board members, guest editors, and reviewers who participated in the manuscript assessment process for the journal in 2018. Your contributions of time and expertise support your research community, advance scientific progress, and continue to make PLOS Medicine a leader in its field. This past year, PLOS Medicine received the assistance of 75 Editorial Board members, 39 guest editors, and 731 reviewers in evaluating 2,620 manuscripts, which enabled the publication of 170 research articles and 57 magazine pieces (PLOS and the e pieces .PLOS Medicine and Open Science. Thank you all for your work.We’re deeply grateful to everyone whose dedicated efforts support


The academic practices that result in the definition of the authorship of a scientific paper are perpetuated according to the customs or historical vision of those involved. Given the potential and substantial benefits of authorship, the improper and “unethical” inclusion of authors may seem beneficial when compared to the risk of retaliation. In fact, the hierarchy and the desire of those involved in having a work published with advisors and references in the field make such behavior common in the scientific environment. Another problem lies in the definition of the order of authors, as it does not reflect the acknowledgment each one should receive during the publication of results and may simply result from the fact that there are no widely accepted criteria for this definition.According to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) This definition implies that each author should have full knowledge of the part produced and responsibility for the information he or she provided, with the additional ability to define the responsibility of each coauthor of the publication The Consortia Advancing Standards in Research Administration Information (CASRAI), through the initiative entitled Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT), presents 14 attributions that may grant researchers the right of authorship of a scientific paper, namely, research design, collection and formal analysis of data, acquisition of resources, research performance, methodology development, project management, resources, software production, supervision, validation, preparation of visual resources, drafting and review, and conclusion of the written work. It is recommended that all collaborators are listed and that their actions are evaluated according to such roles Presenting the same objective, the initiative of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) is intended to create a conducive environment for ethics in scientific publications. Hence, the committee created the PEST analysis that considers activities in the political, economic, social, and technological fields. The aim is to stimulate the creation of common legislation among countries, implement fundraising that will reduce competition among researchers, and promote debates in the social field through the efficient communication provided by technology Even with these parameters, there are very common situations in the academic environment, such as guest authorship (coauthorship), which occurs when the author is included in the publication without having participated in the execution of the project. Another condition is pressured authorship, or coauthorship, which occurs when the names of individuals are included in every work by members of their research team. Gifted authorship, in turn, is when the individual has a high rank Sucupira platform from the Brazilian Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES), and other processes. Thus, the “irregular” inclusion of authors may also harm the other authors who actually participated in the work, where they have an objective that requires the authorship order.There are also situations in which advisors include their students in their work so that the students are more likely to excel in selection processes, scholarship exams, the Brazilian Law 9610/98 “The co-authorship of the work is attributed to those in whose name, pseudonym, or conventional sign it is used. Paragraph 1. It is not considered a co-author the individual who simply assisted the author in producing the literary, artistic, or scientific work by revising it, updating it, and supervising or directing its editing or presentation by any means.”The legislation pertains to the selection of authors and coauthors of a work, which should be respected at the time of the submission of a particular publication. Thus, the ICMJE criteria Thus, the practice of improper authorship, which is apparently irrelevant, generates injustices The growing need for science generates a greater number of quality articles, and coauthorship is a way to legitimize science and ensure the continuity of the scientist. Scientific partnerships reduce costs and optimize the time and use of human resources while favoring a multicentric and multidisciplinary vision by exchanging experiences and new solutions, which has encouraged a substantial increase in the number of authors per work over the last decade It should be noted that all authors have a legal responsibility regarding the information added to the manuscript The choice of the order of authors is very relevant after the manuscript is prepared. It seems prudent that the first (leading) author is the one with the greatest share in the entire work. From the second author, the order of participation tends to decrease. The senior advisor or researcher is usually the last author to be listed.Petroianu This type of quantitative method, explained prior to the start of the project, could avoid disputes regarding main authorship or the inclusion of coauthors who did not participate effectively in the work.Plagiarism is the action of presenting as one's own work artistic or scientific work that belongs to another. This practice is difficult to diagnose, considering that high textual similarity is usually the result of paraphrasing These practices are very common problems found in the academic world, which has led several institutions to create guidelines to prevent these behaviors. The Scientific Electronic Library Online program (SciELO) The CAPES Some sections such as the methods section are required to reproduce a work, and they may be present in other studies in a similar way, thus representing a similarity and not plagiarism. The CAPES Self-plagiarism is another example of a complicated discussion that is also present in academia. Theoretically, self-plagiarism occurs when authors reuse their own material that is already published without reference to it The Best Practices Guide for Strengthening Ethics in Scientific Publication from SciELO The credibility of scientific information depends on the clarity and transparency with which conflicts of interest are presented According to the ICMJE A great portion of journals provide specific terms for author's statements regarding conflicts of interest. Gollogly & Momen Copyrights include the prerogative to present, disseminate, and distribute a particular material that is protected by authorship determinations When published in peer-reviewed journals or as subscription access articles, the journal requires that the copyright for the article published be transferred to the publisher, with the exception of particular situations. The author retains the rights to the intellectual property developed, patents, and data collected, and only the edited file becomes the property of the journals In practice, the use of copyrighted articles is considered by some an obstacle to the advancement of science because it limits the possibility of reading them to those who have subscriptions or pay for articles on demand Thus, sharing scientific articles, which scientists have done for centuries, has become much easier, allowing studies to quickly cross oceans and continents, reaching destinations that no longer depend on publishers and indexers to be found.Contrary to such copyright breach initiatives, a manifesto was drafted by a coalliance of scientific editors including the American Chemical Society, the American Medical Association, the American Physiological Society, Atlantis Press, BMJ, Brill, Elsevier, Future Science Group, IEEE, IWA Publishing, KeAi Publishing, Oxford University Press, Portland Press , Wiley, Wolters Kluwer, and World Scientific Publishing. This manifesto was accompanied by active internet monitoring and removal requests for texts available on global computer networks In case authors wish to maintain their rights to the article in its final format with guaranteed free access to it, they may also choose a free access publication or open access While some journals work only with open or closed systems, several others allow authors to choose the type they wish to use Thus, the evaluation of the selection criteria of authors should be well founded and performed so that everyone can list their participation in the text and respond consciously to all legal matters the work may entail.


