Manuscript Agreement Contract, a Statement on Transparency of Authorship and a Declaration of Conflicts of Interest from the authors. Assessing whether a manuscript meets the requirements of EBM is demonstrated using the “7-D assessment”. The main purpose of this tool is to established that the (1) right Design, (2) right Diagnosis, (3) right Drug molecule, (4) right Dosage, (5) right Data, (6) right Deductions, and (7) right Documentation have been implemented in order to meet the objectives of the investigation. If the findings from any one of these assessments is questionable, the compliance of the research with EBM principles will be weakened and the reviewers and editors will make recommendations to the publisher accordingly. The guidelines described will help to provide a fair and transparent process of scientific publication and foster the freedom of clinical pharmacological research.  Transparency and evidence-based medicine are cornerstones of good publication practices (GPP), and concern publishers, editors, research investigators, and reviewers alike. Methods for implementing these principles within the framework of GPP are described. The main aspects include obtaining a  Woodcock and V. Luger. Dustri Medical Science Publications. Dustri-Verlag Dr. Karl Feistle GmbH & Co. KG, Munich-Oberhaching, Germany and Dustri-Verlag Inc., Rockledge, FL, USA, www.dustri.com, July 2015. Good publication practices (GPP) concern publishers, editors, research investigators, and reviewers alike. This is because the publication of research findings in the medical sciences is not driven by altruism or an innate human need to alleviate suffering. Authors of publications in medical research on the one hand, are almost always motivated by the desire for recognition and/or financial factors, publishers and editors no less so. Thus, those involved directly in the publishing process, especially authors, are required to exercise absolute integrity. Indeed, clinical pharmacology manuscripts frequently contain recommendations for drug treatment as well as other information having a direct bearing on patient health and well-being. Since publishers and editors carry responsibility for the material they publish, the application of GPP and the contribution made by peer reviewers are of considerable importance to ensure complete transparency of authorship andto ensure that the principles of evidence-based medicine (EBM) have been applied.This viewpoint focuses on the implementation of these GPP . Editors, referees, and the publisher in particular are interested in the questions: Who funded the work? Who did the work? Has the work been published before? Has the study been registered? Have ethical issues been addressed correctly? Has the peer review system been applied in an appropriate manner? Are there issues of plagiarism or copyright? Are there ethnic factors to consider? Manuscript Agreement Contract, a Statement on Transparency of Authorship, and a Declaration of Conflicts of Interest will be required. Ignoring these questions could have a deleterious effect on a journal’s image and impact factor and therefore a Manuscript Agreement Contract in which answers to most of these questions are given will need to be made between authors and publisher. It incorporates a statement from the authors confirming A that the investigation described in the manuscript is not being considered for publication elsewhere – no double-submission, that all authors named agree to publication of the manuscript, that publication copyright passes to the publisher. . A statement confirming transparency of authorship describes the contribution of each author to the work being submitted. The list of authors should include all those who have contributed directly to the research. A statement from authors certifying that their manuscript has not been sponsored by a commercial entity and the absence of any acknowledgements means that non-authors have made no substantial contribution to the manuscript. A conflict of interests is a set of circumstances that creates a risk that professional judgment or actions regarding a primary interest will be unduly influenced by a secondary interest. Authors submitting manuscripts to a journal for publication are required to disclose all of the authors’ relationships with companies that make products studied or discussed in the article, companies that make related products, and other pertinent entities with an interest in the topic. If no relationships exist with companies that make products studied or discussed in the article then this can be indicated explicitly. In summary, if the authors receive payment or other type of reward for any work done, if a commercial enterprise makes a payment, donates materials, equipment, services or drugs to a hospital, commercial research unit or academic institution or finances the statistical evaluation of data or makes payments to patients this must be declared by giving full details of the nature of the sponsorship and name and address of the sponsor(s). What is sometimes forgotten is that the same holds true for reviewers. It is essential that they inform the publisher of any possible conflict of interest as outlined above. In addition, they should inform the publisher of any personal relationship to the authors that could influence the review. If a conflict of interest exists, the reviewer must decline to provide a review. In other cases, the existence of a conflict of interest sends out the message that the findings in the published work must be interpreted with caution for the reasons given above. “….the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients. The practice of evidence based medicine means integrating individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research.” Clinical pharmacology manuscripts should therefore include a patient-driven search and appraisal of the available literature and incorporate the best available evidence as EBM in the manner described by Sackett et al. [Sackett et al. 1966  defined t et al. . Most auThe publisher delegates to editors and they in turn to peer reviewers the task of assessing the scientific quality of submitted research. A main aspect of this task must be to ensure as far as possible that the principles of evidence-based medicine have been applied. The peer review of manuscripts is carried out by editors, members of the editorial board and referees with experience in the relevant fields who are invited to peer review for the journal. Names of suitable referees can be suggested by authors. As a general rule at least two reviewers’ reports are obtained before a decision on publication is reached. A final decision on acceptance is usually made by the Editor-in-Chief, a Section Editor, or by an International Editor within a time-frame that respects the interests of the author. Assessing whether a manuscript meets the requirements of EBM need not be difficult if the “7-D assessment” method, put forward here as a suggestion, is used and this holds true for most studies demonstrating drug efficacy, so called “negative studies” where a drug is shown to have no effect on a chosen clinical parameter, e.g., in QT studies, bioavailabilty and pharmacokinetic studies, reviews and case reports. The “7-D Assessment” comprises:Designright Diagnosis,right Drug molecule,right Dosage,right Data,right Deductionsright Documentationright where right design means that the study design and protocol are appropriate for answering the question(s) being asked;right diagnosis is relevant for investigations both in patients and healthy subjects where subject and patient description and patient selection need to be detailed, accurate and appropriate for the aims of the study;right drug molecule begs the questions “Is the active agent a known molecular species?” and “Can the drug entity have a mode of action compatible with the observed pharmacological effects? Has a pharmacological effect observed in vitro a counterpart in vivo? Do confounding factors exist such as the presence of drug enantiomers, stereoisomers or drug combinations? Herbal drugs and extracts do not generally fit in with the concepts of EBM. High first pass effects make it likely that more than one active species is present in the tissues;right dosage concerns not only the size of the dose , but also the method of administration, bioavailability, and duration of treatment. These questions also apply to in-vitro studies with tissues and cells;right data are those data required to meet the objectives of the study, which can establish or disprove efficacy, which have been obtained using state-of-the-art methods, and which have been evaluated using recognized data analysis procedures. In the case of reviews of the literature, the retrieval methods used and quality of the studies reviewed would need to be scrutinized;right deductions means that conclusions will be made following a correct and objective interpretation of the research findings and should address safety and efficacy requirements in clinical pharmacotherapy;right documentation addresses primarily the quality of the evidence in the supportive literature and asks the questions “Is the documentation up-to-date? Is it obtained from peer-reviewed sources, and is it comprehensive?” The citation of websites is very useful for providing information, but must be viewed with caution when used to provide evidence. Information on websites is not peer-reviewed and can be subject to change.If the finding of any one of these assessments is questionable, the compliance of the research with EBM principles will be weakened and the reviewers and editors will make recommendations to the publisher accordingly. Ignoring these questions might have a deleterious effect on the integrity and credibility of the publication process the importance of which was referred to in the first paragraph above. Transparency and EBM are cornerstones of GPP and methods for implementing these principles within the framework of GPP have been described. They will help to provide a fair and transparent process of scientific publication and foster the freedom of clinical pharmacological research. Barry G. Woodcock is Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics. Veronika Luger is an Editorial Officer employed by Dustri-Verlag Dr. Karl Feistle GmbH & Co. KG, Munich-Oberhaching, Germany.


