Leishmania major, Trypanosoma brucei and Trypanosoma cruzi has come the perception of an opportunity to pause, survey and reflect upon the current state of research for these organisms. To consider the shape of things to come and, in particular, how best to modernize future studies by imbuing them with insights mined from the huge genomic and post-genomic datasets now available. Into this zeitgeist a number of books have already been launched starting before the genome publication with useful texts such as Melville's " Parasite Genomic Protocols" in 2004 and then subsequently Barry's "Trypanosomes: After the Genome" last year and perhaps a little more tangentially Olson and Bhattacharya's "The Genomics and Evolution of Microbial Eukaryotes " in 2006.With the recent publication of complete genome sequences for Leishmania in the past few years. It does have a minor degree of overlap with the first, edited by Farrell in 2002, which was simply entitled "Leishmania" and was part of the "World Class Parasites Series". This somewhat weightier, stand-alone tome is updated and is a more unabashedly technical treatise than the first. The work is aimed as a reference for modern parasitologists working in Leishmania research and in allied fields. It will undoubtedly be a mandatory text for PhD students in contributing and affiliated laboratories. Indeed, the editors have done well in securing high quality contributions from most of the top leishmaniasis research laboratories in the world. The composition of the text is essentially an expert set of contemporary reviews which give a snapshot of research as it stands now, shortly after completion of the Leishmania genome. Many of the reviews have annotated large data sets into comprehensive tables and information-rich diagrams, which confirm its utility as a reference text and to a degree justifies its publication in book format and inclusion in medical reference libraries and collections. Indeed, these tables provide useful detail on everything from the enzymes of Leishmania's peculiar metabolic pathways, to current vaccine candidates, to proteins implicated in drug resistance, to those with potential roles in vector interaction. The book itself is available as a modestly priced hardback. The cover art and finish is attractive but the content is black and white apart from two appendixed colour plates and the text is crowded into a two-column format which reduces its readability.This is the second edited text devoted to Parasites and Vectors seems a reasonable place to raise the issue of the future of such texts. Leishmaniasis is considered a neglected disease and its major research funders such as the Wellcome Trust and the NIH are increasingly demanding that research funded by them is published in open access forums. Books such as this one remain an exception. This raises the issue of whether, in an age of open access, an alternative such as a "guest edited" special issue of an open access journal would be a better publishing option for such reviews. The benefits to authors are substantial in that they can increase the impact, influence and circulation of their articles, extending their reach worldwide to wherever the internet is available and particularly into the countries where the diseases are endemic. Further, and contrary to popular belief, electronic open access publication almost certainly extends the shelf-life of the articles, as print runs for such books tend to be of relatively short duration. I believe that the time for publishing reviews in book format is drawing to a close. I would, therefore, call on those who are considering compiling themed reviews in parasitology to work with us at Parasites and Vectors to provide suitable electronic, open access alternatives.As an open access journal, Parasites & Vectors.The author declares that he is a member of the Advisory Board of


Journal of Experimental and Clinical Cancer Research, the corresponding author has informed the journal that this article had been accepted and previously published by Acupuncture and Electro-therapies Research [Journal of Experimental and Clinical Cancer Research. The authors apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused to the editorial staff and readers.Following the publication of this article  in JournResearch . Since i


Neural Development was launched a year ago by BioMed Central. The Editors-in-Chief and the Publishing Editor for BioMed Central, Nandita Quaderi, hoped to fill a vacant niche in journal coverage and thereby provide a vehicle for outstanding work in the field. At the same time we wanted to take full advantage of the web-based, open-access publishing expertise of BioMed Central. As we celebrate our first birthday, we take this opportunity to reflect on our progress to date.Neural Development is off to an excellent start, with an increasing number of papers being published each month and a quick turnaround. It is gratifying to see that work published in Neural Development covers the breadth of the field and comes from labs around the world. Articles range from molecular and cellular studies of neurogenesis and neuronal polarization from the groups of Chris Doe [ND site alone. This paper also won the BioMed Central Research Award for Biology in 2007. Also highly accessed are papers from the groups of Angela Giangrande [hris Doe , Gordon hris Doe  and Carohris Doe , throughhris Doe  and motohris Doe , to netwhris Doe  and Alaihris Doe . By virthris Doe  on polarangrande , Andreasangrande  and Ahmeangrande .the journal for the field." It provides the burgeoning population of developmental neurobiologists with exactly what they have wanted for some time – a journal dedicated to their branch of neuroscience, with an editorial board of experts from across the full breadth of the field, and rapid publication. In addition, open access means particularly high visibility for publications, as the full text is instantly available to anyone with access to a computer. Indeed, open access via the internet has enabled unprecedented availability for scientific work, with the widest possible distribution and readership of an article. This is in the best interests of not only the reader and the author, but also the latter's institute and the funding body. Playing to the strengths of on-line publication, we can also embed clickable movies within an article, a feature already used by a number of our authors. Students and postdocs will also find it useful that our on-line software makes it possible for every article to be a "cover article".That there was a need for this journal is shown by its becoming firmly established as a must-read within the community. For example, we heard much enthusiasm and strong support for the journal at this year's meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. As one of our colleagues put it, "this is Neural Development has now joined the Neuroscience Peer Review Consortium (NPRC). This new, experimental programme is intended to shortcut the all-too-frequent and all-too-painful process in which perfectly good papers are viewed as inappropriate for one journal, then need to be resubmitted and re-reviewed elsewhere, often with only minor modifications. The NPRC allows a paper found unsuitable for one journal to be passed, together with its referee reports, to another journal in the consortium. Of course it is entirely up to authors to decide whether to use NPRC and, if they do choose it, to decide where the paper should be redirected. Referees would also need to consent to having their comments passed on, and editors would still be free to select other referees, as considered appropriate. We expect this system will make life easier for authors, who may get their papers published with fewer rounds of review, and for referees, who would be relieved of having to review the same paper repeatedly. NPRC consortium members for the one-year trial period currently include Journal of Neuroscience, European Journal of Neuroscience, Journal of Comparative Neurology, Neuroscience, Journal of Neurophysiology, and Neuroendocrinology. It seems likely that at least a few others will join soon.A very recent and exciting development is that There are a few areas in which we see a clear need to improve. First, while we receive a healthy flow of papers on a range of early developmental topics, we get rather fewer than hoped for on later aspects of development – synapse formation, circuit formation and remodelling, and ontogenesis of behavior. We hope that a balance across the field will soon be achieved. Second, we hope that the freedom of an on-line format encourages two other forms of communication – reviews and meeting reports. A form of review we see as being particularly useful to the field is a head-to-head from key proponents of contemporarily contentious issues. Meeting reports  are alsNeural Development will be available. Although their ratings will not be available for some time, we expect they will be high, based on other indicators – for example, the high proportion of Neural Development papers selected by F1000 [For many authors, readers and institutions there is one measure that matters above all others in assessing the status of a journal: the impact factor, as determined by The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). The limitations of this metric are legion -15 but wby F1000 . Moreoveby F1000 .In short, we have had a good year and look forward to an even better one. We would be delighted to hear any suggestions you may have on how to improve the service. We thank you for your contributions – whether by submissions or refereeing, you are helping to create an invaluable resource for the scientific community.


Journal of Experimental & Clinical Cancer Research (JECCR), the official journal of the "Regina Elena" National Cancer Institute [nstitute  of Rome,nstitute , the jouJECCR joined BioMed Central in order to provide rapid dissemination of scientific results to the widest possible global audience. Furthermore, authors submitting to JECCR can expect a fast turnaround time, benefitting from an efficient review process and publication immediately upon acceptance. JECCR's content will be widely indexed  and covered by a range of freely accessible full-text archives [First launched in 1982, archives .JECCR publishes scientific studies on the biological, epidemiological, immunological, pathological, radiobiological, and clinical aspects of oncology. Topics considered range from molecular genetics via infectious agents to surgery and therapeutic approaches and outcomes. The broad oncological focus, combined with the Editors' experience in evaluating and conducting systematic reviews and developing clinical practice guidelines, makes JECCR an attractive forum for publishing reviews and guidelines. This focus, well documented in an Editorial by H. J. Schünemann [hünemann , goes veJECCR has decided to devote particular attention to more specific areas of cancer investigation. To this end, specific sections and subsections under the supervision of expert Editors have been created: the new topics include Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors (GIST), Lung and Pleural Tumors, and Preclinical Investigations in spontaneous animal models.In response to increasing requests JECCR's dissemination and visibility. The journal's online archive back to 1999 remains available from its old homepage. [We believe that the new editorial changes combined with the advantages of BioMed Central's open access publishing platform will greatly improve omepage.


