Improving the methodological rigour and the quality of data analysis in manuscripts submitted to journals is key to ensure the validity of scientific claims. However, there is scant knowledge of how manuscripts change throughout the review process in academic journals. Here, we examined 27 467 manuscripts submitted to four journals from the Royal Society (2006–2017) and analysed the effect of peer review on the amount of statistical content of manuscripts, i.e. one of the most important aspects to assess the methodological rigour of manuscripts. We found that manuscripts with both initial low or high levels of statistical content increased their statistical content during peer review. The availability of guidelines on statistics in the review forms of journals was associated with an initial similarity of statistical content of manuscripts but did not have any relevant implications on manuscript change during peer review. We found that when reports were more concentrated on statistical content, there was a higher probability that these manuscripts were eventually rejected by editors. By expoWhile author–reviewer collaboration during peer review can have different forms, some of which are potentially dysfunctional, e.g. collusion and parochialism ,9, one oUnfortunately, there is little understanding of how this developmental function actually works –16. WhilTo ensure that reviewers do not only consider novelty as opposed to rigour, journals have introduced guidelines and instructions to ensure they focus on data analysis and statistical testing ,20. ThesPhilosophical Transactions in 1665, the Royal Society pioneered the concepts and practices of academic journals, editorial responsibility and peer review [Philosophical Transactions A and Proceedings A, which publish research on physical, mathematical and engineering sciences, Philosophical Transactions B, Proceedings B and Biology Letters, with a readership in biological sciences, as well as cross-disciplinary outlets, such as Interface, for cross-disciplinary research at the interface between the physical and life sciences, and Royal Society Open Science, the Royal Society’s most recent open access journal in science, engineering and mathematics.To fill this gap, we established a confidential agreement with the Royal Society to access manuscript and peer review data from their journals. The world’s oldest independent scientific academy, with the first publication of r review . The RoyData included complete manuscript files and (when available) peer review reports over the same time frame (2006–2017) from all these journals. However, after careful analysis of the database, we restricted our sample to four journals to ensure full comparability of manuscripts (see detail in the Methods section). We concentrated on 27 467 manuscripts from four journals and built a glossary of statistical terms to analyse the text of manuscripts and review reports. Note that in compliance with the agreement signed by all authors of this study, journals were fully anonymized to avoid identification. While other research has examined review reports, e.g. studying their linguistic properties –28, our Note that we did not assume that any change of the statistical content of manuscripts during peer review would always lead to manuscript improvements in terms of methodological rigour. We also did not assume that any change of statistical terms in the text would necessarily mean the improvement of the quality and rigour of manuscripts. Here, we assumed that the change of statistical content of manuscripts throughout the peer review process as proxied by text revisions may reveal a joint attention effort by reviewers and authors on the methodological content of manuscripts, which is one of the most important functions of peer review. As suggested by recent research, exploring the text of manuscript and peer review reports quantitatively is key to understand the scholarly communication landscape and reconstruct the complex, indirect, collaborative relationship between authors and reviewers, which typically occurs behind the confidentiality of the journal editorial process .. 2. 2.1Data were obtained thanks to a confidential agreement with the Royal Society and were extracted in a comparable time-frame (2006–2017). The original dataset included 60 240 manuscripts submitted to 13 journals. However, in order to ensure full comparability, we concentrated on four journals, which ensured similar standards in terms of number, type of submissions and rejection rates. We also excluded from the sample any manuscript without a clear submission date, being reviewed by multiple journals, changing its status during re-submission, being assigned an unclear final decision in the manuscript submission system (e.g. rejected after accepted or accepted twice), or with missing files. This implied removing more than 24 000 manuscripts from the sample. The remaining 34 781 manuscripts  were further filtered by selecting all research articles and excluding review papers, opinion pieces, reports, memoirs, recollections, replies etc. We restricted our analysis to journals J1, J7, J8 and J11, since these journals contributed to 97.1% of peer-reviewed manuscripts in our dataset . We excluded data from the rest of the journals since they marginally contribute with less than 1% of peer-reviewed articles. —11 243 manuscripts that were peer-reviewed, —13 616 manuscripts that were desk-rejected or accepted without any round of peer review, and —2608 manuscripts without any available review report .This led us to consider 27 467 manuscripts , includiWe then checked whether journals included any guidelines for assessing statistics in their forms sent to reviewers, i.e. an explicit question asking reviewers to assess the quality of a manuscript’s statistical analysis in the review form.https://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~stark/SticiGui/Text/gloss.htm). To map the statistical content of manuscripts, we selected a list of commonly used statistical terms from a statistics glossary developed by the University of Berkeley .We applied our dictionary to map the presence of these concepts in the text of manuscripts and review reports by using an R library called We considered the presence of statistical terms within the text of manuscripts and excluded equations, tables and figures, while keeping their captions and recurrences in the text. This allowed us to consider also equations, tables or figures while achieving full comparison of manuscripts and journals and minimizing bias due to either journal- or manuscript-specific features .. 2.2To explore the potential effect of peer review on the statistical content of manuscripts and on editorial decisions, we built two models: a Poisson regression for the number of different statistical terms in the final version of each manuscript which underwent revisions during peer review, and a logistic linear regression for the probability of editorial acceptance of manuscripts after peer review.p models, p being the potential co-variates in each linear predictor . We then calculated the posterior inclusion probability (PIP) for each variable as the sum of the posterior probabilities in all models.We applied a Bayesian variable selection to identify the variables to be included in these linear predictors. To do so, we considered posterior probabilities for each possible combination of variables shown in electronic supplementary material, tables S3 and S4. More specifically, we considered 2p posterior probabilities which usually need numerical integration . Due toon (e.g.  and theion (e.g. .nrounds). For the second model, the probability of a manuscript’s acceptance was associated with: the statistical content of the associated review reports . However, for the sake of clarity, we excluded this effect when examining the probability of each manuscript’s acceptance as these probabilities were similar across journals.After selecting our model variables, in order to estimate the final number of different statistical terms of manuscripts, we added a random effect per journal to reflect possible differences between journals c. Howevei) was as follows:Considering all aspects, the final model of the number of different statistical terms in the final version of manuscripts (i) was as follows:The selected model for the probability of a manuscript’s acceptance  and its R interface rjags . JAGS pe. 3We then considered all 11 243 manuscripts that survived the editorial desk and were eventually reviewed multiple times (note that 50.7% of these 11 243 manuscripts were rejected after the first round). We compared their initial statistical content with the final version of manuscripts after peer review. We found that 13.8% of these did not vary their statistical content . For the remaining 35.4%, 23.9% of these manuscripts increased their statistical content, whereas 11.6% reduced it. Regarding the final editorial decision, half of manuscripts accepted for publication increased their statistical content during peer review, 25% decreased it, whereas the remaining 25% did not vary. A proportion of 93.1% of manuscripts which were eventually rejected after peer review did not change in terms of statistical content, 5% increased it, whereas 1.9% decreased it . —the availability of guidelines to assess the statistical content of manuscripts in the review form of some journals; —the number of rounds of peer review undergone by manuscripts before the final editorial decision; —the number of reviewers who jointly or sequentially assessed the same manuscript; and —the reviewer score, i.e. the quality of manuscripts as assessed by reviewers.We found that the availability of guidelines in the review form did not have any significant effect on the statistical content of manuscripts . We found a positive effect of the peer review on the statistical content of manuscripts: more rounds implied more substantial changes . We also found that being assessed by more than two reviewers led to an increase of manuscripts’ statistical content (with a significant χ2-test) for both accepted and rejected manuscripts .We then considered other variables, which could affect the difference of statistical content during manuscript revisions, including:y-axis—associated with the value 0 in changes in statistical content of manuscripts—x-axis—in figure S5 in the electronic supplementary material).We then measured each reviewer’s focus on statistics by analysing the statistical content of their comments to authors. Given that this required the availability of review text, we had to restrict our analysis to 11 050 manuscripts (out of 11 243). Results showed that reviewers varied their opinion on the statistical content of manuscripts . We found a wide variability in the maximum number of different statistical terms in reviewer reports. Reports with less statistical content were associated with smaller changes in the statistical content of manuscripts . Furthermore, when considering random effects at a journal level, results confirmed that manuscripts submitted to journal J8 generally had lower levels of statistical content .More importantly, we found that reviewers contributed to increase the statistical content of manuscripts regardless of the statistical content of review reports . HoweverElectronic supplementary material, table S4, shows the results of our logistic regression model . The probability of a manuscript being accepted for publication was related to the number of reviewers who assessed it, the statistical content of review reports, the overall opinion of reviewers , and the number of rounds of reviews .a). The review score was increasingly instrumental for a manuscript’s final acceptance as it is closely related to the number of rounds. For instance, manuscripts undergoing only one round of reviews had a median review score of 0.12 and those undergoing more than one round had a median review score of 0.67. Although the effect of the number of rounds was strongly associated with the review score , we considered both variables to build a better model, as indicated by their posterior inclusion probabilities . We also found a decreasing effect of the number of reviewers (figure 4c) and the statistical content of reviews (figure 4d). This would suggest that the more the reviewers were concentrated on statistics in their reports, the less likely a manuscript was eventually accepted for publication by the editor.figure 4. 