Progress Accelerated

In complete contrast with the lockdowns, social distancing, and economic stalling brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, the pace of scientific discovery and translation is accelerating exponentially. Within a month of the first reported cases of a new respiratory illness and on the same day that the first fatality from SARS-CoV-2 infection was reported, scientists published a draft of the entire genome of the new virus (1). The sequence was posted on open-access sites, and news spread around the world via social media, resulting in immediate instigation of research and trials. Within 1 year, PubMed listed over 100,000 published articles on COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2. As a result, the global pandemic is being mitigated by public health policies and multiple engineered vaccines that were developed, tested, approved, manufactured, and distributed in record time.

JVIR editors are well aware of the urgency to disseminate the reporting of scientific discoveries. JVIR’s mean time to first decision on submitted manuscripts is less than 30 days. For submissions eventually accepted and published, the mean time to final acceptance, including the revision process that may entail multiple iterations before final acceptance, is less than 90 days. However, production time, the interval between the Editor-in-Chief’s final acceptance to an article’s appearance as a finalized typeset article in press and listed on PubMed as ‟epub ahead of print,” was an industry standard but patience-depleting 5–15 weeks. This has now been rectified, with newly accepted articles being assigned a digital object identifier (DOI), posted on the jvir.org website as an author’s pre-proof (2), and then listed in PubMed and all content platforms within a week.

To access pre-proofs and articles in press, log in to jvir.org. In the left-hand column of the home page, there is a roster of about 5 ‟Online First” articles. A more comprehensive list may be viewed by selecting ‟View More Online First” at the bottom of the column. Another way to access this comprehensive page is at the top right corner of the home page where the 3 horizontal line icon for the menu leads to the option of ‟Online First.”

Articles posted in the ‟Online First” section include all articles following final acceptance, but preceding assignment to a specific issue. They appear either in non-typeset (pre-proof) or typeset (article in press) format, depending on the stage they have reached in the production process. Accepted articles in press already typeset in final form have long been available on jvir.org in either HTML or PDF format, with the temporary header ‟ARTICLE IN PRESS.” These typeset articles are also available on ScienceDirect, Elsevier’s online bibliographic database, labeled ‟In Press, Corrected Proof.”

Weeks prior to typesetting, accepted articles are now also listed as ‟Online First” pre-proofs, available in full text as the authors’ submitted PDF only, indicated by ‟This paper is only available as a PDF. To read, Please Download here.” Each downloaded article includes a cover page labeled ‟Journal Pre-proof,” including the assigned DOI and copyright. Each subsequent page from the authors’ PDF is watermarked with the diagonal text ‟Journal Pre-proof.” Although the figures posted in the pre-proof have been edited by the JVIR graphics editor, the text has yet to be copyedited by the publisher, and final text revisions recommended by JVIR editors and the authors have not yet been incorporated. Pre-proofs progress to articles in press before being published in a specific issue.

The posting of accepted pre-proof articles represents a significant acceleration of the dissemination of JVIR articles. However, this system is only applicable to peer-reviewed and accepted articles. Authors who wish for even earlier dissemination of their work or crowd-sourced feedback prior to formal peer-review may post their manuscripts on an open-access repository or pre-print server. These posts are also assigned a permanent DOI and are searchable and may give the work an aura of authority, despite lacking the rigorous vetting of peer-review. Although JVIR editors are fully in support of wide access, timely dissemination of work, and dialogue among investigators, the editors warn that these pre-prints must not be confused with peer-reviewed works. As CVIR Endovascular Editor-in-Chief Jim Reekers recently wrote, this practice will result in a ‟parallel scientific world” where ‟scientific truth will be based on nonscrutinized, alternative scientific facts” (3). We have seen firsthand during the COVID-19 pandemic how unsubstantiated pseudoscientific claims may mislead the public and destroy the reputations of individuals as well as compromise the trust in science and medicine as a whole.

JVIR has just updated its ‟Instructions for Authors,” (4) which includes a new section on preprint servers:

PREPRINT SERVERS

Posting of a manuscript on a preprint server prior to submission is not necessarily considered to be prior or duplicate publication. However, JVIR editors consider novelty when making manuscript decisions, and if a manuscript receives substantial publicity before or during the peer-review process, suitability for publication may be compromised.

• 1)Upon first submission to JVIR, the authors must inform the journal in the cover letter that the manuscript has been posted to a preprint server and provide the name of the server, the copyright license under which the manuscript is posted, and any associated accession numbers or digital object identifiers (DOIs).
• 2)Only original author-prepared files may be posted. Versions of a manuscript that have been prepared by a publisher or altered as a result of the peer-review process may not be posted.
• 3)The authors must retain rights to copyright the work after posting on the preprint server and, upon acceptance to JVIR, must be able to transfer the copyright to SIR.
• 4)A preprint DOI must be assigned to the posted preprint. Upon acceptance to JVIR, a new DOI will be assigned to the article by JVIR. Once the article has been published in its final form on the JVIR website, it is the author’s responsibility to update the preprint server with an addendum stating that the peer-reviewed and edited version is now published, with a link to the article on JVIR’s website.

As interventional radiology evolves into an independent medical specialty, we may be eager to explore new resources and adopt new platforms that facilitate the acceleration of progress, but the ultimate attribute of JVIR’s publications must remain the credibility of the rigorous science.

Your comments and feedback are always requested; please write to Editor.JVIR.Sze@gmail.com.