AbstractInternational Plant Name Index (IPNI), Index Fungorum, MycoBank and ZooBank) and the journals PhytoKeys, MycoKeys and ZooKeys to create an automated, pre-publication, registration workflow, based on a server-to-server, XML request/response model. The registration model for ZooBank uses the TaxPub schema, which is an extension to the Journal Tag Publishing Suite (JATS) of the National Library of Medicine (NLM). The indexing or registration model of IPNI and Index Fungorum will use the Taxonomic Concept Transfer Schema (TCS) as a basic standard for the workflow. Other journals and publishers who intend to implement automated, pre-publication, registration of taxon names and nomenclatural acts can also use the open sample XML formats and links to schemas and relevant information published in the paper.Collaborative effort among four lead indexes of taxon names and nomenclatural acts (PageBreak As a result there are several nomenclatural indexes that aim to be comprehensive for their focal taxa, for example, Index Kewensis in botany, Index Fungorum or MycoBank in mycology, and Zoological Record and Index Animalium in zoology. Sherborn’s effort in Index Animalium surely stands as the giant among these efforts due to the sheer scale of described animal diversity  can be best implemented. Different options and the relationship to the publication process have been extensively reviewed by Despite the visible progress in recent years, four major questions remain to be answered:When exactly should the registration of a nomenclatural act take place – before or after publication?Who should be responsible for the registration of the act – authors, registry curators or publishers?How is registration actually effected?Who validates the accuracy of the bibliographic metadata for any registered act?International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (ICNafp) such that, from 1 January 2013 to be validly published all new names of fungi must be registered before publication and identifiers for each name included in the publication , allows electronic publication after 2011 under certain conditions, and disallows publication on optical discs after 2012. The requirements for electronic publications are that the work be registered in ZooBank before it is published, that the work itself states the date of publication and contains evidence that registration has occurred, and that the ZooBank registration states both the name of an electronic archive intended to preserve the work and the ISSN or ISBN associated with the work. Registration of new scientific names and nomenclatural acts is not required. The Commission confirmed that ZooBank was ready to handle the requirements of the amendment .The current situation with indexing and registration in the three domains of eukaryotic organisms can be summarized as follows:FUNGIIndex Fungorum (IF) and MycoBank (MB)Post-publication Indexing in st of January 2013Pre-publication registration mandatory for fungi since 1Record identifiers must be published in the protologueThree official registries are approved: MycoBank, Index Fungorum, Fungal NamesPLANTSInternational Plant Names Index (IPNI) which covers seed plants, ferns and lycophytes but not bryophytes or algaePost-publication indexing is a well-established practice of the IPNI record identifiers in protologues piloted with Phytokeys, PLoS ONE and Kew BulletinPre-publication indexing and inclusion of ANIMALSPost-publication indexing is a well-established practice of Zoological Record (now published by Thomson Reuters)st of January 2012 for e-only publicationsPre-publication registration in ZooBank mandatory since 1Record identifiers should be published in the original descriptionPageBreakincreasingly submitted “turbo-taxonomic” papers, combining molecular data, concise morphological descriptions and digital imaging  of nomenclatural acts and the quality control of the bibliographic metadata in these registries should be a primary responsibility of publishers and registry curators and, to a lesser extent, of authors. Registration of a nomenclatural act could be initiated by an author, at the pre-submission or pre-acceptance for publication stage. However, we prefer the publisher-initiated model as it avoids registry curators curating data that may never be published according to the rules of the relevant code. Such a practice may lead to “over-saturation” of the registries with names that are not validly published, causing confusion. Focusing on names accepted for publication also allows these curators more time to focus on the published act and this may allow these specialist staff to assist publication by identifying inconsistencies with the relevant code. Moreover, the publishers’ role is essential in checking and correcting the pre-publication registration details against the ultimately published information. The model presented below could easily be adapted for author initiation, though we envisage that there would be a greater curatorial overhead and a greater likelihood of errors being created. However, we accept that the model needs to be flexible and allow alternatives if it is to receive community support.In the “journal-centric” model, the registration of taxonomic and nomenclatural acts involves two main classes of actors: 1) publishers, or editors, and (2) registry curators. The publisher takes the responsibility for initiating the registration of nomenclatural acts so that the workflow can be performed following a common stepwise model .Step 3. Inclusion of registry supplied identifiers in the published treatments .Step 4. Making the information in the registry publicly accessible upon publication, providing a link from the registry record to the article.The registration process should be as automated as possible. There are several reasons to maximize automation of registration, the most significant being:Increasing cases of bulk, “turbo-taxonomic”, descriptions of new taxa within a single paper, sometimes counted in hundreds, which creates significant overhead on the authoring and editorial process.Decreased risk of errors caused by human intervention (e.g. re-typing).Disambiguation of the dates of acceptance and publication of a manuscript.Efficient and accurate validation of final published data and metadata through automated export from the publisher to the registry on the day of publication.IPNI, MycoBank and Index Fungorum, as well as with the Global Names project  we are developing a workflow and associated XML formats to streamline the registration of nomenclatural acts within the pre-publication process. The workflow was piloted by IPNI for higher plants and ZooBank for animals and the journals PhytoKeys and ZooKeys, respectively. The formats differ between the two main biological codes, ICNafp and ICZN, hence we describe these separately below.Within the framework of the EU FP7 project pro-iBiosphere, and in close collaboration with Zoological Record, ZooBank, IPNI and inclusion of the IPNI identifiers in the protologues was first trialled in the journal PhytoKeys since the publication of its first issue in 2010 (PageBreaktion module. The pilot project uses a custom XML format illustrated by a new genus Lettowia description and new combination Lettowianyassae (Oliv.) H. Rob., comb. nov. in the paper of IPNI will move to use the Taxon Concept Schema standard to encode the data exchanged. This will enable broader adoption.The pre-publication indexing of new plant taxa and nomenclatural acts in  in 2010 . With thIPNI’s Application Programming Interface (API) through a POST request and replied back with automatically inserted IPNI identifiers.The XML query is submitted to Index Fungorum (IF) will adopt that of IPNI after the IF system has moved to Royal Botanic Gardens Kew to run alongside IPNI.The registration workflow of API are enough for a straightforward implementation:The following methods of the MycoBank SearchMycoBankWithFiltersInsertUserProfileUpdateUserProfileInsertMycobankRecordUpdateMycobankRecordUsing the combinations  and  one can implement the Upsert  semantics required for the the Common query/response registration model.As there are multiple fungi registries , another approach would be to perform the registration with only one of them and rely on the synchronization mechanisms (currently being built) to propagate the information to the other databases.IPNI and uses the TaxPub XML schema  which encodes publications as required by the zoological code. For botany, the registration workflow uses currently a custom XML format based on the Taxon Concept Transfer Schema (TCS) XML schema (http://www.tdwg.org/standards/117/) which encodes names; in the future, IPNI and Index Fungorum will implement TCS as a basic standard for registration/indexing of new names and other nomenclatural acts.The registration workflow and XML formats published in this article are free to use for anyone who would like to implement it. To ensure broader adoption of the registration model, the data exchanged through the workflow should be encoded in a standard. For zoology, journals should adopt the TaxPub XML schema .Once the editorial workflow is defined, and structured data can be produced according to these standards, journal editors should contact registries for access to their http://wiki.pro-ibiosphere.eu/wiki/Pilot_2.The authors of this article, staff at the registries and at Pensoft are available to consult journals who intend to implement the automated registration process. Future changes to the automated registration workflow will be published on the Wiki page of the pro-iBiosphere project at


We read with interest the Opinion Article from Haspelmath  concernihttp://bs.powernet.ch/webservices/inet/HRG/HRG.asmx/getHRGHTML?chnr=2703014334&amt=270&toBeModified=0&validOnly=0&lang=4&sort=0). The same high editorial standards are applied across all our offices.MDPI is described by Halpelmath as a “Beijing-based.” This is factually incorrect: MDPI has been based in Basel, Switzerland since it started publishing in 1996, where the head office remains. Since 2008, MDPI has opened branch offices in China and now has three offices there—two in Beijing and one in Wuhan, but remains a registered Swiss company , Hapelmath states that “it does not even have an editor.” This statement is misleading, as it implies that the journal had already been launched without an editor in place. The facts are as follows: At the time the article was published (2013), Languages was not accepting submissions and was in the process of assembling the editorial board. Indeed, the journal website was available only via a link sent to potential editorial board members. Dr Haspelmath was one of the early invitees. We employ strict criteria when starting a journal, which include that it must have a qualified editorial board, including an Editor-in Chief. It has taken some time to arrive at this point, but there is now a full Editorial Board and an Editor-in-Chief in place, and we look forward to publishing interesting and high quality research in Languages.In reference to In his opinion piece, Haspelmath gives the impression that it is self-evident that an open access publisher that charges article processing charges (APCs) must be a vanity press. However, he must surely know that to achieve sustainable success in academic publishing, one must build a reputation and publish citable articles via robust peer-review. MDPI journals fulfill these criteria, and have been trusted by scholars from the very best universities for nearly 20 years. We believe that there are benefits for an open access publisher to be either a not-for-profit organization or a commercial enterprise, and that both are viable. In the latter case, the need for financial sustainability drives efficiencies in the publication process, and innovations that add value for authors and readers alike. The lower average income of open access publishers compared to subscription publishers bears this out. We accept that there are a small minority of publishers that engage in questionable, unethical, or even illegal practices, but we do not believe that these companies will be able to sustain themselves on a long-term basis. We also believe that the majority of scholars are able to differentiate reputable publishers from those with questionable practices.In conclusion, we invite Martin Haspelmath to revise his opinion of MDPI and accept that a commercial open access publisher can have motivations other than profit, and is well-capable of producing high quality research that is open and available for all.The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.