4The role of peer review in improving the quality of scientific publications has been subject to increasing scrutiny in recent research , which hHere, we aimed to fill this gap by examining manuscript changes and peer review reports in a sample of manuscripts submitted to four journals from the Royal Society in the same time frame (2006–2017). We concentrated on the statistical content of manuscripts as a proxy of the rigour of the analysis supporting scientific claims and findings in published manuscripts. While this can be irrelevant in certain areas of research, e.g. the humanities, robust quantitative methodologies and statistical tests are key to corroborate findings in ‘hard sciences’. Furthermore, our database allowed us to consider various factors that could influence manuscript development, including the number of rounds of peer review undergone by manuscripts, the number of reviewers who jointly or sequentially assessed them, the reviewer score, reflecting a manuscript’s perceived quality by reviewers, and the availability of guidelines in the reviewer form.Our results suggest that manuscripts with both initial lowest or highest levels of statistical content increased their statistical content during the process, whereas desk-rejected manuscripts had comparatively fewer statistical terms in their text. We found that these developments were associated with a higher probability of a manuscript’s acceptance. The availability of reviewer guidelines on statistics on review forms seems to ensure similar initial levels of statistical content among submitted manuscripts but did not have any qualitative implication on manuscript change during peer review. We found that editors were more likely to reject manuscripts when reviewers concentrated more on the statistical content of manuscripts in their reports.Note that our developmental measurements of peer review here did not consider the possible developments of manuscripts rejected by these four journals but later submitted to and possibly published by other journals. Although authors can disregard advice from reviewers after rejection and rejections are costly to the system and are often a source of academic frustration , researcThis said, our study has certain limitations. First, in order to analyse the text of manuscripts and review reports, we started from a glossary of statistical terms, selected those relevant to our purposes and measured the occurrence of these terms throughout manuscripts and reports. In our opinion, this was an appropriate design strategy considering the type of journals and areas of research in our dataset and the fact that statistics is a standardized field. However, integrating our measurements with qualitative analysis of the text by human experts would be a significant step forward . This woSecondly, although the four journals from the Royal Society covered here allowed us a certain degree of variety in terms of fields and journals, extending our research to other fields where statistics and statistical models are important, such as medicine, engineering, economics and social sciences, could help provide a more comprehensive picture of the developmental function of peer review in terms of rigour and methodology. This would also increase the in-depth definition of rigour: in certain areas, it is expected that the concept of rigour could extend to hypothesis testing and data collection, thereby suggesting that looking at statistical terms is only an approximation.Finally, note that this type of research on language and content analysis of manuscripts and reports is in its infancy ,28,44–46Click here for additional data file.


The Scientific Journal: Authorship and the Politics of Knowledge in the Nineteenth Century is a deep exploration into Western European scientific cultures and debates surrounding the presentation and privileging of knowledge in nineteenth-century journals. Throughout this volume, Csiszar considers the place of trust, expertise, accountability, public knowledge, and politics, all of which are interwoven into the development of scientific knowledge in the nineteenth century and today.In the medical library field, the medical and scientific journal article holds a privileged place. Considered the space for unveiling cutting-edge and recent discoveries, reviewing various topics and themes, and situating research in the larger medical and scientific world, journals and journal articles provide legitimacy to the work of researchers and faculty throughout the world. The business of medical libraries supports this scholarly apparatus through journal and database subscriptions, loans, education programs, and staff dedicated to helping researchers in various parts of the research and publication process. In the grind of this cycle, there is often little time to reflect on how and why the scientific journal and article rose to this privileged place and the larger historic roots behind this enterprise. Alex Csiszar's Vision of Science [The Footnote: A Curious History [Csiszar's study centers on episodes of debate and change related to scientific knowledge that occurred between scientific communities, particularly the Royal Society in London and the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris, and periodical presses in nineteenth-century France and Britain, although he periodically references other European countries. Recent scholarship has delved into the circulation of scientific knowledge, the economic aspects of publishing, and the popularization of science, which are not the main thrusts of Csiszar's work, as he acknowledges in the introduction. Instead, Csiszar weaves together the history of scientific knowledge production and authorship with book history, situating his work in fields dominated by Steven Shapin and Bruno Latour, and works on Victorian science and book readership like James Secord's  Science . In some History , which pAt the heart of Csiszar's work are two questions, asking why the format of the published scientific paper became the main vehicle carrying what he calls the “epistemic weight” (p. 2) of science instead of a book, for example, and how public trust and legitimacy became tied to scientific literature. Not surprisingly, the answer is fluid, and his questions have deep relevance for understanding scientific literature and publication today, which he clearly acknowledges in the introduction and conclusion. Csiszar also questions why the public is important for legitimating scientific knowledge, especially in light of the rise of scientific experts. He explores many other formats that communicate science, such as newspapers, pamphlets, abstracts, catalogs, and letters, to help drive home how remarkable it is that the scientific journal became the seat of scientific legitimacy and authority. Different chapters discuss how the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Sciences interacted with the larger periodical community, writers, editors, and broader public(s); identified and granted authorship; and developed a referee system (or not). Csiszar also considers what role revolutionary politics in France and England played in the spread or censorship of scientific knowledge, what role the market played in scientific discovery, and how scientists and groups beyond the Society and Academy contributed to debates prioritizing authorship, among many other themes.This text is certainly intended for academic audiences, although anyone interested in the history of the development of scientific literature can dive into the volume. Csiszar often presents the main questions and thrusts of his argument in multiple ways to ensure the reader gets the point. Periodically, the sheer number of individuals involved in the various scientific societies, journals, publishers, and their critics is hard to keep track of, and having some sense of French and British history of the early to mid-nineteenth centuries is helpful.Csiszar ends his book with a quick dive into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, as debates created by new technologies, such as the Internet and preprint repositories, continue highlighting larger issues related to scientific legitimacy and the politics around science in this era. New technologies generate hope, and sometimes fantasy, bound up in the idea that open data and research made available on new platforms will solve some of the deeper problems around scientific production, sometimes ignoring the political and commercial parts of scientific life. Csiszar reminds the reader that genres and formats are fluid, and that scientific literature is still at “a juncture where the cultures of trust that still undergird much of scientific life and the cultures of accountability that dominate much of public life have come together” (p. 288). While COVID-19 has certainly put this assumption to the test, the thousands of articles generated annually by the scientific community continue to center the published scientific paper at the heart of the research enterprise.


A thank you to our reviewers.Brain Pathology would like to extend their gratitude to those who have provided their time and energy to review manuscripts for our journal over the last year. We are well aware that our journal can only exist thanks to your concerted efforts to provide concise, accurate, and thoughtful reviews. Below is a list of all of you who completed at least one review, and agreed to have your name published. We also thank those reviewers who choose not to have their names published.The editors at Abassi, ZaidAktas, GulaliAlafuzoff, IrinaAlexandrescu, SandaAmtul, ZareenBai, HuaBielle, FranckBieniek, KevinCairns, NigelCapper, DavidCarare, RoxanaChang, Che‐FengCoppi, ElisabettaDahiya, SonikaDarkwah Oppong, MarvinDel Bigio, MarcDiamandis, PhediasDing, YiDonato, RosarioEftekhapour, EftekarElAli, AymanErny, DanielFerrer, IsidreFineschi, VFonseca, Ana CatarinaFriedrich, Christoph MGao, YanqinGatto, NoemiGuo, JifengHan, YingHorbinski, CraigHu, Xue‐YuIrwin, DavidJiang, NanKalaria, RajKamasawa, NaomiKanat, AyhanKhodosevich, KonstantinKilic, EKovacs, GaborLatimer, CaitlinLattanzi, SimonaMarbacher, SergeMartinez‐Marcos, AlinoMatute, CarlosMawrin, ChristianMiners, JamesMishra, NishantMiyata, HajimeMöller, HaraldMorales, RodrigoMueller, NorbertNakayama, KazuhisaNauen, DavidNeumann, ManuelaPark, Sung‐HyePaula‐Lima, AndreaPekmezci, MelikePersidsky, YuriPiao, YueshanPinho, JoãoPinto, LuisaPollack, SaskiaPopa‐Wagner, AurelPozzi, SilviaPriller, JosefSarnat, HarveySepulveda‐Falla, DiegoShao, AnwenSinha, NamitaSone, DaichiSreedharan, JemeenStewart, TessandraStewart, WilliamStojanov, DraganSun, DianjianyiTapias, VictorTheil, ThomasThom, MVaubel, RachaelVitte, JeremieVolbers, BastianWalker, ChandlerWang, JianWei, ZhengWhitehead, ShawnWittenbecher, ClemensWoo, Jung AWrede, KarstenWu, DiWu, QihuiYip, StephenYoussef, SamehZhang, ShuZhang, XiumingZhao, CunyouZhou, Zhenhua


The brain function on music has been a recently developing field of neuroscience that holds a position of great interest to neuroscientists, psychologists, health professionals, and musicians alike. The primary goal of investigating music and the brain has been to determine particular neural correlates that are involved in or altered by the engagement of humans with music. It can be said that the study of the neuroscience behind music is a discussion regarding human behavior, environmental stimuli, and how that can be represented in our physiology, as well as how our brain structure allows us to interact with such stimuli in a unique and functional way.Music is a complex phenomenon that employs, from very early in life, widespread neural activity in interconnected regions of sensory perception . Although both studies analyzed intelligence, Schellenberg  combined with both clinical and neuroscientific outcome measures, uniform methodological investigations  and analysis of sub-groups of tasks proposed  could much easier be successful as it focuses on more technical and visible concepts  rather than far transfer one that represents a broader and less visible concept among music and cognitive development   (Brown et al., Due to the implementation of non-unified and blurred quality methodological standards, more justification and work are needed to explain music's possible causal link to neuroplasticity. Support of future studies may be apprehended through comparable and inter-connected related outcomes, allowing the presentation of new knowledge content and processes. Therefore, given the variability in published results in the specific field and the difficulty of interpreting these results, the development of stronger, more thorough, and more uniform research methods in quality is urgent (Jaschke et al., EPa and MA: conceptualization. EPa: methodology and supervision. MA and EPi: validation and resources. MA, EPi, and EPa: writing—original draft preparation and writing—review and editing. MA: project administration. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.The article publication charge for this work was funded by Oslo Metropolitan University.The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.


