PeerJ Blog

[peerj]

Set volume and isolated lumbar extension - Author Interview

We recently published “The effects of set volume during isolated lumbar extension resistance training in recreationally trained males”. In this article, James Steele and his colleagues discuss the results of a study on the benefits and effects of isolated lumbar extension resistance training. 

James comments on his research and his experience publishing with us. 

PJ: Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

JS: I’m currently a Lecturer in Applied Sport Science at Southampton Solent University in the UK. I teach on the Exercise Physiology and Biomechanics units within our degree programs. A lot of my time however is based around research with particular interests in resistance training, its effects upon a range of outcomes and within different populations, in addition to the manipulation of variables within resistance training interventions. I’ve actually just completed my PhD examining the application of a specific resistance training intervention to target the lumbar extensor musculature in sufferers of chronic low back pain.

PJ: Can you briefly explain the research you published in PeerJ? 

JS: The combination of interests in resistance training and low back pain led to the research published in PeerJ. We had previously reviewed the literature around low back pain and found some support for deconditioning of the lumbar extensor musculature to be involved both prospectively and cross sectionally. This led us to examine exercise approaches best suited to condition that musculature and subsequently a number of studies examining the use of isolated lumbar extension resistance training in participants with chronic low back pain. However, being that there appeared to be some prospective relationship between lumbar extensor deconditioning and development of low back pain, in addition to evidence that resistance training is particularly good at injury prevention, we wanted to look at applying this to asymptomatic individuals. The manipulation of resistance training variables for producing the greatest improvements in muscular strength has been examined in part for isolated lumbar extension resistance training, however, only one study had examined the role of set volume and had also used untrained participants. As the effect of resistance training variable manipulation may differ for trained participants, and that trained populations are potentially interested in optimal application of approaches to reduce low back injury and pain, we wanted to examine the role of set volume manipulation of isolated lumbar extension resistance training within a trained population. 

PJ: Do you have any anecdotes about this research? 

JS: I think a great deal of credit should go to my co-author Adam Fitzpatrick as he collected the data for this study as part of his undergraduate dissertation. I think he’d agree it was particularly interesting (and I’d hasten to add slightly amusing) to see the acute responses for many participants in the 3 set group. The training itself was very hard as participants were to perform it to momentary muscular failure. The participants were well experienced and really pushed themselves to their respective maximums in training. Adam took the participants through the training sessions and it was amazing to see how the 3 set group had quite drastic acute responses with respect to nausea. It was something we felt also worthy of discussion in the paper. Especially as there was no difference between 1 and 3 sets, only the truly masochistic would see the additional acute effects of the 3 set approach as being desirable. 

PJ: What surprised you the most with these results? 

JS: I think the most surprising result was that the control group actually lost strength over the short intervention period. We discuss potentially why this might be in the paper - perhaps their engagement in other exercises previously may have been maintaining their lumbar extensor strength and stopping them during the intervention resulted in a reduction. Nonetheless it was still unexpected and yet I think it perhaps adds emphasis to the importance of specific training for this musculature. 

PJ: What kinds of lessons do you hope the public takes away from the research? 

JS: I hope the main take away for the public from this research is that it is possible for even trained persons to produce improvements in their lumbar extension strength with very little exercise when using a very specific isolated approach. Many think that higher volumes produce greater adaptations, however, with more recent studies in this area including ours I think the issue is still up in the air. That optimal results might be afforded with a relatively low volume approach however is a refreshing concept and allows potentially more time to be spent on other aspects of training. 

PJ: Where do you hope to go from here? 

JS: We are currently working on a number of other studies, some related to our work with isolated lumbar extension resistance training, and others that are more general to resistance training. In particular we are looking to conduct research that will enable us to produce and validate a predictive tool for identifying participants with low back pain who are high responders to isolated lumbar extension exercise prospectively. This might allow practitioners to prescribe this exercise to those who might benefit most. We are also looking to examine the effects of specific loading through lumbar extension exercise upon the intervertebral discs. Loading through resistance training produces adaptation in a number of tissues (muscle, tendons, bones) and so it seems plausible that adaptation in the disc might also occur. However no one has examined this through implementation of an intervention. 

