ABOUT THE CONSORTIUM

The Neuroscience Peer Review Consortium (NPRC)has been formed to reduce the time and effort involved in the peer review of original neuroscience research reports. It is an alliance of neuroscience journals that have agreed to accept manuscript reviews from other Consortium journals. By reducing the number of times that a manuscript is reviewed, the Consortium will reduce the load on reviewers and editors and speed the publication of research results.

The Consortium is open to any self-identified neuroscience journal that is indexed by MEDLINE.

The impetus for the Consortium came from journal editors who saw that many solid manuscripts were being rejected because of space limitations or because the articles were not appropriate for their journals. Authors then resubmit their rejected article to another journal, which must engage another set of peer reviewers. In some cases, the same reviewers are called upon again to provide comments. Overall,the current system is inefficient and wastes reviewer time, a scarce resource. Moreover, it generates extra work for editors, who must spend more time soliciting reviews from an overworked pool of reviewers. It affects the quality of peer review because the best-qualified reviewers are less available to review manuscripts because of the number of reviews they are providing. Authors and readers also pay a price because the publication of research results is delayed by weeks or months as additional reviews are sought.

If reviews obtained by one journal could be re-used by another, a considerable amount of work could be avoided and publication delays could be reduced. The potential for significantly enhancing the speed and quality of manuscript reviewing motivated discussions at the PubMed Plus Conference, a meeting of scientists, journal editors and members of the science publishing community, organized by the Society for Neuroscience in June 2007. Members of a working group, consisting of journal editors and publishers,proposed the creation of the Neuroscience Peer Review Consortium, an idea that was endorsed by the other participants at the meeting. The Society for Neuroscience Council then empaneled the members of the original workgroup as the Task Force for Neuroscience Publishing with the charge of supervising the formation and initial operation of the Consortium during the one year trial period.

The Consortium was initiated in January, 2008. The participating journals, in cooperation with the INCF,agreed in November, 2008 to extend the NPRC through 2009, and then to evaluate its effectiveness annually and consider extending it on a year-to-year basis. The extension has been confirmed twice (in November 2009 and November 2010, respectively). Journals may join or leave the NPRC at any time.

The Consortium extends an invitation to all MEDLINE-indexed journals that publish peer-reviewed original research in the broad field of neuroscience to join.

MEMBERS OF THE TASK FORCE FOR NEUROSCIENCE PUBLISHING

· Clif Saper, Chair; J Comp Neurol

· John Maunsell, Cochair; J Neurosci

· Giorgio Ascoli, Neuroinformatics

· Jan Bjaalie, INCF

· Paul Carton, Elsevier Science

· Peter Fox, Hum Brain Mapp

· Pablo Fernicola, Microsoft

· Robert Harington, Wiley-Blackwell’s

· Steve Lisberger, Neurosci [IBRO]

· Eve Marder, J Neurophys

· Margaret Reich, American Physiological

· Society

· Michael A. Rogawski, Neuropharm

· Gary Westbrook, J Neurosci

PARTICIPATING JOURNALS

Current members of Neuroscience Peer Review Consortium:

Jan Bjaalie, who is the Director of the international neuroinformatics coordinating facility (INCF) and was a participant in the PubMed Plus Conference, offered to place the official website for the Consortium under INCF administration. INCF is an internationally funded neuroscience organization; based at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, whose role it is to facilitate informatic approaches to neuroscience research. As the Consortium was designed to include all major neuroscience journals worldwide that wish to participate, this neutral venue seemed ideal for hosting the site.

The goal of the Consortium is to enable journals to forward reviews with minimal changes to existing review procedures. To that end, the forwarding of reviews is handled directly by the editorial offices of the Consortium journals, with no central controlling body.

Accepting members into the Consortium and providing information about it are the primary functions of the Task Force.

NPRC AT A GLANCE

The NPRC permits authors whose papers are not accepted by one journal in the Consortium and wish to submit their manuscripts to a second participating journal to request that the previous set of reviews be forwarded.

The main advantage of the Consortium is that by reducing the number of times a manuscript must be reviewed, it reduces the workload on reviewers and speeds up publication time.

