Eurosurveillance editors have not been sitting still, and 2017 brought several important changes for the journal.Fuelled by technologies that allow new ways of generating, disseminating and accessing scientific information, science communication inevitably undergoes changes. Scientists, publishers and editors drive or follow the evolution of bioinformatics, pre-print repositories, open access, open data, social media and bookmarking and many other things for the benefit of creating, sharing and disseminating knowledge. As time goes by, also the First and foremost, we said goodbye to our static old website and launched a new website to adapt to changes in the publishing business and expectations of readers and contributors . The newIn 2017, three associate editors and several national advisors ended their tenures. Dr Andrea Ammon, the newly elected Director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) [As part of constant improvements and evolution, we changed some of our instructions for authors and editorial policies. We introduced structured abstracts for research and review articles, refined instructions for Rapid communications and amended our policy on overlapping publication to be even more in tune with the International Committee of Medical Journal editors (ICMJE) recommendations. Submissions received after the implementation of these changes evidenced that many of our authors have picked them up fast and this lets us believe that our new instructions for outbreak reports will be noted fast as well. The new policy on supplementary materials and the policy for making genomic sequences publically available should contribute to even greater transparency, reproducibility and reuse of data.While there were many changes, the interest in our journal has not changed over the past year and our indices continued to be favourable. We received over 900 submissions  from across the globe. Some 500 experts reviewed for us and helped us select 187 scientific papers for publication . In addition, we published eight editorials, 11 letters and 24 miscellaneous items. Our 2017 acceptance rate of 21%  was similar to that in the previous two years. The decision to process and publish or not was not always an easy one. However, with the help of our associate editors, advisors and peer-reviewers we believe we selected interesting, good quality and public health-relevant articles. And as every year, we are obliged to all our supporters and contributors who help us shape the journal’s content and who have an open ear for us whenever we need them. We are also grateful to colleagues at ECDC and other close supporters who are there for us and who act as ambassadors for the journal.Eurosurveillance. The journal continued to rank among the top 10 in its category in the Journal Citation reports for the sixth year in a row. The journal also remained in the first quartile  in the Scimago journal rank and Google Scholar metrics were also favourable. The newly introduced Sopus-based CiteScore for Eurosurveillance is 3.7 (96th CiteScore Percentile), which corresponds to rank 15 among 449 journals in the category Medicine: Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health.With a figure of 7.2, the impact factor released in mid-2017 was the highest ever for Eurosurveillance issues. Acknowledging the importance of vaccination and supporting efforts to improve documentation and coverage, we published a special issue on Immunisation Information Systems in April [As in previous years, we continued to cover outbreaks and relevant public health events in a timely manner. An emerging topic covered in several papers in 2017 was the hepatitis A outbreaks among men who have sex with men and the journal featured several articles with new findings on plasmid-encoded colistin resistance. Influenza, HIV/AIDS and food-borne diseases were other topics in several in April .What can readers and contributors expect from us in 2018? As always we will strive to provide interesting, scientifically sound and public health-relevant articles and timely information for public health action. We will intensify our presence on social media and have started to be more proactive using LinkedIn as a further channel to disseminate information. As a result from a call for papers published in March 2017, we will publish a special issue on screening and prevention of communicable diseases in newly arrived migrants in Europe in the coming months and we are looking forward to receiving submissions for an ongoing Call for papers for a special issue on advanced diagnostics to inform public health policy .The new website features enables the publication of educational materials in the form of structured questions and quizzes and supplements to go along with articles. We plan to launch an educational series later in the year, so stay tuned !Eurosurveillance will highlight articles on hospital-associated infections and their control published in 2018 in a special collection ‘Hospital infection control – 200 years after the birth of Ignaz Semmelweiss’.The year 2018 marks the 200th anniversary of Ignaz Semmelweis’ birth, a pioneer of public health and infection control. His conclusions that hand washing could interrupt the transmission of infections in the hospital setting were based on his observation of marked differences between two clinics in Vienna in the mid-18th century with regard to the occurrence and fatal outcome of puerperal fever in mothers or their babies. After successful implementation of hand washing for doctors, the morbidity and mortality in the maternity ward where he worked dropped considerably . HoweverWe look forward to an interesting year with contributions on new findings and opportunities that help prevent and control infectious diseases in Europe and beyond.


We are committed to support our reviewers with all relevant information needed to draft their reports Nature Communications has made a number of changes to the instructions for reviewers that we hope will assist in the evaluation of the paper and eventually improve the quality of the science that is published.Despite the growth of post-publication forums such as a Faculty of 1000, scientific blogs and online commenting, editor-mediated peer review remains the primary means by which science is evaluated ahead of publication. The peer review process critically relies on the report that is provided by the reviewers and that the editors consider in detail and discuss prior to making a decision on the paper. In order to improve the quality of the reports in the evaluation of the paper, The main goal of the reviewer report is to provide an objective and thorough evaluation of the study, considering both the technical aspects and the potential impact in the context of the published literature. In an attempt to help reviewers in composing their report, we have replaced the previous list of questions with broader questions about the claims of the manuscript, data supporting those claims, the interest of colleagues in the field and whether the paper will influence thinking in the specific field.Nature Communications, have introduced mandatory reporting checklists in a number of research areas that detail statistical information, experimental design and reagents, reproducibility of experiments, and compliance with editorial policies. These checklists are passed on to the reviewers to assist them in the evaluation of the methodology, and ensure the robustness of the work. Importantly, these checklists also help editors ensure that all the relevant methodological information appears in the final published paper.Nature Communications has made a number of changes to the instructions for reviewers that we hope will assist in the evaluation of the paper and eventually improve the quality of the science that is published.There are a number of principles that in our view are important to the drafting of a reviewer report, and to the subsequent discussion of a paper in post-discussion forums and conferences. First and foremost, reviewers need to have all the information that they need in order to properly evaluate a paper. In particular, all relevant aspects of a study, including the methods, need to be clearly described. Data should be deposited in repositories where possible and made available to reviewers. To help with this and to ensure the transparency and reproducibility of this published output, Nature journals, including Nature Communications is to select the papers based on the significance of the science presented, even if they may sometimes appeal only to a specialized community or to a small section of our wide readership. With this in mind we ask that reviewers not only evaluate the technical aspects of the study but also give their opinion on the potential impact of the manuscript in the context of the published literature. While ultimately an editorial decision, our criteria for publication are shaped by reviewer advice and feedback from the scientific community.Secondly, we are dependent on the advice of our reviewers when making decision on a paper after peer review. Our aim at When composing a report we ask that the reviewer carefully assess if the data presented in the manuscript support the main conclusions of the work and suggest how the authors could improve the manuscript and fill eventual gaps. The reviewer report should aim to assess the science presented within the manuscript and not merely list a series of experiments aimed at expanding the scope of the manuscript.We aim for a quick turnaround for our authors, so we encourage the report to be submitted in a timely fashion to avoid unnecessary delays. Reviewers should be aware that by accepting to review on a colleagues' article, they imply availability to review following versions of the manuscript. Without this policy it would be difficult to maintain consistency in subsequent review cycles. It is important to raise concerns regarding the novelty of the findings presented in a manuscript at the first round of review; successive rounds should mostly focus on evaluating the extent to which the concerns previously raised have been addressed, unless additional very serious concerns that undermine the central conclusions of the paper arise during revision. Reviewers can decide to add a comment that is not disclosed to the authors but made visible to the editors. To make the process as transparent as possible we ask that any recommendations given to the editor are consistent with the advice given to the author and that all the technical concerns are included in the comments made visible to the authors.The decision on whether to proceed with publication is taken by the editorial team after discussing the reviewers' reports. Although we appreciate that the reviewer's time is precious, we would invite reviewers to write succinct but comprehensive reports; in fact, given the key role of the reviewers' input, longer rather than short and incomplete reports are a tremendous help in reaching an editorial decision. Even if the suggestion is to reject the study, a report providing the authors with specific points experimentally addressable will help in improving the manuscript and facilitate eventual resubmission to another journal. Finally, if the report is not comprehensive and the authors are invited to resubmit a revised version, this will result in multiple rounds of review with more concerns raised at subsequent rounds and delays in the publication process.Nature Communications also offers the possibility to conceal authors' identities to the reviewers, so that the identity of the authors is initially known only to the editors. This double-blind peer review (http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms8774) scheme should help remove any potential or perceived bias arising from age, gender, nationality or the name of individual authors.In an effort to reduce subconscious bias http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms10277). Here, authors can decide to publish reviewers' reports and the point-by point response files along with the accepted version of the manuscript. This process allows more transparency on the editorial process while still maintaining the reviewer's anonymity. The reviewers' identities are not disclosed unless they choose to sign their reports. Further information on the implementation and uptake of this scheme is discussed in a separate editorial at http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms13626.Last but not least, to facilitate the transparency of our editorial decisions, and to support post-publication discussion of our papers, we have launched a transparent peer review scheme (With many of these initiatives being implemented or strengthened in the past years, we are continuingly revising the peer-review process working alongside the scientific community to provide the best service as possible to successfully disseminate solid, high-impact science.Published online: 10 Nov 2016