The FASEBJournal made it evident that there was strong and growing demand for this type of publishing among authors and their funders, and that this demand was likely not being met fully by The FASEB Journal's hybrid open access approach. Furthermore, given The FASEB Journal's selectivity based on publishing priority, not all studies will be published, regardless of how well the experiments are designed and conducted. This leaves a number of authors and potential authors seeking to publish multi/transdisciplinary work with FASEB for whom The FASEBJournal may not be the best fit. Finally, as the focus toward reproducibility intensifies, FASEB wanted to provide a venue where scientists can publish reports covering their ability (or inability) to replicate published experiments. Because these reports lack the novelty of new experimentation, they would likely never be published in The FASEBJournal, despite their critical importance to working scientists.Although the idea of starting an open access journal had been discussed for years, the need for it became clear at FASEB's Publications and Communications Committee meeting in March 2016. The increased uptake of open access publishing in 's constituent societies in starting their own open access publications, we planned a new journal under the FASEB brand, with the primary goal of publishing well‐designed, sound science and reproducibility reports that are multi/transdisciplinary, without regard for any perceived citation impact. Doing this is critical to FASEB's mission of supporting the advancement of the biological sciences both in the United States and around the globe. “Publish or perish” is as true today as it was many decades ago, but also has the added pressures of securing diminishing sources for research funding and navigating the ever‐increasing modes of publishing made possible through technology. As someone who started in academia, then moved to commercial publishing, and is now back in academia, I believe that academic, and especially society, publishers have a responsibility to the communities they serve to make the process of publishing research easier, more straightforward, and ultimately more effective. My hope is that in time, FASEB BioAdvances will achieve these lofty goals.Building on the invaluable experience of FASEBFASEB BioAdvances come to fruition from an editor's perspective has been eye‐opening, fulfilling, and a lot of fun. During my career as a researcher, I published papers in scientific journals. When I worked for publishing companies, I was responsible for individual journals, as well as for entire journal programs. I knew how to run journals, keep them on schedule, and manage the “back end” functions. Serving as an editor has been an entirely different experience. From the initial discussions about the possibility of launching an OA journal, to this past June when we first began taking submissions, and now, to the publication of the first issue, I see how launching a publication like FASEB BioAdvances is truly a team effort. I think this first issue is a good example of how FASEB can help the research community communicate its work. I hope you enjoy reading the journal and would encourage you to submit your work to us.On a personal note, I would like to say that seeing


In this paper, we describe open practices and open resources in the field of digital pathology with a specific focus on approaches that ease collaboration in research and education settings. Our review includes open access journals and open peer review, open-source software , and open access collections. We illustrate applications and discuss current limitations and perspectives. Open science paradigm promotes open, reproducible science through the sharing of all processes, data, material, and methods. The underlying philosophy is that everyone's work should improve knowledge by enabling shared resources by all without any barrier. The main pillars of open science are open access (OA) and open peer review (OPR), open-source software development (OSS), open-source hardware (OSH), open data (OD), and open educational resources (OER). OA and OPR can be applied to all forms of published research output . OSS relates to a family of computer tool in which source code (its underlying recipe written using a human-readable programming language) is disclosed. This contrasts with the closed (proprietary) paradigm where each entity (research lab or company) can only rely on their own developments and are not able to study other's works. Similarly, OSH involves the development of physical systems  through the use of publicly shared design information. OD is data  that anyone can access, use, reuse, or distribute. It can be materialized in the form of free access databases as well as free digital file formats (a published specification to describe how information is encoded in a computer file). OER encompasses freely accessible digital documents  that are useful for teaching and learning. In addition to impact on science, medicine, and education, the open science paradigm leads to the development of novel interactions and business models in the industry such as open collaboration and open innovation. Interestingly, the open philosophy also contributes to overcome vendor lock-in situations where a customer using a proprietary product or service cannot easily transition to another technology due to incompatibilities, inefficient processes, or contract constraints.In this Mini-Review paper, we discuss open initiatives that might pave the way to more collaborative digital pathology (DP) in the future.In this section, we briefly list the open practices and resources we are aware of at the time of submission (in early summer 2019) in the field of DP.Journal of Pathology Informatics (http://www.jpathinformatics.org/) is an OA peer-reviewed online journal dedicated to pathology informatics. It publishes all types of papers related to DP, e.g., development and empirical evaluation of computational algorithms; studies and use cases in clinical, research, or education settings; book reviews or literature surveys; scientific conference reports; etc. Articles are distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons license, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms. Interestingly, other scientific journals of wider scope in the field of biomedical research, medicine, or pathology follow the OA principle and accept papers in the field of DP. It includes Diagnostic Pathology  that considers research in surgical and clinical pathology and also focuses on the technological aspects of pathology including virtual microscopy. Authors are the copyright holders of their article, and according to the BioMed Central license agreement they grant to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce, or disseminate their article. Similarly, the multidisciplinary and OA journal Nature Scientific Reports regularly publishes papers in the field of DP . Obviously, our Mini-Review paper in the Computational Pathology special issue of the Pathology section of Frontiers of