PJ: If you had unlimited resources (money, lab equipment, trained personnel, participants, etc.), what study would you run? 

JS: Wow, that’s a tough question to answer. In fact I have a few different studies based upon my interests I would like to conduct if given unlimited resources. Firstly, to be able to conduct the studies described above to a scale that allows greater understanding of their clinical application than might be afforded by small sample studies. Secondly, I also have interests around the range of outcomes possible from resistance training when performed to a sufficient intensity of effort, particularly the aerobic/cardiovascular adaptations. Unfortunately most studies examining this have been small sample sizes and not particularly well controlled or compared to other more traditional exercise approaches. I’d love to be able to examine this further as I believe it has considerable implications for widening participation in exercise. Finally, and along these lines, I’m very interested in wider engagement in resistance training from a public health perspective. We have conducted some preliminary pilot trials examining the efficacy and effectiveness of an unsupervised bodyweight resistance training interventions for sedentary adults. With unlimited funding I’d love to systematically study the effects of different factors upon adherence to such a program in order to identify firstly whether it is indeed effective and secondly what the minimum support required is for it to be efficacious as an exercise recommendation from a public health perspective. 

PJ: Why did you choose to reproduce the complete peer-review history of your article? 

JS: I and my colleagues have had mixed experiences with peer review. Some good, some bad. I’m a huge believer in transparency for readers of my work so being able to see the process it underwent prior to publication enhances this. I also think that making the peer review record available offers the reviewers themselves recognition for their hard work towards making this manuscript a success. It also serves as a bit of deterrent for some reviewers feeling they can make unjustified criticisms whilst hiding behind anonymity. It creates personal responsibility for both parties - authors and reviewers – and I’m fully supportive of it as an approach. In fact I’d advocate that all journals should opt for an open peer review system such as used by PeerJ. 

PJ: How did you first hear about PeerJ, and what persuaded you to submit to us? 

JS: I first came across PeerJ a few years ago through Twitter if I recall. I’ve been a big OA proponent for some time and also as noted am very supportive of the system through which PeerJ operates. However, up until now I had found that it was difficult to persuade some of my colleagues to give it a try with a submission. When a peer published his recent study with PeerJ I mentioned to him that I was impressed to see some exercise scientists publishing with the journal. He subsequently got back in contact with me offering some voucher codes for submission which were the tipping point for me. Taking the lead on this paper I made the executive decision to submit to PeerJ and am glad I did. 

PJ: Do you have any anecdotes about your overall experience with us? Anything surprising? 

JS: Actually I didn’t find anything really surprising as I had heard such good things about PeerJ prior to submission. In fact the experience pretty much validated them. I’d say the only thing that caught me by surprise was an apologetic email for the review process taking slightly longer than expected – by this point it hadn’t even been in review 4 weeks! Compared with some submissions to other journals that at the extreme had been under review for over a year with no contact from editors I must say I was impressed with this care from the editor. PeerJ did make me feel like a valued customer. 

PJ: How would you describe your experience of our submission/review process? 

JS: Without being too repetitive I’d have to say the system was very intuitive and user friendly. The staff were open and communicative. The reviewers, were polite and constructive. Overall the journal claimed a particular service and promptly delivered on my expectations. 

PJ: Did you get any comments from your colleagues about your publication with PeerJ?

JS: All of my co-authors were thoroughly impressed with the service from PeerJ particularly the speed with which to reviews were obtained and decisions made.

PJ: Would you submit again, and would you recommend that your colleagues submit? 

JS: Without a doubt. I already have a few studies I think would be well suited to submit to PeerJ and I’d like to continue to support its development. 