Egyptian Journal of Forensic Sciences (EJFS) is an open access journal publishing articles in the forensic sciences, pathology and clinical forensic medicine and its related specialties. The journal publishes classic reviews, case studies, original research, hypotheses and learning points, offering critical analysis and scientific appraisal. , and is indexed in Scopus and DOAJ, as well as having a SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) of 0.35 and a Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) of 0.705. EJFS previously published quarterly by Elsevier between January 2011 and December 2016. All issues (volumes 1–6) are available on Science Direct . However, we are thrilled to announce that since January 2017, EJFS transferred to SpringerOpen, one of the largest and most reputable journal publishers worldwide. The journal will now publish in a continuous format. Our editorial board has also been refreshed for this new phase to include well-recognized editors and scientists in the field from all over the globe , so authors do not need to pay an Article Processing Charge (APC). This is important to us to ensure a country’s economy will not influence its researchers’ ability to access articles, regardless if a submitting institution is resource-rich or poor. By having covered open access APCs, we aim to utilize all access to the internet to its full advantage to increase the visibility of research, especially from developing countries where this may be limited .All manuscripts will undergo rigorous peer-review prior to publication. EJFS operates a double-blind peer-review system, where the reviewers do not know the names or affiliations of the authors, and reviewer reports provided to authors are anonymous. Independent researchers in the relevant areas will assess submitted manuscripts for originality, validity, and significance, to help editors determine whether the manuscript should be published in the journal (Authors hold copyright for their work and grant anyone the right to reproduce and disseminate the article, provided that it is correctly cited and no errors are introduced.In the near future, we will be applying for inclusion in PubMed Central and hence PubMed , as wellEJFS (We invite readers and researchers to visit our new website at SpringerOpen, and to submit your work to EJFS . As Edit


The Brazilian Journal of Physical Therapy (BJPT) overcame a large number of challenges since its creation in 1996. Today, the BJPT is indexed to all major databases and has an impact factor ranging from 0.9 to 1.0 over the last 4 years.Thanks to the effort of all authors and members that served the Editorial Board during these 20 years, the BJPT has continuously growing in quality. Great effort has also been put to reduce the review time and to publish high quality papers that could influence clinical practice. Despite all accomplishments, it is time for another step forward, which will help improving the worldwide visibility of the articles published by the BJPT. Thus, it is our pleasure to announce the partnership between the BJPT and Elsevier, starting January 2017.Elsevier is the largest scientific publisher worldwide. Elsevier currently publishes about 2,500 journals and all Elsevier-published articles can be accessed at Science Direct free of charge for subscribers. We are strongly confident that the exposure of BJPT will increase dramatically with this new partnership.Elsevier will also offer a new website for a better navigation of the BJPT content for the readers. EVISE® will be the new submission platform and will allow a more friendly interaction among authors, reviewers and the Editorial Board, during the process of submission until the final acceptance of the paper. As a recognition to the volunteer work of the reviewers, they will be provided with access to Scopus and Science Direct for 30 days.Open Access upon payment. After a 12-month embargo, all papers will become Open Access and accessible to the public without charges. Finally, exposure of all BJPT papers will be enhanced, as accepted papers will be rapidly published as ahead of print.Initially, the articles published by the BJPT will only be available, by subscription, through ScienceDirect, which is considered the world's largest electronic collection of science, technology, and medicine full-text and bibliographic information. However, authors will have the choice of having their papers as We are excited and confident that these changes are for the better, and we hope that everyone who helped us to build the success story of the BJPT will continue contributing to the journal in this major step forward.


June 14, 2017: announcement by Clarivate Analytics of the 2016 impact factors for scientific journals. For a few, this event is as important as the release of the Michelin red guide in France or the last installment of the Harry Potter series!Indeed, recognition of a scientific journal can be evaluated by counting how many citations refer to articles published in the said journal. This idea led, in the mid-1950s, to the invention of the Journal Impact Factor by Eugene Garfield, founder of the Institute for Scientific Information® (ISI®) [As quoted by E. Garfield : “A jourPharmaceuticals, despite its encouraging development [Web of Science™ (WoS™) is the data source used to calculate journal impact factors by Clarivate Analytics. It contains more than 33,000 journals . Amazingelopment . This isPharmaceuticals and many other journals, a publisher, namely Elsevier, launched the concept of “CiteScore™” at the end of 2016 [Fortunately for Pharmaceuticals has been estimated to be 4.90 [Pharmaceuticals is now ranked #8/168 in the category Pharmaceutical Science and #21/158 in the category Molecular Medicine. This is wonderful news, rewarding the numerous efforts made by the members of the editorial offices and those of the editorial board, as well as the confidence of our readers, authors, and reviewers.Following Elsevier, the 2016 CiteScore™ of  be 4.90 . Such an be 4.90 . The val


Nursing Open, a peer‐reviewed, international, fully open access journal that welcomes articles on all aspects of nursing and midwifery practice, research, education and policy.I am pleased to announce the launch of Nursing Open offer, and how will it differ from other open access journals?You have probably lost track of the number of open access nursing journals but you cannot have failed to notice the daily onslaught of invitations to submit to, edit or join the editorial board of a new open access publication. I often receive emails from flattered colleagues telling me they have received such an invitation and asking how they should respond. When I point out that I also received the same invitation, and that most of their colleagues likewise received it, they feel less flattered and usually take it no further. I would not blame you, therefore, if you questioned the need for another online open access nursing journal. What does Nursing Open will be a journal that demonstrates quality, integrity and speed, and we expect to hear from authors and readers if we stray from these watchwords. We will strive to ensure that Nursing Open maintains the same high standards as other Wiley journals and stands out among online open access journals. We aim, for example, to be indexed by Thomson Reuters and achieve an impact factor within as short a time as possible.In terms of our three watchwords, our goals are to achieve:Quality – in launching Nursing Open, we have assembled an excellent team of associate editors and editorial board members. Each member of the team was carefully selected and has ‘signed up’ to the aims and scope of the journal. With few exceptions, the highest quality publications are not at the moment purely online or fully open access; we intend to publish a journal that is both of these, and is as good as any in the field. The journal's mission is to publish articles that contribute to the art and science of nursing and which have a positive impact on health, either locally, nationally, regionally or globally. As such, we will publish articles with scientific credibility and rigour, and coherence and clarity in the writing. Confirmatory and replication studies will be considered; however, the article must present new findings, which could include the reporting of negative findings.Integrity – Nursing Open will operate according to the highest standards of authorship, peer review, editing and publishing. The ‘pay to publish’ aspect of the journal will be entirely separate from judging the scientific worth of articles. We provide a clear standard template for submission to which all articles must conform, and all submissions will be peer reviewed and edited. The process of publication and any problems or disputes arising throughout that process and after publication will be handled with fairness and equity according to the COPE guidelines.Speed – we aim to provide a rapid route from submission to publication in Nursing Open: 5 weeks from submission to first decision and 5 weeks from acceptance to online publication. This will be achieved by a fair distribution of work to associate editors and intimate involvement of the editorial board in the peer reviewing process. As the journal grows, the size of the reviewing panel will increase accordingly to ensure that submissions are processed as quickly as possible. As soon as articles are accepted and produced, they will appear online with a digital object identifier and be immediately available for sharing with peers and colleagues.Nursing Open is adopting are also worth highlighting. The scientific community as a whole invests a great deal of time and energy in publication, and for this investment to achieve the maximum impact, articles need to be disseminated as widely as possible. We realize that publication quality and free access at the point of use come at a price. Therefore, the pay to publish model operated by Nursing Open, offering the ‘gold route’ to open access, is one we believe offers the most rapid and sustainable way to share publications that meet the requirements of funding bodies and the scientific community. All articles published by Nursing Open are fully open access: freely available to read, download and share on publication. Articles are published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License and copyright is retained by the author(s).The benefits of the publication model that Nursing Open's model is the more efficient use of the peer review process. Nursing Open is supported by other journals published by Wiley, and these journals will give authors whose articles are not accepted the opportunity to transfer their article (and the peer reviews if applicable) to Nursing Open. If peer reviews are available, the Nursing Open editorial team will assess them and decide whether or not to seek further peer reviews. This eases the burden on reviewers while ensuring a rigorous peer review system.A further benefit of Nursing Open, which we hope you will find a useful outlet for your research and a useful source of information, evidence and debate. Our Aims and Scope and Guidelines for Authors are available to view and you can meet the editorial team on the journal website at www.nursingopenjournal.com. Also, we hope that you will follow us on Twitter and read and contribute to the Nursing Open blog.Therefore, welcome to