Background. The need for timely, ethical, and high-quality reporting of clinical trial results has seen a rise in demand for publication professionals. These publication experts, who are not ghostwriters, work with leading medical researchers and funders around the world to plan and prepare thousands of publications each year. Despite the involvement of publication professionals in an increasing number of peer-reviewed publications, especially those that affect patient care, there is limited evidence-based guidance in the peer-reviewed literature on their publication practices. Similar to the push for editors and the peer-review community to conduct and publish research on publication ethics and the peer-review process, the International Society for Medical Publication Professionals (ISMPP) has encouraged members to conduct and publish research on publication planning and practices. Our primary objective was to investigate the publication rate of research presented at ISMPP Annual Meetings.Methods. ISMPP Annual Meeting abstract lists (April 2009–April 2014) were searched in November 2014 and data were extracted into a pilot-tested spreadsheet. MEDLINE was searched in December 2014 to determine the publication rate . Data were analyzed using the Cochran-Armitage trend test (significance: P < .05) by an independent academic statistician.Results. From 2009 to 2014, there were 220 abstracts submitted, 185 accepted, and 164 presented. There were four corresponding publications (publication rate 2.4%). Over time, ISMPP’s abstract acceptance rate  did not change, but the number of abstracts presented increased significantly (P = .02). Most abstracts were presented as posters (81.1%) and most research was observational (72.6%). Most researchers came from the US (78.0%), followed by Europe (17.7%), and the Asia-Pacific region (11.2%).Discussion. Research presented at ISMPP Annual Meetings has rarely been published in peer-reviewed journals. The high rate of nonpublication by publication professionals has now been quantified and is of concern. Publication professionals should do more to contribute to evidence-based publication practices, including, and especially, their own. Unless the barriers to publication are identified and addressed, the practices of publication professionals, which affect thousands of peer-reviewed publications each year, will remain hidden and unproven. Rennie and Flanagin warned that the quest to improve publication practices requires “…a massive and prolonged effort on the part of researchers, funders, institutions, and journal editors…” . FundamePublication professionals work with researchers and funders around the world to plan and prepare thousands of publications each year  and havehttp://www.ismpp.org/mission-and-vision). Similar to the analyses of research presented at PRCs , a not-for-profit association with >1,400 members, has a mission to “advance the medical publication profession globally through enhanced integrity and transparency in medical publications, improved standards and best practices, and education, advocacy, and professional collaborations” .Current Medical Research and Opinion (CMRO) Supplements (2009 onwards) and verified against ISMPP records. Submission and acceptance data were obtained from ISMPP. Corresponding full-text publications were identified by searching (17 December 2014) MEDLINE using the first, second, or last author surname and key terms from the title.Abstract metrics and data were obtained from P < .05.Abstracts were categorized based on author affiliations and study type. Publication rate was calculated as the percentage of presented abstracts published as full-text publications in peer-reviewed journals. Data were analyzed by Cochran Armitage trend test. Differences in acceptance rate, abstracts published, study type, and contributor affiliations were considered significant at CMRO. Almost all of the research presented at ISMPP was never published in full in peer-reviewed journals; the publication rate was 2.4%  were accepted for presentation; of these, 164 (88.6%) were published in % 4/164; . Of the % 4/164; . The fouCMRO increased significantly ; there were no changes in acceptance rate (P = .44) or study type . Abstracts were submitted by researchers from the US , Europe , and the Asia-Pacific region . Most research was conducted by medical communication agencies , rather than healthcare companies .Most abstracts were presented as posters . The remaining abstracts were, therefore, selected for oral presentations . Abstracts described mainly observational  or opinion-based  research; interventional research was rare . Over time, the number of abstracts in Research from ISMPP Annual Meetings has rarely been published in peer-reviewed journals. The publication rate (2.4%) is approximately 25-fold lower compared with research presented at biomedical conferences (55.9%)  and PRCsFor publication professionals to join editors and the peer-review community in the quest to drive evidence-based improvements in publication practices , they neOur study has quantified, for the first time, the extent of nonpublication by publication professionals. Additional studies, ideally with qualitative research methods, will be required to investigate the reasons for the low publication rate. We speculate that lack of time may be one of the main drivers for nonpublication. A systematic review, which investigated the reasons why biomedical researchers don’t publish, reported that lack of time was the most frequent, as well as the most important, reason provided for nonpublication . In our Our study has limitations. We focused only on ISMPP Annual Meetings. As our intent was to investigate how well publication professionals contribute to the evidence base affecting publication practices, we focused on the largest annual meeting for publication professionals. We recognize that publication professionals may attend other meetings, but these meetings may not be focused primarily on publication practices, may not have dedicated sessions for research-based presentations from publication professionals, and may not have been held as consistently or for as long as the ISMPP has held annual meetings. Our study is also limited by the focus on peer-reviewed publications included in the MEDLINE database (up until December 2014). We recognize that peer-reviewed publications may have appeared in other databases and after we conducted our search. We focused on MEDLINE because it was readily accessible and is one of the largest databases for medical research articles. We reasoned that those with an interest in medical research publication practices would search MEDLINE for relevant peer-reviewed articles.In summary, the publication rate from research presented at ISMPP Annual Meetings is low. Publication professionals, who plan and prepare thousands of peer reviewed publications each year, should do more to contribute to evidence-based publication practices, including, and especially, their own.10.7717/peerj.2011/supp-1Data S1Click here for additional data file.


Publication fees as a revenue source for open access publishing hold a prominent place on the agendas of researchers, policy makers, and academic publishers. This study contributes to the evolving empirical basis for funding these charges and examines how much German universities and research organisations spent on open access publication fees. Using self-reported cost data from the Open APC initiative, the analysis focused on the amount that was being spent on publication fees, and compared these expenditure with data from related Austrian (FWF) and UK  initiatives, in terms of both size and the proportion of articles being published in fully and hybrid open access journals. We also investigated how thoroughly self-reported articles were indexed in Crossref, a DOI minting agency for scholarly literature, and analysed how the institutional spending was distributed across publishers and journal titles. According to self-reported data from 30 German universities and research organisations between 2005 and 2015, expenditures on open access publication fees increased over the years in Germany and amounted to € 9,627,537 for 7,417 open access journal articles. The average payment was € 1,298, and the median was € 1,231. A total of 94% of the total article volume included in the study was supported in accordance with the price cap of € 2,000, a limit imposed by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) as part of its funding activities for open access funding at German universities. Expenditures varied considerably at the institutional level. There were also differences in how much the institutions spent per journal and publisher. These differences reflect, at least in part, the varying pricing schemes in place including discounted publication fees. With an indexing coverage of 99%, Crossref thoroughly indexed the open access journals articles included in the study. A comparison with the related openly available cost data from Austria and the UK revealed that German universities and research organisations primarily funded articles in fully open access journals. By contrast, articles in hybrid journal accounted for the largest share of spending according to the Austrian and UK data. Fees paid for hybrid journals were on average more expensive than those paid for fully open access journals. The rise of open access journals has been matched by the increasing relevance of publication fees in academic publishing . To coveThe study of institutional spending on open access journal articles has been limited for several reasons. The first is that payment of these charges is fragmented across the budgets of grant agencies, research institutions, and libraries, or is covered by personal budgets. A comprehensive 2010 survey asked 9,645 authors from various disciplines how they financed publication fees, and it revealed that the majority of the respondents had access to research funding or institutional support to cover these charges. By contrast, 12% paid publication fees individually . These rAnother key problem in this regard is that funding for open access journals using publication fees lacks transparency because the parties involved—authors, universities, funders, and publishers—do not release information about who pays for what or the costs of publishing ; this siNevertheless, it remains unclear which factors contribute to pricing in academic publishing. Generally, these might include article processing, impact, rejection rates, management and investment, and profit margins . While fHybrid journals substantially add to the complexity of open access funding . These jTo address the problems of fragmented spending on publication fees and the lack of transparency about what is being paid, some European research funders and research-performing institutions have recently begun to disclose their expenditures for publication as open data. To the best of our knowledge, the first research funders to provide such data were the Wellcome Trust  and the 1http://www.dfg.de/formulare/12_20/.Guidelines for the funding program can be found here:  Grantees agree not only to pay for APCs, but also to find ways to improve the handling of those financial transactions. These ways include central invoicing schemes and memberships that are agreed upon by university libraries and publishers and that often lead to a discount on publication fees , the largest German research funder, has strongly influenced how universities manage institutional support for these charges. Before the DFG started to support centrally funded publication fees through its “Open-Access Publishing” programme in 2011, only a few central funds existed . This ision fees .Non-university research organisations, i.e., institutes organised in