PJ: In conclusion, how would you describe PeerJ in three words? 

JS: Open, swift, revolutionary! 

Join James Steele and thousands of other satisfied authors, and submit your next article to PeerJ.

[peerj]

Bringing the article to life: PeerJ announces 3D printing of article images

As a publisher always looking to offer the best technologies to our users, and inspired by recent developments in sophisticated 3D print technologies, PeerJ is delighted to announce that from today we will be able to offer our authors 3D printing of article images. We feel this additional offering will really help authors to bring the article to life, and provide them with useful physical representations of imagery that can be used as teaching resources or within in a lab setting for example.

PeerJ authors will be able to tailor the physical output to their requirements by choosing both the size and colour of the 3D image. And, as with all PeerJ articles, we also want to ensure that our authors maintain full ownership of the 3D image, therefore we have developed our own 3D Data Rights Management system to prevent others from copying the 3D image (or even binning it!). There is no additional cost for this service, so authors still only pay $99 to publish their research for life.

3D printing of a 120 cell polytope.  Image credit: brewbooks  CC BY-SA 2.0

Further to this new development we also plan to offer delivery of the 3D outputs by our very own PeerJ drone, saving on any large postal costs and unnecessary delays in delivery times. Inspired by Amazon and Google’s recent tests with drone delivery we felt the time was right for PeerJ to experiment with this type of delivery mechanism too.

Delivery drone. Image credit: Don McCullough Drone and Moon CC BY 2.0

We hope our authors are as excited about these new developments as we are, and we look forward to waving off the first of many PeerJ drone deliveries.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

PS: Happy April Fools Day from all of us at PeerJ :)!

[peerj]

Visualizing the extravasation of cancer cells in zebrafish - Author Interview

Today’s "Interview with an Author" is with Masamitsu Kanada, the first author of "Endothelial cell-initiated extravasation of cancer cells visualized in zebrafish", an article that we published a few weeks ago. We were very interested in hearing more about his research and his experience with us. PJ: Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

MK: I did my Ph.D. in Cell Biology. Through these studies, I extensively learned about cell biology and cutting-edge live cell imaging by fluorescence microscopy. To further extend my knowledge about fluorescence microscopy, I joined a postdoc program in Dr. Terakawa’s laboratory and learned about whole-body imaging and intra-vital imaging. Dr. Terakawa has long engaged in cell physiology using optical techniques, especially light microscopy at a high resolution, with and without staining. Using DIC microscopy and evanescence microscopy, he succeeded in visualizing exocytosis in exocrine, endocrine, and neuroendocrine cells. He invented the ultra high NA objective lens (NA=1.65), and realized its marketing through Olympus Corporation. It allowed the evanescence microscope to be used routinely in the biomedical laboratories. Later, he was interested in pathological state of cellular responses, such as the glutamate induced neuronal cell death, osteoporosis-causing osteoclast activity, oxygen radical-related failure in islet cells. Because of his diverse experience in optical microscopy, working in his laboratory was very attractive for me.

PJ: Can you briefly explain the research you published in PeerJ?

MK: In cancer biology textbooks, the mechanism by which circulating tumor cells escape from the blood stream is often explained using an analogy that neutrophils invade into endothelial walls to get out of the vasculature during immune responses. We developed the hematogenous metastasis model using transparent zebrafish larvae to actually “watch” this dynamic process.  Like immune cells, the cancer cells forming embolus invaded into vascular walls, but surprisingly the surrounding endothelial cells often covered up the cancer cell masses and let them all escape from the circulation even though the cancer cells were quiescent. Our finding suggests that activation of endothelial cells by cancer cells is an important process for metastasis formation as well as invasion of cancer cells.

PJ: Do you have any anecdotes about this research?