Environmental Health is now firmly established as a major venue for publishing in the field of environmental health. While remaining selective in our acceptances – of the 217 manuscripts that we have processed by June 2007, 115 (53%) were accepted – the number of manuscripts continues to grow from year to year. Last year we published 33 articles (of 64 submitted) and the number of submissions by June this year has already reached 40. The journal has now been in existence for five years, so the time seems ripe for us to assess the health of our journal and the opportunities offered by open access publication on the Internet.Published articles are one of the main products of research. Digital technology is revolutionizing the reproduction, distribution and control of scientific publication while providing new and important opportunities for science. It also allows wider and more rapid diffusion of knowledge with lower barriers to access, stimulating further research and applications of new information. The Internet facilitates access to journals that would otherwise require a visit to many different libraries. The majority of scientific journals are now available online, and most of the 2.5 million scientific articles published per year can be accessed away from libraries that carry the print versions.For this reason, "pigeon-holing" of research areas has become less important for the researcher to reach the intended audience. As the actual medium in which the scientific article appears becomes less crucial, the choice of one topic-related journal over another among the almost 25,000 peer-reviewed journals worldwide, now includes the criterion of accessibility.Environmental Health adheres strictly to the Open Access charter with a declared DTD [Document Type Definition] – in at least one widely and internationally recognized open access repository .2.The author(s) or copyright owner(s) irrevocably grant(s) to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate the research article in its entirety or in part, in any format or medium, provided that no substantive errors are introduced in the process, proper attribution of authorship and correct citation details are given, and that the bibliographic details are not changed. If the article is reproduced or disseminated in part, this must be clearly and unequivocally indicated.Environmental Health), or by the individual reader . While still a minority business model of scientific publishing, the shift of costs to the author or author's funding source has grown and been shown financially viable. The Wall Street Journal listed "open access" as among the ten most important medical news events of 2003. It has only increased in importance since.Whether open access or subscription-based, there are usually costs associated with publication, costs borne by the author  highlighted the potential for a shift from original publications to original data: "the expanding availability of primary sources of data in digital form may be shifting the balance of research away from working with secondary sources such as scholarly publications..."[001 highlEnvironmental Health offers the opportunity to upload 'additional files', which will be made available along with the published article. They can include raw materials, original documentation, and software. Several authors have already chosen to take advantage of this opportunity . When linked to a published article, these additional files serve as a repository of original data for other scholars to use after appropriate credit (as required by the Open Access charter and the accompanying license)[New technologies and opportunities must continue to respect practices and policies crucial to ensuring the quality and validity of the research. In particular, this means retaining the value and accountability provided by peer review. As a key to quality assurance, scientific manuscripts are assessed by peers and revised accordingly before publication. Review procedures differ between journals, and some have experimented with different forms, although no single model has been found to be ideal.Environmental Health. We aim at having one editorial board member assess the merits of each manuscript. In response to the increased flow of manuscripts, we have now expanded the editorial board. In addition, since some manuscripts require review of the statistical methods, we have established a board of statisticians. The list of board members can be retrieved from the Environmental Health website [Our editorial board has played a key role in securing a high quality standard of  website .Environmental Health has adopted open peer review: authors and reviewers know one another's identity. In addition, the reviews are available from the "Prepublication history" record at the left-hand panel with the abstract or full-text version of all published articles. This option makes it possible for readers to appreciate the original submission along with comments from identified reviewers, with the authors' responses.One of the main issues regarding peer review is whether the author or reviewer, or both, should be anonymous. Open and published peer review serves two major purposes. We believe the effort of our hard-working reviewers deserves credit, and we hope that publication of their opinion may provide the appropriate recognition. We also believe transparency is a must in environmental health, and readers have a right to know why a particular article was published and why revision was requested.Environmental Health's open review policy, while a departure from much past practice, has shown itself able to produce unusually helpful and constructive reviews, something noted by both reviewers and authors. For those of you who have helped us as reviewers we want to take this opportunity to express our gratitude once again for the great service you have done the journal, its authors and, most importantly, the profession. We also note that the great majority of our colleagues have embraced open peer review, and we have received very few negative reactions from prospective reviewers who insist on being anonymous.Environmental Health, accepted comments will be immediately available to the readers. As one of our colleagues once remarked, real peer review begins after publication. We invite all our readers to participate in the post publication evaluation of the literature through our comment facility.Readers also play a role in securing transparency and quality by commenting on published articles, as can be easily done via the "Post a comment" at the left-hand panel when retrieving an abstract or full-text version. In Environmental Health adheres to the policy of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) [A conflict of interest policy specifies the ethical considerations relevant to ensuring impartiality. Ideally, academic writing should be objective, impersonal and informational. But no academic researcher can consider him/herself completely free of all influences from vested interests. Undue influence from vested interests can easily affect the conduct of science and its conclusions . Recent  (ICMJE) .Environmental Health editors and reviewers will recuse themselves from evaluating manuscripts, and any additional issues must be declared. In the field of environmental health science, where social merit is crucial and effects on economic interests common, such declarations are particularly necessary. Even so, such declarations may not provide full insight, when important competing interests are left out [Many biomedical journals now require rather specific declarations of competing interests that might affect an author's objectivity . In circleft out . AffiliaPublishing is also an economic activity of its own. The core scientific publishing market is a multibillion dollar business. Journal publishers therefore have commercial interests and need to attract authors, readers, advertisers and other sources of support . The recEnvironmental Health are unpaid and independent of commercial issues. Waivers to publish free of charge or at a reduced rate in Environmental Health can be granted to authors in case of demonstrated need, e.g., in submissions from developing countries, but this decision now rests with the publisher and not the Editors. The Editors also have the right to screen advertisements relating to journal topic before they are posted on the website.The Editors of Differences of opinion may occur, and editorial decisions should be open to possible appeal. The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)  code reqBoth the quality and quantity of submitted manuscripts have risen and we are gratified by the attention many of our papers have received in the media and the profession. The most popular articles have been accessed (abstract or full paper) over 10,000 times via the journal website , plus liRanking of scientific journals usually relies on the so-called impact factor, reflecting the number of times articles published during two preceding years have been cited during the following year. The number of citations that an article receives over time will of course not be apparent immediately, but the total number of downloads during the first six months after publication predicts the number of citations after two years . EvidencEnvironmental Health. ISI Tracking is reserved for well established scientific journals and inclusion of the journal in Science Citation Index Expanded (available through the Web of Science) is confirmation of our success. As part of that tracking process we will receive an official impact factor in 2010. Using the ISI procedures, BioMed Central has computed a tentative, unofficial impact factor (based on citations of articles published in 2005 and 2006), a very flattering 2.10, placing Environmental Health among the most important journals in the field of environmental health science, despite its youth. We believe the official factor will only increase this further.We recently received the welcome news that Thomson Scientific (ISI) has decided to track Environmental Health, its authors, reviewers, and readers, has been rewarding, eye-opening and gratifying. We are now convinced the choices we made five years ago in regard to open access and open peer review were the right ones. Environmental Health will continue to contribute fast delivery of environmental health science at high quality with easy and free access for readers. We thank you all for making the journal a success as readers, reviewers and authors. We look forward to an even bigger presence in the near future and we welcome you along for what has already been a spectacular ride.The experience of working with Environmental Health and declare that they have otherwise no competing interests.The author(s) are editors-in-chief of PG and DO jointly prepared the manuscript. Both authors have read and approved the final manuscript.


Dear Readers and Researchers,I am very happy to announce the adoption of a new format for the Journal of Educational Evaluation for Health Professions, which comprises three major changes. First, the language has been changed from Korean to English. Second, it will be published only on the World Wide Web. Third, the PubMed-Central XML format has been adopted, which is the standard XML for open-access medical journals. The criteria for acceptable material are detailed in the aims and scope section. I will encourage the publication of papers on the application of psychometric tools and nationwide data analysis. In addition to research articles, the journal will also publish case reports, brief reports, reviews, opinions, technical reports, software, letters to the editor, and book reviews, which will be of practical use to teachers. This change is a consequence of an information-hungry world that seeks easy and rapid access to practical and useful information.I hope to soon publish review articles on the status and development of the national examinations for health professionals in several countries, since the international exchange of health professionals and mutual license accreditation is a hot topic according to the Doha Development Agenda (DDA).In addition, I would like to make the journal an interesting and pleasant experience. I welcome articles from all over the world. The aim is to make the journal an effective forum for information exchange among health professionals.Best wishes.