the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft, and Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, are not eligible for this DFG funding programme. However, in response, some organisations have adopted similar processes to support authors. The Max-Planck-Gesellschaft operates its long-standing open access activities, including handling spending and publisher agreements centrally, through the Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL) , while tThe evolving institutional support for covering open access publication fees has led to calls for a unified approach towards open access funding in Germany. The MPDL called for re-allocating subscriptions in favour of open access journals in 2015 . At the The aim of this study was to examine how much German universities and research organisations spent on open access publication fees. Using self-reported cost data from the Open APC initiative, the analysis focused on the amount that was being spent on publication fees, and compared these expenditure with data from related Austrian and UK initiatives in terms of both size and the proportion of articles being published in fully and hybrid open access journals. We also investigated how thoroughly self-reported articles were indexed in Crossref, a DOI minting agency for scholarly literature, and analysed how the institutional spending was distributed across publishers and journal titles.https://github.com/OpenAPC/openapc-de/releases/tag/v2.4.3) to assess institutional spending on open access publication fees in Germany. In addition to administrative data about the amount paid per article, including value-added tax, the reporting institution, and the year of invoicing, we used information about whether an article was published in a fully open access journal or in a hybrid journal, as well as the DOI reported in the data-set.We analysed self-reported cost data released by the Open APC initiative on May 13, 2016,  to access Crossref’s REST API (https://github.com/CrossRef/rest-api-doc/blob/master/rest_api.md). We requested the XML-based format application/vnd.crossref.unixsd+xml in which full and abbreviated journal titles as well as the ISSN media types  were distinguished. This source also contained normalised publisher information, thus avoiding confusion regarding the naming of publishing houses that other studies faced when working with self-reported data  , Jisc L and the Data curation activities of the Open APC initiative and those of the other initiatives differed in some respects. For instance, the DOI was a mandatory element in the Open APC data template that the participating institutions were required to report, whereas in the case of the Wellcome Trust spending data DOIs were additionally identified by automated compliance checks. Our first screening of the data-sets revealed that some articles published in Crossref-indexed journals lacked a DOI. Because of these different methods to curate the cost data and because our main focus was institutional funding for publication fees in Germany, we decided to compare only German spending with that reported by other initiatives. We did not, therefore, analyse the distribution of spending over publishers and journal titles or the indexing coverage in Crossref for the Austrian and UK spending data.After excluding payments for non-journal articles as well as articles invoiced in 2016, we retrieved information on 7,417 open access journal articles that 30 German universities and research institutions supported financially between 2005 and 2015. As illustrated in The fees for all of the articles amounted to € 9,627,537, including value-added tax; the average payment was € 1,298 . The number of APC payments per institution varied considerably see . With 2,A comparison of average prices revealed that publishing in hybrid journals was, on average, more expensive than publishing in fully open access journals. Price differences between these two categories were also reported earlier, indicating that prices for fully open access journals were lower on average . In 2014To identify publication fee spending at article level and to gather bibliographic metadata, DOIs were a mandatory part of the Open APC initiative’s data collection activities. The participating institutions reported DOIs for 7,373 out of 7,417 articles. Using these DOIs, we retrieved additional metadata from Crossref for 7,346 publications, representing 99% of the total article volume. Articles for which no metadata could be obtained, were registered with the DOI agency DataCite (ten articles) or Medra (two articles). For eight articles, our parser could not gather the XML resource, although these publications were registered with Crossref at the time of our study. Seven DOIs reported to the Open APC initiative could not be resolved.We used the DOI to automatically fetch publisher and journal names for each article from the Crossref REST API. Most of the publication fee spending in Germany was on articles published in Springer Nature journals, which likely reflects the results of mergers with the open access publisher BioMed Central in 2008 and between the well-established publishers Springer Science + Business Media and Nature Publishing Group in 2015. Using the Crossref-Member-ID instead of the publisher name, we were able to differentiate between journals formerly published by Springer Science + Business Media and Nature Publishing Group. In terms of articles, the majority of payments made were for publications in journals formerly associated with Springer Science + Business Media. Springer Science + Business Media journals accounted for 2,027 articles, representing 94% of the overall Springer Nature article volume recorded by the Open APC initiative and 92% of the amount that was spent. Median publication fee spending differed slightly between Springer Science + Business Media  and Nature Publishing . However, the price variation was higher for Nature Publishing journals (SD = € 848) than for the former Springer Science + Business Media titles (SD = € 313).In contrast to Springer Nature, other well-established publishing houses such as Elsevier and Wiley-Blackwell ranked lower in our analysis.Prices also varied within journals. In Germany, institutional spending on publication fees charged by open access journals has increased over the years. These findings are consistent with the general trend towards using publication fees as a revenue source for open access publishing . They alRe-using DOIs to gather bibliographic metadata from Crossref is a promising approach to addressing data curation issues raised by UK initiatives . In our 3 consortia and presumably divided the sum by the number of articles published by their authors in SCOAP3-covered journals.23, the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics, is a unique approach to convert former subscription journals in high-energy physics to open access journals under a CC BY license, see https://scoap3.org/what-is-scoap3/. The consortium, led by CERN, pays publishers centrally, based on previously agreed APCs and an overall price cap, and retrieves its funds from organisations and countries based on their share in the articles published in the covered journals. German universities participate through an initiative led by the German National Library of Science and Technology that received additional funding from DFG.SCOAP This approach is arbitrary, because averages for an institution can be determined only after the end of a full 3-year funding cycle. Other factors affecting price variations are exchange rates and different tax rates for some organisations in Germany. For instance, the Max Planck Society has a limited input tax reduction. The refund of input value-added tax for publication fees is 20%. To increase the transparency of publication fee spending, This study is limited in some respects. First, we cannot assess whether publishers and journals granted publication fee discounts. The Open APC initiative uses a minimal data scheme to encourage self-reporting, and it therefore does not track this type of information. However, large price variations suggest that different pricing levels and pricing schemes are in place, as previously observed . Adding It must also be noted that reporting to the Open APC initiative is voluntary. Therefore, not all institutions in Germany that provide central funding for publication fees contribute cost data to this initiative. According to a qualitative survey that asked why German institutions are reluctant to share their cost data through the Open APC initiative, one institution feared that an increase in transparency would allow publishers to adjust prices in their favour. Others noted that the workload to produce such a data-set could be too extensive . As no rOur analysis of how institutional spending for open access articles was distributed over publishers and journals indicated that open access publishing is heterogeneous and concentrated at the same time. While we were able to identify 139 individual publishing houses that were supported by the German universities and research organisations, the distribution is highly skewed. Ten publishers collected 92% of open access publication fee spending, which is consistent with an observed high concentration of a few publishers in current academic publishing . HoweverOne possible explanation for why traditional publishers are less well represented in our study is the lack of cost information about hybrid open access journals. In fact, 99% of all articles that German universities and research organisations disclosed were published in fully open access journals. This result presumably reflects the DFG funding programme that excludes paying for open access articles published in hybrid journals. However, while reviewing self-reported cost data from Austria and the UK, where hybrid open access journals are generally supported, we observed a much higher share of payments for articles in hybrid open access journals. Because publication fee spending is fragmented and often lacks transparency, it remains open to speculation whether authors affiliated with German universities and research organisations avoid opting for open access when publishing in hybrid journals or whether they simply use other budgets that are not covered by the Open APC initiative.Our study revealed the size and extent of spending on open access journals using publication fees in Germany. According to self-reported cost data from the Open APC initiative, this type of support from German universities and research institutions has grown over the years. Comparing these expenditure with those from Austria and the UK, German open access funding is focused primarily on fully open access journals, raising important questions about hybrid open access journals as a publication venue. Given our findings and the general discussion about funding policies addressing hybrid open access journals, questions about whether and to what extent science policies and the availability of institutional support influence how researchers publish are of particular concern.Using self-reported data and gathering publisher and journal information from Crossref, our study extends methods and improves data collection activities for researchers and practitioners alike, as well as contributing to a better understanding of the factors affecting the analysis of publication fees in open access publishing. In this regard, our research highlights large variations in the distribution of spending that need to be taken into consideration when studying payments on publications at the institutional level. We have also confirmed the findings of other studies that showed large price variations across publishers and open access journals. This complex situation of fee-based open access publishing needs to be better understood by both researchers and practitioners.