Notice of Retraction: Acharya KP et al. Review of brucellosis in Nepal. Epidemiol Health 2016;38:e2016042epiH), “Review of brucellosis in Nepal,” published on October 1, 2016 has been retracted from publication.The following article from Epidemiology and Health :54-62: “Review of brucellosis in Nepal”. The contents were the same in papers published in both the journals. And the authors had agreed to and confirmed the “Submission Agreement”; therefore, the authors are considered to have violated epiH’s policy on duplicate submissions. Furthermore, it is suspected that the manuscript submitted to IJVSM is the final version that our journal had copy-edited through a professional English editing service, and also we discovered a discrepancy in the author’s name between the final version and the original submission.The authors violated the publication ethics by their dual submission and publication to our journal and the IJVSM; epiH decided to retract this paper from our journal. We apologize to readers and try the best to thoroughly screen any plagiarisms and ethics violations prior to the publications of papers submitted and accepted in our journal.Therefore, the editorial board of the


Dear friends and colleagues,eNeuro is already a success: 100 papers published 15 months after launch, and more than 300, 9 months later! We are striving hard to make eNeuro the flagship of on-line open access neuroscience journals. Despite the reputation and appeal it has already gained, we fully understand that some authors may be hesitant to send their paper to a journal without an impact factor. This is the reason why, until we get our first impact factor , we have introduced the possibility for authors who have published a paper in eNeuro to request a letter of recommendation from The Society for Neuroscience. This letter will state that the published science achieves the highest standards of quality and will be signed by the Reviewing Editor of the paper, the Advisory Board member, and the Editor-in-Chief. Authors can include this letter in their CV to assist in their career progression. Please send any questions or comments to eNeuro@sfn.org.As you have already noticed,


Cellular and Molecular Biology Letters (CMBL), and an international publisher, BioMed Central (part of Springer Nature). This event opens the 21st year of publication of our journal and changes the model of publication to an open system. Therefore, I would like to take this occasion to thank my colleagues, Professors Jan Szopa and Arkadiusz Kozubek* and Ms Małgorzata Nietubyć for a wonderful 20 years of a lasting and common effort to publish the journal. I remember, in particular, the pioneering years, when we started the journal without financial support and with rather weak institutional help when conditions were very challenging. Without their help, support and contribution throughout this formative period, this venture would not have been possible.It is my great pleasure to announce the launch of a new alliance between our journal, I would like to thank all of our authors and readers who supported our initiative since its start in 1996. Of great importance was the tireless effort of the reviewers in taking care of the standards of the publications. Their contribution has been invaluable. The contributions of the first Editorial Board Members who helped us a lot through their advice, in particular our colleagues, Professors Stanisław Przestalski, Tadeusz Chojnacki and Włodzimierz Korohoda, have been greatly appreciated.Our journal is published by the University of Wrocław, in collaboration with the Polish Society for Cell Biology, along with more than 15 years of lasting support from the Polish Ministry of Scientific Research and Higher Education. I would like to take this occasion to express our gratitude to these institutions.Of course, the greatest support that we received was from all of our contributors who submitted work of such a standard that we were able to enter world-wide databases, in particular, the ISI Web of Science, so quickly. The quality of the contributions is reflected in the recently published Impact Factor for the journal, which is 1.753 for the past year, along with a five-year Impact Factor of 1.681.CMBL is a forum for researchers, covering the broad areas of cell and molecular biology, including: the cell cycle and its regulation, cell differentiation, cell traffic and signaling, stem cells, gene expression regulation, cellular membranes, cytoskeleton and molecular biotechnology, not excluding other aspects of studies such as cellular proteomics, genomics and advanced imaging technologies. Research, review, short report and mini-review articles are all welcome.Although our journal has developed well and to the point that it now has a small, but stable, circle of authors and readers, we have considered now for quite some time on how to get into an open access model of publication. Now, through establishing the collaboration with BioMed Central, the world-famous open access publisher, we gain this opportunity. Therefore, we hope that, with this new arrangement, the journal will continue to grow in its readership as well as upon its impact within the scientific community that it is trying to reach. Fortunately, the open access journals have become a standard vehicle of publication of the newest achievements of the research in cell and molecular biology. Both the Editorial Team and I, believe that the choice we have made are vital for the future of the journal and that we will be successful in achieving our goal. However, we still need the support of all of you, both our authors and our readers, in this.With this move towards open access comes also a change in the way that the journal will charge for its services, with the introduction of a single flat-fee as an article processing charge (APC) for successful manuscripts. This is an inevitable part of the process of open access publishing, where the costs associated with an open access format are covered by the APC. We believe that, overall, this charge structure represents a cost-effective publishing route, especially when the wider reach of the open access format will bring manuscripts to the attention of a much larger audience, with a corresponding increase in weighting in the impact factor. On behalf of the Editorial team, I promise that our priority is the quality of research presented by the manuscripts it publishes, its novelty, technical advance and importance in learning molecular mechanisms underlying normal and pathological cell biology. All manuscripts will be treated equally, honestly peer-reviewed and published as soon as they will be accepted. So, we invite you all, as authors, to publish with us.We trust that our authors will be satisfied with the publication service they receive from our Editorial Office and BioMed Central. It is my strong belief that this alliance will secure the stable progress of the journal and help it make a greater impact in the field of the molecular biology of the cell. I also hope very much that it will continue to provide a friendly vehicle for the publication of important and significant achievements in global research towards progress in learning about how cells function.Cellular and Molecular Biology LettersEditor-in-Chief, *Sadly, passed away on May 20, 2016