ASN NEURO

Behavioral and brain functions

Behavioral neuroscience

Biological psychiatry

Biological psychology

Brain research

Brain structure and function

CNS spectrums

Developmental neurobiology

Developmental neuroscience

European journal of neuroscience

European psychiatry

Experimental neurology

Hippocampus

Journal of Alzheimer's disease

Journal of comparative neurology

Journal of computational neuroscience

Journal of integrative neuroscience

Journal of neurophysiology

Journal of the association for research in otolaryngology

Learning & memory

Molecular and cellular neuroscience

Nature neuroscience

Neural development

Neural plasticity

Neurobiology of aging

Neurobiology of disease

Neurobiology of learning and memory

Neuroimage

Neuroinformatics

Neuropharmacology

Neuropsychologia

Neuroscience

Neuroscience letters

Neurosurgery

Psychophysiology

Restorative neurology and neuroscience

The international journal of neuroscience

The journal of neuroscience

INFORMATION FOR AUTHORS

How to forward reviews

If a manuscript is not accepted by one journal in the Consortium, the authors can submit their manuscript to a second Consortium journal and have the reviews from the first journal forwarded to the second journal.

It is the authors’ choice whether or not to request that a set of reviews be forwarded. If authors do not want the reviews seen by another journal, the manuscript can be submitted to the second journal without reference to the previous submission, as is now the normal practice.

No information will be exchanged between journals except at the request of the authors. However, if the reviews suggest that the paper is of high quality, but just not suitable for the first journal, then it will often be to the advantage of the authors to forward the first set of reviews.

If authors feel that the first set of reviews is sufficiently supportive, they may revise their paper in accord with those reviews, and resubmit to the second journal,along with a cover letter describing the changes that have been made and informing the second journal that they will ask for reviews to be forwarded from the first journal. This is only applicable to articles submitted after January 1, 2008.

In practice, for the authors this will not be different from resubmitting to the original journal, except that they will have to reformat the paper to the second journal’s specification, and ask the first journal to forward the original reviews. The only information that the second journal will receive is the text of the reviews that were sent to the authors and, if the reviewers have agreed,the names of the reviewers (which will not be released to the authors). No other information about the manuscript will be exchanged between journals. In particular,Consortium journals agree not to accept confidential comments from the reviewers, except those relating to issues such as human or animal subject welfare, potential conflicts of interest or misconduct. No confidential comments will be forwarded, nor will priority ratings or other scores. Eliminating confidential comments to the editors makes the peer review process more transparent and open. In the unlikely event that the reviewers for the first journal identified a problem in animal or human subject welfare, conflict of interest, or potential scientific misconduct, the editors of the first journal will not be able to forward reviews until this problem is resolved.

Forwarding of reviews is all-or-none. Authors may not select which reviews will be forwarded. If a manuscript went through multiple rounds of review at the first journal, the reviews from all rounds will be forwarded.Similarly, a journal will forward its reviews only to one other journal. If that journal also turns down the paper,the entire set of reviews must go to a third journal, not just the reviews from the first one.

How to forward reviews

Authors who wish to forward reviews from a Consortium journal, should submit their manuscript to a second Consortium journal with a cover letter that identifies the name of the first Consortium journal and the manuscript ID that was given by that journal. The authors then must contact the first journal, and ask that reviews be forwarded, giving the name of the second journal, and the manuscript ID number at the second journal. Note that only articles submitted after January 1, 2008 are eligible.

The editors of the second journal will use forwarded reviews at their discretion. They may use those reviews directly to make a decision, but may also request further reviews if they feel it is warranted. If the editors of the second journal think the reviews lack sufficient expertise or depth, they may choose to disregard them and base their decision on new reviews.

INFORMATION FOR REVIEWERS

Reviewers for Consortium journals are required to allow the content of their reviews to be forwarded if the authors resubmit their manuscript to another Consortium journal.

All Consortium journals agree to keep reviewers anonymous to authors. Reviewers will be offered the option of whether they wish to permit their identity to be revealed to other Consortium journals.

The Neuroscience Peer Review Consortium strongly encourages the reviewer to permit his or her identity to be revealed to other Consortium journals. Editors will give more weight to reviews from identified reviewers,and if reviewers are unidentified will often be forced to solicit new reviews, creating more work for reviewers and delaying the eventual publication of the manuscript.

Consortium journals will not accept confidential comments from the reviewer to the editor. If authors are to make informed decisions about whether to forward their reviews, they must be able to see all the material that would be forward. To the extent that confidential comments to the editors may be useful, deleting this information from forwarding reviews would leave the second journal with information that is substantially incomplete. Hence, reviewers will be required to make all comments (except as described in the next paragraph)on the manuscript accessible to the authors and will not be permitted to include comments in a “confidential comments to editors” section of their review.