Medicine  suggests that other OA journals will also provide the opportunity to publish papers in the DP field.The content of an OA journal is open to all, with no access fees. The https://openreview.net/group?id=MICCAI.org/2019/Workshop/COMPAY). Other conferences with a broader scope, such as MIDL  and ICLR  have also published papers with some DP content after an open review evaluation process.OPR is an emerging practice with various alternative review methods that seek to make the peer review process more transparent. Generally, scientific conferences implementing OPR mechanisms are still rather few, and well-known venues for DP  did not follow these principles so far. Notably, the reviews of the latest edition of the MICCAI workshop on Computational Pathology (COMPAY) were organized in a single-blind fashion and were made public along with the final version of the papers (An OSS is a computer tool in which the source code (sets of operations written in plain text according to a computer language) is disclosed. It is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to study, change, and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose. A permissive license allows redistribution with minimal requirements  while a copyleft license stipulates that the same rights have to be preserved in derivative works created later.https://github.com/search?q=digital+pathology). In the following subsections, we list published software tools that have already had some impact or are promising for the field.There is a long tradition of OSS in the bioinformatics and biomedical imaging communities. More than 30 years ago, NIH Image and ImageJ have been pioneers as open tools for the analysis of scientific images . In the https://openslide.org/, permissive license) was initiated at the Carnegie Mellon University. It enables to extract image data from proprietary DP slide scanner formats. Bioformats  is a library developed by the Open Microscopy Environment consortium for reading and writing image data using standardized, open formats. As it was originally designed for low- or medium-spatial resolution microscopy images, in its early days, this library combined with an OMERO server  but that enable the development (by computer scientists) of a wide variety of downstream software. In particular, it includes tools to extract the imaging data from files generated by digital slide scanners, or to convert these into other image formats readable by existing software. The development of Openslide  is a framework for object detection and classification in multi-gigapixel images. HistoQC , CellPrsis.org/ ; copylefsis.org/  used Icythub.io/ ; copylefA web-based application is a program that is accessed over a network connection using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) in a web browser. In such a setting, processing operations  can be initiated by the end-user via the web interface but they are executed on servers .http://camicroscope.org/, permissive license; Microdraw, http://microdraw.pasteur.fr/, copyleft license), to our knowledge, there are only two that also offer advanced features to work collaboratively, such as user and project management, and seamlessly integrated tools for semi-automated image analysis.Although there are several OSS web-based tools for the visualization of WSI  for Automatic Non-rigid Histological Image Registration presents hundreds of different types of histopathology tissue  stained with different dyes and where landmarks have been manually annotated to assess image registration performances.Until recently, technical challenges due to the large amounts of imaging data generated by slide scanners made it difficult to easily share WSI between remote labs. As a consequence, large data sharing initiatives are still rather few although very promising for both education and research purposes. In the recent years, datasets of significant sizes have been published in the context of image analysis challenges or as companion of research papers. The Camelyon challenge  used Gohttps://cancer.digitalslidearchive.net/) hosts tens of thousands of WSIs from The Cancer Genome Atlas. The Image Data Repository [(https://idr.openmicroscopy.org/tissue/] currently hosts two DP imaging collections. The Cytomine Open Data Collection (https://cytomine.coop/collection) currently offers tens of high-quality WSI of animal and human histology sections originally used in education settings (http://www.histology.be), with an associated license for each image. The University of Leeds Virtual Pathology Project  hosts more than 385K digital slides, but these are the property of the University of Leeds and software used to visualize them are not OSS.Other data collections are accessible more easily for end-users through web viewing applications. The Cancer Slide Digital Archive . Cytomine web application was used by researchers in various fields including machine/deep learning (https://uliege.cytomine.org/#publications). Cytomine was also used in education settings by more than 15,000 users from 85 countries (including developing countries), through a massive open online course . While these kinds of initiatives ease the use of open tools, further efforts should be undertaken to spread their use, particularly in developing countries.Overall, these tools are being increasingly used in ongoing international research projects worldwide. This broad community of users allows continuous improvement of OSS provided that financial means are set up to guarantee their sustainability beyond the research projects that helped to initiate their development. In order to translate these software tools into production environments , it is required to provide services  and to rely on pragmatic business development models as these additional efforts could hardly be provided by original authors of these tools. For example, an open, not-for-profit, cooperative company was founded to improve Cytomine software sustainability , should be encouraged. In addition, continuous efforts should aim at integrating latest libraries and image analysis packages into collaborative OSS platform presented herein to avoid duplication of efforts. These collaborative software tools might also be further enhanced to disseminate data collections with detailed annotations and metadata and therefore enable the organization of high-impact studies or challenges. Indeed, we believe open and collaborative principles should be further followed to accelerate scientific progress and hence societal impact. In our opinion, individualist practices  should be surpassed. Overall, open initiatives highlighted in this paper might pave the way to more collaborative DP in the future.Overall, not all open initiatives have been as successful as we have just presented it. For example, some software packages have hardly been used beyond the laboratory in which they were developed. We believe future community efforts should be undertaken to maximize their reusability. Building a comprehensive, searchable, database of existing tools, such as Bioimage Informatics Search Engine .