Ever since the Women’s Dermatologic Society (WDS) Board of Directors voted in March of 2014 to establish a peer-reviewed journal, our leadership has realized how the advent of predatory publishing has affected the establishment of a legitimate medical publication. For example, in 2014, there were already approximately 40 different dermatologic journals but none with a specific focus on women’s skin problems and career issues of female dermatology trainees. In fact, there are no specific journal publications dealing with careers for women in medicine. The WDS is the third largest dermatologic society in the United States with approximately 10% male membership holders and a growing proportion of international members. Leaders in academic dermatology, both female and male, make a significant difference in terms of the main goals of the WDS: mentorship and leadership development. The two WDS co-editors in 2014 approached a number of respected publishers to explore options to publish the journal. Not one of the medical publishers offered the WDS the possibility of a subscription-based publication, stating that with the proliferation of predatory open-access publications, most libraries were not willing to add on additional charges for new journals. Hence, the only way forward was an open access, peer-reviewed model. For many of us within the WDS, this has been hard to accept because we have matured in our careers with journals that have no publication charges and are generally accessible free-of-charge through the university or hospital we are affiliated with, or by society subscription.In addition, many dermatologists and even trainees have become accustomed to receiving invitations almost on a daily basis from non-medical journal editors representing various “predatory journals” and asking us to write articles for them. Some of these journals have titles that are very similar to those of legitimate dermatology journals associated with prestigious dermatologic societies, such as the British Association of Dermatology’s two journals. In fact, these predatory journals have invited dermatologists to join their editorial boards as an honorary activity, so the journals appear to be legitimate on the basis of who is associated with them. I had the personal experience of being invited to submit a case report to one such journal, and after seeing the names of several respected colleagues serving on their editorial board, I believed it to be a legitimate publication. Therefore, I decided to submit an interesting case report for publication. Yet, within a couple of hours of submitting the case report, I received an email from the non-medical editor, stating it had been reviewed and was accepted for publication with no revisions. This is very unusual for any journal submission. Subsequently, what I thought was a $50 submission fee for the article turned into a $3,000 charge to my credit card! I tried to contact the journal for an explanation, and discovered that their ‘head office’ in New York was a P.O. box with an answering machine containing an outgoing message in broken English. I contacted my colleagues on the editorial board to see if they were aware that this journal was using their good names in this way and, of course, they were not. Several of them immediately resigned from the editorial board of that journal and insisted that I be refunded this fee, which was hidden in small print at the time the article was submitted.Yet, there are some excellent journals, which are now open-access and charge publication fees, such as the Public Library of Science (PLOS) One journals. I recall in the old days, pre-internet, that we had to pay a lot to get multiple copies of high quality printed images posted in black and white. Some people would even pay typists and extra fees for the images to be printed in color in the journals. These days, we take for granted that we can electronically upload submissions for free and have forgotten that there were always associated fees, which we or our departments absorbed. To be able to give copies of our articles to people who sent reprint requests, we also had to pay for reprints and postage. The charges for reprints were even higher for prints in color. Compared to these charges, the open-access fees are actually not that much higher in many cases, and particularly for IJWD, which is $800 for a research paper or review, $500 for a case report (the same as for JAAD Case Reports), and the fees are waived if the submission comes from a World Bank poor country. Compared to a $3,000 charge from the average predatory publisher, this is very reasonable.However, it is not just predatory journals that we need to be aware of. Now, many bogus textbook publishers and conference organizations email doctors with invitations to speak at their meetings. There are no covered expenses but there are charges for online access to book chapters with no royalty fees to the authors. For some doctors who rarely or never are invited to speak at society meetings, these invitations are a temptation and can appear to boost their CVs. I do not know who is paying to attend these conferences, but some doctors and scientists must be; these businesses must be making profits from the conference registrations and exhibitors, or they would not keep organizing these meetings.All of these activities dilute the reputations of decent publishers and conference organizations because it becomes more difficult to gain educational support for the main specialist society congresses. Members of the public do not realize how the vast majority of medical speakers at meetings do not receive honoraria and in fact, speaker honoraria from pharmaceutical companies and travel expense reimbursement are prohibited for speakers at some meetings, such as the American Academy of Dermatology and American Dermatologic Association. In Australia, unlike Europe, it is rare to receive pharmaceutical support to attend meetings, in part because travel is so expensive but also because of new regulations. This is good idea because only those experts who actually work in and teach other specialists in the field can be sponsored to attend meetings rather than those who just want to attend.non-predatory, legitimate peer-reviewed journals, such as the IJWD. IJWD became aware of at least one American department of dermatology whose policy does not allow its faculty to publish in open-access journals because of the open-access fees. One of our WDS members, who is a faculty member with this department, submitted a paper to IJWD, which was accepted after peer-review and revision. The paper had to be withdrawn and, having been improved thanks to our reviewers’ voluntary efforts, is now published elsewhere. Those departments forget that behind all of these legitimate journals are editors who volunteer a considerable amount of their after-hours time, and expert reviewers who volunteer their time and savings for their departments from the old days on librarians who request papers, medical illustrations, printing fees for photographs, color images, and reprint fees. A more tolerant view of open-access publications with increased awareness and vigilance about predatory journals will help us all to maintain the standards of medical publications.Jeffrey Beall’s excellent opinion piece in this issue  about th


With the transition of AAPM's publishing partner from Multimed to Wiley, the JACMP is reaching a wider and more diverse audience. It seems right once again to think about the types of articles that the JACMP wishes to publish. This Editorial therefore cuts two ways; those articles we definitely are seeking to publish, and those that we do not wish to publish and may decline without peer‐review.The Journal of Applied Clinical Medical Physics (JACMP) is an applied journal, which publishes papers that will help clinical medical physicists perform their responsibilities more effectively and efficiently for the increased benefit of the patient.The overriding focus of any JACMP paper should be its clinical application and value.If the treatment quality is better because of the paper or if the work to treat the patient is made more efficient, this is the type of paper we want.The JACMP does not want articles where the primary focus of the article is a contribution to the science of medical physics and the clinical component is missing or diminished.Let me first elucidate some core philosophies of the JACMP:CLINICAL Review ArticlesCLINICAL Radiation Oncology PhysicsCLINICAL Imaging PhysicsCLINICAL Nuclear Medicine PhysicsCLINICAL Radiation MeasurementsCLINICAL Non‐Ionizing TopicsRadiation Protection & Regulations in MedicineManagement of Technology in Clinical Medical PhysicsProfessional IssuesEducation in TechnologyThese topical areas illuminate the types of manuscripts the JACMP Editorial Board would like to publish:SCIENTIFIC Review ArticlesSCIENTIFIC Radiation Oncology Physics without a direct clinical applicationSCIENTIFIC Imaging Physics without a direct clinical applicationSCIENTIFIC Nuclear Medicine Physics without a direct clinical applicationSCIENTIFIC Radiation MeasurementsSCIENTIFIC Non‐Ionizing TopicsClinical Radiation BiologyClinical BiophysicsClinical Radiation OncologyClinical RadiologyThese areas are representative of the types of manuscripts the JACMP Editors do not wish to publish:Medical Physics Journal. There is communication between the two AAPM academic journals, and occasionally an article submitted to one may be declined and recommended for the other. Additionally, the JACMP infrequently receives clinical articles that clearly belong in a clinical physician's journal, a radiobiology journal or a biophysics journal. I ask our authors to understand we are circumscribed by the publication space historically occupied by the JACMP and that if we recommend the article for another publication it is not a negative reflection on the article.Yes, there are articles that contain both a clinical and a scientific emphasis, just as there are articles that touch on the clinical areas immediately above, while nevertheless, are primarily focused on topics within the JACMP publication space. If the article is hypothesis‐driven and is mostly about testing a scientific question, this article is likely more appropriate for the In short, if the paper does not help the practicing clinical medical physicist save time or do a better job for the patient, we would recommend submission to another journal. Thank you for your support of the JACMP and for your understanding of its publication goals.None.


Non-Coding RNA maintains high quality standards for its published papers. In 2017, a total of 24 papers were published in the journal. Thanks to the cooperation of our reviewers, the median time to first decision was 25.50 days and the median time to publication was 62.50 days. The editors would like to express their sincere gratitude to the following reviewers for their time and dedication in 2017:Alvarez-Dominguez, Juan R.Li, HongdaAniello, FrancescoLi, LinAtianand, Maninjay K.Lin, Chin-YoBacolla, AlbinoLiu, ChangningBazzini, ArielLiu, JunBenistant, ChristineMelters, DanielBiswas, SantanuMelters, DanielBlanco, EnriqueMo, Yin-YuanBlin, KaiMoran, YehuBolger, AnthonyMoreno-Mateos, MiguelBorges, FilipeMueller, SoerenBose, DebojitNecsulea, AnamariaBudak, HikmetNelson, AndrewChakrabarti, KausikNowicki, MarcinChakrabarti, KausikOler, AndrewChiang, Tai-anPanda, AmareshCiaudo, ConstancePathania, RajneeshCock, J. MarkPichler, MartinD'Agnano, IgeaSanchez-Carbayo, MartaDibb, NicholasSchmittgen, ThomasDimri, GoberdhanSingh, KasmirDonato, MicheleSlotkin, KeithDragomir, AndreiStathopoulos, ConstantinosDweep, HarshSterne-Weiler, TimEnguita, FranciscoSutaria, DhruvitkumarFava, EugenioTaguchi, YoshihiroFerracin, ManuelaTesfaye, DawitFerreira, LucianaUchida, ShizukaFiannaca, AntoninoUchida, ShizukaGarcía-Escudero, RamónUnver, TurgayGonzález, José M.Unver, TurgayGupta, Sachin KumarValdmanis, PaulHamamah, SameerVanderWeele, DavidHiroshi, NakayamaVaughan, AshleyJanga, MadhusudhanaVolders, Pieter-JanJanitz, MichaelVolders, Pieter-JanJiang, WeiVora, MehulJin, HailingWang, JiguanJordan, KingWang, LixiaoKav, Nat N. V.Wang., KaiKim, TaewanXiao, JunKosaka, NobuyoshiXuan, ZhenyuKotsikorou, EvangeliaYakovlev, Igor A.Kuchenbauer, FlorianYamada, MasashiKumar, RajeshYu, XiangKumar, RajivePeer review is an essential part in the publication process, ensuring that