Consortium journals will accept confidential comments from reviewers only about human or animal subject welfare, and potential conflicts of interest or misconduct.

Issues of this nature must be resolved by the authors to the satisfaction of the editors of the first journal before any reviews are forwarded. Restricting confidential comments to the editors in this way makes the peer review process more transparent and open.

INFORMATION FOR EDITORS

Editors for Consortium journals must agree to the three basic principles of the Consortium (see Joining). The Editor-in-Chief must initiate the process of joining the Consortium, and must represent the Editors and Publisher, who all must agree to the Consortium rules and procedures. Once a journal has joined the consortium, it will be listed in this website Journals along with the contact information for that journal. This listing will facilitate contact between journals by identifying the official contact person and email address.The main advantage of the Consortium for Editors is that by reducing the number of times a manuscript must be reviewed, and thus reducing the workload on reviewers,it should become easier to find new reviewers when necessary. However, individual journal editors will still have the discretion to use reviews from other journals as they see fit. At one extreme, if a manuscript arrives with reviews that say it is of high quality but not appropriate for the original journal, the manuscript might be accepted without further review. Alternatively, if the authors have made extensive revisions that were requested in the reviews, the editor might return the manuscript to the original reviewers for re-review (if their identities have also been transferred). At the other extreme, if the reviews seemed to lack appropriate expertise or depth,the editor could choose to disregard them and get comments from new reviewers. Thus the Consortium process will only help facilitate the disposition of new manuscripts, and in no case will restrict the freedom of the second journal from handling the paper as the editors see fit.

Journals that join the Consortium will have to agree to inform the reviewer that the review may be passed on to another Consortium journal, and to ask for permission to pass on his or her identity as well. Review forms must be configured so that no confidential comments to the editors are permitted, beyond those pertaining to human or animal subject welfare, or to conflict of interest or scientific misconduct. To the extent that confidential comments to the editors may be useful, deleting this information from forwarding reviews would leave the second journal with information that is substantially incomplete. Hence, review forms will have to ask reviewers to place all their views about a manuscript into a set of narrative comments that will be accessible to the authors.

The Consortium does not specify how any journal should announce its membership in NPRC, beyond informing reviewers that their reviews may be forwarded and asking reviewers if they will allow their identities to be revealed with forwarded review.

NPRC suggests that journals include text like the following in the letters to authors of rejected manuscripts:＂<> is a member of the Neuroscience Peer Review Consortium. The Consortium is an alliance of neuroscience journals that have agreed to accept manuscript reviews from each other. If you submit a revision of your manuscript to another Consortium journal, we can forward the reviews of your manuscript to that journal, should you decide this might be helpful.

You can find a list of Consortium journals and details about forwarding reviews at http://nprc.incf.org.＂

Journals must also agree to look into any issues concerning human or animal subject welfare, conflict of interest, or scientific misconduct, and to resolve those issues to the satisfaction of the editors before any reviews are forwarded. It is unlikely that authors would request that reviews be transferred before such an investigation is complete, but in the event that such a request is made, the first journal should inform the authors and the second journal that the reviews cannot be transferred until an ongoing review of confidential nature is complete.

Consortium journals agree to send on reviews to other Consortium journals when authors request. If an author requests that reviews be transferred, the staff of the first journal should determine from this website (Journals)that the receiving journal is indeed a Consortium member.

The reviews (with reviewer identities only if the reviewers have agreed to this) should then be sent to the designated email address for the second journal. (If the reviews are on paper, the designated email address can be notified to identify a FAX number or address to which to send the reviews.) Note that the reviews should include all rounds of review from that journal, as well as any reviews that had been forwarded from a previous journal, so that a complete trail of the progress of that manuscript remains intact. The first journal should not be asked to send on reviews again to a third journal; that would be the responsibility of the second journal, etc.

Each journal will have to configure appropriate means for handling the reviews that they receive from a previous submission to another journal. In some journals that operate from a single office using reviews on paper, this may be as simple as placing the forwarded reviews in a paper file with the manuscript. For more complex journals with multiple levels of editors and electronic review systems, this may require setting up a method for placing the previous reviews into the electronic review system. It will be the responsibility of each journal that joins the consortium to find its own methods for dealing with the forwarded reviews. However, all Consortium journals must agree to maintain the confidentiality of the identities of the reviewers for any reviews that they may receive.

