Broadening the Scope of JNeurosci's Content

JNeurosci has traditionally organized its content according to sections that best reflect an article's principal theme. At the time of inception in 1981, there were five sections labeled “molecular,” “cellular,” “developmental,” “behavioral neuroscience,” and “neural systems”. As the field changed its research interests over time, the journal's sections accordingly shifted focus. Some of the original sections were merged into one (e.g., cellular/molecular neuroscience), others were expanded (e.g., cognitive neuroscience was added to the behavioral section), and new ones introduced (e.g., the “Neurobiology of Disease” section to provide clinical neuroscience with appropriate representation).

In reviewing the journal structure and mission during this past year, JNeurosci's Editorial Board has concluded that the organization into sections doesn't make sense anymore in publishing the journal's content. The field of neuroscience has grown and expanded considerably during the past couple of decades. New areas have emerged that are essential for the progress achievable in our field (e.g., computational and theoretical neuroscience). And new groundbreaking discoveries are frequently made at interdisciplinary boundaries bridging more than one subfield, which will not fit neatly into one particular section. To reflect these changes in our field, JNeurosci's Editorial Board has developed a new mission statement to broaden the journal's scope and to move away from a section-based publishing structure.

With our revised mission, we welcome contributions from the broad field including (but not limited to) molecular, cellular, developmental, systems, behavioral, cognitive, computational, integrative, and clinical neuroscience. Soon, our authors will be able to indicate any of these subfields or combinations thereof during the submission process, so that they have control over how to best characterize their work. You will also see this change in publishing philosophy reflected in our Table of Contents starting with the first issue of 2024. Going forward, we remove the longstanding organization of the journal's content into sections and simply list our content by article type (e.g., research articles, reviews, and journal clubs).

Broadening the scope can come with its own potential challenges for authors and editors alike. Subfields have developed their own standards in communicating scientific findings to their communities. However, these standards may not be ideal in communicating to broad audiences. Editors need to make sure that the appropriate expertise is present within the Editorial Board to ensure a transparent, rapid, and fair peer review process. We have taken steps to address these challenges in subfields where JNeurosci has had little representation thus far. One such example is computational and theoretical neuroscience. We have added two reviewing editors (Tatiana Engel and Tim O'Leary) and several associate editors to our Board to strengthen expertise in this area. And we organized a webinar led by two of our board members (Anne-Marie Oswald and Bruno Averbeck) to discuss how to best present work in this area to a broad audience (https://neuronline.sfn.org/professional-development/writing-a-computational-neuroscience-manuscript-for-jn). As a society journal, we have a strong commitment to supporting our community in disseminating their high-quality work widely and effectively.

With these revisions, we hope to invite as many members of our community as possible to publish their work in JNeurosci and to welcome work that crosses interdisciplinary boundaries. We also hope to align JNeurosci more closely with the broad representation of topics that our SfN community enjoys at the annual meeting. JNeurosci's editorial leadership is composed of active scientists. We are committed to publishing novel and rigorous studies that significantly advance our knowledge and that appeal collectively to the values and interests of the entire neuroscience community. We attempt to accomplish this through a process that is focused on our community of authors and readers. As always, if you have thoughts, questions, or concerns, please feel free to reach out to me by email (kastner_eic{at}sfn.org).

In science,

Sabine