Journal of Medical Case Reports in 2006, the number of journals that publish case reports has increased rapidly, and most of these journals are open access. Open access publishing usually requires authors to pay publication fees while offering the articles online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. The movement for open access has gained support in the research community, with the publishers BioMed Central and PLOS ONE becoming leaders in scientific publishing in their number of articles and citations. As the number of open access publishers has exploded, so too has the number of publishers that act in bad faith to profit from the open access model. Simple guidelines have been developed and resources are available to help authors choose a suitable journal for publication of their case reports.Since the establishment of the  Case reports offer unique value to the body of medical knowledge by describing new diseases, disease mechanisms, therapeutic approaches, and adverse or beneficial effects of drugs. The act of recording, discussing with colleagues, and publishing clinical observations as case reports remains essential to the art of medicine and patient care . These sThe merits of large randomized studies are well known, but many clinicians recognize the value of case reports as a complement to evidence-based medicine. The case-based nature of clinical practice often is at odds with the population-based nature of research studies, where the findings may have little relevance to an individual patient. Narrow inclusion criteria and the absence of co-morbidities in randomized trials often create a disconnection between typical patient populations and populations represented in research studies . Case reIn response to renewed interest and acknowledgment of their value, the number of peer-reviewed journals that publish case reports has increased in recent years to more than 160 . Most ofIn line with the growing demand for case report publishing opportunities, the number of new peer-reviewed journals that focus on case reports had increased to more than 160 journals produced by 78 publishers by mid-2015. Figure Open access publishing offers freely available and unrestricted use of research and scholarship, which many researchers see as vital to efficient dissemination of science in the digital world . The opeAs scientific publishing shifts from a business model of subscription revenue to open access, the number of open access journals has exploded. However, the proliferation of journals that will publish seemingly anything for a fee has caused alarm among many in the global research community. Alongside many respected open access publishers, others have entered the space acting in bad faith. Some see it as the “dark side” of open access, a growing collection of pseudo-academic, prestigiously titled journals, many of which have similar but not quite identical websites and names to those of well-known established journals. Many of the websites look sufficiently impressive that non-experts doing online research have trouble distinguishing credible research from junk. Experienced academics have been misled into submitting manuscripts and even serving on editorial boards for pseudo-academic journals, agreements that often are difficult to undo. Most of these journals do not post their publication fees, and often authors are not informed of fees until after submitting a manuscript. Withdrawal of a manuscript, which is necessary before submitting the same paper to a legitimate journal, may require payment of the high fees first . For somScholarly Open Access, although removed by Beall for unknown reasons in January 2017, closely monitored the increasing number of open access publishers and alerted readers to individuals, publishers, publications, meetings, and scholarly metrics that, in the view of Mr Beall, appeared to exploit the open access model [Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), and Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing from COPE, the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), and the World Association of Medical Editors [Jeffrey Beall, a librarian and associate professor at Auraria Library at the University of Colorado, Denver, coined the term “predatory open access publishing” to describe this situation. He is a critic of open access publishing, blaming the system for creating the problem of predatory publishers. His blog ss model . He main Editors –16. Simi Editors . The casThe challenge for watchdogs and authors alike is to decide when a publisher is untrustworthy or simply unprofessional. Some publishers may fall under suspicion due to poor copy editing or amateurish website design, but this may not reflect an outright neglect of scholarly standards. It is important not to blacklist startup publishers who lack experience. Another problem with maintaining lists of disreputable publishers is that because copycat journals are often short-lived, the blacklist will continue to grow but individual entries may quickly become obsolete.Have you read any articles in the journal before?Is it easy to discover the latest papers in the journal?Do you or your colleagues know the journal?Is the publisher name clearly displayed on the journal website?Can you contact the publisher by telephone, email, and post?Can you easily identify and contact the publisher?Does the journal site explain what these fees are for and when they will be charged?Is the journal clear about the type of peer review it uses?Have you heard of the editorial board members?Do members of the editorial board mention the journal on their own websites?Do you recognize the editorial board?Do they belong to the COPE?If the journal is open access, is it listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)?If the journal is open access, does the publisher belong to the OASPA?Is the publisher a member of another trade association?Is the publisher a member of a recognized industry initiative?The “Think. Check. Submit.” campaign arose in response to concerns about publishing practices, and the effort is supported by a coalition of scholarly publishing organizations. “Think. Check. Submit.” takes a positive approach to help researchers identify credible journals, providing up-to-date guidance for choosing where to publish , 19. To In addition to consulting colleagues and academic librarians for journal suggestions, authors have available to them several online resources. BioMed Central previously collaborated with Edanz, a company that assists authors in navigating the publication process, to create the author academy . The freSeveral automated search tools help identify suitable journals as well. Authors insert keywords from their manuscript abstract into a search engine, which then compares the words to many online publications and Edanz Journal Selector covers a broad range of journals. The online tool is free, and Edanz also offers a journal selection service (US $300) in which experts use their publication experience to identify up to four of the best journals for a given paper . The JouJournal impact factors, calculated and published by Thomson Reuters, measure the average number of citations per published article for papers published over a 2-year period. Despite the fact that the simple metric can be misleading, the impact factor has become, over time, a marker of journal prestige and desirability. The judgment of a paper’s value is often based more on the journal in which it appears than on its content. Many researchers contend that reliance on impact factors undervalues disciplines or study designs, such as case reports, which have lower citation rates. Overall, the number of citations of an article is commensurate with hierarchies of evidence, with meta-analyses receiving more citations than any other study design. Case reports typically receive few citations, although there are notable exceptions . The numNeurocase, has received an impact factor (1.124), dating back to 1998.Efforts to embrace a broader view of value in scientific communication, and perhaps diminish the influence of impact factors, have emerged. Journals of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) no longer advertise impact factors on their websites. Similarly, in recognizing that impact factors are just one of a number of metrics, Nature journals list a suite of citation-based metrics. Only one case report journal, Taylor & Francis’s Medicine/National Institutes of Health Indexed research databases are often curated to ensure the quality of included publications. Clarivate Analytics (formerly Thomson Reuters) offers The Web of Science™, as one such example, and recently introduced the “Emerging Sources Citation Index” to complement their more selective indexes. This collection reflects the growing number of peer-reviewed publications of regional importance and in emerging fields .Journal of Medical Case Reports from BioMed Central, offer high visibility, relatively rapid publication, and transparent publication policies. The reputation of the journal plays an increasingly important part of the decision, requiring thorough vetting of potential journals.In conclusion, the growth in number of case report journals has provided authors multiple avenues for publication but, at the same time, it has introduced a new level of uncertainty in the journal selection process. Factors to consider when choosing a journal are: the topics the journal covers, the target audience, length restrictions, and the time to publication. Open access publications, such as the


