I am honored to have been selected as the new editor-in-chief and eager to work with our authors, reviewers, editors, and staff on The Journal of Neuroscience for the next few years. As interim Editor-in-Chief, my role has been to work with the Editorial Board, an outstanding group of working scientists, to make sure that current policies were implemented smoothly and that the journal continued to do what it does so well—evaluate and publish the best work that represents the breadth of neuroscience research. Going forward as Editor-in-Chief, my goal is to bring together the JNeurosci community—including authors, reviewers, editors, and staff—and encourage their involvement in finding new ways to make sure that our peer review is open, even more rapid, and, as always, fair.
Transitions are both exciting and risky. New eyes can see ways to do things more effectively and identify previously overlooked opportunities. Change can also result in movement away from comfortable routines that we have grown to rely on. To make sure that our community is well informed about any initiatives implemented during the transition and to encourage their involvement, I will be writing a monthly column that will cover any changes that are taking place at JNeurosci, and the field of scientific publishing more broadly. I believe that we all want JNeurosci to continue as a leader in neuroscience publishing and remain a place we want to send our strongest work, so we will need to experiment with new approaches, some of which might fail, and find new ways to represent data, facilitate peer review, and evaluate the strongest science.
Some of the areas we will be working on are: developing standards for presenting statistical analyses, determining how to include extended datasets in manuscripts as neuroscience becomes even more data intensive, presenting new types of review articles to provide outlets for discussion of neuroscience that are not available elsewhere, and finding more ways to bring newer PIs and trainees into the review process.
Before starting any new initiatives with our Editorial Board, however, I would first like to hear from all of you. Just as it is important to move into the future and innovate, it is also essential not to break things that are working well. What do you think JNeurosci is doing right and what can we do better? We look forward to all critical and constructive comments. We would be excited to hear any innovative ideas about how JNeurosci can move forward.
Please send your thoughts, comments, and ideas to JN_EIC@SFN.org, or you can tweet your ideas to @SfNJournals or @marinap63.
I'm looking forward to working with you.
