Author Appreciation

Main Text

The Biophysical Journal (BJ) editors and staff realize that our authors deserve full support as they seek to publish their research in BJ. Over the last year, we have developed several new policies, procedures, and initiatives that are designed to support our authors at every stage of the publication process: submission, peer review, and post-publication dissemination. I am pleased to report on some of these new innovations, some of which have been introduced already and others that will be coming very soon.

Simplified formats for initial paper submission

We recognize that it can be cumbersome to conform to the editorial style of a particular journal at the point of initial submission. Therefore, the following has been placed in our Author Guidelines:

“At the initial submission stage, BJ will accept for review well-prepared manuscripts in any format. However, the title page should contain only the article title and the list of authors, using only initials for the authors’ given names as well as their full surnames; do not include author affiliations or email addresses. You are encouraged to provide your figures in line with the manuscript text so that the editors and reviewers can more easily read through the paper and match the figures with their associated textual description

Of course, submissions should be complete and include all text, figures, citations, and supporting material in a form that will be easy to read and evaluate by editors and reviewers.

Addressing bias in peer review

Several recent high-profile studies have called attention to the issue of unconscious bias linked to gender, age, or nationality affecting evaluation of scholarly manuscripts. This has led some prominent scientific journals to establish double-blind peer review policies or offer a double-blind peer review option, whereby the identities of authors are not provided to reviewers. Editor Miriam B. Goodman has spearheaded a year-long discussion of this issue for BJ in close collaboration with the Biophysical Society. We have decided that a comprehensive double-blind peer review policy would not be the best approach for BJ. However, it was felt that the use of initials instead of full given names and the omission of institutional affiliations and addresses on manuscript title pages could reduce the impact of unconscious bias. This is what prompted the revision to our title page requirements for submitted manuscripts as noted above. Of course, authors and their institutions would be fully identified once a paper is accepted and published.

Collaborative review

A set of reviews that have conflicting evaluations or revision suggestions can be a source of frustration to authors. While such an outcome is infrequent, it happens often enough that some scientific journals have adopted a policy of producing consolidated reviews. This approach results in a single review that reflects a consensus of the individual reviewers and the editor. Reaching such a consensus, however, can add significant time to the overall review process and place a great burden on volunteer reviewers and editors. To address this issue, very soon BJ will institute a simple procedure that will minimally impact the turnaround time for handling a submitted manuscript. After all the reviews are received by the BJ editorial office, the reviewers will be given 48 hours in which they can read their colleagues’ evaluations and edit their own reviews. Reviewer anonymity will be preserved during this process, which will be automated through the BJ manuscript tracking database.

Assuring proper attribution for reused data

As a key component of our Guidelines for the Reproducibility of Biophysics Research (http://www.cell.com/pb/assets/raw/journals/society/biophysj/PDFs/reproducibility-guidelines.pdf; see also the Editorial by myself and the Biophysical Society leadership (1)), authors are required to share data and materials whenever possible through public databases or repositories. By the same token, however, authors who deposit their data deserve to have their work cited when that data is reused in a new study. Indeed, our earlier Editorial (1) prompted some members of the Structural Biology Community to raise a concern that authors occasionally refer to a Protein Data Bank structure without properly citing the original source of the structure. Accordingly, BJ has added the following explicit policy to its Author Guidelines:

“Manuscripts that refer to information in a public database (such as structures in the RCSB Protein Data Bank) must cite the publication, if available, in which the original information was reported. If the data is not derived from a publication, the authors and Digital Object Identifier (DOI) of the data should be cited.”

BJ Classics

The measures outlined above reflect BJ’s responsibility and commitment to serve our author community at all stages from submission through review and publication (even if the science is disseminated through a public database). But what about BJ papers of 10, 20, or 50 years ago that have made an especially strong and continuing impact on the field of biophysics? How should we appreciate them and their authors? I am delighted to announce that an upcoming issue of BJ will inaugurate the first BJ Classic feature. The journal will periodically highlight a paper chosen by the BJ Editorial Board that has made an especially important and lasting contribution. BJ Classic highlights will be written by the original authors, their colleagues, or their students to review how the paper has influenced the field and how it is still relevant today. These articles should be accessible to scientists outside the field and, preferably, also to students. Our first BJ Classic will discuss the paper that appeared in Volume 1, page 1 of BJ 65 years ago (2).