Early-career researchers can learn about peer review by discussing preprints at journal clubs and sending feedback to the authors. Assessing the scientific literature and providing constructive criticism is an essential skill for all scientists. Many early-career researchers learn how to review publications by discussing recent papers at journal clubs. Some graduate students and postdocs also have the opportunity to review manuscripts with their supervisors, but for many, their first contact with the formal peer review process takes place when they submit their first paper.The past few years have seen a dramatic increase in the use of preprints in the life and biomedical sciences. Preprinting manuscripts at the author’s discretion prior to journal acceptance on a platform such as bioRxiv is changing the way and speed at which we communicate science  together with David W. Sanders (Princeton University), the Phase Separation Journal Club is an example of a virtual journal club. Using the online platform Slack, it brings together about 40 members spanning the entire academic career spectrum and several time zones. Every preprinted or published paper that the group discusses has its own channel. A session starts with a bullet point write-up of the paper, which is followed by a one-hour online discussion using the chat feature. Participants can add comments later on as well. A summary of the journal club can be collated and provided as feedback to the authors.Utilizing preprints in journal clubs has many unique advantages. Students learn to critically evaluate manuscripts that have not already been peer reviewed, so there is no assumption that a panel of expert reviewers has already caught potential mistakes or improved the manuscript. By uncoupling the manuscript from a specific journal title, trainees are encouraged to review the quality of the science, with no focus on perceived impact or alignment with a specific journal scope.In addition, the students are expected to produce a written report rather than just participate in a verbal discussion, which forces them to organize their thoughts in a coherent manner. Knowing that the authors of the preprint are going to read the report increases accountability and favors constructive rather than destructive comments. Lastly, student reports will provide additional comments to preprint authors, who currently do not experience a high level of feedback on their work (~10% on bioRxiv; In our experience thus far, the response from authors has been positive. One thanked the student for their comments in the acknowledgments of their paper, and others have asked students to consider joining their institution to do research. In one case, the author sent the official reviews, their response to the reviews and the revised manuscript so that the students could compare their own comments with the official reviews. Other authors have sent back point-by-point rebuttals, just as they would do in response to journal reviewers, which further extends the training potential of this exercise. Several authors also replied that they have initiated their own preprint journal clubs.Unlike traditional journal clubs focused on published manuscripts, preprint journal clubs create the opportunity for students to provide feedback that can lead to improvement of the manuscript. Helping the authors and contributing to the scientific discourse motivates and empowers early-career researchers, building their confidence as young scientists.Finally, when the preprint is published in a journal, the students can compare the final and original versions, and see first-hand how the manuscript has changed through the review process. This gives trainees healthy expectations about how their own manuscripts might evolve during peer review.Getting credit for contributions in preprint journal club review is an important consideration for early-career researchers. Reviewing platforms such as The Winnower or PREreview already grant DOIs to reviews, which can then be added to the evaluator’s CV or ORCID profile. Journal editors are therefore able to directly evaluate the quality of the open reports provided by junior scientists, potentially leading to formal peer review opportunities.While getting public recognition for one’s reviewing efforts may be of interest for some, it is critically important to retain the ability to maintain anonymity whenever needed or desired so that vulnerable junior and underrepresented scientists can be protected. As an example, this can be achieved on the BiOverlay platform, where an editor handles the reviews confidentially, in a way that is consistent with what happens at a journal. Similar approaches to retain anonymity must be developed and implemented for groups of students. For instance, instructors could communicate reviews to authors on behalf of students, while online journal clubs could allow participants to be anonymous if they prefer.Beyond journal clubs, preprint reviews could be used early on in the formal education of new PhD students. The ability to scrutinize new results is an important part of the shift from trusting the textbooks to critically evaluating the literature. Just as we teach ethics and statistics to students, we should also train them in peer review practices. Students could start by using a template to review landmark papers that demonstrate exemplary scientific rigor and manuscript organization. Subsequently, they could review a recent preprint selected by the course leader. The final step is for students to choose and review a preprint, and send the report to the corresponding author after validation by the instructor. A single class has therefore the opportunity to evaluate a large number of papers.In the current reviewing system, the fate of any scientific paper is in the hands of a very small number of people, which typically includes an editor and two to four reviewers. Moreover, the burden of reviewing a large body of literature is placed on a small percentage of the scientific community . By usinAlso, authors have the opportunity to leverage preprint feedback to revise their manuscript prior to journal submission, which can accelerate the review process. Ultimately, preprint feedback could be shared with journal editors, who could then choose to consider it in their evaluations.Given the benefits for authors, students, and the broader research community, proliferation of preprint journal clubs will have a profound impact on scientific communication and training.


Veterinary Medicine and Science (VMS), a new, online, peer‐reviewed, Open Access journal covering all aspects of veterinary medicine.Welcome to http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)2053-1095/homepage/EditorialBoard.html) composed of many prestigious veterinary researchers and clinicians.The launch of any new journal is an exciting but uncertain event; uncertain because without any track record (and consequently no impact factor score), why would authors choose such a journal to publish their research? The answer lies both in the perceived benefits of Open Access publishing, and the reassurance that the new journal will be relevant and will publish with integrity. VMS offers that reassurance, backed by an Editorial Board  licence, nor any need to gain permission to reuse the published information (assuming an appropriate attribution is made). Open Access publishing provides an opportunity to enhance discovery through rapid dissemination of new information as well as improving education, particularly in countries which cannot afford journal subscription fees, and providing public enrichment. Indeed Open Access publishing has become the expectation of major grant awarding bodies in the UK, and from April 2016 the Higher Education Funding Council for England will require all UK research to be open access in order to qualify for future funding assessments.Wiley is a leading veterinary publisher so publication will be robust and permanentThe article publication charge is very competitive.Articles will be read by a wide audience due to the breadth of the journal's subject range.Articles will often be highlighted on Wiley's social media feeds and veterinary newsletters.Articles will have live citation and download statistics.http://exchanges.wiley.com/blog/2014/07/08/altmetric-is-now-on-board-for-all-wiley-journals/;) scores.All articles will be given Altmetric  published over 350 articles in the 12 months since August 2013. Furthermore, publishing on the Wiley online platform gives the author some extra tangible benefitsVMS welcomes submissions on any topic within veterinary medicine; original work and evidence‐based reviews are equally acceptable. But what VMS will not be is a vehicle whereby any manuscript can be published as long as the author pays. Regrettably some Open Access journals do not exhibit such integrity as was recently exposed by Bohannon , when 15VMS intends to publish high‐quality articles relevant to all areas of VMS, and will establish its integrity through rigorous peer review. As Editor, I am very grateful to an enthusiastic group of Associate Editors who recruit the peer reviewers to make this work. Accepted publications will be of high quality and accessible to anyone with an internet connection.


