Publishing sleep and chronobiology research without barriers

The best piece of advice my father passed down to me from his father was: ‘if you find a job you enjoy, you’re not working’. Aarti, Jonathan, Eva, Gerben, Masao, Charna and I are privileged to find ourselves in that position. Scientific research is an intrinsically fun activity, a hobby and a passion that (amazingly) we get paid for. The chronobiology and sleep fields, in particular, are made up from delightful and diverse communities of wonderful people working to answer a dazzling array of fascinating questions, from molecular sleep mechanisms to clinical chronotherapy trials, from infection and immunity to sociology and macroeconomics. Of course I’m biased, but I suspect it’s fair to claim the work presented at our conferences is more varied and interesting than most. Certainly, I don’t plan on leaving the field in anything besides a box!

Unfortunately, however, publishing research can be a painful process. Perhaps it always was, but recently I’ve found no more effective way to drain the enthusiasm for sharing exciting new findings than several rounds of review, only for it to finally be rejected because reviewer two simply could not be placated by any combination of fresh experiments and refinements of the text. All too often, in my experience, the reviewer twos of this world provide cutting criticism without adequate consideration of how a manuscript might be improved. This metaphorical fun sponge can be accentuated when editors expect a string of rebuttal arguments tailored to beat each reviewer’s points into submission.

I am not convinced such an adversarial approach to peer review is always beneficial—the paper will inevitably be published somewhere, so what is really gained by violent intellectual combat when the central theme of most papers is: ‘Look! We found out something new and interesting’. Unless authors are provided with constructive feedback for improving their manuscript, the elements that frustrated reviewer two will undoubtedly frustrate reviewers at the next journal, and then its readers whenever it is published. From a utilitarian perspective, this is not a good thing … and while we’re at it, neither is the antique custom of allowing groundbreaking discoveries and ideas to sit behind paywalls, accessible only to those with costly subscriptions, despite most research and its publication costs being paid for through general taxation and charitable donations.

What’s different?

As a new journal we can decide on our values and act accordingly. At npj Biological Timing and Sleep we believe no one wants to publish a bad paper, that all scientific research has some intrinsic value, and that it should be accessible to all. Sadly, however, forgettable, irreproducible, incomprehensible, opaque and poorly executed papers are published all the time. One can either accept that this is simply the way things are or help try to improve the situation. I’m sure many of you are aware of the many meta-research analyses and reproducibility projects suggesting that most published biomedical research findings are wrong^1–3. Finer minds than mine have considered the many potential reasons why this might be, but one factor must surely be ineffective peer review. So, when it came to setting up a new fully open-access journal, one of our top priorities was improving the peer review experience for both authors and reviewers.

Peer review is generally accepted to be an essential part of scientific communication but the rapid recent rise in publication number has placed a huge strain on the system. One imagines reviewers might focus their energies on top-tier publications, but apparently the quality of peer review correlates poorly with the journal impact factor⁴, whereas factors such as expertise, time spent and review structure correlate better^5,6. Reviewers already give as much time as they are able, and it is unsustainable to burden those few reviewers with the greatest expertise with the most manuscripts to appraise. The load must be shared equitably if peer review is to survive and thrive. Therefore, to make it less onerous for reviewers, yet more constructive and collaborative with the authors, we have tried to streamline how a manuscript is appraised. We ask that the focus be simply on providing feedback for how it can be improved and how any claims should be refined, softened or caveated. We really appreciate and value the time any reviewer takes to do this, so we encourage just three questions to be considered:

Science

Would a reasonable and well-informed person agree that the conclusions are sufficiently supported by the presented data? If not, what additional data would be required to support the authors’ interpretation; otherwise, how might the authors’ interpretation be softened or caveated if other interpretations are equally or more plausible?

Clarity

Is the manuscript likely to be comprehensible to an intelligent first-year undergraduate studying biological sciences? If not, how might the authors communicate their findings more clearly?

Methodology

Do the experimental methods, statistical analyses and justification of any human or animal experiments appear to be sufficiently robust? If not, what additional information is needed to be compliant with the consensus ethical frameworks and principles of open science?

To encourage disruptive science and avoid ‘group think’, reviewer assertions and subjective opinions will not be considered unless supported by an evidence-based argument. This is because essential paradigm shifts occur when the weight of experimental evidence is not compatible with consensus understanding⁷. So long as they are well-controlled, we will always be happy to publish those results that don’t fit with expectation, because some of them will inevitably turn out to be important.