Hilda Bastian considers post-publication commenting and the cultural changes that are needed to better capture this intellectual effort.Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary A research report or idea needs to clamber over more than the hurdle of publication to move science, practice, or policy forward. It's not only a matter of authors waiting for kudos and citations to roll in. If their work is not to sink into oblivion, or be acted on when it shouldn't be, publication is just the beginning. Both improving research quality Early Enlightenment science was rooted in ongoing discussion among scientists. Scientific discourse in a small, widely scattered community was in person and via books and the “erudite letters” that were the precursor of journal articles These days the system does not keep up well with the speed of activity and the volume of research from a vast community. Articles are, by and large, too uncorrectable and unconnected Post-publication evaluation is highly fragmented. It often appears within future articles, either embedded in the introduction and discussion sections, or in formal research syntheses. Dedicated review journals  select, summarize, and critique publications, usually in an “expert picks” way. There are also rigorously structured systems of post-publication evaluation inside and outside journals There are more immediate channels to respond to published research, such as letters and comments to the editor, commentaries, and editorials in journals, and discussion in blogs. Dedicated websites have been developed for discussing and sharing research among authors Somewhere within this activity is the amorphous phenomenon that people call post-publication peer review. For some, post-publication peer review is simply shifting pre-publication peer review to after an article's release Many associate post-publication commentary with only the negative “yin” of criticism, correction, retraction, and failed replication. It is essential to prevent research-led error, harm, and futile studies. But there is a vital positive “yang” aspect, too, incorporating research aftercare For some, though, the success of post-publication commentary is concerned only with the “yin” of correction and retraction. For others, post-publication evaluation only “works” if it occurs for all articles, making pre-publication peer review redundant. From these perspectives, post-publication evaluation would always be shortchanged, and be seen to fall short. However, success includes rescuing important work from obscurity, and building work and capacity, not just tearing it down. Updating is at least as critical as correction to improving published research.Furthermore, the scientific evidence base for effects of routine pre-publication peer review on article quality remains weak Many are wary or worse about post-publication culture. For some, any un-peer-reviewed response to peer-reviewed work is impertinent, and the Internet's removal of constraints to adding both substantive and trivial post-publication commentary to the public space is hard to accept. The Internet has also increased the quantity of incivility out in public view .Disputes between scientists have always been common, and it has always been the case that “in the bitter social conflict that ensues, the standards governing behavior deteriorate” The fear of repercussions for junior scientists in particular is high. This fear lies at the heart of the contentious issue of anonymous post-publication commenting. Some argue, though, that the risks for young scientists of openly commenting on others' work do not necessarily outweigh the advantages of visibility and recognition Even if the cost is reticence about participating, I believe the balance tips towards the requirement for transparency. Readers need to be able to judge whether writers are commenting outside their areas of expertise. Concerned readers need to have a chance of recognizing writers who have conflicts of interest, or be able to investigate whether or not potential conflicts exist.However, addressing the obstacle to scientific progress posed by social dominance and aggression is a critical cultural issue, and not only—or even necessarily predominantly—for young researchers. Stereotype threat (anticipating discrimination) and other social issues may deter women scientists and other groups from commenting, too. Social influences can make women less talkative and less assertive than men in mixed gender groups Women scientists seem to be underrepresented in science activities that make their reflections public. In some fields and countries at least, women may still publish less During the first year of PubMed Commons, less than 20% of those commenting were women. Research on gender bias in research and editorial peer review has been somewhat reassuring I don't think that anonymity is a good solution. We need to consider skill development in critiquing research Rewards for substantive intellectual effort post-publication and for the aftercare of research publications and sharing of data would help. Formal recognition is also necessary to undo the perverse incentive for authors to keep important insights and additional data until a subsequent publication. Such delays can last for months, if not years.Passive consumption of scientific papers, and the withholding of adequate information by authors, cannot advance science. Thinking and talking about our responses to research reports is still science's vibrant and compelling intellectual core. Capturing that post-publication intellectual effort more rigorously is essential for better science.


P. Anversa, Boston, USAJ.J.M. Bergeron, Montreal, CanadaM. Bhatia, Christchurch, New ZealandO. Binah, Haifa, IsraelH.E. Blum, Freiburg, GermanyT.B. Bolton, London, UKC. Bona, New York, USAM.D. Bootman, Cambridge, UKN. Bornstein, Tel Aviv, IsraelG. Bussolati, Turin, ItalyK. Camphausen, Bethesda, USAM. Caraglia, Naples, ItalyY.H. Chen, Shanghai, ChinaC.-M. Cheng, Hsinchu, TaiwanS.N. Constantinescu, Brussels, BelgiumP. Doevendans, Utrecht, The NetherlandsB. Eyden, Manchester, UKM.S. Faussone-Pellegrini, Florence, ItalyW. Franke, Heidelberg, GermanyL. Frati, Rome, ItalyT. Fujimoto, Nagoya, JapanP.M. Glazer, New Haven, USAJ. Gooch, Atlanta, USAH. zur Hausen, Heidelberg, GermanyA.M. Hofer, Boston, USAR.E. Horch, Erlangen, GermanyO. Hovatta, Huddinge, SwedenS.S. Hu, Beijing, ChinaJ.D. Huizinga, Hamilton, CanadaM. Ivan, Indianapolis, USAB. Jena, Detroit, USAY.T. Konttinen, Helsinki, FinlandT. Kornberg, San Francisco, USAS. Kostin, Bad Nauheim, GermanyR.C. Kukreja, Richmond, VA, USAR. Langer, Cambridge, USAJ.W. Lawler, Boston, USAF. Lupu, Oklahoma City, USAJ. Meldolesi, Milan, ItalyM. Mercola, San Diego, USAV.M. Miller, Rochester, USAK. Morgan, Boston, USAJ.F. Morris, Oxford, UKC. Mummery, Utrecht, The NetherlandsF. Murad, Houston, USAD.F. Mureşanu, Cluj-Napoca, RomaniaH. O’Neil, Canberra, AustraliaK.P. Nephew, Bloomington, USAM. Pesce, Milan, ItalyO.H. Petersen, Liverpool, UKN.C. Popescu, Bethesda, USAD. Pozo, Sevilla, SpainM.Z. Ratajczak, Louisville, USAU. Ripamonti, Johannesburg, South AfricaJ. Rubin, Bethesda, USAA. Samali, Galway, IrelandP.R. Sanberg, Tampa, USAR.C. dos Santos Goldenberg Rio de Janeiro, BrasilM. Simionescu, Bucharest, RomaniaG.W. Sledge, Indiana, USAR.V. Stan, Hanover, USAG. Steinhoff, Rostock, GermanyM. Stürzl, Erlangen, GermanyM. Taggart, Newcastle upon Tyne, UKA. Tosaki, Debrecen, HungaryN.A. Turner, Leeds, UKC.A. Vacanti, Boston, USAA. Vaheri, Helsinki, FinlandL. Vécsei, Szeged, HungaryV. Velculescu, Baltimore, USAC. Wang, Beijing, ChinaR.A. Wang, Xi’an, ChinaB. Winblad, Stockholm, SwedenC. Zhang, Newark, USAM. Leabu, Bucharest, RomaniaAsia OfficeX. Wang, Shanghai, ChinaH. Amin, Houston, USAK. Cheng, Los Angeles, CA, USAL. Chirieac, Boston, USASanda M. Ciontea, Bucharest, RomaniaV. Cismasiu, Oxford, UKCamelia Iancu-Rubin, New York, USAElisa-Anamaria Liehn, Aachen, GermanyN.I. Moldovan, Columbus, USAM. Oprica, Stockholm, SwedenA.G. Papavassiliou, Athens, GreeceR.A. Towner, Oklahoma City, USAD. Cretoiu, Bucharest, RomaniaC.G. Manole, Bucharest, RomaniaJournal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, P.O. Box 35-29, Bucharest 35, Romania. Tel./Fax: +40 21 312 4885. E-mail: editors@jcmm.orgJournal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ UK. Tel.: +44 1865 776868, Fax: +44 1865 714591.jcmm@wiley.com)Production Editor: Jeremy Chua , Short Communications, Editorials and Points of View, as well as Letters to the Editor. 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Journal of Berry Research, Mediterranean Journal of Nutrition & Metabolism (IOS Press) and Diseases (MDPI) as the Associate Editor for Molecules (MDPI) and in the editorial board of Food Chemistry (Elsevier), Plant Food for Human Nutrition (Springer), Nutrition and Aging (IOS Press), and the International Journal of Molecular Sciences (MDPI).Maurizio Battino, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Biochemistry in the Department of Clinical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Università Politecnica delle Marche , is the Director of the Centre for Health and Nutrition, Universidad Europea del Atlantico  and Director of Nutrition and Health projects and Master courses at FUNIBER on-line platform . His research group, the Bioenergetics Group, investigates a way of mitigating disease processes through the correct use of specific foods (mainly berries and dietary fats) and of their bioactive compounds. He undertook a B.Sc. in Bologna, Ph.D. in Catania  and post-doc in Granada (Spain); he obtained a M.Sc. in the International Communication Technology in Medicine  and was awarded with a Doctor Honoris Causa degree by the University of Medicine and Pharmacy “Carol Davila” Bucharest (Romania). He currently reviews scientific articles for over three dozen peer-reviewed journals, serves as the Editor-in-Chief for the Dr. Maurizio BattinoDr. Maurizio Battino’s Research TeamSeveral research projects are currently being undertaken related to the definition of the role of antioxidants and bioactive compounds present in different food matrices  on oxidative stress and on