Epigenetics & Chromatin published its first papers a year ago, together with an editorial in which we stated our aim to publish a high-quality journal with a broad scope. A year later we are happy to report that these aims are being achieved. Papers published so far represent a broad swath of research on chromatin-based processes and epigenetic mechanisms. We are also delighted with the quality and breadth of submissions from many of the leading laboratories in the field.E&C [Among the papers in our inaugural issue was one from Elizabeth Blackburn and co-workers on the use of novel 4D imaging describing how human telomeres behave in vivo . This laE&C .E&C, which have also been collated to form a special anniversary print issue. The most popular model systems for epigenetic research are represented among them, including mice, yeast and flies. The articles range from studies of classical epigenetic phenomena, such as X-chromosome inactivation [Here we review a collection of recent articles that we believe illustrate the scope and quality of articles published in tivation  and positivation , to bioctivation  and atomtivation . Below, E&C paper published in January, 2009 [Drosophila white locus PEV mutants. Surprisingly, they find that the distribution of HP1 is highly inhomogeneous, and that the white gene is unusually sensitive to heterochromatic silencing. These findings led the authors to propose a model that reconciles some of the most puzzling features of PEV.The classical phenomenon of PEV, the heritable "spreading" of the silent state into a gene by juxtaposition to heterochromatin, has intrigued geneticists for 80 years. But despite substantial progress in understanding the components of spreading, the mechanism has remained in doubt. In their ry, 2009 , Bas vanE&C paper published in October, 2009 [Pluripotency lies at the heart of reprogramming and stem cell biology, yet its molecular basis remains unknown. Mouse embryonic stem cells represent a favorite model for studying the relationship between epigenetics and chromatin, and this system was used by Azim Surani and colleagues to investigate the possible role of the ESET histone methyltransferase in regulating pluripotency. In their er, 2009 , they deE&C paper published in September, 2009 [Ultimately, understanding the role of chromatin in mediating epigenetic inheritance requires a more complete description of the process that occurs behind the replication fork, where old nucleosomes are transmitted to daughter strands and new nucleosomes are assembled. However, little is known about this process in vivo, and as a result, the chromatin basis for epigenetic inheritance remains the subject of much speculation. In their er, 2009 , JessicaE&C will become increasingly attractive for publication of the most exciting research in the field. Among the advantages of publishing in E&C are that upon acceptance, a paper is immediately published online in preliminary form, highlighted on the E&C web site and indexed on PubMed. A particular advantage of online publication is that papers can be made more readable by including crucial data and procedures as part of the main body of the paper, rather than being relegated to supplements. As co-Editors-in-chief with long experience in this field, we exercise our judgment concerning the necessity for additional experiments proposed by referees that would otherwise delay publication of an exciting result and/or represent an unreasonable amount of work. Should the circumstances merit it, we are glad to consider accelerated publication of a paper submitted with decision letters and complete peer reviews from a high-impact journal. This policy was proposed and approved at a recent meeting of the E&C Editorial Board, and we hope that potential authors will consider this option as a way of achieving very rapid publication in a highly competitive arena.The tremendous progress that we have witnessed in the chromatin and epigenetics field exemplified by these studies has led to an increasing appreciation for the importance of chromatin-based processes in biological regulation. As a result, many researchers are finding that their work is becoming more competitive for space in high-impact journals. We recognize that in these cases a journal such as ours may not be the first choice for submission. Nevertheless, we think that by maintaining the high quality of published work, E&C, we still need to increase the number of submissions and subsequent publication in order for this venture to succeed. Therefore, when trying to decide where to send your work for publication, we ask that you take into account the high editorial standards of E&C, the breadth and excellence of our Editorial Board, the rapid publication upon acceptance, and the advantages of open access in reaching your intended audience. On behalf of the E&C team and the Editorial Board, we hope that you will consider our journal for submitting your work for publication.As pleased as we are with the overall quality of manuscripts submitted to


