Introducing Immune System, Karger’s latest Open Access journal. The new peer-reviewed journal will focus in Immunology with a special attention to Environmental Immunology, Immunomics and Immunotherapy, bridging clinical, preclinical and translational investigations. 

Karger Publishers’ new journal Immune System features Open Access-based original research and reviews reporting on translational and clinical studies encompassing all fields of immunology with the intention of bridging clinical research with preclinical and translational investigations. With the launch of this new journal, the company seeks to fulfill a strong need in the scientific community for an open and up-and-coming forum for current basic and applied immunological research. The journal will emphasize evidence-based clinical and laboratory research with statistically valid results that clearly help to advance the future of science.

The world-renowned editors-in-chief, Désirée Larenas-Linnemann, Hospital Medica Sur, Mexico City, Mexico, along with Florent Ginhoux, A*Star, Singapore, are specifically welcoming intra- and interdisciplinary research on Environmental Immunology, Immunomics, Immunotherapy, including but not restricted to immune aspects of allergies, respiratory tract, skin, autoimmune and neurodegenerative disorders. The editors are looking for cutting-edge scientific research, systematic reviews, well-elaborated clinical cases and case-series. The transfer of information from fundamental research to clinical research and clinical practice – that is from lab bench to bed — is particularly welcome. 

“Immune System is an innovative Open Access journal, welcoming articles with a broad background from basic science to clinical research, as long as the manuscript focuses on certain aspects of our immune response,”states editor-in-chief Désirée Larenas-Linnemann.

“I’m delighted to announce the launch of our new Karger journal, Immune System, committed to advancing the frontiers of immunology by showcasing and pioneering discoveries that unite clinical and preclinical research. Let’s collaboratively shape a future for immunological research, unbound by limitations” says Marco Casola, Publications Manager of Immunology and Allergy.

Submissions will be accepted on a rolling basis via the journal’s homepage at https://go.karger.com/e/925633/ims/2fpypx/566049969?h=kOTG0HDsjlj04sf6vuBucEj4T0EMJINqLIP0DgcdeB8

Editage — a brand of Cactus Communications (CACTUS) —  a science communication and technology company —  unveiled its publication support service tailored for US researchers. This comprehensive service aims to assist researchers at every step, from manuscript crafting to its broader dissemination, ensuring that their work not only meets the exacting publication standards of academic journals but also reaches its intended audiences, thereby amplifying the impact of research and increasing professional recognition for researchers. 

The new offering from Editage goes beyond conventional publication aids. Along with language refinement and pre-submission peer reviews, researchers can also benefit from targeted services such as Q1/Q2 journal support and AI-powered editing. Further, by partnering with academic publishers, journals, and societies, Editage enhances the visibility of research through strategic avenues like effective social media plans, compelling research graphics, and engaging reels. By acting as end-to-end research companions who go the extra mile, the new services will also help authors and researchers save time, increase publishing confidence, and gain expert feedback, thereby allowing them to focus on the core research.

Commenting on the announcement, Abhishek Goel, CEO and Co-Founder, CACTUS, said, “We are thrilled to announce the launch of Editage’s new service offering for researchers in the US. The latest initiative by Editage is an attempt to listen to the concerns of US researchers and provide expert solutions that help them publish to their potential with ease and increase the impact their research brings.”

Having begun as a language support provider, Editage has expanded its horizons over the years. Today, it offers an array of services that cater to both the publication and impact-enhancement needs of authors and publishers globally.

To learn more about the new service, please visit the website http://www.editage.us/.

Oxford University Press (OUP) is launching Oxford Intersections, a new resource combining original research from multiple academic disciplines centred on a complex global topic.

Launching in 2024, the first six Oxford Intersections initially under development are:

Racism by Context – AI in Society and Culture – Place and Space – Social Media – Borders – Food Security

The topics have been selected because of the critical role of interdisciplinary research in helping policy and decision-makers address the world’s most complex and urgent environmental, cultural, political, and psychological challenges, the solutions of which are beyond the scope of a single discipline or area of research. 

The format of Oxford Intersections will also facilitate greater connection within the academic community. For each work, a General Editor will oversee and mobilize a diverse team of world-leading scholars and researchers from across disciplines. New research will be rapidly integrated into each Intersection on an ongoing basis, ensuring readers can access the most comprehensive and current thinking on a global topic.

Speaking about the value of Oxford Intersections, Sophie Goldsworthy, Director of Content Strategy and Acquisition for Research Publishing at OUP, said: “The launch of Intersections reflects some of the liveliest work taking place in the academic community and meets the evolving content needs of our readers and users. In connecting original research of the highest quality across discipline boundaries, we hope to spotlight pressing global topics, collapsing the gap between research and real-world impact to take new work to a broad global readership as quickly as possible.”