the modulation of several genes involved in antioxidant defenses, metabolism, cell survival and proliferation, inflammation and related disorders . The experimental models on which the group has worked and currently works include both in vitro models  and in vivo models . Targeted diseases are those related directly with mitochondrial impairment  and/or inflammation processes and oxidative stress including metabolic syndrome, cancer, atherosclerosis and periodontal diseases.Dr. Battino has more than 25 years of experience in bioenergetics and in food research with special emphasis on the role of natural antioxidants and his studies are documented in more than 250 peer-reviewed research articles with h-index = 51 according to Google Scholar MyCitations or h-index = 41 and 39 according respectively to Scopus and ISI Web of Science; he has also co-edited several books and special issues.1. Professor Battino, as is well-known to us, you are a Highly Cited Researcher (Thomson Reuters) in the category of Agricultural Sciences. Do you remember how and when you first became interested in this field?I think that a premise is needed: “Agricultural Sciences” category for Thomson Reuters comprises also “Nutrition”; this is why I received this award in the above category. As far as my “Nutrition” research interest are concerned, I began about 25 years ago when for the first time I studied the effects of virgin olive oil intake on mitochondrial functions and properties  dreams, defend them and ask your mentors to give you the possibility to demonstrate if your idea is valuable. I have always given a chance to my Ph.D. students and post-docs to support their theories even if they contrasted with my ideas: I was right! This achievement demonstrates I was right and now it is because of their challenges that we are a Highly Cited group.5. You have studied natural bioactive compounds for more than 25 years. Which discoveries in this field would you say were the most important?Firstly, the recognition of the involvement and the role of antioxidants as possible tools for improving the most known and diffused chronic diseases mainly those related with low grade inflammation; on this topic also my group and co-workers have substantially contributed [6. Can you outline what the most important ongoing projects are in your group?We are currently focusing upon AMPK pathways’ modifications in cancer cells [7. Has the focus of your research changed over the years?I began investigating the mitochondrial respiratory chain enzymes, their structures and properties, and my first interest was to understand which role antioxidants could have when they interact with some of these components. Gradually, I widened the number and kind of antioxidants and then I begin to focus on the foods where they were contained.8. What is the next stage in food research on the role of natural bioactive compounds?The next stage, actually, could be that of producing foods with enhanced amounts of some of these compounds. We have patented, for example, a strawberry variety that possess 8-fold the current folate contents of a commercially available strawberry: the idea is to assist foods’ production from farm to fork in order to give the consumers not only a healthy product but even a product that could help and assist consumers in their daily challenge for a healthy diet which could positively have repercussions on the prevention of the most diffused chronic and degenerative diseases.9. What are some of the most urgent challenges in treating mitochondrial impairment diseases?It could seem crazy to say that the main problem of mitochondrial diseases is that they are terrible diseases which affect only a limited number of patients but it is true in the sense that in many countries they are not perceived as an actual and serious problem for Public Health. Therefore, the research grants are terribly limited and the efforts depend upon researchers of good will who usually dedicate part of their time and grants to also study mitochondrial diseases. It is absolutely required to dedicate more efforts to studying them because they could present shared mechanisms which could be of help in several different situations [10. Which recently developed technologies may help with this?I came back to investigate mitochondria, a few years ago, when SeaHorse made available a technology which allows us to evaluate and to monitor both glycolisis and mitochondrial respiratory activity in whole living cells and in tissue slices. I think that the technologies which will affect our investigations most in the next 5 years will be 3D cell-cultures (with tissue-printers) and NanoString: I personally planned to change most of our investigation using 3D-tissue printers gradually within the next months; unfortunately, I cannot afford a NanoString device and I hope that somebody reading this interview can support our lab in this sense: it would be a strategic investment.11. Where do you see the potential of “bioactive compounds in berries” to human health?It has been widely demonstrated that berries’ bioactive compounds affect several metabolic routes and, perhaps, the most intriguing results are the last ones which suggest a possibility for them to actively prevent the onset and development of some kind of cancers. We have obtained striking evidence and we are now in the process of fierce discussion with reviewers of some journals.12. Do you have some advice for other groups who are thinking of embarking on nutrition and health projects?The field is very competitive and only new, innovative and creative ideas may have the chance to survive: be rigorous but imaginative.13. Thank you for your answers to the above questions on your research! It is well known that you are the Editor-in-Chief and an Editorial Board Member of several open access journals. Do you remember when the idea of becoming involved in open access publishing first occurred to you?I was curious to see how an Open Access journal worked: firstly, it was just a curiosity but I immediately remain really astonished to see the great work behind it. My previous expertise in the editorial field regarded traditional journals; therefore, I found this new challenge exciting. I began about four years ago and, actually, in the meantime the Open Access world has experimented to undertake the most incredible evolution and improvements. Nowadays, in addition, all the main important traditional Publishers are offering full Open Access Journals in addition to Open Access possibilities in the historical journals.14. How did this come about?I was contacted several times but discharged most of the emails as SPAM. Once, the offer to guest edit a special issue attracted my attention and asked for additional information.15. What do you think the idea of open access contributes to the publishing world?Open Access deeply contributed to the development of publishing world and will be more and more important in the next few years: an irrefutable movement towards Open Access devices is gaining in all the knowledge areas and Open Access will very suddenly represent the most diffused choice for researchers. In this moment, probably, too many companies with limited experience in the scientific editorial fields have launched new (too many and uncontrolled) journals. I think that, if there will be a way to control SPAM offers, Open Access could actually represent the most important contribution to publishing world.We are honored to carry out this interview with Dr. Battino, in which Professor Maurizio Battino shared his experience in the field of natural bioactive compounds, as well as his opinions on open access publishing. example ,4).2. Wtributed ,11,12. Btributed ,14,15,16tributed ,21,22,23er cells ,25 afterer cells ,20,21,26tuations ,28.10.


The purpose and effectiveness of peer review is currently a subject of hot debate, as is the need for greater openness and transparency in the conduct of clinical trials. Innovations in peer review have focused on the process of peer review rather than its quality.The aims of peer review are poorly defined, with no evidence that it works and no established way to provide training. However, despite the lack of evidence for its effectiveness, evidence-based medicine, which directly informs patient care, depends on the system of peer review. The current system applies the same process to all fields of research and all study designs. While the volume of available health related information is vast, there is no consistent means for the lay person to judge its quality or trustworthiness. Some types of research, such as randomized controlled trials, may lend themselves to a more specialized form of peer review where training and ongoing appraisal and revalidation is provided to individuals who peer review randomized controlled trials. Any randomized controlled trial peer reviewed by such a trained peer reviewer could then have a searchable ‘quality assurance’ symbol attached to the published articles and any published peer reviewer reports, thereby providing some guidance to the lay person seeking to inform themselves about their own health or medical treatment.Specialization, training and ongoing appraisal and revalidation in peer review, coupled with a quality assurance symbol for the lay person, could address some of the current limitations of peer review for randomized controlled trials. He was emphatic that I would suffer complications in the future if I did not have all four teeth removed under a general anesthetic. This seemed drastic to me, but I was given the same advice by two health professionals and it was with trepidation that I questioned their advice. At the time, ‘Evidence-Based Medicine’ which proposed the use of scientific evidence to inform clinical decision making was still a novel idea , aimed aI decided to search for the evidence. My only source of information was a medical library where I could identify and photo-copy relevant looking articles or get copies via an ‘inter-library loan’. I did not find any useful information, but I decided against the procedure on the basis that the risk of a general anesthetic and a stay in hospital seemed to me