Many early-career researchers are involved in the peer review of manuscripts for scientific journals, typically under the guidance of or jointly with their advisor, but most of the evidence about this activity is anecdotal. Here we report the results of a literature review and a survey of researchers, with an emphasis on co-reviewing and 'ghostwriting'. The literature review identified 36 articles that addressed the involvement of early-career researchers in peer review, most of them about early-career researchers and their advisors co-reviewing manuscripts for the purposes of training: none of them addressed the topic of ghostwriting in detail. About three quarters of the respondents to the survey had co-reviewed a manuscript. Most respondents believe co-reviewing to be a beneficial (95%) and ethical (73%) form of training in peer review. About half of the respondents have ghostwritten a peer review report, despite 81% responding that ghostwriting is unethical and 82% agreeing that identifying co-reviewers to the journal is valuable. Peer review would benefit from changes in both journal policies and lab practices that encourage mentored co-review and discourage ghostwriting. The peer review of manuscripts submitted to scientific journals is widely viewed as fundamental to efforts to maintain the integrity of the scientific literature . Early-cWe conducted a literature search and a survey to explore the involvement of ECRs in peer review more thoroughly and, in particular, to determine the prevalence of both co-reviewing  and 'ghostwriting' . Please see prisma-statement.org; We performed a comprehensive review of the peer-reviewed literature to identify any previous studies on the role that ECRs play in peer review, particularly with respect to ghostwriting. Exhaustive search terms that combined any synonyms of "early-career researcher" and “peer review” were used per evidenced-based guidelines for systematic reviews . Respondents are also of the view that ghostwriting peer review reports is unethical: 83% disagree with the statement that “The only person who should be named on a peer review report is the invited reviewer, regardless of who carried out the review”; 81% disagree with the statement that “Ghostwriting a peer-review report for your PI is an ethically sound scientific practice”; and 77% disagree with the statement that “It is ethical for the invited reviewer (e.g. PI) to submit a peer review report to an editor without providing the names of all individuals who have contributed ideas and/or text to the report” (The Office of Research Integrity (ORI), which oversees research funded by the US Public Health Service, states that “academic or professional ghost authorship in the sciences is ethically unacceptable”  asking all respondents, regardless of peer review experience, to surmise why someone might withhold the name of a co-reviewer ; ii) askThe main perceived barrier to naming co-reviewers was a lack of a physical mechanism to supply the name to the journal (e.g. a textbox for co-review names), with 73% of respondents selecting this as an option . CulturaIn contrast, when we asked “Consider cases where you contributed to a peer review report and you know your name was NOT provided to the editorial staff. When discussing this with your PI, what reason did they give to exclude you as a co-reviewer?” 73% of respondents reported that they had not discussed this with their PI . This isWe also performed preliminary analyses by gender, field, citizenship and race/ethnicity, but any differences we observed were small or not statistically significant, and some demographic subsets were too small for analysis. We are considering how to share these data more completely.Journal peer review is an important part of scholarship. As such, ECR training and authorship on peer review reports deserves thoughtful consideration to ensure the integrity of the peer review process. Our data reveal that involving ECRs in peer review is an academic norm, with about three-quarters of our survey population having contributed significantly to a peer review report when they were not the invited reviewer (co-reviewed), and about half having done so without being named to the journal editorial staff (ghostwritten). These high frequencies contrast with journal policies and cultural expectations that only the invited reviewer engages in the peer review of a manuscript. They also fly in the face of community values when about four-fifths of those surveyed agree that ghostwriting is unethical. What drives these differences between community values and experience?whether or not named credit is given to the co-reviewer, and excluding co-reviewer names from peer review reports can and does happen whether or not the co-reviewer has experienced quality training in the process. Even as we sought to collect data that would disentangle these two processes, the rationales for ghostwriting were often conflated with the rationales for co-reviewing. For example, when we asked respondents specifically for the reason(s) their PI gave them for excluding their names on a peer review report, many wrote responses such as "I was told this is how one gets to train to review papers..."  and beneficial training exercise (95% agree), explaining why co-reviewing is the second most commonly reported source of training in peer review. These data should be weighed heavily when considering journal policies, since any policy that prevents co-reviewing by ECRs would remove a common and valuable training exercise in peer review. We support the adoption of policies that specifically embrace ECR co-review as training . The Transpose project is also compiling a crowd-sourced database of journal policies on peer review, co-reviewing and preprinting .“ECR training” is not a sufficient justification for co-reviewing for the half of survey respondents who have written a peer review report without any interaction with their PIs. In these cases, co-reviewing devolves into a delegation of scholarly labor that benefits the invited reviewer, often an overburdened PI in a hypercompetitive research environment . This enSurvey data suggest that training in peer review is determined by a small number of individual experiences outside of evidence-based training structures and community oversight. “Receiving reviews on my own papers” only gives a limited number of examples of how others review and is a passive form of learning that lacks individualized or iterative feedback from a mentor. Since it is a common complaint that reviews are overly critical , it seemThese results highlight an area of opportunity to improve and standardize training in peer review of manuscripts as a critical scholarly skill (Appendix 1). Since the top two reported forms of training involve PIs either as manuscript reviewers or ECR mentors, interventions to ensure PIs have received training in peer review and in communicating this skill to ECRs may also be appropriate. A lack of “training the trainers” was cited as a main reason for why pairing experts with new peer reviewers failed to improve review quality in one of the few randomized controlled trials of this practice . Given tEven in the best case scenario for co-reviewing, when training is taking place and is effective, its benefits can still be confounded by ethical lapses such as ghostwriting. The most common explanation for ghostwriting was that authorship was simply not discussed , a concePower imbalances may prevent an ECR from feeling able or willing to initiate this conversation with their PI. 39% of respondents think that ghostwriting occurs because "some ECRs may not be comfortable asking for co-authorship" . As one Ghostwriting is also driven by a cultural expectation that co-reviewers do not deserve named credit to the journal regardless of how much they contribute. 