The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University was formed based on the recognition that breakthrough discoveries cannot change the world if they never leave the laboratory. The Institute's mission is to discover the biological principles that Nature uses to build living things, and to harness these insights to create biologically inspired engineering innovations to advance human health and create a more sustainable world. Since its launch in 2009, the Institute has developed a new model for innovation, collaboration, and technology translation within academia, breaking “silos” to enable collaborations that cross institutional and disciplinary barriers. Institute faculty and staff engage in high‐risk research that leads to transformative breakthroughs. The biological principles uncovered are harnessed to develop new engineering solutions for medicine and healthcare, as well as nonmedical areas, such as energy, architecture, robotics, and manufacturing. These technologies are translated into commercial products and therapies through collaborations with clinical investigators, corporate alliances, and the formation of new start‐ups that are driven by a unique internal business development team including entrepreneurs‐in‐residence with domain‐specific expertise. Here, we describe this novel organizational model that the Institute has developed to change the paradigm of how fundamental discovery, medical technology innovation, and commercial translation are carried out at the academic‐industrial interface. This has led to major medical breakthroughs, including heart bypass and dialysis machines, respiratory ventilators, pacemakers, endoscopes, stents, orthopedic implants, drug delivery systems, and various forms of functional imaging, to name just a few. However, engineering, biology, medicine, and the physical sciences are now converging in unexpected ways. Developments in nanotechnology, genetics, synthetic biology, and cell engineering currently allow us to manipulate individual atoms, genes, molecules, and cells one‐at‐a‐time, and even create artificial living cells. At the same time, progress in materials science, computer science, stem cell biology, and tissue engineering has enabled scientists to create adaptive self‐assembling materials, microdevices, and biomolecular computational strategies to manipulate cell function, control complex organ physiology, guide tissue regeneration, and engineer artificial tissues and organs for applications ranging from regenerative medicine to diagnostics and therapeutic discovery. The reality is that engineers and physicists now commonly publish in biological journals, while biologists and physicians submit articles to engineering and physics publications, and computer scientists integrate their work into all forms of biomedical research. As a result, the boundaries between living and nonliving systems are literally breaking down.The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard UniversityThe Wyss Institute's mission is to discover the biological principles that Nature uses to build living things, and to harness these insights to create biologically inspired engineering innovations to advance human health and create a more sustainable world. Its foundation lies in the recognition that breakthrough discoveries cannot change the world if they never leave the laboratory. And thus, the Institute was designed to confront the challenge of translating technology advances across the academic‐industrial interface, as much as it was created to catalyze the emergence of Biologically Inspired Engineering.The Institute is similar to other academic research institutes in that it resides within the academic ecosystem of Harvard University. But the structure of the organization is specifically designed to overcome many of the challenges that in the past have held back technology innovation, intellectual property generation, and the commercialization of academic discoveries. This is crucial because these translation challenges continue to be a major stumbling block for universities and hospitals as they attempt to transition the discoveries their faculty and staff make into the marketplace where they can improve patients' lives. In this article, we provide an overview of the organizational model we have developed to enable cross‐disciplinary research collaborations, support technology innovation, augment intellectual property generation, and ensure efficient translation of discoveries into products that enter the marketplace in order to enhance human health.2Companies tend to be optimized to generate intellectual property, protect its value, and develop products efficiently; however, as they are primarily focused on maximizing shareholder value, they often do not support pursuit of high‐risk ideas that arise in their organizations. Difficulties in fostering innovative technology development are typically compounded in industry by most companies' unwillingness to change market direction and refocus operations due to the large capital investments they often have made for scale up and manufacturing of existing products in already well‐defined market segments. In contrast, academia is a cauldron of innovation and creativity, but the focus is on publications with little focus or investment in intellectual property creation and its translation into useful products; thus, only few research advances have any direct impact on society at large.The Wyss Institute was launched with a $125 million gift to Harvard University from Hansjörg Wyss, which at the time was the largest single philanthropic gift in the University's history, and this was supplemented by contribution from Harvard as well. Based on our success within 5 years, our donor doubled his gift to $250 million. As a philanthropic entrepreneur who had been the CEO of a large medical device company, the donor shared this view and noted that “Big companies will not take risks. I try to convince my people to change directions, and they do not respond; it's like trying to turn a huge tanker. You academics do innovative things, but all you do is publish papers and make widgets. What I would like to see is an innovative startup in the world's greatest academic environment that will take risks and have positive near term impact on the world.”As a result, the Wyss Institute has pioneered a new model that combines the focus on applications, intellectual property generation, and commercialization commonly found in a start‐up with the creative freedom and flexibility of academia. The measures of success that were established when the Institute was formed included academic ones, such as international recognition for our scientific leadership, and recruitment of world‐class faculty, students, and fellows. However, we are also assessed based on the patent portfolio we generate and our ability to develop productive corporate alliances, licensing agreements, and new start‐ups. Having our bioinspired technologies being sold or productized to achieve near‐ and long‐term impact is the ultimate measure of the Institute's success.In traditional academic settings, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and young faculty are not commonly trained to patent the technologies they invent, and their career advancement is not linked to their success at reducing innovations to practice. This is one of the major reasons why academic research produces a huge amount of information and innovations that are potentially exciting, but they rarely leave the laboratory, resulting in little or no positive impact on our broader society. The Wyss Institute aimed from its beginning to address this gap.Given this focus, one of our major goals was to create a rich environment that is specifically designed to support interdisciplinary research and intellectual property generation, as well as prototype development, testing and validation, thereby de‐risking technologies both technically and commercially. Our belief was that in addition to generating stronger intellectual property, successful maturation and de‐risking of technologies led by a multidisciplinary collaborative team of world‐leading scientists and engineers would attract funding from both industry and government agencies that are focused on development of disruptive technologies , thereby increasing the likelihood that these innovations will transition to the marketplace. However, to accomplish this, we realized that we must build our community from the bottom‐up, because all creative endeavors are based on people.To achieve these unique goals within an academic setting, the Wyss Institute was set up to span all Harvard schools and departments, and not be confined within any one school. In fact, it became a nonprofit 501(c)3 corporation inside Harvard University with its own governance structure in 2013. The Institute's Board of Directors, which includes both Harvard and external members, is tasked with the overall governance of the Wyss Institute. Programmatic decisions are made by the Institute's Operating Committee, comprised of the faculty leads from each of the six enabling technology platforms described below, ensuring that faculty members are in control of the programmatic direction of the Institute. Through this governance structure, the Institute has been able to establish semiautonomous research and administrative operations, policies, and procedures that are both consistent with those of Harvard, while meeting the Institute's needs for flexibility and adaptability. Institute administrative staff are recruited with a strong emphasis on the fit with the Institute's entrepreneurial, collaborative, and service‐oriented culture, which results in high‐performing administrative teams similar to those more commonly seen in start‐ups, which focus on advancing the Institute's mission by specifically meeting the needs of the Institute's faculty and researchers. Institute staff crisscross the university and partner institutions, and work collaboratively with staff at various Harvard schools to administer interschool academic appointments, manage research, ensure compliance, and oversee sponsored funds and finances. The Institute is not an academic appointing unit, so all of its faculty have academic appointments in their home institutions, and most faculty (except for new junior hires) maintain research laboratories at their home institution, while also conducting research at the Institute site. This is a subtle but important part of our recipe for success: faculty can create their own “empires” that reflect their own unique approaches in their home laboratories, but they learn that they need to pursue a different and highly collaborative approach, consistent with our more entrepreneurial culture, if they want to establish operations at the Institute site and become an active member of our community.The Institute currently has more than 350 full‐time staff members, including 20 core and 16 associate faculty members, and close to 40 scientists and engineers recruited from industry, who bring significant experience in product development from a broad range of medical and nonmedical markets into our community. Core faculty members are appointed for 3‐year renewable terms, while associate faculty has 1‐year renewable appointments. Fellows and students from different faculty laboratories are brought together and co‐located at the main Institute's site in the center of Boston's Longwood Medical Area, and at a satellite site on Harvard's Cambridge engineering campus. In addition, we harness the deep academic resources and talent, clinical depth, and broad technology expertise of the entire Greater Boston/Cambridge region by having established a consortium of collaborating institutions, including Harvard University and its affiliated hospitals , as well as Boston University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tufts University, and the University of Massachusetts Medical School. In the last few years, we expanded the roster to include the University of Zurich and Charité Berlin based on collaborations with faculty from these institutions that emerged from common interests and bottom‐up involvement with our core faculty.The consortium is structured so that faculty and staff from all these institutions and diverse disciplines can work side by side at the Institute's sites. Although we primarily focus on medical challenges, we realized that there are many technologies that exist in nonmedical areas, , which could add huge value for medicine, and there are biomedical technologies  and approaches that could be equally valuable for nonmedical fields ranging from energy and manufacturing to data storage. Thus, our Institute's research areas include nonmedical pursuits focused on environmental sustainability, as well as more classical biomedical research challenges. Also adding to the richness and reach of the Institute are its strong collaborations with industrial partners who offer the understanding of markets and user needs to match the breadth of applications envisioned by Institute researchers. This constant flow of people between the Institute and its many collaborating partners helps to maintain a multifaceted exchange of information, ideas, and resources, while consolidating our focus on biologically inspired engineering across the Greater Boston region and beyond.3Pfizer, AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Vertex, and Biogen to Procter & Gamble, Dow Chemical, Pratt & Whitney, IBM, Analog