When I took on the role of Editor-in-Chief of this open-access journal, I began, for the first time, to think about scholarly communication beyond submitting my papers and getting them published. This thinking led to previous Perspectives Fourth Paradigm: Data Intensive Scientific Discoveryhttp://research.microsoft.com/en-us/collaboration/fourthparadigm/), which is a tribute to the late Turing Award winner Jim Gray. Jim, and many of the authors who pay homage to his vision, have thought deeply about the subject of scholarly communication. They conclude that data and knowledge-driven computation is indeed a fourth wave, as computation has impacted science to the point where every aspect of it is touched by computation (hence the name eScience), including dissemination and comprehension. These visionaries recognize that we are at a tipping point at which scholarly communication will change from a traditional print-oriented medium  to something else. That something else begins to transform today's research article as we realize the power of the medium, establish new forms of knowledge discovery, and measure the impact of scholarly contributions in new ways. For all that vision, these luminaries do not address the question that I have been pondering, and which I would like to raise here. Assuming all this innovation takes place, what will the publisher of the future look like, and as a contributor and consumer of a publisher's services in this new era, what do I want from the publisher of the future?No need to take my word regarding the opportunities that exist to improve scholarly communication and comprehension. I recommend reading “Part 4: Scholarly Communication” from the free online book the get real. Let me try here to do a better job at stating what I want from my publisher in the future.Recently, at gatherings of publishers where I have been invited to speak, I have been trying to pose and then answer this question. Unfortunately, I fear that what I propose appears so radical as to be greeted with either blank stares or looks of Many of you are undoubtedly thinking that just accepting your papers will be enough, but bear with me. Presumably, publishing will continue in the life sciences (unless we go over completely to an ArXiv.org or similar model where articles are simply deposited without peer review and impact measured by how much they are accessed), and if so, will continue to be overseen by the publishers we, as scientists, work with today. A few new and innovative publishers like the Public Library of Science (PLoS) will continue to emerge as business models and practices change, but existing publishers will probably adapt in this new era. I anticipate similarities to earlier phases of the Internet revolution. Amazon.com emerged as a new and major online-only shopping entity, but Sears, Wal-Mart, Harrods, etc., while being slower in adopting the new medium, did eventually successfully support online shopping and a range of new services. By comparison, a few innovators have had some impact on scholarly communication, but traditional science, technology, and medical (STM) publishers will continue to dominate the conservative and relatively slow-moving market. These pioneering publishers are now experimenting with interactive PDFs, “articles of the future,” semantic tagging, data integration with research articles, incorporating rich media (video and podcasts), and so on. Most likely, at some point these innovations will become mainstream through increased introduction by traditional publishers, but then what? Stated another way, if we finally move away from the traditional PDF to something more dynamic that integrates data, rich media, and includes interactive access, what do I as a scientist want from publishers at that point?x presenting my work in a way that maximizes the understanding of what has been done, providing the means to ensure maximum reproducibility of what has been done, and maximizing the outreach of my work? I would suggest that now is the time not to just toss the paper over a high barrier to the journal and forget about it, but to break down the barrier and have a new form of interaction and dialog with a publisher who is prepared to embrace a changing publishing model and can answer the question in a satisfactory manner. In other words, we have an interaction with the publisher that does not begin when the scientific process ends, but begins at the beginning of the scientific process itself.To answer this question, let us start with where we are today. As authors, we put an enormous amount of effort into producing a publishable manuscript. At some point we pass it over to the publisher without a second thought. Subsequently, we will put a large amount of effort into a revision or rebuttal letter, but again, there is no thought on what will happen to our work after it has been accepted beyond the date it will be published and appear in PubMed. There is an enormous amount of trust in our publisher that our creations will be handled in the best possible way and, when published, that they will be disseminated to all who want to read our work. Open access introduced a hairline fracture in this trust with some scientists realizing that perhaps their work was not being as widely accessed as possible. Nevertheless, most scientists still do not think seriously about limited access and signing away the copyright. After all our efforts at producing a paper, very few of us have asked the question, is journal In summary, the final published work does not map well to the workflow of the scientific endeavor used to create it. In the digital era there is no excuse for not doing better. The digital era transformed how science was disseminated and in so doing the word “paper” became synonymous with the term “PDF”—the same content just delivered differently. We are at a point where the word PDF will soon be replaced by something else; let's just call it an interactive PDF. What I am suggesting is that one day the interactive PDF will be replaced by the scientific workflow as the entity by which we get credit as scientists. The workflow will make science more reproducible and more open, and this is how I want the publisher of the future to handle my scientific output—I want publishers to publish my workflows. The notion of a workflow here is perhaps slightly different than that defined by many of this readership. It is less of a computational workflow, but part process and part container for content (or pointers to that content) that is significantly broader and more integrated than what is sent for publication today, namely, a manuscript and supplemental information in an essentially computationally unusable form.Perhaps you are beginning to see why I get so many blank stares when I raise this issue with scientists (producers and consumers) and publishers (service providers), but let me press on. Performing scientific research can be represented as a workflow. First, there is an idea that then is formulated as a hypothesis. An experiment is designed to test that hypothesis. The experiment produces data that are analyzed, generating results. Those results are discussed and conclusions drawn. Today, much of the product of that workflow is in digital form, and in the field of computational biology it may all be in digital form. Then comes the barrier that we climb over to publish. Everything we have done needs to be retrofitted to a medium that really does not represent our work in the best possible way. For example, the data from which the conclusions were drawn and the conclusions themselves may now be disjointed, perhaps presented in two separate public repositories  with only a tenuous, if any, link between them. Much of the work may have to be omitted to meet restrictions imposed by page limits (or page charges) that do not really make sense in an electronic medium. Visualization of the data, which was so easily accomplished in the laboratory, is impossible in the final published article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Notebook_Science), but there are also differences. Here, something is only open when the laboratory chooses to make it so, and so does not necessarily imply total openness, but I would guess that greater openness would result, if only by default. More importantly, open notebooks do not necessarily extend to publishing, but they could.There is synergy here with the idea of Open Notebook Science  as the end product, will push to make this happen. Consider a few inefficiencies and persistence issues from my own current scientific workflow to make the point:The intellectual memory of my laboratory is in my e-mail folders, themselves not perfectly organized. This creates a hub-and-spoke environment where lab members and collaborators have to too often go through me to connect to each other.Much of our outreach is in the form of presentations made to each other and at national and international forums. We do not have a good central repository for this material; such a repository could enable us to have a better understanding of what other researchers are doing.While we endeavor to make all our software open source, there are always useful bits of code that languish and disappear when the author leaves the laboratory.Important data gets lost as students and postdoctoral fellows leave the laboratory.I could go on embarrassing myself, but I think you get the picture. In a world of perfect workflows, I could immediately reconstruct the history of all work done in my laboratory from different viewpoints, for example by project, subproject, or scientist. At my fingertips I would have a preserved copy of all data, presentations, intellectual exchanges that have been undertaken, papers that have been read and studied, and so on.So what does this have to do with publishers? I want the publisher of the future, or the publisher in collaboration with a third party, to be the guardian of these workflows in the same way that today I entrust them with the finished product of my research. The publisher becomes responsible for the whole kit and caboodle. Some would say that much of what is published today should not be, so why add more superfluous information to the record of science? The response is that one person's trash is another person's treasure. What is important is that the tools exist for a consumer to efficiently make their own judgment between the treasure and the trash. Those tools need to be able to navigate and summarize the workflows and in fact make associations that are just not possible today, but lead to new discoveries. There is a business model in what I propose since I think many of us would write into grants the cost of having a publisher, or third party in collaboration with the publisher, maintain our scholarly output in the way described. Presumably, funding agencies would fund such requests since it would make scientists more efficient and create a better scholarly record. Funders are already pushing in this direction of greater access to data and scientific papers, so this is an extension of that mandate. Those funds would be passed to the publisher of the future in the same way as open-access charges and page charges are today.There are many issues with the concept of not publishing PDFs and publishing workflows instead. It is much harder to manage, for a start. The PDF is a single static interface that we all understand and can use. A workflow is more dynamic and can be viewed from a variety of perspectives in the same way a database or content management system presents multiple views of the content. This flexibility could be very powerful, but would represent a major change for most scientists. A change of work habit is only one major barrier to the workflow vision. There is something comforting about the simple organization of a paper and the relatively brief description of the work relative to what is proposed here. But really, is the work provided in our current scholarly discourse reproducible and can it be built upon? The manuscript also provides a creative medium through which authors can express themselves; there is a risk of losing this human element if too much structure is imposed. A counter view is that the workflow as content container could include audio and video discussions by the authors that would make the content potentially more accessible.The scientific endeavor as a simple linear workflow is also clearly an oversimplification. The author needs to present components of the workflow that make sense and can be followed, rather than the endless iterations that happen in daily research, but that is not to say negative data and experiments should be excluded. Alternatively, the same experiments may result in more than one paper, and in this new paradigm parts of the workflow would be reused and hence not original. As long as this is declared, a complete workflow can still be judged for its originality. Expecting the publisher to manage the complete workflow may be too much. Perhaps the answer is to have a shared content model and subsequent easy navigation between publisher and institutional repositories where governance of the workflow is shared. Right now it seems the content of the respective repositories is either totally repetitive or not linked to publishers in any way. An alternative model might be to have a third party manage content as an intermediary between institution and publisher. Whereas a published paper is an end product, workflows  are likely to continue to change, so versioning becomes important, but can be handled. Research funding agencies could, and should, promote these type of governance models and hence catalyze their adoption.There are also the more recognizable issues, so let us consider a few of these:Confidentiality. The system that maintains the workflows can do this in the same way a journal management system handles the manuscript submission, peer review, and editorial process today. Specific individuals, groups, and the community at large can be provided appropriate levels of access to each element of the workflow at appropriate times. It is likely that much more of the scientific endeavor would be freely released to the community than happens today. Hopefully, this would accelerate scientific discovery worldwide. Proper attribution could be given by tagging components of the workflow so they can be attributed to their original source.Peer Review. Certainly this would be more demanding and tools would be needed to do a good review since it becomes more than just reading a paper, but exploring the workflow. There are instances already where publishers require the data so that the reviewers can truly evaluate the paper ; review of workflows takes this a step further.New Infrastructure. Publishers already provide Web-accessible servers for appropriate audiences to access manuscripts under review and final published papers. Commercial systems do exist for supporting workflows and managing projects today. These could be extended for the task of maintaining and publishing workflows, although few publishers would seem equipped to do this today.Data Repositories versus Publishers. Part of the workflow proposed, namely the data, may currently reside in public repositories with their own standards, reward system, politics, and so on; how can this be reconciled with the publishers presumed to take on this role? In the world of interoperability, cloud computing, and other buzz words, there is no reason why the workflow need reside all in one physical place; it just needs to appear that way to the user. Today publishers enable data repositories by insisting data associated with a publication are deposited therein. In the future, that contract would need to be expanded to provide more seamless interoperability that would seem to benefit everyone.Community Acceptance. At first glance, what is proposed for the publisher of tomorrow appears as a radical departure from what is done today; however, it can be done in stages. Consider much of what is published in this journal. It can be distilled to software (methods), data , and annotations (research articles). It is not a huge jump to imagine these integrated and accessible through an online interface. Other parts of the workflow could be integrated over time. Some publishers already provide repositories for other components of the workflow , but it is just not integrated with what is considered the final product today, namely the published PDF. A gradual change in a conservative marketplace would seem the most realistic. It also allows for gradual experimentation as to what the current research article interface can realistically morph into. There still needs to be a succinct summary of the workflow; will that be the research article or something else? There also needs to be an ongoing and accepted reward system by the community of scholars, otherwise it will not be adopted, even though sustainability alone is a compelling argument.Journals and the Reward System. The success of a scientist has traditionally been tied to the journals in which he or she publishes. In part, this arises because those who assess us do not intimately know our work and they use the quality of the journal as their guide. In some ways, this is very unscientific since reviewers are considering data from a whole journal, not the paper itself. Article-level metrics and the emerging interest in bibliometrics in an online world change this situation, raising issues associated with the journal concept itself. Publishing workflows versus publishing research articles is just another facet of this sea change that needs to be considered and value measured.Fourth Paradigm, computation will touch every aspect of the scientific endeavor. Organizations like Orwik (http://www.orwik.com/) and Mendeley (http://www.mendeley.com/) are already pushing in this direction, and the RSS system According to the


S/he looks for two important parameters in a peer-reviewed journal before submitting a manuscript viz. how quickly can one get the paper published and what impact the published paper will have thanks to the journal per se. Someone who needs an ‘immediate’ acceptance letter for a fast approaching date for review, promotion or grant application would opt for a journal which can accept a paper early (i.e. has a fast turnaround time) or easily (i.e. has a low rejection rate). Some promotional or grant reviews give more preference to journals indexed with PubMed or Science Citation Index (SCI). Many job applications in research institutions and grant applications request the applicant to list their publications based on the Impact Factor (IF) of the journal. It is considered that papers published in journals with high IF or indexed with PubMed /SCI are likely to have a higher research impact compared to papers published in ‘non-indexed’ or ‘low-IF’ journals. Hence, a prospective author gives preference to journals with this indexing or recognition.Where to publish, asks the new author. An author faces a dilemma as s/he weighs the advantages of lower rejection/faster turnaround time of a small journal Apart from looking for the turnaround time and rejection rates, an author today looks for ease and convenience of the submission process of a given journal. About a decade ago, majority of the journals requested authors to submit at least three sets of neatly typed manuscripts double spaced, with 2.5 inches of margin on all the sides, printed on a good quality white paper. One had to submit three sets of glossy photographs, if the paper had any figures, along with the original submission. This wasn't all the hard work one had to do; the revision process was equally tedious. Authors were required to submit one or sometimes three sets of revised manuscripts along with one copy with underlined or colored text to highlight the changes done. Imagine if a manuscript had to undergone three or four revisions. With advancing technology, scholarly journals today are more author-friendly than before. Majority of the journals encourage electronic submission of manuscripts either through email or a web-based manuscript submission system. The process of submission is so simple for the new age technology savvy authors that simultaneous submissions of a single manuscript to more than one journal are often seen! Editors like me who have worked on more than one journal at a time have, on many occasions, reviewed a manuscript rejected just a few minutes back by another journal. While most submission systems are quite advanced and user-friendly there are a few issues which authors have to face. Most such systems are developed for publishers who can automatize most of the publishing tasks till the print or web publication of the journal. To capture every possible data, in ready to use XML, authors spend a little more time than they wish to. The web-based submission system may seem a bit impersonal for some authors because of the automated template based electronic mails, some of which even address them as ‘Dear Author(s)’. The local environment on the computer  and differences in various submission systems also affect user-friendliness for authors. Overall, however, these submission systems have expanded the umbrella of journals where one can submit manuscripts and also helped journals reduce the turnaround time for submitted manuscripts.www.journalonweb.com/ijp) for over five years now. The system allows authors to submit a manuscript within minutes by attaching two document files of a manuscript. The authors can track the progress of the manuscript during the peer-review process. A reference checking facility helps the authors check correctness of references cited in the manuscript. A new feature added recently alerts authors by a mobile message when a manuscript is sent for revision or proof reading. For editors, the system allows to check for possible plagiarism or duplicate submission. Editors can send a manuscript to any number of reviewers not limiting to any particular country or place. The purpose of using such a system is to facilitate faster peer review of submitted manuscripts.The Indian Journal of Pharmacology (IJP) has been using a web-based manuscript submission system  journals. Traditional subscription-based journals face competition from the new OA journals which offer immediate free access to published research papers through a web-based medium. Some OA journals, however, charge the authors a fee for submission or publication of a manuscript. Majority of the OA journals, fortunately, do not have such ‘author-side’ fee. Articles made available freely on the internet through an OA journal or interoperable OA repository have shown to have higher visibility and research and citation impact than those published in journals with a subscription barrier. Some subscription-based ‘hybrid’ journals also offer authors the option of paying a fee to make their paper available for free to the readers. The purpose of making research available for a wider audience through OA is to gain a higher impact which otherwise is lost due to the access barriers of subscription based journals.www.ijp-online.com). Like most OA journals from India and other developing countries, IJP does not collect any fee from authors for submission, processing or publication of manuscripts. All articles including review articles published in IJP are made available online on its website and on Bioline International's website (www.bioline.org.br) even before the print publication. The effect of this wider visibility has been seen on the citations received to the journal's articles [The IJP offers a platform for wider visibility of published research through its OA website (articles  which al