Notes andRecords, I remember to ask myself: why do scholars write? Is it curiosity,ambition, hope, courage or all those qualities blended into the creative impulse that says‘I have some new knowledge, so what do you think?’When I think about peer review as Editor-in-Chief of Notes andRecords are satisfied that the primary sources have been interpreted in asensitive, nuanced and appropriate manner. Have the voices of the past been allowed tospeak, or are they being shoehorned into an ill-fitting conceptual box for the sake ofsurface novelty and academic fashion? A case of Foucault for Foucault's sake?In the history of science, when editors select reviewers we hope that they will check thatour potential contributor has read the historiography—in other words, that our author isaware of what other historians have said about the matter and sets her own argument in thisscholarly context. We hope that our reviewers for We hope that our reviewers have considered whether the transcriptions of material areaccurate. In the Hebrew Bible, when Moses came from Mount Sinai, his head was said to have‘radiance’ or, in Hebrew, ‘karan’. However, when St Jerome was preparing his Latin editionof the Bible, he misread ‘karan’ as ‘keren’ or horned. Jerome's error meant that forgenerations, Moses was portrayed with horns, even by Michelangelo when sculpting Pope JuliusII's tomb in 1513. Lost in translation.unconscious bias all along the way. Voices from a variety ofbackgrounds and cultures allow us to assess a potential contribution to the fieldmeaningfully. Unity in diversity.We hope our reviewers check that authors understand the historical context of the materialswith which they have chosen to work. Has the author recognized, for example, what the term‘cousin’ in the eighteenth century really meant, or why seventeenth-century reflectingtelescopes could perform poorly due to their speculum metal alloys? We hope that ourreviewers offer suggestions on how to make the prose more fluid and compelling. Being a peerreviewer is demanding, and that is why it is especially important as an editor to use theprinciples of both diversity and expertise in selecting reviewers, and to check our yes, this is new; yes, this isworth sharing; this is the creative impulse made manifest. Publication may take a whilesometimes, as authors are finding their voice, or struggling with difficult material, orfinding just the right words to make an event from the past come alive. But that's all rightand to be expected, and publish or perish be damned. Let's remember that there is a deepbreath taken before the author hits the ‘send’ button. Making knowledge is courageous.And most of all, as editors, we have hopeful anticipation that the reviewers will sayAs an editor, this process of refinement and care and scholarly exchange in the peer reviewprocess is a wonderful thing to observe and to facilitate. And the most wonderful result ofsuccessful peer review is to see a paper published, whether that is a young scholar makingtheir debut in the scholarly community, or a more experienced colleague who tried somethingnew and succeeded. If done correctly, both the peer reviewer and the author re-evaluatetheir expertise and communicate in a kind and collegial fashion—because, when it comes downto it, peer review in its ideal form is both an act of altruism and an act of investment inthe continuation of the scholarly enterprise by our colleagues. That is why it is soimportant to engage in thoughtful peer review as a scholar, and that is why it is importantto do it well, acting not as a gatekeeper, but as a fellow contributor in the creation ofknowledge. Collective wisdom.Notes andRecords for their own collective wisdom and their excellent service to thejournal.And I heartily thank all the peer reviewers for


The Global Infectious Disease Ethics (GLIDE) Collaborative is launching a new Wellcome Open Research (WOR) Gateway, and we as the leaders of GLIDE hope to encourage submissions to this timely and necessary new platform for publishing open access peer-reviewed articles focusing on this area. GLIDE aims to provide a flexible collaborative platform for identifying and analyzing ethical issues arising in infectious disease treatment, research, response, and preparedness, through the lens of global health ethics. It has a focus on being inclusive of diverse global perspectives, and will pay particular attention to including the voices of researchers at all career stages. The idea for GLIDE pre-dated the onset of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic as bioethics colleagues from the University of Oxford and Johns Hopkins University realized the value that collaboration could add to analyses, research, and advanced training related to ethics, policy, and infectious disease in the global health context. Fortunately, the Wellcome Trust agreed. We began working initially on a pilot project in 2019 and now are in the midst of a multi-year launch of the GLIDE collaborative platform with colleagues at Oxford, Johns Hopkins, and an International Expert Network.It doesn’t require much argument to make the case that attention to ethics, infectious disease and global health has never been more important. The GLIDE Gateway represents a timely and necessary new platform for publishing open access peer-reviewed articles focusing on this area.As we carried out a series of virtual meetings over the last year with members of GLIDE, we heard multiple versions of a similar concern: there are many barriers to both publishing in and accessing the academic journal literature due to author publication costs and licence fees. The growth of open access publication has been a major step towards addressing the problem of accessing articles that otherwise reside behind paywalls, but author publication costs make the cost of publication prohibitive for many scholars across the globe and in particular for colleagues in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and early career scholars. These barriers are exacerbating the inequities surfaced during the pandemic, highlighting the importance of addressing structural obstacles to knowledge sharing. The GLIDE Gateway aims to be a small step in promoting much needed wider systemic change.The GLIDE Gateway will provide a home for open access and fee-free publishing focusing on infectious disease and global health ethics and will create a living resource for cutting edge analysis and discussion in this increasingly important but overlooked area. The Gateway will be an inclusive space for diverse voices from across the globe, and create a community of scholars working on these topics. To attract high-impact submissions for publication, the Gateway will provide rapid peer-review by a community of committed scholars led by an advisory team including Profs. Michael Parker from Oxford and Jeffrey Kahn from Johns Hopkins.Epidemic Ethics and theGlobal Forum on Bioethics in Research, creating a growing presence on WOR for global health ethics content and offering the opportunity for WOR to become a leading source of global health ethics scholarship. For those committed to the principles of open access publication and free sharing of knowledge, the GLIDE Gateway represents a new option for publishing. With the help of the community, the GLIDE Gateway and the WOR platform will be recognized as a first-tier journal option for those working in global health ethics and infectious disease. To help seed the Gateway, presenters at this year’s Oxford Global Health Bioethics International Conference (now organized by GLIDE) with the theme “From Crisis to Wellbeing: Recognizing the Power and Potential of Global Health Ethics” will be encouraged to submit papers based on their presentations for publication on the Gateway.In addition to its content area focus and participation from the growing GLIDE community, the Gateway will join other related Collections on Wellcome Open Research (WOR) fromIn sum, the WOR GLIDE Gateway will provide a new opportunity for high-impact and quality, open access and free to publish literature, on global health ethics and infectious disease. It will be accessible and available to scholars from across the globe, with reduced barriers for those from LMICs. This approach “walks the talk” of open access publication and makes real the commitment to address some of the inequities in knowledge sharing created by traditional publishing models, all of which are critically important as the world struggles to emerge from a global pandemic. We welcome colleagues in the bioethics community to join us in this effort, to focus more research and scholarship on the issues of global health ethics and infectious disease, and to consider submitting articles to WOR, making our work more widely available. We will be glad to help facilitate your effort to publish in the Gateway.No data are associated with this article.


