World Diabetes Day is celebrated
on 14 November each year. The theme of this year’s day is the same as the
previous two years: “Diabetes Education and Prevention”. Type 1 and type 2
diabetes are chronic conditions that affect 2.8
million people in the UK. Without proper treatment diabetes can result in
various complications, such as cardiovascular disease, chronic renal failure
and retinal damage.
A recent article published in
Cardiovascular
Diabetology, investigated the various role of numerous genetic and
environmental risk factors in the development of type 2 diabetes and
cardiovascular diseases using twin studies. The study demonstrated that the
genetic risk factors that were most prevalent included weight, waist
circumference and blood pressure. Environmental risk factors that had most
effect were serum homocysteine, serum cholesterol and fasting blood glucose
levels.
The latest review article published
by Diabetology
and Metabolic Syndrome discusses obesity related inflammatory responses
and their link to type 2 diabetes. It is hoped a better understanding of the
pathophysiology of insulin resistance will lead to improved treatment and
preventative measures. The article
reviews the key physiological pathways involved in obesity related inflammation,
focusing on the involvement of macrophages and how these factors collude to
interfere with insulin signalling pathways, leading to insulin resistance and
ultimately type 2 diabetes.
Daniel Giannella-Neto, Editor-in-Chief of Diabetology
and Metabolic Syndrome, states: “D&MS is working to raise the
awareness of diabetes, by highlighting and getting involved with world diabetes
day. The theme for this November the 14th is ’diabetes education and
prevention’, D&MS and members of the Editorial Board, are involved
with the regular publication of articles on this topic.”
Just to clarify…
Is there still a monetary cost to the author/funder associated with getting a Peerage of Science reviewed manuscript published in a BMC journal via this new route?
i.e. do the usual APC’s apply, is there a discount, or are they waived completely?
Getting Peerage of Science to organise/arrange the peer-review process would save BMC some hassle (cost) therefore I would expect there to be a heavy discount on the usual APC at the very least. Or do Peerage of Science perhaps charge BMC for this service? If PoS charge BMC, what price may I enquire?
PS I should say I’m fully in support of this move. It’s great that you’re allowing the option of decoupling of functions (e.g. peer-review) that are traditionally only provided as an all-in-one, take-it-or-leave-it package by the more traditional journals.
Clarifying from Peerage of Science point of view:
I do believe using Peerage of Science can yield journals some cost savings over time, but naturally they can only evaluate this after receiving and handling many manuscript submissions with linked reviews.
Peerage of Science does not charge anything from journals using the links authors give them in traditional submission, as we see this primarily as a service for peers.
Peerage of Science is funded by subscription fees fully participating journals pay to have advance access, tracking tools, and opportunity to send direct publishing offers (though currently many of the first journals are still on their free trial period). So, just like the traditional peer review system, Peerage of Science service also rests on journals having sufficient revenue to cover the costs of peer review.
Peerage of Science is not involved in the publishing contract authors and publishers make with each other. The service is only concerned with providing an efficient and rewarding submission and peer review system.
Therefore, Peerage of Science is neutral regarding author fees, or journal subscription fees, or any other business model a journal operates on.
Janne-Tuomas Seppänen
Thank you both for your replies. I hope this can be a success
BioMed Central is happy to support initiatives to improve the peer review process and so are happy to endorse this innovative new service from Peerage of Science. We have signed up four of our journals, and are looking forward to seeing how this new model works, to assess how successful it is and whether this does improve methods of peer review. We have no plans to make any changes to our APCs while we are evaluating the service.
I concur with Ross completely. BMC needs to wake up and revamp its business model completely to be truly embracing a new peer review model, which acknowledge that the time of reviewers needs to be recovered from the APC fees. Unless this is revised, the whole experiment will just fail.
Editors Notes: I am grateful to Janne-Tuomas
Seppänen from Peerage of Science for correcting a few points related to the description of review process in the original version of this blog.
The corrected version was updated at 1550 on 20/11/2012
Editors Notes: I am grateful to Janne-Tuomas Seppänen
from Peerage of Science for correcting a few points related to the
description of the review process in the original version of this blog.
The corrected version was updated at 1550 on 20/11/2012
None of this addresses the importance of editors in effecting and adjudicating the reviews of manuscripts. In fact, I would argue that peer-editing (see PMID: 19233837) solves most (maybe all) of the “problems” that this Peerage of Science initiative seeks to solve.