By publishing Oxford Intersections, OUP is responding to changes in how researchers operate, collaborating across disciplines and looking to influence beyond academia.

Building on OUP’s capabilities as a digital publisher, Oxford Intersections will be hosted on Oxford Academic – the online platform for OUP’s academic research. The interdisciplinary resource will sit alongside more than 40,000 books and 500 journals, significantly increasing the discoverability and user engagement of the research content.

Oxford University Press is looking for researchers to contribute to Oxford Intersections – contact OxfordIntersections.Editorial@oup.com for more information and to be considered.

Canadian Science Publishing (CSP) is pleased to announce a new partnership with the Society for Open, Reproducible and Transparent Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (SORTEE). 

The partnership, which is being piloted until July 1, 2024, will further enhance open science initiatives across CSP’s portfolio of 22 journals and promote education and outreach to the global science community.  

“We believe that the future of science is open,” says Elaine Stott, Chief Executive Officer of CSP. “We’re excited to work with SORTEE to promote open science initiatives within our journals and engage with scientists from around the world.” 

Educational resources such as webinars and workshops will be offered through this partnership, as well as opportunities to participate in dialogue on issues related to open science. 

“We are excited to kickstart this partnership with Canadian Science Publishing,” says Dominique Roche, Past-President of SORTEE. “By joining forces, we are better positioned to boost open science practices and drive positive change in research and scientific publishing.” 

SORTEE is a service organization which brings together researchers working to improve reliability and transparency through cultural and institutional changes in ecology, evolutionary biology, and related fields. The society is international in scope, membership, and objectives.  

CSP is committed to enhancing the reach, rigour, and relevance of science so people can find, trust, and use it. Earlier this year, CSP launched a new five-year strategic plan, which outlines our path forward and the goals we intend to achieve on our gradual transition to becoming a fully open access publisher. Open science and open access provide greater potential for discovery, collaboration, and innovation. Becoming fully open access will enhance the reach of the science we publish. 

Frontiers has today published a new author policy designed to help prevent cases of “authorship-for-sale” among its research publications, a term used throughout the industry which refers to the unethical practice of buying or selling authorship on research papers. 

“We recognize that there are legitimate reasons for the request of authorship changes after submission. However, to create real impact in reducing authorship-for-sale schemes, publishers must depend on responsible collaboration from our authors to ensure that their author lists are correct at the point of submission,” says Dr Frederick Fenter, chief executive editor of Frontiers. 

Under the new policy, requests for authorship changes will only be granted under exceptional circumstances and after in-depth assessment by the Frontiers’ research integrity unit. A ledger of requests will be maintained to identify suspicious patterns and trends among these types of requests. As of today, Frontiers has identified and retracted 38 research papers linked to the practice. 

“The updated policy and decision to retract these papers reflect our commitment to upholding integrity throughout our portfolio and ensuring that authorship is attributed based on genuine contributions to the research process,” says Dr Fenter. “By taking this unambiguous stance, we aim to maintain the trust of readers, authors, and collaborators, while demonstrating to those tempted to engage in this unethical practice will be identified and reported to their institution. 

“We recognize the potentially negative impact of the authorship-for-sale retractions on the credibility of any authors who genuinely contributed to these manuscripts. However, our commitment is and will always be to protect the integrity of the scientific record. This is an industry-wide issue and details have now been shared with the Committee on Publication Ethics. We also remain open to sharing details of our investigation and the methods we use to identify ‘authorship-for-sale’ papers with other publishers on request.” 

The updated authorship policy is part of Frontiers’ ongoing efforts to foster a culture of academic integrity, responsible authorship, and ethical research practices. The organization remains dedicated to promoting an environment in which the quality and authenticity of research are upheld above all. 

In January 2021, Cell Press gave author teams publishing in our primary research articles the opportunity to share information at the acceptance stage about inclusion and diversity topics relating to their paper as well as the option to compile an inclusion and diversity statement to appear near the acknowledgments of their published paper. The initial response was positive, with 10% of author teams participating, but we received feedback about making the criteria more representative and reducing the work needed to submit the required information.

In September 2022, we simplified the form research teams fill out. These changes included:

• the addition of a new statement to reflect gender identity—“One or more of the authors of this paper self-identifies as a gender minority in their field of research.”
• the addition of “n/a” and “prefer not to disclose” options when selecting what information to include with the statements.
• the option of adding the statement “We support inclusive, diverse, and equitable conduct of research” for those authors who wish to support inclusion and diversity but prefer not to use the statements listed.

Since the rollout of the updated form, we’ve seen a 4-fold increase in authors choosing to incorporate an inclusion and diversity statement in their papers, which can now be found in 40% of published research articles varying by journal and discipline.