Skills in communicating research findings are as important as the original work, in order to be beneficial to all the stake holders. A published article is the primary means whereby the research findings are disseminated, priority is established, and academic promotion is determined. Scientific communication depends on trust and requires that authors be held to standards of honesty, completeness, and fairness in their reporting, and also to accountability for their statements.A potent stimulus, rather a compulsion for anybody to write a scientific communication, is an albeit, misplaced, universal emphasis on ‘publications’ as a criteria of determining competence and suitability for academic positions. The teaching institutions rely on publications as the coins that academics must use to get through the tollgates on their way to academic promotion. And if the promotion committees function well, they weigh as well as count the coins. Papers wThere has been a dramatic increase in the numbers of medical journals published in the last two decades and there has been an increasing demand for the scientific articles. Every year, millions of scientific medical articles get published. However, the articles published even in the most prestigious journals are far from perfect.Scientific communication is a demanding exercise and is an art to be mastered, of course, in most ethical way. Unfortunately, transgression in scientific communication is encountered quite often than is expected by the editors and peer reviewers and is found to be done by the learned authors in a variety of ways, at times unknowingly but many times deliberately for personal gains. The past couple of years have seen some shocking exposés of violations of authorship in medical papers which suggest that one of the most important tenets in medical publishing – what it means to be named as an author on a paper – may not actually be as well accepted as previously believed.Transgression in scientific communication may be in any one or all of the following ways viz. plagiarism, Copyright infringement gift/guest authorship and ghost writing/authorship.Plagiarism: As defined in Wikipedia, it is the “use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and their representation as one's own original work.” The word ‘plagiarism’ is derived from the -Latin word plagiārius, which means “kidnapper”; plagiarism in scholarship, is considered as dishonesty or fraud in the academic arena and offenders are subject to academic censure, up to and including expulsion[expulsion7 While pCopyright infringement: It is not the same as plagiarism. Although both terms may apply to a particular act, they are different transgressions. Copyright Infringement is the illegal and unauthorized use of a copyrighted material without the signed and written consent from the original creator. On the other hand, plagiarism is concerned with the unearned increment to the plagiarizing author's reputation, that is achieved through false claims of authorship.[thorship.7Gift/Guest/Ghost authorship: Every professional needs to understand that the authorship establishes accountability, responsibility, and credit for scientific information reported in biomedical publications if used appropriately. However, misappropriation of authorship undermines the integrity of the authorship system. Honorary authorship (guest or gift authorship) is defined as naming, as an author, an individual who does not meet authorship criteria.[criteria.3 Honorarcriteria.3 Althougcriteria. authors criteria. A varietcriteria.ie, awarding honorary authorship and concealing ghost authorship) is incompatible with the principles, duties, and ethical responsibilities involved in scientific communication.[A study was conducted to determine the prevalence of articles with honorary authors (named authors who have not met authorship criteria) and ghost authors  in peer-reviewed reputed international medical journals and also to identify journal characteristics and article types associated with such authorship misappropriation. A total of 19% of the articles had evidence of honorary authors, 11% had evidence of ghost authors; and 2% had evidence of both. The prevalence of articles with honorary authors was greater among review articles than research articles but did not differ significantly between large-circulation and smaller-circulation journals. Compared with similar-type articles in large-circulation journals, articles with ghost authors in smaller-circulation journals were more likely to be reviews and less likely to be research articles. The study concluded that a substantial proportion of articles in peer-reviewed medical journals demonstrate evidence of honorary authors or ghost authors. The findings also suggested that the ICMJE authorship guidelines may not be well understood by all authors and may be difficult to apply to certain types of articles such as non-data-based reviews and editorials[Indian Journal of Anaesthesia? Primarily, it would mean a radical change in the attitude, behavior and practice of the editor and the editorial board who should define and enforce journal policies, clarifying that transgression in scientific communication is a serious and punishable breach of publication ethics. Of course, prevention is the key; possible measures could be the requirement of submission by the authors along with the article, a ‘declaration’ about the involvements of any other professional colleague who can be another author; methods to remind authors of their responsibilities and to attempt to eliminate, among other problems, honorary, frivolous, and irresponsible authorship.[What might this mean in practice for our thorship. Editors'thorship. and the thorship. initiatethorship.


Surgical Neurology International (SNI), a new OPEN ACCESS, Internet-only journal, accessible to all neurosurgeons. OPEN ACCESS means that anyone in the world with access to the Internet can visit the website, view the journal, obtain its papers, its editorials, and comments for FREE!I am pleased to announce the formation of Surgical Neurology International will serve approximately 35,000 neurosurgeons around the world. It will potentially have the largest circulation of any neurosurgical journal. SNI will have the same editorial policy and principally the same Editorial Board as I established and upheld as Editor-in-Chief of Surgical Neurology for 15 years. SNI will accept papers on clinical neurosurgery and other clinical and basic neurosciences with topics of interest to our audience. It will have editorial comments about controversies, the principles of medical and neurosurgical practice, socio-economics, politics, ethics, and science, as were expressed in the past.SNI will have an advanced educational website for residents and practicing neurosurgeons, with content provided by the UCLA Department of Neurosurgery and its guest lecturers under the direction of Nestor Gonzalez and with the cooperation of Neil Martin, the Department Chairman. This content, as well as downloads of papers, will be available at no charge. For those neurosurgeons who cannot afford a journal, cannot access one easily, or cannot go to meetings, Surgical Neurology International will be their source of information.In addition to accepting research papers from all over the world, Surgical Neurology International wants to involve neurosurgeons, particularly the young neurosurgeons who have a difficult time for gaining recognition in many countries around the world. SNI will have new and innovative Clinical Decision Support sites for real time use by neurosurgeons in clinical cases they see every day. SNI will also have the latest social networking sites and individual communication options so everyone can access the journal anywhere, any time. It will be twenty-first century education.For those who are interested, they can receive notices of new papers being published each month. When papers are accepted, they will be published within days rather than weeks or months. All papers will be searchable through PubMed Central, a division of PubMed, and will be searchable on PubMed and other commonly-used databases.The only cost will be to authors of accepted papers. This fee will be US$400 to publish a paper after it is accepted. For short communications and case reports, the cost will be US$180. We are working on ways to eliminate that fee by obtaining advertising or grants. There is no additional charge for color pictures or videos. For those who cannot afford this author's cost, it can be waived by decision of the Editor.Our publisher is Medknow Publishers in Mumbai, India. We thank Atul Goel for directing us to this organization that publishes many OPEN ACCESS medical journals. I also want to thank Bob Goodkin, Pat Kelly, Ben Roitberg, Konstantin Slavin, Neil Martin, and Nestor Gonzales for their support in bringing this new journal to all neurosurgeons in the world.You can access our new Web site at www.surgicalneurologyint.com. This site includes a link for authors to submit their new manuscripts, and is also the Web site to use to access the educational content, which will be operational soon. This Web site will have other features we are developing to help you exchange information with your colleagues about challenging cases, an imaging site for interesting cases, chat rooms, etc. If you would like to receive Table of Contents through e-mails or RSS alerts, please access the Web site and follow the instructions under “Staying in touch with the journal.”SNI, in any of its aspects, please let me know at jamesausman@mac.com.If you are interested in becoming involved with the journal, We hope that neurosurgeons everywhere will enjoy this new publication. This is your journal, and we are open to any ideas you have to make it beneficial to you and to your practice. We would be delighted if you would share this information with your colleagues.


