The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society and the Wellcome Trust have announced that they are to support a new, top-tier, open access journal for biomedical and life sciences research. The three organisations aim to establish a new journal that will attract and define the very best research publications from across these fields. All research published in the journal will make highly significant contributions that will extend the boundaries of scientific knowledge.
A team of highly regarded, experienced and actively practising scientists will ensure fair, swift and transparent editorial decisions followed by rapid online publication. The first issue of the journal, whose name has yet to be decided, is expected to be published in the summer of 2012.
The three research organisations developed their plans following a workshop in 2010 at HHMI's Janelia Farm Research Campus attended by a number of leading scientists. The participants concluded that there was a need for a model of academic publishing that better suits the needs of the research community.
Recruitment is under way for an Editor-in-Chief who - like each member of the journal's editorial team - will be an experienced, active scientist. The editorial team will be editorially independent of the funders. They will rely on their scientific expertise and active research experience to identify the best papers, make scientifically based judgments and exercise leadership in steering these papers through peer review.
The journal will employ an open and transparent peer review process in which papers will be accepted or rejected as rapidly as possible, generally with only one round of revisions, and with limited need for modifications or additional experiments. For transparency, reviewers' comments will be published anonymously.
As the journal will only exist online, it offers an opportunity to create a journal and article format that will exploit the potential of new technologies to enable improved data presentation. The three organisations have made a commitment to cover the costs of launching the journal to ensure its success. The long-term business model will be developed by the incoming Editor-in-Chief and the team they build.
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