Background: There are currently numerous innovations in peer review and quality assurance in scholarly publishing. The Research on Research Institute conducted a programme of co-produced projects investigating these innovations. This literature review was part of one such project ‘Experiments in peer review’ which created an inventory and framework of peer review innovations. The aim of this literature review was to aid the development of the inventory by identifying innovations in the external peer review of journal manuscripts reported in the scholarly literature and by providing a summary of the different approaches. This did not include interventions in editorial processes.Methods: This review of reviews is based on data identified from Web of Science and Scopus limited from 2010 to 2021. A total of 291 records were screened, with six review articles chosen for the focus of the literature review. Items were selected that described approaches to innovating peer review or illustrated examples.  Results: The overview of innovations are drawn from six review articles. The innovations are divided into three high-level categories: approaches to peer review, reviewer focussed initiatives and technology to support peer review with sub-categories of results presented in tabular form and summarised. A summary of all innovations found is also presented.Conclusions: From a simple synthesis of the review authors’ conclusions, three key messages are presented: observations on current practice; authors’ views on the implications of innovations in peer review; and calls for action in peer review research and practice. The Research on Research Institute (RoRI) conducted a number of co-produced projects with academic publishers and scholarly communication service providers. These projects investigated current experiments and innovations in quality assurance and peer review in scholarly publishing. This literature review is part of one such project entitled ‘Experiments in Peer Review’.The ‘Experiments in Peer Review’ project aimed:to identify, analyse, and evaluate current innovations in peer review and other forms of quality control/assurance of research outputsto assess their potential impacts on scholarly communication in particular and the research environment in general.The first phase of this project was to create an inventory and framework of experiments in peer review carried out by publishers and other scholarly communication organisations. The inventory is based on a widely distributed survey of scholarly publishers designed to retrieve information on current innovations at grass roots level  software, members of the public, patients, advocates and lobbyists. Peer review, used in this broad sense, also encapsulates activities designed to ensure research integrity such as plagiarism checks and monitoring compliance with data management policies. Similarly, peer review also includes informal responses, questions and comments posted on social media, pre-print servers, e-journals or other places online in response to a given research output. These types of informal responses were found in a study examining disciplinary knowledge production , where eThe scope of this review is restricted to peer review in scholarly publishing, although similar observations about the benefits and limitations of peer review are found in publications concerned with other parts of the research system. One example is the onerous nature of peer review, which is a factor also associated with peer review in research funding , and resThis literature review describes innovations. In a similar treatment to the interpretation of the term ‘peer review’ we adopt a broad interpretation of the term ‘innovation’. The definition proposed byLike any scholarly work, this literature review is limited by its scope and data sample. It is an overview of approaches to external peer review of journal manuscripts. It is based on searches of academic bibliographic databases and does not include evidence identified through grey literature searches. The source documents are six literature reviews and the article provides an overview of the peer review approaches stated in these reviews. Reviewing these overview articles enabled generic categories to be created to encompass broad types of intervention, such as training or other support for peer reviewers. In line with our aims, not every individual example or implementation of these broad types of initiative was found in the included papers. Also, given the data sources, some approaches to peer review may have been omitted, such as volunteering to review.In addition, the review focuses on the peer review process involving external reviewers, rather than the editorial side of the review process, hence examples of innovations of this nature are not included.This review of reviews does not contain a quality assessment of the included review papers. Where a quality assessment of primary studies was performed within the included reviews, we have indicated this in the descriptions of the included studies.The next section will describe the methodology used in this literature review and how we will present the results. This is followed by the results themselves in which we classify different types of innovations. We conclude with some discursive reflections on the current situation.This review was undertaken to set the context and inform an empirical study . HoweverOf high importance to this review and RoRI’s work with scholarly publishers is the Reimagine Review registry set up by Accelerating Science and Publication in biology (ASAPbio). The projects included in this registry provide live examples of the types of peer review innovations summarised in this review, such as post-publication review and pre-print review. More details of the registry are provided inReimagine Review is a registry of peer review experiments. As of January 6, 2023, it includes 62 registered projects.The registry is presented as a searchable database. The user is able to filter the records in various ways including type of output, who initiates the review, whether the reviews are stand alone or linked to a specific publication, the level of transparency or ‘openness’, whether a decision is made at the end of the review (to publish or not), discipline, format of reviewing (such as comments or scores) and some characteristics of the process . Alternatively, the top page enables authors to choose by output: pre-print, articles already accepted for publication by a journal, privately shared manuscripts and finally ‘other outputs’ such as protocols, data sets etc. This enables authors to choose the most appropriate service that fits with their needs. The types of innovation featured in the Reimagine Review inventory  such as Web of Science andScopus to identify relevant papers using synonyms for ‘peer review’ and ‘innovation’, records were screened to exclude studies that did not describe a type of innovation in peer review, or gave an example of a specific innovation. Further records were retrieved using citation searches of the remaining relevant records. Following these search and screening iterations, 68 records were initially included. The full texts of these records were retrieved and screened and six review articles were chosen for the focus of the literature review. Searches were conducted in January 2021, limited from 2010 and no study filters were applied. An example search strategy is presented below.A literature search was conducted inWeb of Science via Clarivate. TI=("peer reviewing" OR "peer reviewer" OR "peer review ") AND TI=(experiment* or pilot* or improvement* or innovation* or solution* or initiative* or intervention*)Timespan: 2010–2021. Indexes: SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI, A&HCI, CPCI-S, CPCI-SSH, BKCI-S, BKCI-SSH, ESCI.EndNote (X9.3.2) to facilitate de-duplication after which study selection was completed in theRayyan software10.31235/osf.io/qaksd).Search results were initially downloaded toThe results are presented using narrative and tabular formats, followed by a summary of the review and conclusions. The results section begins with a description of included studies, followed by a detailed description of innovations in peer review types using three high level categories: approaches to peer review, reviewer focussed initiatives, and technology to support peer review. This includes definitions of each type of innovation extracted from the included studies. A summary table of each innovation and where these have been reported is provided at the end of the review. SeeThe review includes six overview studies which range from a systematic review of randomised controlled trials to a succinct summary of review innovations. All the studies were valuable in capturing the different types of current innovation in peer review. Each study is described below, presented in chronological order. This is followed by a narrative summary of each type of innovation, followed by a summary table, giving definitions of each innovation and citations to the respective studies where they are found.BMC Medicine which aims to evaluate the effectiveness of innovations to improve the quality of peer review for publications in biomedical science. It includes 22 randomised controlled trials.The innovations that were evaluated were: reviewer training, addition of a statistical peer reviewer, open peer review (where reviewers’ identity is known), blinded peer review (where reviewers’ or authors’ identity is not known), and innovations to increase the speed of peer review. The unit of randomisation were either peer reviewers or manuscripts depending upon the innovation being assessed, for example comparing the effect of adding a statistical reviewer against the usual process of peer review in a given set of manuscripts. For details of study characteristics seeF1000 Research. Its process is notable as the review has 33 authors. They are experts in scholarly publishing, and it is these expertise which formed the basis of the review. The authors identified papers through searching databases such as Google Scholar, Scopus, and Library & Information Science Abstracts (LISA). Additionally, there was a lengthy peer review process which was published with the review including reviewers reports and authors responses, a key part of the F1000 model (and itself an innovation in peer review). The authors review the history of peer review, its myriad shortcomings and details the potential solutions that have been developed to date to address these challenges. The pros and cons of newer innovations in peer review such as portable, de-coupled and collaborative peer review are then discussed as well as an examination of different levels of anonymity. They then go on to focus on a number of social web platforms, such as Reddit and expand on the benefits and limitations of each platform considering three criteria: quality control and moderation, certification, and incentive structures. Alongside the review of new innovations, the authors are clear to signal that there are particular benefits of peer review and that it has deep and far-reaching cultural significance within research practices which should not be underestimated. A hybrid model is suggested combining aspects of different platforms. The authors stress that any such innovation cannot succeed without engagement from researchers, but this is in tension with the structure of researcher incentives in the research system. The review concludes with two main points, one to decouple peer review from journal publishing in order to return to what the authors suggest would be a community-led process. Secondly, there is very little evidence to support the uptake of different methods of peer review, so research to measure the effectiveness of these different approaches in achieving different goals of peer review is essential. Three key initiatives are referred to as leaders in this respect: thePEERE initiative, theResearch Integrity and Peer Review journal, and theInternational Congress on Peer Review and Scientific Publication.Information Services and Use which reviews new approaches to peer review in scholarly publishing. The author is affiliated to the BMC Group at the Springer Nature Publishing Company. The article does not refer to scholarly literature, but refers to new innovations and ways of working in practice. The article begins by stating the benefits of peer review by key stakeholders. The author then goes on to summarise newer practices such as the increase in double-blind peer review in scientific disciplines. She then discusses open peer review, post-publication peer review and transparent peer review. Finally, initiatives aimed at increased efficiency such as cascading peer review and sectional or partial peer review are discussed. The article concludes by highlighting the increased focus of rewarding and training reviewers by scholarly publishers and learned societies and the overall improvement in reviewer recognition and efficiency, as well as the increase in experiments in transparent peer review.Research Integrity and Peer Review. It aims to describe current forms of peer review and their implementation and also consider the role and expectations of peer review. The authors present an historical account of peer review and describe methods of peer review to date, including recent technological advances. Four dimensions are identified in peer review innovations: ‘the selection conditions [such as the timing of the review], the identity and access among actors involved, the level of specialisation in the review process, and the extent to which technological tools have been introduced’ (p. 9). The authors then present a typology of peer review characteristics ordered by these four dimensions. This is followed by a discussion on the role of the academic publishing system and expectations of peer review. The authors underline the large diversity of review processes currently used. They also suggest four key expectations for peer review: ‘assuring quality and accuracy of research, establishing a hierarchy of published work, providing fair and equal opportunities to all actors and assuring a fraud-free research record’ (p. 12). The article concludes by