MK: While we were developing a method to inject human cancer cells into very small blood vessels in the zebrafish larvae, another group reported the zebrafish hematogenous metastasis model that is what we were trying to make. It was unfortunate for us. We then followed their method and created the model. Interestingly, however, the injected human cancer cells behaved differently, probably due to the different cell types, from those previously reported, and we could observe the interesting manner of cancer cell extravasation that we call “endothelial cell-initiated extravasation.” Interestingly, by using a similar model system, we and other group found different phenomena.

PJ: What kinds of lessons do you hope the public takes away from this research?

MK: Seeing often leads us to the discovery of novel mechanisms that we can’t even imagine. Imaging studies in vivo should be pursued more rigorously to understand the cancer metastasis which is the common fatal process for the patients of cancer.

PJ: Where do you hope to go from here?

MK: In this research, we observed the interaction between human cancer cells and zebrafish endothelial cells, and our finding suggests interesting mechanism of cancer cell extravasation. Unfortunately, this phenomenon was only observed using the zebrafish model, so that we need to confirm that this cancer cell extravasation actually occurs in mammals. Old study performed by electron microscopy suggested similar type of cancer cell extravasation occurred in the lung metastasis mouse model. However, we cannot build the same imaging system as the zebrafish model using mouse models at this point, because of the limits of the current intravital microscopy. There are many difficulties that need to be overcome, but the imaging research field has shown dramatic progress recently.  We hope to make this imaging system possible in the near future, and prove this novel type of cancer cell extravasation actually happens in mouse models.

PJ: You published a preprint and submitted the text to PeerJ for formal peer-review. Can you explain why?

MK: It has been a while since we wrote this manuscript, so we wanted to get this work published as soon as possible, in order to get feedback from other researchers, and also take credit for our findings. For this, a preprint system was a good way to go. We still understand, however, how important the peer-review process is to re-think if our conclusion is appropriate, and improve quality of the studies and the paper.

PJ: How would you describe your experience of our submission process?

MK: PeerJ’s submission process was so interactive and quick! In our previous experience, we barely interacted with the journal staff after submitting a manuscript until their decision was made. In contrast, PeerJ was very interactive and responsive, so that we could clearly follow the process.

PJ: Would you submit again, and would you recommend that your colleagues submit?

MK: Absolutely. We think PeerJ is a good choice, not to waste time for multiple re-submission processes - and reasonable cost is also a big factor to choose PeerJ.

PJ: In conclusion, how would you describe PeerJ in three words?

MK: Friendly, Interactive, Fast

PJ: Many thanks for your time!

MK: My pleasure! Join Masamitsu Kanada and thousands of other satisfied authors, and submit your next article to PeerJ.

[peerj]

Sample size in ontogenetic allometry - Author Interview

We recently published “Small sample sizes in the study of ontogenetic allometry; implications for palaeobiology”. In this article/study, authors Caleb Marshall Brown and Matthew J. Vavrek “investigate the relationship between sample size, ontogenetic allometric relationship and statistical power using an empirical dataset of skull measurements of modern Alligator mississippiensis.”

Caleb comments on his research and his experience publishing with us. 

PJ: Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

CB: I am the Betsy Nicholls Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, located in Drumheller, Alberta, Canada. I recently (2013) obtained my PhD from the University of Toronto in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. My research largely concentrates on dinosaurs, investigating their diversity, evolution, and growth.

PJ: Can you briefly explain the research you published in PeerJ? 

CB: This research was conducted in collaboration with Dr. Matthew Vavrek, a research associate at the Royal Ontario Museum. Our paper investigates allometry, or relative growth, a process by which the proportions of an animal can change as it grows. We were particularly interested in identifying allometry in fossils and with smaller sample sizes. The paper really has two parts, the first documents the sample sizes normally used in allometry studies on different types of animals, and the second uses a dataset of Alligator skull measurements to test how small sample sizes can alter our ideas about relative growth.

PJ: What surprised you the most with these results? 