to completely outweigh any benefit of having four perfectly healthy pain-free teeth removed.A short time later, when I was a junior doctor, a subgroup analysis of the diabetic patients who took part in the original ‘4S study’ , reporteThese experiences not only illustrate the barriers to information I faced as a patient, but the power of individual clinical trials to directly influence treatment decisions for individual patients and the blind faith I and my peers had in a system whereby publication in a peer reviewed journal gave the reported results the status of ‘the evidence’ and, therefore, the ‘Truth’.While my faith in the publication process was naïve and misplaced, flaws in the way randomised controlled trials (RCTs) were conducted and reported were recognised and initiatives were underway address these concerns. These culminated in the CONSORT statement  which aiWhile my faith in the publication process was naïve and misplaced, flaws in the way RCTs were conducted and reported were recognized and initiatives were underway to address these concerns. These culminated in the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) statement  which aiWhile reporting guidelines aimed to address how individual trials were reported, there were also concerns about how far only positive or favorable findings were published while those with less exciting, favorable or inclusive findings were not (publishing bias). In 2005, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) published a statement announcing that its member journals would adopt compulsory trial registration as journal policy . The aimRecently, in light of ongoing concerns about publication bias and the suppression of unfavorable results, the All Trials campaign  was launMeanwhile, running parallel with this, the world of peer review, was undergoing a revolution. Most definitions of peer review include a description of a process of scrutiny by independent experts or peers in the same field ,10. For British Medical Journal (BMJ) in 1999 [Flaws with the common single blind peer review system  were recognized  and ther in 1999 .The novel idea of an ‘Open Access’ journal, where all published research is freely available without subscription, began to emerge and although it was met by ferocious opposition from publishers , BioMed The number of peer reviewed journals has been increasing at a steady rate of 3.5% a year and almost all are now available online . With onThe impetus behind these recent initiatives has been to reduce delays for authors and reduce burden for reviewers. Their focus is on the process of peer review in terms of how and when it is done, rather than the substance and quality of peer review itself or expertise of the peer reviewer.Recent innovations in peer review seem to be driven by biologists with medical research ‘tagging along’. However, systems which might help biological research to thrive, might not necessarily be appropriate for research that directly influences patient care. There is no agreement on who a ‘peer’ or what ‘peer review’ actually is . It is nBMJ commented that it was, ‘odd that science should be rooted in belief’ [Despite this, peer review is still seen by researchers as important and necessary for scientific communication  and publ belief’ . In the  belief’ , there iA UK Parliamentary enquiry on peer review in 2011  concludeWith peer review as a vague and undefined process it is not surprising that in a survey of peer review conducted by Sense about Science, 56% of reviewers in a survey said there was a lack of guidance on how to review and 68% thought formal training would help . TraininAlthough reporting guidelines have been available for two decades, many researchers and reviewers still do not understand what they are or the need for them. This is further compounded by inconsistent guidance from journals for authors on how to use reporting guidelines  and a laThe need for a concerted effort across disciplines to investigate the effects of peer review has been recognized , but befSince the methodology for conducting and reporting of RCTs has been defined by the CONSORT statement  which imPeer review of RCTs should be recognized as a professional skill in this way. Every RCT, and its peer review reports if made public, whether published online, on paper, open access or subscription only, with open or closed peer review, or peer reviewed before or after publication could then have a searchable ‘quality assurance’ symbol (like the ‘kite-mark’ used by the British Standards Institute ) or a woTo achieve this, major organizations including medical schools, medical regulatory and accreditation organizations , funding bodies, publishers and journal editors and lay people need to come to a consensus on the definition, purpose, standards and training requirements of peer review of RCTs. Training should begin in medical schools and be ongoing.per se and comparative studies on the effectiveness and quality of emerging innovations.By recognizing peer review as a professional skill with measurable standards which are separate from the journal, publisher or peer review model, peer review is separated from commercial considerations, peer reviewers get recognition for their work, and researchers, clinicians and patients get some indication of quality on which to base their judgments. Publishers and journals are then free to innovate while still maintaining consistency of peer review for RCTS, editors have clear criteria on which to base their choice of peer reviewer for a given manuscript and a baseline is set that allows for future research into the effectiveness of peer review While innovations in trial reporting and the peer review process have increased transparency, there has been little progress in defining the aims and effects or improving the quality of peer review itself. There is a vast volume of health information available to the lay person with little or no guidance on its quality or trustworthiness.Treatment decisions are based on evidence which is itself determined by a system for which there is no evidence of effectiveness. Innovations in peer review that specifically address the quality of peer review and the expertise of the peer reviewer and provide guidance for lay people seeking to inform themselves about their own health related decisions are urgently needed. Formal professional training for peer review of RCTs coupled with a means of identifying RCTs peer reviewed by such trained experts could address these needs.The focus of this article has been on peer review of evidence-based medicine and RCTs in particular because the consequences of an ill-defined system of peer review are easily understandable by the scientist and the lay person alike. However, the purpose of peer review and a method of training and evaluating peer reviewers could be defined in a similar way for any other type of study design or any other field.


On 27th of April 2015 ZooKeys published its jubilee issue 500. It has been exactly 28 months since we published our semiquincentennial issue  and madeth of July 2008 reached 3407 or approximately 42 manuscripts per month, on average. Launched as a fast-line publishing journal, in spite of the great increase in submissions, the average peer-review and production time remained within the timeframes of 2012, namely approximately 3 months from submission to publication. The actual rejection rate based on evaluation of all submitted versus published articles is 28%.From its start in July 2008 through April 2015, the journal published altogether 2436 articles and 65942 pages. The number of published articles continued to grow gradually over the last two years ] archive, which guaranteed their long-term preservation, integrity and perpetuity. As an added benefit, Pensoft became a partner of the Global LOCKSS Network supporting libraries and their local collections.Being the first taxonomic journal to promote and implement data publishing in its routine workflow , over thhttp://refindit.org). Besides, a new article level metrics allowing scoring the number of user’s visits by article format, as well as the number of views of each individual figure and table was introduced.A major step towards strengthening the journal position was undertaken in December 2014 when ZooKeys moved on to a new technologically advanced publishing platform with several innovative features that better visualise published content and maximizes its re-use by readers. These include a navigation panel that allows key text elements, such as figures and tables to be downloaded individually. Other key features include visualisation of occurrence data on interactive Google map, Taxon Name Profile, and Reference finder  of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) . By doinSchmidt and Lafontaine 2013 – ZooKeys 264) and V (Schmidt and Lafontaine 2013 – ZooKeys 421); Advances in Hemipterology ; DNA barcoding: a practical tool for fundamental and applied biodiversity research ; Review of taxonomy, geographic distribution, and paleoenvironments of Azhdarchidae (Pterosauria) (Averianov 2014 – ZooKeys 432); Proceedings of the Summer Meeting of the Crustacean Society and the Latin American Association of Carcinology, Costa Rica (Wehrtmann and Bauer 2014 – ZooKeys 457); The origin and early evolution of metatherian mammals: the Cretaceous record .The last two years will also be recalled with the publication of several landmark thematic monographs and conference proceedings, just to mention a few: Contributions to the systematics of New World macro-moths IV (PageBreakQuite a number of interesting zoological discoveries were announced in the journal and attracted large audiences and considerable media interest (see also Tables en masse descriptions of new taxa, often called “turbo-taxonomy” in 2012, ZooKeys served as an experimental testbed for the concept (Shortly after the erection of the method of rapid and  concept , 2014. F concept ; a new i concept ; a new s concept .PageBreakThe journal success wouldn’t be possible without the great support of the zoological community. We deeply appreciate the help received from our most active authors, reviewers and editors!