INFORMATION FOR PUBLISHERS

By permitting their neuroscience journals to participate in the initial one-year pilot Neuroscience Peer Review Consortium, publishers offer their editors and reviewers potential savings in time and effort. By reducing the number of times a manuscript must be reviewed, and thus reducing the workload on reviewers, it also should become easier to find new reviewers when necessary.

The pilot experience will test whether the reviews for a particular journal are relevant when passed along to another journal.

Publishers also may give their journals the potential benefit of attracting submissions, since authors whose manuscripts were favorably reviewed but not accepted for publication may be more likely to submit next to another journal in the Consortium because of the probability that their papers will be accepted more rapidly.

This is particularly true for papers that are “on the edge”in the first choice journal, so that the better papers are the ones most likely to be resubmitted to another journal in the Consortium.

Publishers have no financial, legal, or other obligations to the Consortium beyond their journals’ agreeing to three basic NPRC principles:

· to forward all reviews to another journal in the Consortium upon the author’s request;

· to configure review forms to eliminate confidential comments to the editors;

· to inform reviewers that their reviews may be

· forwarded to another Consortium journal, ask whether or not the reviewer’s name should be included with the review, and honor the reviewer’s preference. Of course, the normal rules about maintaining the confidentiality of the identities of the reviewers apply to all reviews, whether solicited or forwarded.

The Consortium does not stipulate any particular process for handling the reviews that journals receive from/forward to another journal. Each journal in the Consortium may decide on its own methods for dealing with the forwarded reviews.

The Consortium does not specify how any journal should announce its membership in NPRC, beyond informing reviewers that their reviews may be forwarded and asking reviewers if they will allow their identities to be revealed with forwarded review.

NPRC suggests that journals include text like the follow-ing in the letters to authors of rejected manuscripts:＂<> is a member of the Neuroscience Peer Review Consortium. The Consortium is an alliance of neuroscience journals that have agreed to accept manuscript reviews from each other. If you submit a revision of your manuscript to another Consortium journal,we can forward the reviews of your manuscript to that journal, should you decide this might be helpful.

You can find a list of Consortium journals and details about forwarding reviews at http://nprc.incf.org.＂

Ultimately, by allowing their neuroscience journals to participate in the Consortium, publishers may help their journal editors make early editorial decisions and avoid approaching the same referees. Of course, whether or how to use the reviews received is entirely at the discretion of the editor, and editorial offices are under no obligation to postpone decisions until requested reviews have been forwarded from the first journal.

JOINING

The Neuroscience Peer Review Consortium is open to all self-identified journals that publish peer-reviewed original research in the field of neuroscience, are indexed in MEDLINE, and agree to do the following:

· Forward all reviews of a manuscript to another Consortium journal if authors have resubmitted that manuscript and requested that the reviews be forward. If the manuscript went through multiple rounds of review, the reviews from all rounds must be forwarded.

· Configure review forms so that there are no confidential comments to the editors, except as pertains to human or animal subject welfare, conflict of interest,or scientific misconduct. It is essential that authors know all the material that would be forwarded, so they can make a fully-informed decision, and that editors receive complete information. In the event the editors identify an issue such as subject welfare,conflict of interest, or scientific misconduct, this must be resolved by the editors of the first journal before reviews are forwarded.

· Inform reviewers that their reviews may be forwarded to another Consortium journal, and ask them for permission to include the reviewer’s name with the review. If permission to include the reviewer’s name is not given, the narrative review would still be transmitted, but the reviewer’s anonymity would be preserved. Consortium journals must protect the confidentiality and anonymity of forwarded reviews as they would those of original reviews.

Journals have no obligations to the Consortium beyond those listed above. The Editor-in-Chief of any journal wishing to join the Neuroscience Peer Review Consortium should provide the information requested on the sign-up page. For further information please direct questions to nprc-info@incf.org.

Sources:

1. Neuroscience peer review consortium. About the Consortium. http://nprc.incf.org/. Accessed 1 August, 2011.

2. Neuroscience peer review consortium. Journals. http://nprc.incf.org/. Accessed 1 August, 2011.

3. Neuroscience peer review consortium. Authors. http://nprc.incf.org/. Accessed 1 August, 2011.

4. Neuroscience peer review consortium. Reviewers. http://nprc.incf.org/. Accessed 1 August, 2011.

5. Neuroscience peer review consortium. Editors. http://nprc.incf.org/. Accessed 1 August, 2011.

6. Neuroscience peer review consortium. Publishers. http://nprc.incf.org/. Accessed 1 August, 2011.