highlighting the lack of empirical evidence to test the efficacy of peer review methods and the tensions that exist between what peer review can deliver and what is expected of it, for example its ability to identify fraudulent research or methodological errors. The authors suggest there is a new, additional perspective, in how research knowledge is perceived, fuelled by statistical reviews, post-publication reviews and other innovations, from a library of knowledge, to a set of scientific facts. They suggest that this perception of research as 100% accurate knowledge fuels retractions and rewriting of documents to create seemingly perfect accounts.FEMS Microbiology Letters. Explicit methods are not stated. There are 87 references listed in the document. Commensurate with the aims of a state-of-the-art review . The data reveals that it is not a clearly defined concept. However, understandings of OPR centre around the (i) identities of the reviewers, editors and authors being known to each other in various combinations or made public and (ii) reviewer reports and authors responses to comments being made public.Pre/post publication reviewThe key feature of peer review innovations in this subcategory is the timing of the review. The authors’ definitions reveal a mixture of informal and formal peer review, open and confidential modes, expert and lay commentary.a priori design. Once a study is designed, the protocol is reviewed, before any data is collected. The value of this method is to reduce questionable research practices, where researchers deviate from their original intention and methodology and indulge in malpractice such as p-hacking and cherry-picking results to create more eye-catching conclusions. Registered reports are championed by the Center for Open Science amongst others.One other review innovation in this subcategory is the use of registered reports or similar approaches. This is where a research design is evaluated before the research has begun. It typically applies to quantitative empirical research that follows a fixedCollaboration and decouplingThe approaches to peer review in this subcategory reflect a loosening of established roles and have been organised within a summary table  to illusMoving away from increased interaction as a focus of innovation and the slight modification of traditional procedures, the next type of innovation in this category is cascading or transferring peer review. This innovation was found three times in this review:The final set of innovations in this subcategory reflect the deregulation of academic publishing as several new businesses emerge onto the market to provide peer-review services. This is reported byFocussed and specialised reviewThis category captures types of peer review that focus on one aspect or section of a publication. Soundness only peer review  refers tPeer reviewer focussed initiativesReviewer incentivesThis subcategory describes various incentives that are offered to induce researchers to act as peer reviewers. The incentives are manifest in direct and indirect rewards for peer review.Direct rewards have been designed to reward peer review on top of the traditional indirect rewards. Direct rewards come in a range of forms, such as linking peer review to ORCID records, whichIndirect rewards are about being a good academic citizen, taking part in peer review as a usual part of academic work. These rewards are well established. As examples of indirect rewards of a private nature,Reviewer supportInnovations to support reviewers include standards, training and tools for reviewers.Technology to support peer reviewAI support for peer review, research discovery tools and publishing platforms amongst other technologies feature amongst the innovations described so far in this review. However,As review articles, the studies in our review draw conclusions based on several items of primary evidence. By bringing together these conclusions in a simple synthesis, it is possible to reveal some key messages, given that any similar conclusions drawn in the various review articles have the combined weight of all the primary evidence reviewed. The conclusions of the review articles have been integrated below, to highlight observations on current practice, perspectives on the implications of new ways of working and calls for action. The strongest conclusions, based only on frequency, are the need for more research to determine the effectiveness of new models of peer review, and the need for a full reflection on the peer review system, including all stakeholders.There are a number of observations summing up the current state of affairs in peer review: the increase in innovation has been rapid , there hA number of authors discuss their interpretations on the implications of newer practices: that quality may be compromised if reviewers are paid ; also, tNumerous calls for action are found in the conclusions drawn by the authors of the review articles. Three reviews  of innovations in peer review and quality assurance in sc. publishing. If as you say later it's captured by your definition, avoid it here – as it implies it is not captured.  This literature review – why then use the term meta-summary in the titleThe aim of this literature review – please rephrase, and say what is the aim of this paper. Its relation and origin, and later use for the project can be described in the introduction/methods.Please rewrite the methods, and include information expected for lit/sys. review, who screened, how, in which software, language limits, and so on, as well as how, was summary conducted, was there a meta-analysis, and so on.Say our initial strategy found that all individual interventions we identified were captured in 6 reviews (and even some we did not), and so we adapted this project to be an umbrella. We grouped the intervention into….From a simple synthesis of the review authors’ conclusions – please mention first in the methods how you synthesized results and defined high level categories. I also hoped you would tell us which interventions were most commonly attempted.IntroductionI recommend a complete rewrite and expansion of the introduction, see comments on the abstract. What is the aim of this paper? The aims of the overall project, and how it came to be are secondary.  Definitions and framing.I have difficulties with your definition of peer and would require it to be changed. A peer (reviewer) is an individual, not a software, or an AI. I understand that for the purpose of the article, and that in other published articles, the peer review term is used to describe all checks/suggestions (including those done by software) but that does not mean that the word peer needs to be redefined. Peer review is a compound noun, and its meaning can incorporate what you need, without redefining the word peer. Furthermore, later in the article, you use the term reviewer focused initiatives – which implies reviewer, is not used interchangeably with peer reviewer, nor does it include your peer definition.Similarly, peer review also includes informal responses, questions, and comments posted on social media – this goes against the new taxonomy of peer review – which specifically differentiates comments from peer review. So please state, in our study peer review also incorporates …Woods, 2018), where examples of researchers’ peer review practice were identifiedThese types of informal responses were found in a study examining disciplinary knowledge production , Review timing (innovations), Reviewer interaction (innovations), Content focus (innovations),Technology support – rather than Technology to support peer review. – but see my comment 15As table 1 includes 576 included studies, I also hoped to see a table with these 576 studies classified by which innovations they cover. Was information based only on summaries in the 6 studies, without checking if something was missed by the original authors? cites informal training that researchers do for themselves – this is then an intervention on authors. So perhaps this category should be revised, and if the first high level is focused on the review process, then these here are perhaps focusing on review skill/expertise.  Reviewer focused initiatives +- should rather be Reviewer focused innovations. But I believe you need to mention that AI checks and software cheeks are also Editor/publisher focused and can also be given to authors to self-evaluate their manuscripts. Like language software, self-evaluation checklists, statcheck, and so on.  Incentives can also be used to make editors do a better job. You also stated: that Barroga (2020)I find the weakest part of the summary to be the technical support, and the names assigned to them. GitHub and many other models are already captured in the “approaches section” they are rather platforms where a manuscript or peer review reports could be stored. And so there is nothing in the GitHub model that was not covered before. Amazon model refers to the rating of reviews – and this belongs to reviewer-focused initiatives not here. It should have been made clear when technology is used to enable other approaches, versus when it provides a new type of innovation. I find it also very strange that AI approach was listed primarily under focused review. Why does it matter who performs it? AI review can be pre-or post, it can be open or masked , it can be focused or for all. Why isn’t AI also mentioned under reviewer support, they can save time for reviewers to check many things. Finally, why use Baraga’s models and summarize them here. Can they be called an innovation, if they were never attempted in peer review– e.g. GitHub model, and amazon model. They are theories/models. You stated “what makes an innovation is if the practice is new to those who are implementing it. – if it was not implemented at least once, it should not have been included. It is a theory/model. What is it in this model that is not an innovation captured elsewhere? Just the use of a different term?https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/v8ghj/. The categorization of high-level innovations here, and the schools showcase quite a different approach to classifications, and maybe both need to be revised in light of one another and my comments here.   My last comment is not directly about this paper, but more on the 4 schools described in How to improve scientific peer review: Four schools of thought - I will refrain from commenting on the discussion as I believe my above comments are already extensive and ask for a lot of changes, that should then also be reflected by rewriting the discussion.   In hopes that my comments may help you improve your manuscript, Mario MaličkiIs the review written in accessible language?YesAre all factual statements correct and adequately supported by citations?NoAre the conclusions drawn appropriate in the context of the current research literature?NoIs the topic of the review discussed comprehensively in the context of the current literature?NoReviewer Expertise:Peer reviewI confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to state that I do not consider it to be of an acceptable scientific standard, for reasons outlined above. https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/v8ghj/Thank you for reviewing our article and for alerting us to areas for improvement. What was particularly useful was to highlight instances where our use of language was less precise than it could have been, for example in the use of ‘peer review’, ‘peer’ and ‘innovation’. We have addressed these issues in the text. In response to other reviewers' comments we have added a limitations section and updated the title and abstract to more accurately reflect the scope of the article, which we think will also address some of your concerns regarding a more accurate description of the scope of the article. We have also provided additional citations in the text which have strengthened the article, for example to define the different review types discussed. With reference to the ‘Four Schools’ article, this has now been updated and is published here:  I’m thankful to be able to review the Wellcome OR manuscript titled "Innovations in peer review in scholarly publishing: a meta-summary”. I just have two major suggestions for authors. And one minor comment -that the authors might consider or not.Major suggestionsPlease, on Methodology, provide operational definitions for the terms “meta-summary”, “narrative review”, “summary article” and “state-of-the-art review”.Please, revise the numbers on the flowchart. Note your actual numbers did not add .Please, consider further explanations on the figure foot or the text.Minor commentYour text and your conclusion seem to avoid statements about the methods to provide evidence of the peer review processes. In particular, I wonder if there is any causal link between those peer review methods and the ultimate goal of Science, reproducibility.Is the review written in accessible language?YesAre all factual statements correct and adequately supported by citations?YesAre the conclusions drawn appropriate in the context of the current research literature?YesIs the topic of the review discussed comprehensively in the context of the current literature?YesReviewer Expertise:Methodologist expert in pivotal clinical trialsI confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard, however I have significant reservations, as outlined above. Thank you for taking the time to review our article, and for providing us with feedback to improve our work. This is much appreciated. We have addressed the major suggestions including a new simplified and accurate flow chart . With reference to your comments about research methods and causal links, we have described the review papers that the article is based on, this includes the characteristics of each article, including research methods where these were employed. In our article, we didn’t set out to establish any links between reproducibility and particular types of peer review or particular methods to research peer review processes. However, the desire to improve the quality of research, including more detailed and accurate reporting, is clearly a motivating factor for many of the initiatives we describe.


