The American Society for Microbiology (ASM) has announced mSphereDirect, a new pathway of manuscript review and submission for mSphere, ASM's pan-microbial, open-access science journal. This new pathway aims to take the mystery out of the peer review process by allowing authors, with clear policy guidelines, to choose the most appropriate reviewers of their work, making peer review a more constructive experience since reviewers can provide candid advice to the authors. Publication decisions will also be made within a faster time frame.
The key features of mSphereDirect include rapid decisions made on manuscripts with 5 business days with no requests for re-reviews; rapid dissemination of science. Papers submitted through the pre-print server, bioRxiv, will immediately be flagged as pending publications by mSphere. Final papers will be available within weeks and bioRxiv will direct everyone to it; and rapid publication of work in an open-access, pan-microbial science journal.
ASM launched mSphere as an open-access, online, pan-microbial sciences journal a little over a year ago. Since its launch, the ASM journals staff has worked to ensure that mSphere is a medium for publishing cutting-edge science and implementing policies and processes to make the publication process less burdensome for authors. ASM continues working toward this goal with the launch of mSphereDirect.
mSphereDirect will launch in January 2017.
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