Behavioral Sciences. Behavioral Sciences seeks to publish original research and scholarship contributing to our understanding of human behavior. The journal will provide a forum for work that furthers knowledge and stimulates research in the behavioral sciences. We are committed to building a diverse and methodologically rigorous literature of interest and benefit to behavioral and social scientists, as well as to clinical practitioners, educationalists, and the general public.On behalf of the Editorial Board and the editorial management staff of MDPI, it is my great pleasure to introduce this new journal  In medical schools in the United States, teachers of the behavioral sciences are usually psychiatrists, and the content of teaching tends to concern general psychiatry alone. My own experiences were quite different in learning behavioral sciences in undergraduate psychology and in medical school. I recall that the curricula included topics such as group psychology, animal behavior, signal detection theory, learning theories, cultural anthropology, neurology and neurobiology, “happiness” research, doctor-patient communication, and cognitive psychology. This latter topic included processes that can distort thinking and lead to erroneous beliefs as exampled by studying the psychology of individuals that believed in psychic or paranormal phenomena. This was a wonderfully rich and stimulating education that fueled my interest in abnormal psychology and in psychiatry as a prospective career.Such a diverse scope of the behavioral sciences is reflected by the interests and research activities of the 20 distinguished members of the Editorial Board. The 20 members have interests that include the neurobiology and genetics of behavior, the addictions, comparative psychology, cognitive psychology, animal models of behavior, learning, stress, epidemiology, and health psychology. The Board also has expertise ranging from child through adult psychiatry. This is an impressive list indeed but it is not complete. We hope to grow and internationalize our editorial board so please let us know of your research interests, expertise, and interests in serving.Such a diversity of scope of topics shares a commonality in the scientific methods deployed to advance knowledge. The methods are central to determining the validity of findings of research. In this regard, it is worth noting that the specific research question(s) drives the decision on study design. Thus, authors should explain their decision-making on how the design was chosen, and on the relative strengths and weaknesses of the specific methods . The limitations of the methods are preferably reviewed in the discussion section so that the reader can judge the results, the potential for bias, and the adequacy of conclusions in light of the methods. We therefore ask our authors to be assiduous in detailing the methods.The editorial process will be led by our colleagues at MDPI. They will distribute manuscripts for peer review and consult the relevant editors regarding the results of the reviews. We wish to monitor our editorial processes and to respond in a very timely fashion to editorial queries, to completing reviews, and to editorial decision-making.Submitted manuscripts will be sent to two or three reviewers for comments pertaining to the importance of the manuscript, quality of the methods, and adequacy of results and conclusions. We will also solicit comments on the adequacy of the references, utility of tables and figures, adequacy of the structured abstract and clarity of writing. The review process is critical to the scientific integrity of the discipline; reviewers should treat this responsibility with the upmost respect and empathy for authors. The editorial staff at MDPI and I hope to provide some information on how we are faring in our review and editorial decision-making processes in due course.Behavioral Sciences is strictly open access. This means that no reader will be charged for access to research published in the journal. The costs are covered through modest fees which are consistent with those charged by other open access journals. These are paid only if the article is accepted. In addition, fees for the inaugural volume will be waived. Open access publishing prevents considerable publishing delays and the high institutional subscription prices that are common to scientific publishing.We are tremendously fortunate to have available the publishing experiences of the staff at MDPI. They will work to ensure timely reviews and editorial decision-making. Behavioral Sciences. We will announce the theme and editors for the first issue very soon. We welcome additional proposals for guest editorships of theme issues. We especially welcome your submissions as original papers, scholarly or theoretical contributions, or focused and systematically conducted reviews. We also want to hear from you about how we can develop and improve our content and editorial decision-making processes, and please let us know of any interest in reviewing for us or in serving on the editorial board. This is your journal dear prospective readers, contributors and colleagues. On behalf of the Editorial Board, I sincerely thank you in advance for all of your efforts in supporting Behavioral Sciences!We are all very excited about the adventures ahead for


This article was republished on September 18, 2015, because an incorrect version of the manuscript was uploaded following the final author revision. Please download this article again to view the correct version. The originally published, uncorrected article and the republished, corrected article are provided here for reference. In addition to changes made throughout the paper, please note that the Abstract has been updated to the following:Delays in peer reviewed publication may have consequences for both assessment of scientific prowess in academia as well as communication of important information to the knowledge receptor community. We present an analysis on the perspectives of authors publishing in conservation biology journals regarding their opinions on the importance of speed in peer-review as well as how to improve review times. Authors were invited to take part in an online questionnaire, of which the data was subjected to both qualitative  and quantitative analyses . We received 637 responses to 6,547 e-mail invitations sent. Peer-review speed was generally perceived as slow, with authors experiencing a typical turnaround time of 14 weeks while their perceived optimal review time was six weeks. Male and younger respondents seem to have higher expectations of review speed than females and older respondents. The majority of participants attributed lengthy review times to reviewer and editor fatigue, while editor persistence and journal prestige were believed to speed up the review process. Negative consequences of lengthy review times were perceived to be greater for early career researchers and to have impact on author morale (e.g. motivation or frustration). Competition among colleagues was also of concern to respondents. Incentivizing peer-review was among the top suggested alterations to the system along with training graduate students in peer-review, increased editorial persistence, and changes to the norms of peer-review such as opening the peer-review process to the public. It is clear that authors surveyed in this study viewed the peer-review system as under stress and we encourage scientists and publishers to push the envelope for new peer-review models.S1 File(PDF)Click here for additional data file.S2 File(PDF)Click here for additional data file.


Bulletin has now become an open access journal with effect from this issue.Radical changes are taking place in scientific publishing, driven by mandates from major research funders both in the UK and elsewhere. The publishing landscape is changing, and open access is increasingly being seen as a viable alternative to subscription-based business models. Although many issues are yet unresolved, even the large commercial publishers are developing stables of open access journals. To reach a wider audience, and to increase appeal to potential contributors deciding where to publish, the  Revolutions tend to be chaotic and disturbing affairs. And yet the radical changes taking place in scientific publishing which threaten to rock the very foundations of the industry have been quiet and covert. The publishing revolutionaries aim to make all publicly funded research – and possibly all research – freely available to any curious reader. This is in contrast to the current conventional publishing model in which researchers use grant money to conduct studies, which are then published in an academic journal that is funded by journal subscriptions. The radical change, which has been discussed in previously smoke-filled rooms in universities and publishing houses alike for at least the past 10 years, is being driven by weighty institutions, including the British government-funded Research Councils UK (RCUK). Publishers now have a deadline requiring them to make all papers arising from projects supported by RCUK to be freely available (or open access) within a set period – 6 months for most biomedical research. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is following suit, as is the European Union.Cell, Nature and Science.1 Dr Randy Schekman, who runs a laboratory at the University of California, called for the boycott because he believes researchers and scientists are being inappropriately influenced by the need to get their work disseminated by these prestigious publications. He also claimed that the top-flight journals, aware of their prestigious position, artificially restrict the number of papers they accept.Only occasionally does the matter enter the consciousness of those outside the arena, as it did for example at the end of last year, when a recent Nobel Prize winner called for academics to stop submitting their work to the pukka journals such as The Lancet as well as several others aimed at psychiatrists and allied professionals  – in 2012 had a margin of 38% on revenues of £2.1 billion.2 Similarly, in 2011, German-owned Springer, which acquired BioMed Central in 2008, made 36% on sales of €875 million.2At first sight the change to so-called open access might not seem so revolutionary; surely scientific research should be freely available to all? What really is the big deal? The answer, in part at least, is vast sums. Elsevier, the world's largest academic journal publisher – producing more than 90 journals including Despite the profits, the publishers have historically argued that they incur significant costs to create and distribute a high-quality product. The matter is certainly not straightforward if alternative models of disseminating scientific knowledge are considered. Further, as with many revolutions, the battleground is littered with unseen incendiaries.3Clearly, publishing research findings is not cheap and, as with most things, someone has got to pick up the tab somewhere along the process. Previously it was the reader who paid, either individually or through organisation subscriptions. Current options for funding include the researcher or his/her affiliated institution. Such a situation is not without its problems nor its critics.PLoS One, PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine. The organisation, which is non-profit, was backed by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and received a $9 million grant to start up in 2002.4Further, it is important to appreciate that the publication landscape has changed radically over the past decade or so. The San Francisco-based Public Library of Science (PLOS) was among the first group of organisations where publishing costs are met by charging authors a fee on acceptance. The group now has a stable of seven journals including BMC Psychiatry, BMC Psychology and BioPsychoSocial Medicine. Nature Publishing Group also produces a number of open access journals, while many mainstream publications offer open access on articles for a fee.Some commercial publishers have also been producing open access journals. For example, one of the largest, BioMed Central was founded in 2000 and now boasts dozens of journals, including many specialising in psychiatry and related disciplines: examples include https://peerj.com/) charges a one-off membership fee and authors also agree to act as reviewers. Other journals, for example eLife (http://www.elifesciences.org/) set up as a collaborative by several charitable foundations, are online-only and have no publication charges currently – although this situation may change. It should also be noted that Dr Schekman is an editor-in-chief at eLife and as such may not be entirely disinterested in calling for the boycott of rival publications.In addition to charging the author, other open access funding models have emerged. For example, PeerJ (Other key players in the world of academic publishing are the so-called learned societies – including the Royal College of Psychiatrists – which among other activities, produce their own journals such as this one, funded by monies from a variety of sources but mainly subscriptions from members and academic institutions. In recent years, many learned societies have faced falling journal sales resulting in declining revenues.3Those opposed to open access raise many concerns about the move including worries over the quality of articles. With the number of scientific journals seeming to grow exponentially, particularly those being entirely web-based, the question is how does one sort out the sheep from the goats?Predicting how the final publishing landscape will look in the future is difficult. The situation is still volatile. The proliferation undoubtedly provides researchers, academics and scientists more diverse opportunities to publish their work. Whether these new publications are viable in the longer term remains to be seen.Psychiatric Bulletin there is a belief in the need for standards and the pursuit of excellence with the aim of betterment. And over the past 12 months, efforts have been made to improve things; the standard for article acceptance has been gradually increased and the review process has become more streamlined.Here at the Bulletin is now open access. Further still, publishing ahead of print has been introduced. Other strategies for quality improvement will include the production of themed editions focusing on hot topics such as culturally informed psychiatry, sustainability and public mental health.Further, to reach a wider audience and to increase appeal to potential contributors deciding where to publish, the And finally, to give a clear signal that the journal is eager to attract articles from health professionals, carers, lawyers, all members of the multidisciplinary team and all stakeholders involved in the treatment and care of people with mental illness, including, of course, patients themselves, there will be no cost to authors for at least the next 12 months and possibly longer.