Acta Crystallographica Section C. Authors are encouraged to present new chemistry where there is a clear chemical story based around molecular structure. In this context, ‘structure’ is used loosely and is not in any way restricted to structures determined by single-crystal X-ray crystallography, but includes those determined from powder X-ray or neutron data and NMR spectroscopy, and through theoretical calculations.Chemistry matters to  Acta Crystallographica Section C, it is appropriate to take this opportunity at the beginning of a new calendar year to provide readers with a short update on the progress that the journal has been making. I would also like to thank everyone who has contributed to the journal, including all the authors, referees, the Managing Editor and the team in the Chester Editorial Office, the Co-editors and my fellow Main Editors. It also provides me with the opportunity to welcome our two new Main Editors, Amy Sarjeant from Bristol-Myers Squibb Company in the USA and Alan Kennedy from the University of Strathclyde in the UK. They have been in post since October and are already bringing new ideas for the future development of Acta Crystallographica Section C.As I come towards the end of my term as one of the Main Editors of Acta Crystallographica Section C has been continuing to transition to a journal that publishes exciting new structural science with an emphasis on molecular chemistry. Authors are encouraged to present new chemistry where there is a clear chemical story based around molecular structure. In this context, ‘structure’ is used loosely and is not in any way restricted to structures determined by single-crystal X-ray crystallography, but includes those determined from powder X-ray or neutron data and NMR spectroscopy, and through theoretical calculations. Structures determined using Hirshfeld atom refinement and related methods are also encouraged.Over the last decade noncovalent interactions based on the sigma-hole, that my co-Main Editor, Jonathan White, is organising with Professor Lee Brammer and two members of his group, from the University of Sheffield, as guest editors. This is a highly topical area of structural research with the importance of these noncovalent interactions in a broad range of chemistry only now being fully appreciated. The publication date will be early in 2023. Further special issues will follow later in 2023 and 2024.The journal continues to highlight exciting aspects of structural chemistry through feature articles and special issues. The next special issue is on Acta Crystallographica Section C, and for the patience and kindness that he has always shown to me and the other editors and contributors to the journal. Finally, I would like to acknowledge all the hard work, support and friendship of the Chester Editorial Office staff during my time as a Main Editor. It is ultimately they who get the accepted manuscripts through production into the final product that we can all read and enjoy.I would like to thank the contribution made by the retiring Co-editors Yoshiki Ohgo, Tong-Bu Lu, Chris Frampton and Eugene Cheung, and my particular thanks go to my co-Main Editor, Larry Falvello, who will be retiring in 2023. His contribution to the journal over many years has been enormous, and I am most grateful to him for the scientific rigour and good common sense that he applies to all matters relating to


Over thWe have found that these public preprint reviews and assessments are far more effective than binary accept or reject decisions ever could be at conveying the thinking of our reviewers and editors, and capturing the nuanced, multidimensional, and often ambiguous nature of peer review. eLife will now let them stand on their own by publishing every paper we review, along with our reviews and an assessment as a Reviewed Preprint, a new type of research output we hope will become the norm across science.These changes are about more than just optimizing peer review. In choosing to no longer reduce our assessments to a single, eternal publishing decision, we are relinquishing the traditional journal role of gatekeeper in favour of a new approach that restores autonomy to authors and ensures that they will be evaluated based on what, not where, they publish.This new manifestation of eLife is available to authors immediately, and will be the only way we operate come January.Peer review – the act of researchers reading, thinking carefully about, and commenting on their colleagues’ work – is an integral part of science. It is a testament to the collective spirit of the global scientific community that more than two million papers are peer reviewed every year with no compensation, and minimal recognition.Unfortunately, much of the value generated by this immense collective effort is squandered by embedding it in a journal publishing system whose reliance on an outdated model of peer review – in which reviews are used to make accept/reject decisions and never made publicly available – strips it of most of its value.Exposing research findings to scrutiny is an essential step in the scientific process. And asking peer reviewers to identify and help correct flaws in the authors’ methods, data and reasoning is of intrinsic value. But coupling this scrutiny to publishing decisions distorts the process, effectively turning recommendations into requirements. As a result authors often do experiments and carry out analyses that they think are unnecessary, and remove ideas and insights that they believe in from their work.Having been written for authors and editors, the peer reviews themselves are rarely seen, their contents reduced to an accept/reject decision – a relic of pre-Internet times, when journals had to identify papers that warranted the expense of printing and mailing to subscribers. The aspects of the review that would be of most value to the community – the strengths and weaknesses of the work the reviewers identify, aspects of the findings and methods that excite them, questions that remain, how it fits in with other work and into the broader field – are all discarded once a decision is made.de facto currency of academic research careers, and institutionalized the practice of judging scientists based on where, rather than what, they publish. This has, in turn, transformed journals from a means of communicating science into gatekeepers whose judgments – ones that are heavily influenced by bias, faddishness and chance – can determine which science gets seen, and which scientists succeed.Most significantly, the emphasis placed on directing papers into journals has turned journal names into the Our choice to invest transient signals of projected quality, impact and interest with such outsized significance distorts hiring, funding and promotion decisions, corrupts research and career choices, and rewards the cynical chasing of high-impact publications over the production of genuinely impactful science that will survive the test of time. The end result is a scientific endeavour rendered less efficient, less rational, less appealing as a career and overall less effective than it should be.In the face of these pathologies, scientists across the world are taking tangible action to make science publishing and its place in science better. They preprint their work, advocate for others to do so, and quash efforts to treat preprints as lesser works of science just because they have no journal title attached to them. They form preprint journal clubs and teach students how to write constructive comments, which they post online. They lobby colleagues and institutions to change graduation, hiring, promotion and tenure policies around publishing, and to have smart and effective open science policies. And when making their own evaluations, they choose to ignore journal titles, and to look askance at those who prioritize them.eLife was founded with the stated mission to promote responsible behaviours in science like these. With independent funding that allows us to take steps that others fear, we are in a unique position to deliver a publishing system that scientists who care about the future of science can embrace.The system of science publishing we have today was not developed for today’s science or today’s technology. Its defining feature, a hierarchy of journals that use peer review to decide which papers they will publish, arose in the last century as a response to the limitations and costs of the printing press and the postal service.In the interim, we have experienced the biggest change in the technology used to disseminate information in human history. Yet even though the Internet was literally invented to help scientists communicate with each other, it has had remarkably little impact on science communication.We should have rebuilt this system from the ground up to take advantage of our liberation from the constraints of print. Instead, we built online submission and review systems, and replaced printed articles with pdfs, but nothing fundamental has changed. Our reliance on journal brands has stifled innovation.We and others have long envisioned a better system, designed to serve science not publishers, and which takes full advantage of today’s technology. Its basic axioms are:Authors should be able to share their work freely and openly when they think it is ready.Peer review should consist of scientists publicly sharing their assessments of already published papers, either under the auspices of an editorial organization that oversees the review process, or on their own.Works of science should be reviewed by multiple relevant groups and individuals throughout their useful lifespan.These are not new ideas: something like this was proposed by then-NIH Director Harold Varmus in 1998, but was scuttled by publisher opposition, and by the reluctance of scientists to change the system on which they had built their careers . But we The essential elements of this new model – exclusively reviewing preprints and producing public peer reviews and assessments – are already core parts of the eLife editorial process. The biggest change we are making now is that we will no longer make accept/reject decisions following peer review, nor, obviously, ask our reviewers to make publishing recommendations.eLife assessments for a fuller description and examples).The consultation between reviewers and editors that we currently use to make publishing decisions and recommendations to the authors, will now be used to craft an eLife assessment which summarizes their consensus view of the significance of findings and evaluates the strength of the evidence for them. These will be concise, written in language accessible to a non-expert reader, and will draw on a common vocabulary to ensure they are clear and consistent across the journal (see this blog post about Reviewed Preprints for examples of how they will look).Although we do not have the capacity to review every preprint submitted to us, we will publish every paper we send out for review as a Reviewed Preprint, a journal-style paper containing the authors’ manuscript, the eLife assessment, and the individual public peer reviews. The authors will also be able to include a response to the reviews and assessment . Although we don’t think publishing should work this way, and hope we will evolve to a better system, we want to make sure that authors whose papers have been peer reviewed by eLife and who want them to be included in these databases have that option. Authors can, therefore, decide at any point that the latest Reviewed Preprint should become the VOR.Before a VOR is produced, we will carry out a series of additional checks to ensure that the data, methods and code are made available, that appropriate reporting standards have been followed, that competing interest and ethics statements are complete, and that cell lines have been authenticated. As this model becomes established, we plan to carry out these checks earlier in the process and to turn these into “badges” that will appear on the Reviewed Preprint to make it easy for readers to know what established criteria the work has, and has not yet, satisfied.It is important to note that publishing a VOR with eLife is not a requirement, and authors may wish to either let the Reviewed Preprint stand as their final version, or they may wish to retain the option to update their paper in the future.In keeping with our commitment to author autonomy, eLife claims absolutely no control over the paper. This means that authors not only can ask a traditional journal to consider publishing their paper based on our public reviews and assessment, they are, as far as we are concerned, free to submit the paper to another organization carrying out public review, or to a traditional journal while we are reviewing it. Indeed we hope that, in the future, the norm will be for papers to be reviewed by multiple organizations with different expertise and foci at different times throughout the useful life of the paper.Nobody who interacts with the current publishing system thinks it works well, and we all recognize that the way we use it impedes scientific progress. The power to fix it resides uniquely with scientists, and we who have benefited tremendously from science, in our lives and in our careers, owe it to those whose hopes ride on its promise to not let our fear of change limit its impact one moment longer.


