Cutting the Time Spent on Manuscript Reviews: INCF-hosted Consortium Revolutionizes Neuroscience Publishing Industry

The system is set up so that reviews for good manuscripts that are rejected by one journal can be sent to and re-used by another journal in the Consortium, as opposed to having the manuscript sent out for additional review by the second journal. Ultimate control of manuscript submission remains in the hands of authors, however, such that anyone with concerns with forwarding reviews can simply choose not to participate and stick with the old system.
 
Journals began joining the Consortium in October 2007, and as of January 2008, 20 journals are members, including the Journal of Neuroscience and the Journal of Comparative Neurology (link to list of journals). Another nine journals are in the process of joining (link to joining journals). To become NPRC members, journals must publish peer-reviewed original neuroscience research, be indexed in MEDLINE and agree to some simple standards regarding review forwarding procedures (for details on joining: http://nprc.incf.org/joining).
 
“The initial NPRC was set up to provide the absolute minimal restrictions on the editors and publishers, the minimum amount of paperwork, and maximum security for reviewers who did not want to reveal their identities to the second journal,” said Clifford Saper, who chaired the Task Force for Neuroscience Publishing at the June 2007 PubMed Plus conference organized by the Society for Neuroscience (SfN). Similar review forwarding systems are used by the Nature press and Cell press publishing families.
 
Saper, the James Jackson Putman professor of neurology and neuroscience at Harvard Medical School, has found the review forwarding system used by Nature to be very useful as an author. “On two occasions I have submitted papers to Nature which were judged to be excellent, but not of sufficiently broad interest for the main Nature journal,” Saper said. “On both occasions, the same reviews were forwarded to Nature Neuroscience, which accepted the papers without another round of review.”

The review forwarding system saved Saper several months of working and waiting. “I think most authors will like this, and most reviewers will be relieved that they do not get the same paper back to review two or three times from different journals,” said Saper, who is also the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Comparative Neurology.

The NPRC was formed following the June 2007 PubMed Plus conference. Chaired by Saper and Eve Marder, who was then the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Neuroscience, the Task Force for Neuroscience Publishing discussed the problem of manuscripts that were rejected by one journal only to be submitted to another journal.

INCF director Jan Bjaalie was among the dozen or so participants in the Task Force, which included scientists, editors and publishers in the neuroscience publishing industry. The working group enthusiastically embraced the concept of a review forwarding system, decided on some key standards that all parties – authors, editors, reviewers and publishers – could be happy with, and accepted Bjaalie’s proposal that the NPRC be coordinated by the INCF. The NPRC will have a one-year trial period that ends December 31, 2008.
 
According to the NPRC’s working group, “The INCF represents an ideal host: a neutral organization, whose business it is to promote international interchange of information in neuroscience,” said Saper.

Bjaalie says that it was an easy decision for the INCF to host the NPRC. “It is a policy issue,” Bjaalie said. “How can you make scientific communication more efficient? How can it benefit all scientists?” As an independent, international neuroscience organization unaffiliated with a journal, the INCF was deemed a suitable host to provide a website and support staff for the NPRC. At the INCF Secretariat in Stockholm, scientific information and public relations officer Elli Chatzopoulou helps journals who want to join the Consortium and scientific officer Raphael Ritz builds and oversees the NPRC website.
 
“In operational terms, we – the INCF and the website we run for the NPRC – provide information and reference for participants and would-be participants. We are not involved in the communication between the authors and the journals,” Ritz said. Ritz has built the site in such a way to foster collaboration, in that journal editors are encouraged to log in to the site and provide and update all the information needed to describe their journal.
 
“The generous support of the INCF in hosting the NPRC web site was a critical factor,” said John Maunsell, who succeeded Marder as co-chair of the Task Force. “It means the NPRC could operate without imposing fees on journals or authors, which would have greatly complicated its operation and – in all likelihood – reduced support for it,” said Maunsell, professor of neurobiology at Harvard Medical School.

It is possible that the review forwarding system could lead to increased submissions at high profile journals, in that authors would figure that they don’t have much to lose in submitting to the higher ranked journals given the expedited re-submitting procedures. In fact, the highly ranked Journal of Neuroscience, which can accept only a small fraction of submitted manuscripts, expects an increase in submissions now that the journal is an NPRC member.

“Because we are a society-run journal, we have an obligation to serve the neuroscience community and are therefore prepared to provide the resources to handle the extra load,” said the journal’s editor-in-chief Maunsell. “Our calculations about the value of the NPRC were based on the overall picture,” Maunsell said. “If the Journal of Neuroscience has to find more reviewers, the field as a whole should have to find fewer. If the NPRC works well, finding reviewers will become easier for everyone, because reviewers will be asked to do fewer reviews.”
 

-- Molly W. McElroy
Freelance science writer based in Washington, DC

Related documents:

• PubMedPlus Report [pdf]
  

• NPRC flyer [pdf]
  

• NPRC flowchart [pdf]