43% of ghostwriting experiences were explained by “co-authorship is for papers, not for peer review reports” or “intellectual contribution not deemed sufficient.” 28% of respondents surmise that ghostwriting occurs due to "a belief that only the invited reviewer deserves authorship, even when others contribute ideas and/or text to the review report." These rationales for ghostwriting contradict community opinion about whether this should be the case, with 83% disagreeing that “the only person who should be named on a peer review report is the invited reviewer, regardless of who carried out the review” and 74% agreeing that “anyone that contributes ideas and/or text to the review report should be included as a co-author on the review.” Ghostwriting could therefore be reduced if cultural expectations were shifted to reflect consensus opinion that co-reviewers deserve to be named to the journal.Many journals have policies that prevent invited reviewers from sharing manuscripts with anyone else and/or policies that prevent ECRs from serving as reviewers or co-reviewers without prior permission from the editor . These pThe naming of co-reviewers would be facilitated by, for example, a mandatory text-box on the page that reviewers use to submit their review: this page could also contain language asking for co-reviewers be listed. 73% of respondents surmise that ghostwriting occurs because of a lack of such a mechanism. However, when asked to reflect on their own experiences, only 4% of ghostwriters gave this as a reason . Even with this consideration, these data reveal a difference between the cultural perception of this barrier (73%) and actual experience (4% or more), so any practical solutions (such as adding a text-box) must be accompanied by changes that make it clear that journals expect all co-reviewers to be named.It is in the best interests of journals to provide mechanisms for ECR co-reviewers to be easily named . If a joEarly-Career Advisory Group at eLife).Two hypotheses for why ghostwriting is commonplace were refuted by our data. 82% of respondents disagree that there is no benefit in naming co-reviewers. Co-reviewers, especially ECRs, may value having their name provided to the journal for many reasons, including the ability to be “known” to scientific editors and potential colleagues; the ability to have their work acknowledged by a third party (e.g. Publons) for career advancement; and/or the ability to demonstrate eligibility for residency or visas. ECRs agree more strongly than PIs that there is value in receiving credit or being known to the journal editorial staff as a co-reviewer , perhaps87% of respondents disagree that ghostwriting occurs because researchers see value in withholding co-reviewer names, perhaps because of a perception that adding co-reviewer names diminishes the review by providing evidence that someone other than the invited reviewer contributed. These data align with results of an ongoing experiment in co-reviewing at the Elsevier journals, in which editors did not rate the co-reviewed reports as low quality, and more than half were considering co-reviewers to serve as invited reviewers on future manuscripts . ResearcGhostwriting undermines the integrity of peer review. It is pervasive because many see it as an obligatory feature of peer review training or a necessary delegation of labor. Some don’t think to discuss or feel able to discuss authorship on peer review reports. Others are deterred by vague journal policies that do not reflect the status quo – that involving ECRs as co-reviewers is common and considered valuable and ethical. To encourage naming co-reviewers to the editors, journals must clarify their expectations and reporting mechanisms for the participation of ECRs in peer review. These logistical changes should be coupled with an adjustment of cultural expectations for co-review as a training exercise and not exploitation. At a minimum, invited reviewers should discuss with co-reviewers how credit will be given for peer review work. Ideally, they should also ensure that co-review involves feedback so that it is effective training. Changing journal policies and cultural expectations to recognize and value the work of ECRs will benefit the peer review system and all of its constituents.The following procedures were used to perform a systematic review of the peer-reviewed literature for any research on the topic of ECR participation in manuscript peer review. These procedures were developed under the guidance of a professional librarian (author SO) and were based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) criteria . The datCollected articles underwent two rounds of relevance screening. In the initial round, article titles and abstracts were screened independently by two study authors (JG and GM). Both authors used the same inclusion criteria to sort search results into “relevant,” “maybe relevant,” and “not relevant” categories. The criteria for article inclusion were: written in English, published in a peer-reviewed journal, mention of ECRs, and mention of peer reviews of manuscripts. Any article that did not meet the inclusion criteria above was excluded as well as database hits for conference proceedings and dissertations.118 unique articles remained in the “relevant” and/or “maybe relevant” categories at this stage of screening . ArticleWe designed a survey to evaluate the peer review experiences of researchers with a specific focus on ghostwriting of peer review reports. The survey was verified by the Mount Holyoke Institutional Review Board as Exempt from human subjects research according to 45CFR46.101(b)(2): Anonymous Surveys - No Risk on 08/21/2018. All survey respondents provided their informed consent prior to participating in the survey. The survey comprised 16 questions presented to participants in the following fixed order:6 demographic questions that collected data on their professional status  and personal information ;7 questions that collected data about their experience participating in the peer review of manuscripts for publication in a journal: these questions included 2 questions about their experience with independent reviewing vs. co-reviewing; 4 questions about receiving credit for reviewing activities; and 1 question about whether and how respondents received training in peer reviewStrongly Disagree; Slightly Disagree; No Opinion; Slightly Agree; Strongly Agree) with 11 statements about the ethics and value of co-reviewing and ghostwriting; 1 question asking their opinion about why ghostwriting as a practice may occur; and 1 exploratory future direction question asking if their opinions would change if the names of peer-reviewers were made publically available (“open peer review”).3 questions that collected data about