Briefly, an invited editorial on anti-Blackness in medical librarianship for the Journal of the Medical Library Association (JMLA) was withdrawn by its five Black librarian authors before publication over challenges and barriers experienced during the editorial process.  on topics of anti-racism and/or EDI. The first meeting (of at least one per yearly term) is to take place in the fall to coincide with the start dates of new position terms.Diversifying the Journal’s editorial team: calls for new editors will ask applicants to include an EDI statement about relevant experience/training with the intent to diversify the editorial team, or to at least recruit editorial members who can demonstrate they are committed to these efforts.Recruiting individuals with appropriate expertise to serve as peer reviewers: calls or invitations for peer review will recruit individuals with expertise in critical race theory, gender and sexuality studies, ethnic studies, etc. to serve as peer reviewers or third-party reviewers for submissions on these topics.Moving forward, JCHLA/JABSC will be instituting the following courses of action:Providing author guidelines for bias-free language: author instructions under Preparation of the Manuscript on the Journal’s website now state that authors must strive to use language that is free of bias and avoid perpetuating prejudicial beliefs or demeaning attitudes in their writing. Authors are encouraged to consult the APA guidelines and recommendations available for Bias-Free Language [Language .Encouraging journal submissions on topics of anti-racism and EDI: the list of suggested topics on the About the Journal section of the JCHLA/JABSC website now includes: “Racial injustice and topics of equity, diversity, and inclusion pertaining to health sciences librarianship.” Calls for submissions to the journal will specifically suggest these topics more frequently.Some quick and straightforward actions that the editorial team have already incorporated include:Open Call in order to identify and implement all actions that are applicable for JCHLA/JABSC. While well-intentioned, we acknowledge that there may be missteps along the way and encourage our readership, the medical librarianship community, and beyond, to keep us accountable as we continue this journey of growing, learning, and unlearning so that JCHLA/JABSC can serve our BIPOC colleagues, and by extension the medical librarianship profession, better. We recognize that this work will be on-going and will strive to build continuity amidst turnover of editorial team members. Moving forward it will be imperative for the editorial team to communicate the progress of this work with our readership to facilitate accountability, transparency, and on-going feedback.The Journal’s editorial team will continue going through the list of actions demanded in the Open Call for JMLA and Medical Librarianship to Support Black Colleagues is a stark reminder of how far we still have to go in efforts to address racism and improve EDI in scholarly publishing practices. We must move beyond complacency and good intentions to meaningful actions in the fight against systemic racism in scholarly publishing, as in all areas of life.The significant list of actions demanded in the


International Journal of Molecular Sciences.We have carefully read the interesting explanatory comment by Eugene V. Sheval  on the rThis review includes a collection of ten tips based on the experience gained at the laboratory bench of some of the authors. It also includes, as a central issue, a collection of ten summarized original proposals that had been shown to significantly improve immunofluorescence. In this section, we included a simple, rapid, and innovative method published by Svistunova and colleagues  entitledIn the methodological section of our review, we recommended methanol fixation, based on a slight confusion with the original text: the abstract section of the paper states that “In this study, the authors found that a short proteinase treatment allowed for the detection of antigens in the nucleoli”; here, fixation with formaldehyde is not mentioned. Furthermore, in the sixth paragraph of the results section, the authors wrote “Thus, using methanol fixation, it was possible to identify B23 in the nucleolar interior”. This, plus the non-significant differences observed in the average fluorescence intensity obtained with both fixation methods  (Figure 2C [It is clear that methanol fixation alters patterns of distribution into the nucleolus, as it is stated in the original manuscript, and as we mentioned in our review; however, our principal recommendation, as shown in Figure 9 , is the In conclusion, we appreciate the clarifying comment by Dr. Sheval for fixation with 3.7% formaldehyde as the previous step of trypsin treatment instead of methanol for the benefit of readers of the manuscript.


Nanoscale Advances in 2021, as selected by the editorial team for their significant contribution to the journal.We would like to take this opportunity to highlight the Outstanding Reviewers for  Nanoscale Advances’ reviewers, and in particular highlight the Outstanding Reviewers for the journal in 2021. Selected by the editorial team and Editorial Board for their significant contribution to Nanoscale Advances, we announce our Outstanding Reviewers annually and each receives a certificate to give recognition for their contribution.We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of In recognition of the varied contributions of our reviewer community, our Outstanding Reviewers from 2021 have been chosen based on several different measures, including the number, timeliness and quality of the reports completed over the last 12 months. In addition to reviewers who provided a high number of quality reports, we are pleased to highlight reviewers who provided exceptionally thorough and detailed reports, reviewers who provided clear and insightful adjudicative reports and reviewers who made additional efforts to aid authors in improving their manuscripts. Nanoscale Advances recognizes the Outstanding Reviewers. Key in terms of guaranteeing the quality and impact of Nanoscale Advances is the peer review process. As such, peer review depends not only on the excellence of the reviews but also on their timeliness. All of it comes on top of the many burdens that we face as active researchers. At the heart of the peer review process are carefully drafted reviews. They provide the valuable service that we owe to the scientific community in general, and to the readers of Nanoscale Advances in particular. I want to extend a big thank you to these Outstanding Reviewers and everyone else who has reviewed manuscripts for Nanoscale Advances.” – Professor Dirk Guldi, Editor-in-Chief“By now it is a good old tradition that  Dr Zibin ChenThe Hong Kong Polytechnic University0000-0002-7144-1861ORCID:  Dr Filippo FabbriIstituto Nanoscienze Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche0000-0003-1142-0441ORCID:  Dr Peng HuangShenzhen University0000-0003-3651-7813ORCID:  Dr Jun LiUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison0000-0002-7498-6736ORCID:  Dr Xin TianSoochow University (School of Radiation Medicine and Protection)0000-0002-5631-8160ORCID:  Dr Joshua WelshNational Institutes of Health Institution0000-0002-1097-9756ORCID:  Dr Rui YuanPPG Industries Inc.0000-0003-0063-0822ORCID:  Nanoscale Advances Editorial Board and Advisory Board and the nanoscience community for their continued support of the journal, as authors, reviewers and readers.We would also like to thank the  Chunli Bai, Editor-in-ChiefDirk Guldi, Editor-in-ChiefJeremy Allen, Executive Editor


The rising rate of preprints and publications, combined with persistent inadequate reporting practices and problems with study design and execution, have strained the traditional peer review system. Automated screening tools could potentially enhance peer review by helping authors, journal editors, and reviewers to identify beneficial practices and common problems in preprints or submitted manuscripts. Tools can screen many papers quickly, and may be particularly helpful in assessing compliance with journal policies and with straightforward items in reporting guidelines. However, existing tools cannot understand or interpret the paper in the context of the scientific literature. Tools cannot yet determine whether the methods used are suitable to answer the research question, or whether the data support the authors’ conclusions. Editors and peer reviewers are essential for assessing journal fit and the overall quality of a paper, including the experimental design, the soundness of the study’s conclusions, potential impact and innovation. Automated screening tools cannot replace peer review, but may aid authors, reviewers, and editors in improving scientific papers. Strategies for responsible use of automated tools in peer review may include setting performance criteria for tools, transparently reporting tool performance and use, and training users to interpret reports. Peer review is a cornerstone of scientific publishing that, ideally, provides high quality assessments on large numbers of submitted manuscripts. Rising publication rates have increasingly strained this system. While many papers benefit from peer review, problematic papers are still published . This maAutomated screening in academic publishing is not new, and may offer a unique opportunity to improve scientific papers. Publishers have been using automated tools to detect plagiarism for more than a decade . JournalOur experience suggests that automated screening is most powerful when many tools are applied simultaneously to assess various aspects of reporting. The ScreenIT pipeline, which includes a growing set of automated tools, has been used to post public reports on more than 23,000 bioRxiv and medRxiv COVID-19 preprints . While tPeer review includes three areas of assessment: journal fit, research and reporting quality, and compliance. The “fit” assessment considers whether the manuscript aligns with the journal’s aims and scope and is typically performed by journal editors or administrators . Fit mayWe