It gives me great pleasure to announce that the Saudi Journal of Anaesthesia has now been indexed on PubMed Central (PMC) and PubMed list. We received this news on June 9, 2010. Indeed, it is an excellent achievement and it represents the hard and continuing work of the editorial board. Let me give you a brief on the process of publication, once an article is received online. Following online submission, the Editor in Chief (EIC) assigns an editor for managing the manuscript. This editor checks the outlines of the manuscript and if the author has not followed the instructions given in the journal, the editor transfers the article to technical modification square and the article is then sent back to the author. Upon receiving the corrected version, the editor checks it for plagiarism. If the manuscript passes the plagiarism test, then reviewing process will start. It took us considerable time to build our reviewers‘ database and we feel proud of having excellent reviewers representing different anaesthesia subspecialties. The article is sent to three external reviewers and we ask them to send their report online within 2 weeks from the day they are contacted. Honestly, we are proud of having such a standard of professional reviewers and let me take this opportunity to thank all of them for their dedicated time in reviewing the manuscripts. Upon receiving the three reviewers‘ reports, we send them to the author for revision. The manuscript moves between external re-review and revision squares, till a provisionally accepted version is obtained. After this, the article is sent to the pre-accepted language check square which is represented by our publishing office “Medknow Publications". Once language is checked, the article is sent to the EIC for a final decision and scheduling for a certain issue/year of SJA. I wish to take this opportunity to extend my thanks and appreciation to “Medknow Publications” staff office and their crew for their excellent and professional work to maintain the high standard of the SJA. Once an issue is completed, a proof will be prepared by the publishing office and sent to EIC for final approval. With the reviewing process described above, we ensure that the article is peer reviewed and published within a short period of time. Also, our reviewing process and plagiarism feature has enabled us to discover a plagiarized article and after consultation with our consulting editors we followed the slow judge procedure. This procedure started by informing the author of his unethical attitude. Since we received no answer for our queries, we raised the matter to his department chief, and further, to his college dean office, for appropriate action to be taken. In the meantime, we have sent a notice to Editors-in-Chief of most anaesthesia journals with the documents of the plagiarized article as a caution notice for any possible future submissions from his side.Our short term plan in the future is to continue the hard work to maintain the high standard of the journal. We will continue producing three issues per year till the end of 2011, and starting from 2012, we will produce one more issue to achieve a total four issues per year. Our long-term plan is to be in the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) list of journals, which we believe could be achieved.I am proud of our editorial board members and I wish to thank them all for their time and efforts which brought the SJA to the international arena. My deep thanks and appreciation go to Professor Abdelazeem Eldawlatly for his continuing work and endless efforts to bring our dream to reality. Also, my deep thanks and appreciation are extended to the secretarial office of SJA and Saudi Anaesthesia Association for their tremendous efforts to achieve the association goals. Last, but not the least, I would like to thank all authors who published their work in SJA knowing that it was not indexed. The confidence that they showed in SJA and the support that they gave will remain unforgettable. Also, I wish to encourage all of you to submit your articles to SJA, without which we will be unable to upgrade our journal.


BMC Ecology has always been open to a wide range of topics from biodiversity research, and the International Year of Biodiversity [sensu stricto. We continue to consider all articles related to the ecology of animals, plants and microorganisms and wish to emphasise 'biodiversity' within the scope of the journal. We are confident that ecologists, evolutionary biologists and all scientists interested in biodiversity research will welcome our extended invitation to share this niche in an open access community journal.iversity  presentsIt is also an appropriate time to acknowledge the synthesis of research traditions that is continuing under the umbrella of 'biodiversity research'. Biodiversity researchers come from all walks of academic life. They include systematic biologists, working with museum or herbarium specimens, who collect and describe new species and delineate others. Some academics may be branded as biodiversity researchers for their interest in evolutionary biology and speciation. Ecologists and conservation biologists, studying how species interact with each other and their environment, share a mutual goal in discovering how to protect threatened ecosystems. While interrelated, these different traditions have developed their own methods and to a certain extent their own language. 'Biodiversity research' unites these different research traditions. While some taxonomists would protest at being referred to as an ecologist (and vice versa), they can hardly object to being called biodiversity scientists. The input and collaboration of different research traditions is key, if progress is to be made in understanding life on earth in all its variety - and progress has to be made fast, with ecosystems under threat from causes too many and all too familiar.BMC Ecology do to promote collaboration of biodiversity researchers? And what sets BMC Ecology apart from other journals?What can a journal such as While most scientists and funding bodies now appreciate the value of open access publishing, the options for ecologists and biodiversity researchers wishing to publish open access in a trusted, highly visible, community journal are somewhat limited. This is surprising, and many argue that open access should be a more prominent issue in biodiversity and ecology . We shouBMC Ecology authors are encouraged to make raw data freely accessible and we don't have restrictions on the amount of additional material that can be deposited with our articles, which are all freely available from our homepage [Biodiversity researchers have to get to grips with enormous datasets, starting with the historic record of species descriptions accumulated since the time of Carl Linnaeus, to genomic information, barcoding initiatives, ecological surveys, satellite surveillance data, GPS tracking records, and more. A new discipline, biodiversity informatics, has a goal to develop tools and pipelines that let the scientist see the bigger picture emerging from these various types of data . For thihomepage . We alsohomepage , Encyclohomepage , and Zoohomepage . Open acBMC Ecology articles of interest beyond scientific circles include a study by Lora Ghobrial and colleagues [To obtain continuing support for biodiversity research, and the conservation policies that emerge from it, scientists need to convince the public that it is a worthy endeavour and that they can be entrusted to make sensible use of taxpayers' money in times of decreasing financial resources. Biodiversity researchers need to be transparent about the process that leads to novel findings, especially if they have an impact on political decisions that affect all of us. Everyone should be able to scrutinize results of primary research on topics such as climate change and man-made biodiversity loss. Sure, many scientific papers are rather technical and not most people's favourite breakfast time reading. But unlike other disciplines of modern biology, biodiversity research is quite accessible to a wider audience. Examples of lleagues , who uselleagues , who decOn May 15, the snake collection at the Butantan institute in Sao Paolo, Brazil, caught fire, destroying one of the world's largest collections of venomous animals . The insBMC Ecology is ready to play its part in the exciting times ahead.In summary, biodiversity research has all the ingredients to have a big future: a real urgency (that's the gloomy bit), but also the ability to engage people and unite them; new tools to connect and visualize millions of individual data points, and the disappearance of boundaries between previously more isolated disciplines. Publishing in open access journals can accelerate this potential, and with our new emphasis on biodiversity,


As we put together another issue of Tobacco Induced Diseases we are faced with a number of publication problems. Within this issue we have several very interesting studies as well as commentaries and reviews all related to smoking or the effects of tobacco smoke components on different biological systems. We begin with a review of a recent publication from the Royal College of Physicians, London that we received and provides an excellent background on passive smoking and the case for clean air. This report is somewhat unique in that it brings together a wide array of information specifically related to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). It also deals with the economics of smoke-free policies. Probably the most interesting chapters relate to the methods the tobacco industry has used to attempt to negate smoking regulation and again shows that this industry has know of the harmful effects of smoke exposure, both direct and indirect, for many years. The full report is available from the Royal College of Physicians of London (2005).We next move to a review article by Dr. Bergen concerning the ability of exposure to tobacco smoke or its products during the fetal period to alter maternal energy balance inducing cardiovascular or other diseases in later life. As a researcher involved with regulation of obesity at the neural level through such pathways as leptin activation, Dr. Bergen brings a unique perspective to the question of smoking during pregnancy and provides an interesting bridge between direct smoke exposure levels such as occurs in the daily smoker, characterized by the mother, and the "passive" smoking of the fetus, highlighting the potential of tobacco smoke to induce many, often subtle long term effects.The presentation of the core of our articles in this issue brings us to the point of this editorial. These articles have undergone extensive peer review and represent the best of scientific publications. Author revisions and further input from reviewers have produced excellent quality scientifically sound pieces of research. But what of other manuscripts we have received that might not yet be considered, for a variety of reasons, to be at a level for publication? The dilemma of the new journal is this: how do we acquired sufficient numbers of publications to produce regular issues and concurrently keep our quality high? What level of scientific publication is acceptable to a new journal and do we have to compromise our standards to achieve full volume publications? We believe the answer to the latter question is clearly no. High quality publications of scientifically sound documentation is a requirement to carve out a niche for an ongoing and credible place for the journal in the scientific world. Indeed those authors who have submitted materials for possible publication which we have been unable to accept should not feel the least slighted. As a new journal we make every effort to develop a support base for these authors and their works. Many publications can eventually reach a level sufficiently high to merit publication and we hope to be able to provide the network of reviewers and authorities that are able and willing to work with these researchers. In addition, as we begin to receive more submissions from authors for whom English is not their first language, we will try to review publications on the basis of scientific merit, the intention being that the language may be improved if the science is sound.Tobacco Induced Diseases continues on its move to BioMed Central. We appreciate the support of submitting authors.The authors declare that they have no competing interests.


Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry. Launched in August 2005, BJOC became the first journal in the field of organic chemistry fully conforming to the open access model, and our first five years have been a time of fast growth and development. Fully supported by the Beilstein-Institut (we have no submission fees and no access charges), the journal continues to publish top quality work in all fields of organic chemistry, from materials, through mechanism, synthesis and natural products, to chemical biology.January 2010 sees the beginning of the sixth volume of the In the last few months we have seen a rapid rise in the number of papers we are publishing. For example, 2009 saw an increase in submissions of 50% over the previous year, and the number of papers we have published continues to increase year on year (over 50% more in 2009 than 2008) with no compromise to our original target of publishing the highest quality organic chemistry available freely online. Supporting this increasing publication rate we now have a growing team of associate editors from across Europe and North America (with plans to extend to remaining continents). Every paper is assessed in detail by an editor and thoroughly refereed by an international panel of referees drawn from all fields of organic chemistry. Underpinning this, the whole manuscript management, production and publication system we use was developed specifically for BJOC to be organic chemistry specific, and is supported by a dedicated team at the Beilstein-Institut.The open access model allows us to be fully available to all users, and the number of people accessing our website and reading our papers is now over 20000 per month, an increase of 50% over the last year. The online-only format makes universal access to all aspects of the journal possible worldwide. It also brings with it other advantages, such as our innovative “album” tool for a quick graphic structural overview of the contents of a paper. A further development in the last two years has been our pioneering of “thematic series”. These are a kind of “virtual special issue” in which experts in a field, brought together under the guest editorship of a leading scientist, report their latest work in a series of related papers. Published over a period of months in the normal way within the journal, these papers can be viewed together using the “thematic series” tool on the website. Recent series have covered the topical themes of flow chemistry , supramoThe first five years of BJOC have been an exciting time to be involved in pioneering this project - challenging in many ways, but rewarding as the success and profile of the journal continues to build. As we move into a new decade, it is certain that scientific opinion and publication habits are broadly moving in the direction of Open Access. The Open Access model has come late to chemistry, but is set to become the dominant publishing model of the future and BJOC remains well placed to be in the vanguard of Open Access journals in the field.Jonathan ClaydenEditor-in-chiefManchester Dec 2009


Ratings in journal peer review can be affected by sources of bias. The bias variable investigated here was the information on whether authors had suggested a possible reviewer for their manuscript, and whether the editor had taken up that suggestion or had chosen a reviewer that had not been suggested by the authors. Studies have shown that author-suggested reviewers rate manuscripts more favorably than editor-suggested reviewers do.Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, an interactive open access journal using public peer review (authors' and reviewers' comments are publicly exchanged). Public peer review is supposed to bring a new openness to the reviewing process that will enhance its objectivity. In the statistical analysis the quality of a manuscript was controlled for to prevent favorable reviewers' ratings from being attributable to quality instead of to the bias variable.Reviewers' ratings on three evaluation criteria and the reviewers' final publication recommendations were available for 552 manuscripts  that were submitted to Our results agree with those from other studies that editor-suggested reviewers rated manuscripts between 30% and 42% less favorably than author-suggested reviewers. Against this backdrop journal editors should consider either doing without the use of author-suggested reviewers or, if they are used, bringing in more than one editor-suggested reviewer for the review process (so that the review by author-suggested reviewers can be put in perspective). In the research on journal peer review, there are said to be biases, if – independently of the quality of submitted manuscripts – attributes of the reviewers (such as the nomination of a reviewer by the author or the editor) are correlated statistically with the reviewers' ratings British Medical Journal (BMJ), the selection of author-suggested reviewers (Ra) “could improve the quality of peer review in two important ways. Firstly, authors are often better placed than editors to know whom to approach for a considered, balanced, and credible opinion in their field of research. The best reviewers are not those with the most experience or eminence and may be unknown to anyone outside the subject. This is a particular problem for editors of general journals, who review manuscripts from a wide range of disciplines. Secondly, nominated reviewers will enrich the BMJs database, keeping us in touch with young active researchers and giving us a broader population of reviewers.”Reviewers for a manuscript can be selected by editors (1) on the basis of their personal knowledge and familiarity from past experience, (2) from a database of previous reviewers cross-referenced by name and specialty, (3) from references listed in the manuscript, and (4) based on suggestions made by the authors of the manuscript a may be biased in favor of the authors a is that “they can be the authors' best friends” a in addition to editor-suggested reviewers (Re) (meaning reviewers selected by the editor not on the basis of a suggestion by the author), the one (Ra) rates a manuscript systematically more leniently than the other (Re). According to the “Ethical Guidelines for Publication in Journals and Reviews” of the European Association for Chemical and Molecular Sciences a “tended to make more favorable recommendations for publication” (p. 314) than ReJournal of Clinical Investigation, Earnshaw and Farndon British Journal of Surgery, Goldsmith, Blalock, Bobkova, and Hall Journal of Investigative Dermatology, Wager, Parkin, and Tamber Angewandte Chemie International Edition (AC-IE). In addition, Jayasinghe, Marsh and Bond A number of studies of different journals showed that this fear is justified. A study by Schroter, Tite, Hutchings, and Black Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (ACP), through the use of Ra and Re. Using modern information technology, in particular the Internet, the ACP and other interactive open access journals have now become established in science that work with a “new” system of public peer review In this study we aim to test whether there is a potential source of bias in the manuscript reviewing in public peer review at an interactive open access journal, a rate manuscripts systematically more favorably than Re, it would be expected that public peer review at ACP does not show this effect.  and Copernicus Publications (http://publications.copernicus.org/). ACP is freely accessible via the Internet (www.atmos-chem-phys.org). It has the second highest annual Journal Impact Factor (JIF)  in the category “Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences” . ACP has a two-stage publication process Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions, ACPD). These discussion papers are then made available for “interactive public discussion,” during which the comments of reviewers , additional comments by other interested members of the scientific community, and the authors' replies are published alongside the discussion paper. The reviewers can be Ra or Re.ACP was launched in September 2001. It is produced and published by the European Geosciences Union (EGU) : (1) scientific significance , (2) scientific quality ?”), and (3) presentation quality ?”). The response categories for the three questions are: (1) excellent, (2) good, (3) fair, and (4) poor. In addition to the principal evaluation criteria, the reviewers are asked to give a final publication recommendation: “Do you recommend acceptance of the manuscript?” Here, the response categories are: (1) yes, without alterations, (2) yes, after minor alterations, (3) yes, after major alterations, and (4) no. Besides giving the formal ratings to the four questions, the reviewers also have the opportunity to write a commentary.During the discussion phase, the designated reviewers are asked to answer to the following questions according to the ACP's principal evaluation criteria (see http://adv-model-earth-syst.org/index.php/JAMES/about/faq). At ACP, the editors leave it up to the reviewers if they want to include ratings in their public comments, and sometimes they do (∼30%). With increasing acceptance and spread of public review it may become beneficial and appropriate to prescribe publication of formal ratings. For now, however, the ACP editors prefer a mix of open commentaries and non-public ratings for the discussion phase.The ratings are submitted in parallel to the commentaries, but they are not open, because they are meant to support the editorial decision rather than the scientific discussion. This policy was introduced in 2001. According to the experiences and the philosophy of ACP's chief-executive editor Ulrich Pöschl, prescribed publication of formal ratings is likely to do more harm than good . Most other journals pursuing public peer review do not prescribe publication of formal ratings either, and some of them explicitly instruct reviewers not to include formal ratings in their public comments .After the end of the discussion phase every author has the opportunity to submit a revised manuscript taking into account the reviewers' comments and the comments of interested members of the scientific community. Based on the revised manuscript and in view of the access peer review and interactive public discussion, the editor accepts or rejects the revised manuscript for publication in ACP. For this publication decision, further external reviewers may be asked to review the revision, if needed. In general, an editor accepts a manuscript for publication in ACP, if – similar to the “clear-cut” rule of the journal AC-IE n = 87) have one review, 64% (n = 356) have two, 17% (n = 92) have three, 3% (n = 15) have four, and 2 manuscripts have five independent reviews. Of the total 1145 reviews, 304 (27%) were by Ra and 841 (73%) by Re.For the investigation of peer review at ACP we had data for 1111 manuscripts that went through the complete ACP selection process in the years 2001 to 2006 n = 153) revealed that 38 (25%) were published as contributions in other journals. No publication information was found for 115 (75%) manuscripts, whereby 70 of the 115 manuscripts (61%) were published in ACPD. The 38 manuscripts that were published as contributions in other journals were published in 25 different journals within a time period of five years . Six manuscripts were published in the Journal of Geophysical Research; three manuscripts were published in Geophysical Research Letters. The other 23 journals published one or two of these manuscripts each Of the 1111 manuscripts submitted between 2001 and 2006, 958 (86%) were published in ACPD and ACP, 74 (7%) were published in ACPD but not in ACP , and 79 (7%) were published neither in ACPD nor in ACP (these manuscripts were rejected during the access review). The search for the fate of the manuscripts that were not published in ACP  were investigated using the marginal homogeneity test At ACP between 2004 and 2006 135 of a total of 552 manuscripts (25%) were reviewed by a pair of Ra and Re. Using ORM, the association between several independent variables  and an ordinal-scaled dependent variable (here: the reviewers' ratings) can be determined: “As with the binary regression model, the ORM is nonlinear, and the magnitude of the change in the outcome probability for a given change in one of the independent variables depends on the levels of all the independent variables” As in the within-manuscript analysis only 135 of the 552 manuscripts could be included, an ordinal regression model (ORM) was computed as a second step to analyze ratings of RBy fitting an ordinary ORM with robust standard errors for clustered data instead of fitting a variance components model , we were treating the within-cluster dependence as a “nuisance” and not as a phenomenon that we were interested in reliable convenient measure of quality in science – a measure that will continue to be widely used” (p. 201). In the present study we retrieved citation counts for manuscripts accepted by ACP or rejected and published elsewhere for a fixed time window of three years after the publication year. “Fixed citation windows are a standard method in bibliometric analysis, in order to give equal time spans for citation to articles published in different years, or at different times in the same year” http://www.cas.org/).Out of a lack of other operationalizable indicators, it is common in research evaluation to use citation counts as an indicator for scientific quality. According to van Raan not the correlation between citation counts and reviewers' ratings but instead the correlation between the bias variable and ratings, when manuscript impact is statistically controlled. In statistical bias analysis this procedure is called the control variable approach As the citation counts were captured ex post – that is, after the editors' publication decisions  – they are included in the regression models only as control variables. This means that in the analysis the interest was a und Re on the scientific significance, scientific quality, and presentation quality of a manuscript and the final publication recommendation. Whereas the arithmetic average ratings by Re are more negative on all evaluation criteria and for the final publication recommendation than the ratings by Ra, the median ratings of the two groups do not differ on either evaluation criteria or final publication recommendation. The median ratings for the two reviewers groups are always 2. The results shown in a and Re on one and the same manuscript.a and an Re. The table shows the number of those manuscripts (row percents) for which the ratings by Ra and Re did not differ (column: “no difference”), the rating by Ra was more positive than the rating by Re (column: “Ra is more positive than Re”), and the rating by Re was more positive than the rating by Ra (column: “Re is more positive than Ra”). As the distribution of the percentage values for all evaluation criteria and for the final publication recommendation show, there are clearly more manuscripts rated more favorably by Ra than by Re than there are manuscripts rated more favorably by Re than by Ra. For instance, 22% of the final publication recommendations made by Ra are more positive than those made by Re. There are more positive recommendations by Re than by Ra for only 11% of the manuscripts (there is no difference between the recommendations by the two reviewer groups for 67% of the manuscripts). Hence, overall for this group of manuscripts Ra rated more favorably than Re more frequently than vice versa. Using the marginal homogeneity test, we examined whether the ratings by Ra and Re also differed statistically significantly. As the results of the test in a tend to make a more positive final publication recommendation than Re. To test this hypothesis, in a further analysis we selected those manuscripts among the 135 manuscripts reviewed by both Ra and Re that were rated the same on all evaluation criteria by both reviewers. This was the case for 18% of the manuscripts (n = 24). a were more favorable than the recommendations by Re. No manuscript received a more favorable final publication recommendation by Re than by Ra.The differing results of the marginal homogeneity test could indicate that with the same ratings on all evaluation criteria, Ra and Re using ORMs. An ORM was computed for each evaluation criterion and the final publication recommendation. a or Re) and the log-transformed citation counts. a, the ratings on all criteria as well as the final publication recommendation are statistically significantly more favorable than the ratings, if the review is by Re – independently of the quality of the reviewed manuscript (measured ex-post using citation counts). To be able to assess the size of the effect of the variable “Author-suggested reviewer” on the ratings, after the ORMs we computed percent changes in expected ratings for a unit increase (from rating by Re to rating by Ra) e ratings can be expected that are between 30% and 42% less favorable than the ratings by Ra.In closing, we tested differences between the ratings by Rindependently of their quality – whether manuscripts that were reviewed by Ra are reviewed more favorably than manuscripts that were reviewed by Re. The results of this study are therefore more solid than the results of most of the studies published up to now that did not control for the scientific impact of manuscripts in the evaluation.Compared to most of the studies on potential sources of bias in the manuscript reviewing process published up to now, the present study used an optimized strategy with two independent analysis steps. In both steps there was a control for the scientific impact of the research reported in a manuscript in order to be able to determine – a and Re only with regard to the final publication recommendation , there is a tendency in the dataset towards more manuscripts that Ra rate more favorably than Re than the opposite case. In addition, with the same ratings on the evaluation criteria, Ra tends towards a more positive than a more negative final publication recommendation than Re. In a second step of analysis, an ORM was computed. This analysis showed that both for the evaluation criteria and the final publication recommendations, more positive ratings can be expected by Ra than by Re. All in all, the results for the journal ACP agree with the results of other studies  are randomly assigned to a treatment and control group (such as Ra and Re) Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1982, pp. 196–246, and Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1985, pp. 743–747). In that study manuscripts with fictitious author names and institutional affiliations were submitted to journals for publication.However, even though the results of the study indicate that there are differences between the ratings by RRegardless of what the results of experimental studies of that kind would be, we can probably assume that there can be no peer review system without the influence of potential sources of bias. Scientists, too, are only human: “Philosophers and sociologists agree that the notion of a truly objective disinterested ‘seeker after truth’ is incompatible with the realities of social existence. We all have personal interests and institutional values that we are bound to promote in our scientific work … It will surely defend objectivity as an ideal, impossible to realize completely in practice but always to be respected and desired” a than from Re. Many journals use precautions to avoid biased review from Ra, e.g., by stipulating that reviewers do not work in the same institution, have never published with them, etc. If reviewers have a disqualifying conflict they should excuse themselves or not be used. However, personal relationships are harder to quantify than financial links so they are often overlooked. Journal editors should therefore consider, if Ra are used, bringing in more than one Re for the review process so that the review by Ra can be put in perspective.If indications of the effect of sources of bias are found in a peer review process, Thorngate, Dawes, and Foddy