their opinions about co-reviewing and ghostwriting as practices, regardless of whether they had personal experience with these practices: these questions included 1 question about their degree of agreement on a 5-point Likert scale . We therefore attempted to create a “negative control” comparison group of participants who received our survey from channels independent of Future of Research. We created a separate survey form asking identical questions and personally asked 25+ PIs known to the authors, as well as organizational collectives of PIs, to distribute this survey link to their own networks . Both surveys were live during the same month-long time period; however, the PI-distributed survey gathered only 12 responses and so was not sufficient to be used in the analyses presented here. Since the goal of the second, PI-distributed survey was to be independently distributed outside of our efforts, we are not able to determine whether it garnered so few responses because of a lack of genuine distribution or because the populations it reached were not motivated to participate in the survey. Therefore any conclusions drawn from this study reflect the 498 experiences and perspectives of those individuals so moved to participate in the survey distributed by Future of Research and our results should be considered in this context. One possible future direction for this study is to reopen the survey in conjunction with publication of this manuscript in an effort to broaden and diversify the sampled population, to compare subsequent rounds of responses to our initial 498 responses, and to improve clarity on survey questions (Appendix 2).Survey data were analyzed using Microsoft Excel, Version 16 and IBM SPSS Statistics for Macintosh, Version 25 . Whenever statistical analyses were used, the exact tests and p values are reported in the appropriate figure legend and/or results text. A p value of less than 0.05 was considered significant. In the interests of transparency, eLife includes the editorial decision letter and accompanying author responses. A lightly edited version of the letter sent to the authors after peer review is shown, indicating the most substantive concerns; minor comments are not usually included.Thank you for submitting your article "Co-reviewing and ghostwriting by early career researchers in the peer review of manuscripts" for consideration by eLife. Your article has been reviewed by 3 peer reviewers, and the evaluation has been overseen by myself (Emma Pewsey) as Reviewing Editor and Peter Rodgers, the eLife Features Editor. The following individuals involved in review of your submission have agreed to reveal their identity: Blanca Rodríguez-Bravo (Reviewer #1); Sarvenaz Sarabipour (Reviewer #2); Francisco Grimaldo (Reviewer #3).The reviewers have discussed the reviews with one another and I have drafted this decision to help you prepare a revised submission. We hope you will be able to submit the revised version within two months.-----SUMMARYBy surveying 489 researchers, the authors show that co-reviewing performed by ECRs when their PI is invited to review manuscripts is the norm and that ghostwriting  is common despite being deemed unethical by the majority of survey respondents. This is a timely study, and the manuscript is solid: the objectives of the study are clear, the methodology is explained conveniently with the help of the supplementary materials that are provided, and the discussion is broad and relevant.ESSENTIAL REVISIONS1. Please state if the responses to any of the questions have been analysed by gender, field (life sciences etc.), citizenship and race/ethnicity/URM of the participants. If so, please discuss any differences that can be observed.2. Figure 3: From the survey data, PIs and journal clubs are the two most important sources of reviewer training. It is therefore worth noting in the manuscript that PIs should take this career development training and mentoring more seriously. You could potentially also mention that PREReview (https://www.authorea.com/inst/14743-prereview) and preprint journal club reviews can complement PI mentorship and help train and prepare ECRs for independent and co-reviewer roles.3. Lines 228-231: "In 3 of 11 statements, ECRs felt significantly more strongly than PIs but still shared the same valance ". Please clarify whether any significant differences were found in the options of ECRs and PIs for the other 8 statements.4. Line 232: Please explain why you chose to include a 'no opinion' option when asking participants how strongly they agreed with the statements. Is this a necessary option for future surveys of this kind?5. In the discussion section, please discuss whether there is a way to incentivize journals to provide mechanisms for PIs to acknowledge the contributions of ECRs to reviews.6. The discussion and conclusions advocate for a cultural shift, among others, but it would be nice to also discuss the change of mind that affects ECRs when they become PIs in such a hypercompetitive environment. Are there new incentives that could be introduced to encourage PIs to name their ECR co-reviewers?7. Figure 7: Please ensure that each reason given in this graph is addressed in the "Discussion" of the manuscript and offer potential practical solutions for each to the community. For instance, in response to the statement that "73% of respondents reported that they had not discussed being credited for co-reviewing with their PIs" (line 269), you could mentions that better mentoring practices help overcome such miscommunication.OPTIONAL SUGGESTIONSa. You may wish to consult the results of the project "Early Career Researchers the Harbingers of Change?" (http://ciber-research.eu/harbingers.html), in particular the publication focused on peer review: Blanca Rodríguez-Bravo, David Nicholas, Eti Herman, Chérifa Boukacem-Zeghmouri, Anthony Watkinson, Jie Xu, Abdullah Abrizah, Marzena Świgoń Peer review: The experience and views of early career researchers Learned Publishing, 30(4), pp.269-277.One of the recommendations of the article is that journals should acknowledge that peer review is often performed by co-reviewers, and facilitate it for training purposes, since in this way the principal investigators will have no excuse for not giving credit to their collaborators.b. You may wish to discuss ways of reducing the need for co-reviewing. For example, starting a database of ECR reviewers can help train potential reviewers and ensure a productive peer review process. Recommending this list in the manuscript to journals/associate editors may help to practically address ECR ghost reviewing by contacting ECRs directly and acknowledging their expertise. An example of such a list is: https://ecrlife.org/2018/03/02/boosting-ecr-involvement-in-peer-review/ We repeat the reviewers’ points here in italic, and include our replies point by point, as well as a description of the changes made, in Roman.ESSENTIAL REVISIONS1. Please state if the responses to any of the questions have been analysed by gender, field (life sciences etc.), citizenship and race/ethnicity/URM of the participants. If so, please discuss any differences that can be observed.In addition to the analysis by career stage described in the paper (ECRs vs PIs), we also performed preliminary analyses by