believe that in their current form, automated tools have the most potential to aid in assessing compliance. This may also include some routine aspects of the research and reporting quality assessment . Tools that detect any statement may be most useful for items that are rarely addressed, whereas tools that assess nuanced reporting are better for commonly reported items.Finally, we need to consider the user experience and needs of the scientific community. Reports should be carefully designed, with feedback from researchers and publishers, and combined with educational materials to provide authors with clear guidance about how to improve their paper. The scientific community needs to identify the most responsible way to share reports. At what phase of peer review should reports be shared with editors, peer reviewers, and authors? When screening preprints, should reports be shared only with the authors, reviewers, and editors, or should reports be publically available to readers? We also need standards for transparently reporting tool performance and limitations, and determining how these criteria should factor into the reporting and interpretation of tool results. If automated screening becomes widespread, publishers and toolmakers may need to protect against gaming.Editors and peer reviewers are essential for assessing journal fit and research and reporting quality, including scientific rigor, the soundness of the study’s conclusions, potential impact, and innovation. Automated screening tools may play a valuable supporting role in assessing compliance and some elements of research and reporting quality, such as compliance with reporting guidelines. Automated screening may also be useful in systematically raising awareness about the problems with widely accepted, suboptimal practices that might be overlooked in peer review. While the future of peer review may include reports from automated tools, knowledgeable reviewers should use these reports responsibly. Future work should enhance existing tools, simplify integration of tools into editorial systems, and train reviewers, editors and authors to use tool reports to improve papers. If successful, automated tools could reduce poor reporting and educate researchers about reporting best practices.


Nanoscale Advances.The editorial team introduce the Royal Society of Chemistry’s newest nanoscience and nanotechnology journal,  Nanoscale Advances, the newest member of the nanoscale journal family published by the Royal Society of Chemistry. Nanoscale Advances is an international gold open access journal publishing across the breadth of nanoscience and nanotechnology. Our focus is on quality, reproducible new work that makes an important advance to the existing literature, as well as making it accessible to a global, interdisciplinary network of nanoscale researchers through gold open access publication.Welcome to the inaugural issue of Nanoscale Advances website and article-processing charges are currently waived, so it is free for authors to publish until mid-2021.All articles published are free to read on the Nanoscale Advances is our first journal that will be gold open access from launch, and we chose a name that builds on the established open access brand of RSC Advances. We hope that, with this launch, we can better serve our community who want to publish high impact, open access, and nanoscience-targeted research. For more information on our open access policies, visit our website.At the Royal Society of Chemistry, we want to make sure that our journal portfolio represents the needs of our community. The publishing landscape as a whole is rapidly changing and we are committed to supporting long term, sustainable open access models. Nanoscale Advances joins the nanoscale journal family, Nanoscale Horizons and Nanoscale, as a collaborative venture between the Royal Society of Chemistry and a leading nanoscience institute: the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology (NCNST) in Beijing, China.Science and technology require collaboration to thrive and in this spirit, Nanoscale Horizons, Nanoscale, and Nanoscale Advances” – Professor Dirk Guldi, Editor-in-chief“In the light of current trends, the Royal Society of Chemistry has made a significant step towards realizing the perfect “nanoscience” synergy by launching Nanoscale (impact factor 7.233) has cemented its position over the last ten years as the largest high impact nanoscience journal, publishing high quality work across the interdisciplinary field of nanoscience and nanotechnology. In 2016, Nanoscale Horizons was launched as a sister journal to capture truly cutting-edge ideas and new concepts in the field. With an inaugural partial impact factor of 9.391, it publishes exceptionally significant work of interest to the broad nanoscience community. As the third member of this nanoscale journal family, Nanoscale Advances will complement our existing journals as a venue for quality and important work that advances the existing literature.All three journals in the nanoscale journal family share an identical subject scope, which means that we can offer an efficient manuscript transfer service, where appropriate. Our hope is that, no matter which journal you submit to, we will find the most appropriate home for your work with the minimum hassle for you.Nanoscale and Nanoscale Advances have a shared Editorial Board, so the same high profile Associate Editors handle manuscripts for both journals. This shared responsibility ensures that there is a common overview and a consistent application of expertise, streamlining the assessment process for our authors and our reviewers. If you submit to Nanoscale and are offered a transfer to Nanoscale Advances, the same Associate Editor will handle your article in both journals. This reduces possible delays and ensures an efficient transfer of the history of your article, including any reviewer comments. In addition, several of our Associate Editors also act as Scientific Editors on Nanoscale Horizons, helping ensure articles meet the stringent criteria required for publication.To facilitate this, The Editorial Board is led by two exceptional researchers, both leading figures in the nanoscience community.Editor-in-chief Professor Chunli Bai is Director of the NCNST, as well as the President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. As a prominent figure, both in Asia and internationally, he provides substantial experience and prestige to the journal.Editor-in-chief Professor Dirk Guldi also occupies a Scientific Editor position on the Editorial Board of Nanoscale Horizons. Working across all three journals, he is perfectly placed to ensure close ties between the members of the nanoscale family.We hope that you enjoy reading our first issue and that you will join us in some of our upcoming initiatives! Keep an eye out for future virtual themed collections featuring articles published in our nanoscale journals.Twitter, Facebook, or sign up to our newsletter to keep up to date with the latest news and some of our most recently published content.Follow us on Alternatively, come and meet us! Members of the team will be attending the Spring MRS in Phoenix, USA in April 2019, and we will be running a symposium during ChinaNANO at the NCNST in China in late summer 2019.Nanoscale Advances forward so that the journal fully meets the needs of our authors and readers. We always welcome comments, suggestions, and feedback, so please do contact us at nanoscaleadvances-rsc@rsc.org with your views and feedback.Finally, we are committed to developing and taking Professor Dirk Guldi, Editor-in-chiefDr Sam Keltie, Executive EditorDr Michaela Mühlberg, Deputy EditorDr Hannah Kerr, Development Editor


Psychiatric Research and Clinical Practice (PRCP). As the editor, it is my pleasure to share this premiere issue with our readers. The American Psychiatric Association is a leading publisher of research and information on mental health through its topflight journals and books. PRCP has a special niche in this collection—offering an open‐access journal confirms the Association's commitment to ensure that valuable information and research are available to all who may be interested. Providing open access is particularly critical as the general public shows a growing interest in psychiatry and neuroscience.Welcome to the first issue of the American Psychiatric Association's peer‐reviewed, open‐access journal, It is my honor to steward this new endeavor. I have a history of clinical research that spans over 20 years. I am fortunate to be joined by a talented editorial board that includes Drs. Renato Alarcón, Jonathan Alpert, Deanna Barch, Alex Kopelowicz, Teri Pearlstein, Katharine Phillips, Susan Schultz, and Lawson Wulsin. This board represents a variety of areas and interests and reflects the breadth of research we hope to see in the journal.PRCP. We welcome new research related to mental and behavioral health and particularly welcome submissions that move physicians closer to the bedside than to the bench. Works that are of high clinical relevance are a priority for us. We will also have a section titled “From the Lab,” which will provide important clinical context for laboratory findings. We are happy to consider replications of previous findings as well as research that finds different results. Qualitative and quantitative reviews that are helpful to our readers are appreciated. We look forward to receiving submissions that fall anywhere on the continuum from efficacy to effectiveness and even those focusing on implementation. Finally, “Clinical Practice Pearls” can facilitate our practice, and we would like to provide a platform for these bits of wisdom. As part of the family of journals from the American Psychiatric Association, the standards are understandably high, and readers should not expect less from the Association. We encourage those who are interested in publishing in PRCP to explore the guidance on our journal's Web site (prcp.psychiatryonline.org) and to contact us with any questions.Readers and potential contributors may be interested in the sort of work we would like to receive and publish in