JASN this Month: Something Old, Something New

JASN’s primary mission is the publication of the best original science in nephrology, both clinical and basic, and JASN has the privilege of a very robust stream of submissions. The current editorial team, with the help of strong peer review processes established by previous editors and hundreds of dedicated scientific reviewers, has taken on the challenge of narrowing the field to ensure we continue to publish the very best. We are able to publish <12% of the submitted manuscripts, and the decisions are tough.

Nevertheless, peer review is only one piece of the job. We want to make the excellent work we publish as accessible as we can. It is a time of information overload, and we recognize a duty to our readers and authors to make the work we publish as clear and readable as possible.

We have been thinking about how we read original scientific articles. As readers, we know the process is rarely linear. Sometimes we never get past the abstract. Sometimes we skim the figures. Often the reported methods do not clearly answer all of the questions about what was done. Sometimes we find ourselves moving back and forth between the discussion, figures, methods, and introduction rather than reading straight through. And we all know that reading original scientific articles is not easy.

In this issue of JASN, you will see a number of changes made to help you, our readers, get quickly to those studies of most interest to you, to understand what was done, and to integrate the new information. Beginning with this issue, we are placing a short Table of Contents on the cover, making it easier, we hope, for you to browse and find the studies of greatest relevance to your work. Our cover still has room for a figure, but it is just a cut-out, a teaser, with the full figure with legend on the masthead page, and a page number to take the reader to the full paper.

We have also added a new element, the Significance Statement, to each of our original articles to help you choose which articles to read in greater depth. The Significance Statement is new to JASN, although it is something borrowed, because a number of other journals such as PNAS and JAMA have similar elements. It is a short statement (120 words or less) written by the authors to tell the readers, including those not expert in the topic at hand, the core message of the paper.

We are making other changes. To streamline the flow of information, we are introducing structure to the abstracts: Background, Methods, Results, Conclusions. We are tightening the overall word limits. Original articles are now limited to 3000 words (excluding methods, references, figure legends, and tables) and to eight data display items (figures and tables).

We believe that understanding what was done is critical to understanding what was found. We are therefore working with authors to strengthen the Methods section. The Methods now follow the Introduction, rather than being placed at the end. We are striving to ensure that the section is complete enough to give you a clear understanding of what studies were performed, what methods were used, and how the data were analyzed. The Methods section is now excluded from the word limits. Although additional detailed information about the methods may be included in the Supplemental Material, reference to the Supplemental Material should not be needed to understand the core experimental steps and principles.

We know that figures really matter because many of us are visual learners. We are therefore urging our authors to include a schematic drawing that illustrates their core findings. This figure does not count toward the limit in data display elements.

Most of you have, at some point in your career, probably participated in a journal club. A journal club is a wonderful way to share reading of original scientific articles, to learn what is new, to debate its significance, and an education in the interesting challenges of reading science. We ask all our readers, but particularly Nephrology Journal Clubs—tell us how we are doing! We have a new Letters to the Editor section and would welcome hearing how you read, and how we can help make original articles even more accessible, without reducing rigor. We know the work we publish is complex, and sometimes challenging, but we want it to be readable and clear. And we hope some of the changes you see in this issue help, at least a bit, to make the work even better.

Finally, we are often asked whether as Editors we pay more attention to the paper version of JASN or our on-line presence. Both are important. The print version of JASN reaches 14,000 ASN members every month; we value that and have no plan to change it. The changes in original articles outlined above will affect both paper and web versions. Although paper is important, over the long haul, the web is an even more important way for readers to reach the work we publish. Next on our to-do list, and coming soon, is a remake of our website.

Disclosures

None.