In addition, we’ve noticed that more research teams overall are providing affirmative answers to questions asking whether someone from an underrepresented group was part of their paper, potentially indicating that the diversity of our author pool is increasing. Since the forms were updated, we’ve seen growth in:

• one or more of the authors self-identifying as an underrepresented ethnic minority in science (from 11.4% to 18.3%).
• one or more of the authors self-identifying as a member of the LGBTQ+ community (from 6% to 7.9%).
• one or more of the authors self-identifying as living with a disability (from 1.6% to 3.3%).
• one or more of the authors receiving support from a program designed to increase minority representation in science (from 3.6% to 5.8%).
• author groups actively working to promote gender balance in reference lists (from 8.3% to 20.2%).
• author lists including contributors from the location where the research was conducted when relevant (from 12.5% to 25.3%).

“It’s important for us at Cell Press to understand if and to what extent authors are incorporating inclusion and diversity in their everyday practices and for us to promote and celebrate these efforts in the academic setting,” says project co-lead Sheba Agarwal-Jans, PhD, a senior scientific editor at iScience. “We want to emphasize that recognition of minority status in research is not creating boundaries but increasing equity in a system that can be inherently biased already.”

“We hope that this initiative continues to encourage research teams to reflect on their own diversity and its importance to science,” says project co-lead Benedicte Babayan, PhD, a senior scientific editor at Neuron. “The uptake so far reflects that authors are having these important conversations with their teams, and we’re here to support our authors in this however we can.”

Drs. Agarwal-Jans and Babayan will continue to evolve the project based on community feedback. They are discussing how to allow co-authors to self-identify versus needing to share identifying information with the corresponding author to complete the form, how to improve the wording and user experience on the form, and how to continue to communicate the value and need for this initiative. 

“The inclusion and diversity statement is one of several initiatives at Cell Press to increase equity, diversity, and inclusion in publishing, research, and STEM,” says Cell Press Inclusion & Diversity Officer Isabel Goldman, MD. “It allows authors the opportunity to signal their support while providing us the ability to gauge where we might need to focus future efforts. The uptake we’re seeing reinforces our commitment to making science more equitable for all. We hope this initiative will continue to resonate with researchers and that other publishers will adopt it in the months and years to come.”

For more information or to leave feedback, contact diversity@cell.com.

Authors publishing open access (OA) with Springer Nature see their work used more than if they had published with other mixed model or pure OA publishers. 

Its second annual OA report, released today and expanded to cover its hybrid as well as fully OA journals,  also highlights the role Springer Nature is playing in driving the global transition to OA.  

Chief Publishing Officer,  Harsh Jegadeesan, said:

“Having easy and open access to all parts of research is essential to the development of a fully open world. The report shows the benefit that publishing gold OA has for authors, and the role OA has on driving forward a more reproducible research ecosystem that impacts and accelerates solutions to the world´s pressing challenges. It is something that we at Springer Nature are firmly committed to enabling.”

Analysing publicly available data on fully OA and hybrid journals across publishers the report shows that:

• Springer Nature has now published over 1.25m OA articles
• Authors publishing in its fully OA portfolio benefit from the highest usage for the second year running with its fully OA articles achieving the highest cumulated citations (nearly 4 million) in 2022.
• Springer Nature authors’ work published in its hybrid OA titles is also used more than that of other publishers – data shows authorsbenefit from the highest total citations and highest average citation rate, 6.6.
• The number of people downloading its authors’ OA content increases year on year with data showing a 15% (hybrid) and 10% (fully OA) increase between 2021 and 2022 
• Its transformative agreements (TAs) are shown to be key to OA growth delivering 3x more OA articles in Springer hybrid titles than author choice in 2022.
• In 2022 Springer Nature became the publisher of the largest number of OA books on SDG-related topics, reinforcing its OA leadership in books

Carrie Webster, Vice President Open Access added:

“Open access has been an integral part of our DNA for over 20 years. We were early movers in OA transition, acquiring the first OA publisher in BMC; launching the largest OA journal, Scientific Reports; creating the first highly selective fully OA journal, Nature Communications; and signing the first TA in 2015 setting a precedent for the community. This report not only demonstrates our continued OA growth but also highlights our ongoing commitment to ensuring our authors can take advantage of the numerous benefits gold OA brings in advancing knowledge and discovery.”

Alongside the publisher’s Annual Progress Report and Sustainability Report, which also share data and strategy, this report is a key demonstration of the publisher’s commitment to transparency and accountability around its publishing programme for the communities it serves.

The full report can be accessed here, alongside the fully OA report from 2022. 

More information on Springer Nature’s wider commitment to OA and our full OA offerings can be found here.