gender, field, citizenship and race/ethnicity of the participants because we were also very interested in these comparisons. However, there were no striking conclusions to be drawn from these demographic analyses: differences were not statistically significant nor of great magnitude and some demographic subsets (eg. U.S. domestic people of color in the life sciences) were underpowered with small n values. To report these analyses thoroughly without cherry picking would significantly increase the length of an already long manuscript. Early drafts of our preprint included some of these descriptions of demographic data and were flagged by colleagues as tangential and distracting. We are considering how to share these negative data more completely, e.g. in a preprint or blogpost, and believe they are beyond the scope of this manuscript. We hope the reviewers find this reasonable and acceptable.2. Figure 3: From the survey data, PIs and journal clubs are the two most important sources of reviewer training. It is therefore worth noting in the manuscript that PIs should take this career development training and mentoring more seriously. You could potentially also mention that PREReview (www.authorea.com/inst/14743-prereview) and preprint journal club reviews can complement PI mentorship and help train and prepare ECRs for independent and co-reviewer roles.We completely agree with the reviewers’ point that PIs must take this training responsibility more seriously - thank you! We also concur that gaining review experience through preprint (or regular) journals clubs is an important complement to PIs’ mentorship. Note that preprint journal clubs were already mentioned briefly in Supplementary File 3: Examples of Formalized Training in Peer Review, citing Avasthi et al. 2018. This section also references a template for how to integrate preprint journal clubs into the graduate classroom provided by Dr. Needhi Bhalla at the University of California Santa Cruz that is included in our preprint.We added new language on line 297 to better highlight our recommendations for training in peer review, and in particular the role that PIs and journal clubs serve:https://www.authorea.com/inst/14743-prereview). Since these ad hoc reviewing experiences with PIs and journal clubs may vary in their availability and quality, all ECRs should be offered standardized, evidence-based training in peer review. For example, peer review courses that are compulsory and ubiquitous in graduate schools would ensure that all PhD-holders are appropriately trained to perform constructive peer review.”“Given their key role as the main source of training in peer review, it is important that PIs make deliberate efforts to teach their trainees this skill and provide feedback on ECRs’ work. Mentorship from PIs may be complemented with, but not replaced by, journal clubs where ECRs gain experience in reviewing published manuscripts or preprints . If a respondent has no opinion on a topic but is not offered a “no opinion” option in the survey, they would either have to a) choose an inauthentic opinion from the survey choices or b) leave the question blank. Choosing an opinion even when one has none (a forced choice) would introduce noise into the survey results. Leaving the question blank would create a missing data point. A missing data point would not be sufficient for us to interpret it as “no opinion” since there are other reasons why a question might be skipped .We included a “no opinion” option in our survey to be inclusive of the reality that respondents may feel neutrally about certain aspects of co-reviewing and ghostwriting. We wanted our dataset to be able to capture that indifference, should it exist, as much as we wanted to know whether respondents’ agreed or disagreed. For example, we hypothesized that PIs’ indifference about the value of naming co-reviewers might cause them to omit co-reviewer names. Evidence in support of that hypothesis is described at line 410 of the manuscript:“ECRs agree more strongly than PIs that there is value in receiving credit or being known to the journal editorial staff as a co-reviewer (Table 3), perhaps because invited reviewers are already known as experts in their field. In the words of one write-in response: “PI surprised I would be interested in being acknowledged, and seemed like too much trouble to acknowledge my contribution. There was no box in the online form to declare it.” PIs’ ambivalence for due credit for co-reviewers likely derives from a position of relative privilege. When people of privilege are the only participants in decision-making , they may create policies that fail to consider differing values of less privileged members of the community, like ECRs.”Examples of research on the utility of the midpoint “no opinion” option:· Chyung, S. Y., Roberts, K., Swanson, I., & Hankinson, A. Evidence-based survey design: The use of a midpoint on the Likert scale. Performance Improvement Journal. 2017; 56(10).· Kulas JT, Stachowski AA. Middle category endorsement in odd-numbered Likert response scales: associated item characteristics, cognitive demands, and preferred meanings. J. Res. Pers. 2009;43:489–493.· Nadler, J. T., Weston, R., & Voyles, E. C. Stuck in the middle: The use and interpretation of mid-points in items on questionnaires. The Journal of General Psychology. 2015; 142(2), 71-89.5. In the discussion section, please discuss whether there is a way to incentivize journals to provide mechanisms for PIs to acknowledge the contributions of ECRs to reviews.We strongly agree with the reviewers that systematic change will require thoughtful reconsideration of the current incentives for journals, PIs, etc. To this effect, we have added the following text at line 393 of the manuscript:https://ecrlife.org/2018/03/02/boosting-ecr-involvement-in-peer-review). Ultimately, the burden of proof for ethical behavior falls on journals who are the managers of the peer review process. The status quo where ghostwriting abounds and is widely considered unethical is a strong disincentive for maintaining current policies.”“It is in journals’ best interest to provide mechanisms for ECR co-reviewers to be easily named, as described recently by an Elsevier editor . Editors take care to assign appropriate reviewers that lack conflicts of interest, an effort that is stymied by ghostwriting. Editors may also see an increase in accepted invitations to review once PIs feel free to share the burden of reviewing with their trainees without ethical concerns. Journals would also benefit from enlarged reviewer pools by including previous ECR co-reviewers and/or consulting existing lists of ECR reviewers  from personal opinions. We plan to share our recommendations for policy changes in a companion opinion article, currently in preparation, that draws on the data reported here. We are happy to provide these reviewers with a draft of that opinion manuscript should they wish to see it.6. The discussion and conclusions advocate for a cultural shift, among others, but it would be nice to also discuss the change of mind that affects ECRs when they become PIs in such a hypercompetitive environment. Are there new incentives that could be introduced to encourage PIs to name their ECR co-reviewers?should be done. Junior/pre-tenure PIs in particular may hesitate