What we publish

Our priority is inclusivity. Only hindsight can reveal the papers with the greatest impact so we simply aim to attract research of rigour, depth and breadth. In this vein, we have been delighted by the high quality of submissions to our recent collections on translational circadian research and sleep regulation, for example. More broadly, we encourage any submission relating to biological rhythms or sleep and wakefulness. This may include their spatiotemporal regulation, underlying mechanisms and components, biological functions, (patho)physiological consequences and ecological impact. Interactions between sleep, biological rhythms, disease and aging are especially welcome as we think this will be an important area of growth during the next decade. We do not explicitly consider a study’s ‘interest value’, since this is subjective, rather all submissions with the potential to provide new insight will be considered. We also accept that discovery science and hypothesis-generating observational studies are as valuable as hypothesis-driven ones—we do not discriminate on the basis of research philosophy!

Over the last 50 years, the utility of model organisms and in vitro culture systems for studying basic mechanisms has drastically accelerated understanding of circadian timing mechanisms compared with those of sleep. Indeed, the many years taken for it to become fully accepted that Drosophila sleeps⁸ likely explains why understanding of sleep’s essential functions and evolutionary origins lag behind that of circadian clocks. We are therefore particularly keen for sleep research submissions that employ model organisms and draw upon novel strategies towards gaining new insights, such as phylogenetic approaches.

Open science

We embrace the idea of making research, data, and methods openly accessible and transparent in order to promote collaboration, reproducibility, and public trust⁹. The principles of open science encourage a return to the ideals of the scientific enlightenment that I think we can all get behind. So, for example, we can guarantee there will be no limit on the amount of supplementary information published with every paper. Our hope is that enough detail will always be provided that the effort needed to replicate any finding that we publish is as little as possible. Also, we explicitly encourage the submission of replication studies, particularly where they relate to important or controversial findings. Consistent with this, all submissions will automatically have ‘scoop protection’—a study does not become less valid because similar findings have been published elsewhere.

Unclear communication can also be a barrier to open science. This might arise because scientific writing in the lingua franca presents a greater challenge for researchers from outside the anglosphere. Also, over the years I gather circadian research has become particularly notorious for overusing field-specific jargon and acronyms to describe relatively simple concepts. Both issues can pose an unnecessary obstacle to meaning from being understood by non-specialists that we hope to remove, through the first-rate polyglottal support of npj staff and by ensuring that even common terms such as zeitgeber (ZT) are clearly explained.

Finally, we are proud to be a completely open-access journal. This allows new knowledge to flow freely to our colleagues, but also anyone with curiosity and an internet connection. The benefits of this are hard to deny: greater visibility, higher impact, and faster innovation. Open access isn’t just a publishing model; it’s a powerful statement that science belongs to everyone.

The future

This is a time of rapid change for research in general, and scientific publishing in particular. Besides the unstoppable march towards total open access, machine learning is infiltrating every part of the process. It is now commonplace for experiments to be designed and analysed with the assistance of AI and I have no doubt that the next decade will see some papers being prepared, submitted, appraised, reviewed, revised, edited, published, read and summarised entirely without human supervision. This, in itself, is something of an experiment that will determine whether human participation is required for the process of acquiring and disseminating new knowledge, and one whose outcome will be of great interest. For the foreseeable future, however, we ask that our reviewers do not rely on AI tools when appraising a manuscript and that authors make clear any areas where they were used, e.g. for data analysis or manuscript preparation.

Finally, whilst we look to the future, it is always worth remembering the past. It has therefore been an absolute pleasure to publish career perspectives by luminaries of the field such as Sato Honma¹⁰, Till Roenneberg¹¹ and Charlotte Helfrich-Förster¹². These provide fascinating insights into the wealth of experiences behind their science that we can all learn from.

I’m afraid I do not possess the dextrous loquaciousness of the inimitable Marty Zatz and so I’ll simply end with an invitation to get in touch through the journal website or email if you have any suggestions for improving our offering, for emerging themes we should focus on, or even if you just fancy a chat. We are here to serve you.

Competing interests

J.O.N. is Editor in Chief of npj Biological Timing and Sleep. The author declares no other competing interests.