Currently most of the aspects of the move are complete. PDFs of all the articles published previously in CytoJournal before June 2008 .Organizing inclusion in CrossRef with  is comparable to other Cytopathology journals.Although the official IF for CytoJournal will be available in near future, The, department chairs-leaders, academic institutions, readers, and authors have FREE access to monitor and quantify individual articles, journals, and authors for promotion and other academic purposes.As mentioned above, currently there are many other real-time, more flexible quality indicators allowing comparison between different journals in open system. These indicators not only provide quality evaluation of a particular journal, but also permit quantification of isolated articles and individual authors for comparative evaluation. h-index:i.  Sometimes referred to as the Hirsch index or Hirsch number, quantifies scientific productivity and impact by the author. An author with an index of h has published h articles. Each of these h articles has been cited by other scholars at least h times (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirsch_number#cite_note-2). This index is useful for comparing authors working in the same field as citation patterns differ widely among different fields. This index is ideal for promotion and comparison of different faculty in the same area of expertise.Index Copernicusii.   provided through the freely available web site, which also explains how the index is generated  with opportunity to compare with other journals from the data about other journals under the ‘Master List’ http://journals.indexcopernicus.com/masterlist.php?litera=aandstart=0andskok=30SCImago research groupiii.  (http://www.scimagojr.com/index.php) has numerous features including SJR, H-index, and other quality indicators for comparison of various journals as a free resource.Harzing.comiv.  provides free software for citation analysis of individual authors and journals. To download this software visit http://www.harzing.com/resources.htm and click on ‘Publish or Perish installer for Windows’ (or for Linux) towards the bottom of this page by scrolling downward [Google scholar data http://scholar.google.co.uk/downward . Citatiodownward  or journdownward  in 2 minhttp://www.cytojournal.com/cytooascholar.asp). An open access related poster/flyer may be downloaded from http://www.cytojournal.com/CytoJ-OpenAccess.pdf and e-mailed to your colleagues. Please post/circulate those in your department, institution, societies, and conferences, in order to communicate the benefits of this open access charter of CytoJournal. The current platform in addition to the very important feature of worldwide open access benefit has instant translation feature with translation into many languages around the world [CytoJournal strongly recommends that all the editorial board members, reviewers, authors, readers, and other well-wishers to participate in the ‘CytoJournal Advocacy’ and ‘CytoJ open access scholar’ program , its secretary/legal advisor Atty. John K. Bartosz, JD, LL.M , and managing editor of CytoJournal- Anjani Shidham for their invaluable contribution of providing expertise in various activities of CytoJournal.