to do anything differently for fear it might reflect poorly upon them during their own tenure evaluation.We don’t interpret these data to mean that ECRs change their minds on these issues when they become PIs. Instead, it seems as though PIs simply re-create their own experiences because that is “how it is done” (see Table 5). So if someone was not named to the journal when they were an ECR co-reviewer, then they do not name their own trainees as co-reviewers once they become a PI, even if they think that is how it In our opinion, the best way to incentivize PIs to do something is to make it a requirement of grant funding or tenure. In general, mentorship activities are not well accounted for in these evaluation processes and ought to be. For example, perhaps PIs who pay ECR salaries from grant budgets should demonstrate in grant progress reports how those ECRs are being trained, which might include a list of which trainees were listed as co-reviewers by journals or Publons.We added this text to line 333 of the manuscript: “PIs could be further incentivized to name ECR co-reviewers by accounting for this practice in PIs’ evaluation for grant funding or tenure. For example, perhaps PIs who pay trainees’ salaries from grant budgets should demonstrate in grant progress reports how those ECRs are being trained, which might include a list of which trainees were listed as co-reviewers.”https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-06-13/the-u-s-is-purging-chinese-americans-from-top-cancer-research).Journals have the power to make naming co-reviewers so easy and obvious during the peer review report submission process that it may not require further incentivization for the PI. In other words, we don’t think that a carrot needs to be added to the system, but rather the sticks (barriers to good behavior) need to be removed. If journals make naming co-reviewers a clear, standard expectation of all invited reviewers, then it seems unlikely that a PI would actively avoid naming a co-reviewer. In those rare cases, perhaps journals could include a whistleblower hotline for a ghostwriter to alert the journal in cases where names were intentionally and maliciously withheld. A particularly strong disincentive to hiding ECR contributions is that this has been used as a pretext to dismiss faculty where ECRs have been shown confidential grant applications to assist with reviews , you could mentions that better mentoring practices help overcome such miscommunication.We have made sure that all of the possible responses in  now Figure 6 are discussed with possible solutions (noted by “→” below) on the following pages:No practical mechanism pg 17“A lack of a mechanism (such as a text box), with language demonstrating expectations that co-reviewers be listed) to include this information in the peer review report submission process.”→ add textbox along with clear language upon submission of the peer review report that invited reviewers are expected to name co-reviewers or acknowledge the review was only performed by the invited reviewerProhibitive journal policies pg 16“A belief that reviews should only be done by the invited reviewer, and not by, or with assistance from anyone else.”“A belief that including co-author information would demonstrate that the PI breached the confidentiality of the manuscript.“→ remove or reform current prior permissions/confidentiality policiesCo-reviewers don’t deserve authorship: pg. 15“A belief that only the invited reviewer deserves authorship, even when others contribute ideas and/or text to the review report.”“A belief that there is no strong ethical reason to add co-authors names.”→ journals and PIs should realize that respondents think that co-reviewers do deserve authorship and adjust their policies/behaviors to reflect this by routinely naming all co-reviewersPower dynamics pg 15“Some ECRs may not be comfortable asking for co-authorship.”→ PIs should initiate these discussionsProtectionism pg 19“Some co-reviewers want to be able to write critical reviews anonymously.”“A belief that keeping ECR names off of peer review protects ECRs during a vulnerable time in their career.”→ Not a major driver of ghostwriting, no changes neededDenialism and/or ignorance pg. Pg 19“A belief that ghostwriting does not occur: PIs are the only people that contribute to peer review reports.”“A belief that ghostwriting does not occur: everyone always provides the names of all contributing authors to the editorial office.”→ Not a major driver of ghostwriting, no changes neededand better mentoring practices will help overcome such miscommunication.”The data referenced by the reviewers’ comment above from line 269  is from Table 4 and we have added the point about mentorship to the discussion of that table at line 332: “If ghostwriting arises from PIs and ECRs simply not thinking to include co-reviewer names vs. intentional withholding of names, then building awareness should encourage more conversation about this issue OPTIONAL SUGGESTIONShttp://ciber-research.eu/harbingers.html), in particular the publication focused on peer review: Blanca Rodríguez-Bravo, David Nicholas, Eti Herman, Chérifa Boukacem-Zeghmouri, Anthony Watkinson, Jie Xu, Abdullah Abrizah, Marzena Świgoń Peer review: The experience and views of early career researchers Learned Publishing, 30(4), pp.269-277. One of the recommendations of the article is that journals should acknowledge that peer review is often performed by co-reviewers, and facilitate it for training purposes, since in this way the principal investigators will have no excuse for not giving credit to their collaborators.a. You may wish to consult the results of the project "Early Career Researchers the Harbingers of Change?" .”https://ecrlife.org/2018/03/02/boosting-ecr-involvement-in-peer-review/b. You may wish to discuss ways of reducing the need for co-reviewing. For example, starting a database of ECR reviewers can help train potential reviewers and ensure a productive peer review process. Recommending this list in the manuscript to journals/associate editors may help to practically address ECR ghost reviewing by contacting ECRs directly and acknowledging their expertise. An example of such a list is: https://ecrlife.org/2018/03/02/boosting-ecr-involvement-in-peer-review).”We have incorporated this into the response to point #5 above, now on line 397 of the manuscript. “Journals would also benefit from enlarged reviewer pools by including previous ECR co-reviewers and/or consulting existing lists of ECR reviewers AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS- author contributions text has been removed from the manuscript. There is a still a short section about financial disclosures.BOXES- converted all Boxes in into tables- removed the top title bar from each- reordered tables to reflect the order of first mention in manuscript textFIGURES- Combined old Figures 4&5 into new Figure 4A and 4B- Added ratios to figure legend for new Figure 4- Renumbered remaining figures- Added requested text/ratios to Figure 1 legendSUPPLEMENTAL FILES- new Supplemental Files 1-3 created as requested- formerly Supplemental Figure 1 (flow chart of literature review) changed to Figure 1 Supplement, as requestedSOURCE DATA- deidentified source data provided for Figure 1 (demographics) and Figure 5