Devices, iRobot, Sonos, and even Ben Hogan Golf Equipment Company.We launched the Institute by enlisting 14 of the most brilliant, innovative, and entrepreneurial faculty from Harvard University and our collaborating institutions as our founding core faculty members and over time augmented this group with new recruitments of both core and associate faculty  as it is staffed by experienced, full‐time engineers and houses state‐of‐the‐art manufacturing equipment that enables fast prototyping and construction of virtually any type of device from the microscale to the macroscale. We also can build using a broad range of materials including those that are approved by the FDA for various medical applications. These capabilities allow members of our community to innovate and iterate at a rate that is uncommon for academia, which greatly enhances our ability to meet and beat milestones on both government‐ and industrial‐funded technology development projects.4The Wyss Institute's research and development efforts are currently organized around six enabling technology platforms and two cross‐platform initiatives,Platform and project self‐assembly at the Institute results from the free flow of ideas and interactions among faculty and researchers, as well as administrative and business development staff. It is amplified by a culture that welcomes exploration and taking risks, which allows our staff and researchers to pursue their “out of the box” ideas without the stigma and fear of potential failure. Through its philanthropic funds, the Institute has the ability to readily support such ideas at their nascent stage, without the need for internal grant applications that typically stifle the excitement in organizations through long and bureaucratic decision points. Some of these ideas arising in our community may “fizzle out” as the first experiments may fail in the lab or the team dynamics may not survive the early stages of formation. But some ideas and teams gain momentum, and with increasing technical success comes the need for additional resources and focus. The Institute will then leverage government and industrial funding, in addition to internal platform funds, to further de‐risk technologies, moving them from concept to prototype in specific applications and fields.Adaptive Material Technologies. The goal is to understand and apply principles of self‐assembly and self‐organization—nature's own principles—to create adaptive, responsive, and self‐optimizing materials, devices, and structures that adapt their shapes and functions to provide properties critical to sustainability. Although the focus is on nonmedical areas, materials developed by pursuing this focus include self‐healing, repellant coatings for the prevention of infectious biofilm formation on implantable medical devicesBioinspired Soft Robotics. The aim is to create mobile, soft, and wearable robotic devices that move, adapt, and work collaboratively or seamlessly integrate with the human body. A major effort has led to the development of soft wearable devices, including lightweight exosuits  as early in the development process as possible. These ROIs are reviewed by an intellectual property attorney who is employed full‐time and is located onsite at the Institute. The feedback provided by this attorney, combined with input from ATT members who have technology‐relevant industrial expertise, and from business development staff who are hired by the Institute or work within Harvard University's Office of Technology Development (OTD), help to focus the investigator's research efforts so that they pursue the shortest path towards developing new technologies that have the greatest chances for commercial success, and hence, the highest likelihood of reaching patients.Business and intellectual property portfolio development at the Institute are as critical to the Institute's mission of translation as is the development of new technologies. Because all intellectual property generated at the Institute sites is owned and managed by Harvard University, decisions relating to intellectual property and business development are made through a collaboration between Institute business development staff and members of Harvard's OTD, some of whom are also funded by the Institute to ensure their dedicated focus on Institute‐related technologies. All Institute‐funded staff who manage technology translation activities are located at the Institute site to ensure their effective integration with the faculty, research teams and technology development efforts at the Institute.Technologies that pass successfully through technology prototyping and validation, and progress towards the narrow end of the funnel, are sometimes licensed to established companies or new startups, much like in any other academic institution. However, some ideas emerge from this technology pipeline and progressively mature into higher value programs that garner even greater external investor interest because of positive end‐user feedback supporting the high potential value and impact of the technology. With this type of high value technology, we often receive input from investors that they want to see the technology de‐risked further, both technically and commercially, before they will invest. In cases where we have this type of established interest from investors and end‐users, a high performing and passionate Institute team championing the technology , and strong intellectual property and technical data, the Institute establishes what we call “Institute Projects.” These programs provide the additional financial support and access to facilities or knowhow required to de‐risk the technology, cross the “valley of death,” and launch a new commercial entity with a higher likelihood of success than is typical in academia. Furthermore, unlike the conventional academic model of translation, where licensing patents directly from the academic lab into a commercial entity has given rise to the “valley of death,” the Institute's approach offers a key advantage in its ability and willingness to file IP and hold on to it until its value is better established. This more strategic approach increases both the new venture's probability of success and the initial valuation of the technology.By bringing in entrepreneurs‐in‐residence (EIRs) with relevant, application and industry‐specific experience, and teaming them with the faculty inventors and technical champions of each technology, we have been able to nurture these Institute Project efforts as “virtual startups” within the Wyss Institute environment. For example, under the guidance of EIRs, our funding has been used to support large animal efficacy and toxicity studies for specific clinical indications; conduct market research and interview multiple physicians and government officials around the world to identify challenges that must be overcome for the development, deployment, and reimbursement of a new infection diagnostic; reduce the manufacturing costs for a vibrating insole that provides elderly with the balance of a 20‐year old and carry out a clinical validation study; and even initiate a Phase I human clinical trial for a cancer vaccine in collaboration with our consortium member, the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. The concept of a focused Institute Project with well‐identified goals and milestones allows us to significantly mature and de‐risk our most valuable and disruptive technologies, while developing a putative leadership team, which can increase the startup valuation when these projects spin out. This approach also allows them to hit the ground running with an experienced team already in place, thus greatly increasing their likelihood for long‐term commercial success. Institute Projects that do not lead to a new startup are either eventually licensed, or they come to an end at the Institute.The creation and implementation of our model of translation inside Harvard's well‐established academic environment has had its challenges. The Institute had to find ways to develop its own unique approach to translation and creation of an entrepreneurial culture, while maintaining close connections to the rest of the university and respecting its policies. Such co‐existence requires a clear definition of the Institute's goals and culture, consistently articulated and communicated to all stakeholders from faculty to staff to collaborators alike, as well as clarity on setting internal priorities and making choices consistent with these goals and culture. Maintaining this focus in the presence of traditional academic pressures has been and continues to be a challenge. We also have faced other challenges related to effectively balancing the open innovation and academic “skunkworks” of academia with the market focus and disciplined development required to create and de‐risk technologies that can eventually become viable entities of their own. Moreover, the Institute is a dynamic entity, continuously managing the flow of people and ideas as technologies mature and move out. However, establishment of this “dynamic equilibrium” has a major advantage as well, as it enables us to make room for new ideas and people to take their place when startups fold out of the Institute, thus allowing us to continually change focus and keep the Institute vibrant. This process of continuous regeneration presents a challenge that requires a management approach that is flexible yet truly engaged with all aspects of the organization.6Science or Nature every month (on average) since the Institute's launch in 2009. In total, as of June 2017, we also have submitted close to 2,000 patent filings (with 120 patents issued), launched 19 new startup companies  and closed on nine additional licensing deals. The Institute with its 20 core and 16 associate faculty is currently responsible for producing a significant portion of all patent submissions and new startups across all operating units of Harvard University.During its brief eight and one‐half year history, the Institute has achieved a number of important milestones and successes and has consistently met all of its measures of success, both academic and commercial. Our faculty have received numerous awards, including many being elected as members of the National Academies of Science, Medicine, or Engineering. While most of our faculty members only maintain portions of their research staff at the Institute, they have published almost 1,700 articles, including one in Science in 2010 describing the human breathing lung‐on‐a‐chip,Beyond the metrics above, the Institute's impact lies in enabling the accelerated and successful translation of a number of key breakthroughs and technologies. One example is the invention of human Organs on Chips, which are microfluidic cell culture devices that were developed as replacements for animal testing. Following the first publication in 7In less than 10 years, the Wyss Institute has created a culture and community within academia where risky ideas are encouraged, supported, and incubated, as well as where failures are accepted as much as successes. This allows for all intellectual knowledge to be kept in the organization and ultimately be turned into successful learning opportunities. The Institute's ability to catalyze true convergence of engineering, biology, medicine, and the physical sciences, while focusing on multiple high value applications in both medicine and nonmedical areas that can have broad impact on the world, is a unique differentiator relative to other Institutes and Centers that leverage a single scientific strength  and/or focus on a narrow research area . But the real strength of the Wyss Institute model lies in the powerful network of its people, with an unprecedented ability to harness new ideas and intellectual property spawning from one high‐risk project, morphing onto multiple new projects, resulting in discovery of new high‐value problems and technology solutions that no one knew existed at the beginning. While there is no doubt that what we accomplished was made possible by the large scale of the philanthropic gift that launched our effort, we believe that there are many lessons we have learned that could translate to other academic centers around the world that want to similarly transform their academic inventions into new diagnostic and therapeutic products that will help patients, if the correct organizational and management structures are supported by institutional leadership.Looking ahead, financial sustainability is a critical challenge for the Institute. While the translation of technologies to the marketplace is already resulting in increasing revenue from royalties, the Institute shares this revenue stream with Harvard University and its collaborating institutions in a win–win arrangement that aligns the interests of all consortium members. Thus, ensuring a steady and robust flow of additional funds from philanthropic and governmental sources remains a high priority. Having learned from the experience of the last eight and a half years, optimizing and further refining the Institute's model of translation is a key task ahead. Finally, ensuring that the dynamic and agile culture of the Institute stays strong as its technologies, people, and external environment evolve is an ongoing objective, which is critical for its long‐term success.Emulate Inc., Opsonix Inc., FreeFlow Medical Devices Inc., and SlipChips Corp., and is a member of their scientific advisory boards.D.E.I. holds equity in