CB: Maybe this should not have surprised me, but what did surprise me the most was the similarity in the samples sizes used between living vertebrates and invertebrates, and also between fossil vertebrates and invertebrates. I expected fossil samples to have smaller samples than those from living animals (and we did find this), but I did not expect the other results to be so similar. To me this highlights how samples sizes (at least for allometry) for invertebrates and vertebrates are not that different.

PJ: What kinds of lessons do you hope the public takes away from the research? 

CB: The most important lesson that the public can take away from this research is the importance of museum collections. This research would not have been possible without the specimens stored in many different museums. These specimens were collected for a variety of different purposes totally unrelated to this study, but because they were made accessible they can be used in all sorts of novel projects.

PJ: Where do you hope to go from here? 

CB: Although this paper puts forward some new data and ideas it is by no means a definitive result regarding sample size and allometry. Science is cumulative, and new research will continue to increase our understanding of this question. What I would be interested in seeing is how broadly applicable our results are when other datasets are examined with similar methods - particularly datasets derived from other animals and with larger sample size.

PJ: How did you first hear about PeerJ, and what persuaded you to submit to us? 

CB: I first heard about PeerJ via social media (Twitter, Facebook), but also from different colleagues within my field. I performed a peer review for PeerJ and was impressed by the publishing process. I am also a proponent of open access, so for one of the next papers was ready to submit PeerJ seemed like a good option

PJ: How would you describe your experience of our submission/review process? 

CB: I was very impressed with all the aspects of PeerJ publications process. The review process was quick and professional. I was surprised with the quality of the formatting. Relative to other online only open access journals, PeerJ puts more of an effort into formatting and how the final paper looks. I was also surprised with the flexibility of both the submission and page proof stages of the publication.

PJ: Did you get any comments from your colleagues about your publication with PeerJ?

CB: So far my colleagues have been positive about both the research and the choice of publishing venue. It is great to have the research open access and available to anyone who is interested.

PJ: Would you submit again, and would you recommend that your colleagues submit? 

CB: Yes, I would definitely consider submitting to PeerJ again, and would recommend it to other researchers. PeerJ is a great option for affordable, fast, open access research, and I do think it will help to change the scientific publication process.

PJ: Anything else you would like to talk about? 

CB: Firstly, I would like the extend a special thanks to Drs. Grant Hurlburt and Kevin Seymour for their work in obtaining and preserving much of the Alligator collection at the Royal Ontario Museum. This material is now available to other researchers investigating a variety of questions. Museums like the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology also play an important role in making science accessible to the public, so consider paying us a visit.

Secondly, if any readers are interested in seeing more of our research, follow us (and our museums) on twitter: @Brown_Caleb_M (@RoyalTyrrell) and @MatthewVavrek (@ROMpalaeo).

PJ: In conclusion, how would you describe PeerJ in three words? 

CB: Fast, Open, Science

Join Caleb Marshall Brown and thousands of other satisfied authors, and submit your next article to PeerJ.

[peerj]

"Why I believe in Open Access and what it means to me" David McCune, Director at SAGE Publications

With just over one week passing since our two year anniversary of PeerJ publishing articles and the opening of peer-review submissions to PeerJ Computer Science, we took this opportunity to ask David McCune, Director at SAGE Publications, to outline his thoughts on why open access publishing matters. Here’s what he said:

As an advocate of Open Access why do you believe it can change the academic ecosystem for the greater good?

The publishing process is only one part of an academic ecosystem that is ripe for disruption. The fundamental obstacle to that disruption is the way scholarly reputation is now built. The academy today is a slave to a single metric: the quantity of publications in high impact factor journals. A scholar's reputation, prestige, job and tenure prospects, even grant and funding decisions - all are overly reliant on this single metric.

Scientific information should be disseminated as widely as possible. It should be evaluated and debated openly, vigorously and frequently. More human beings should create and have access to more scientific research. More research, more transparency, more dissemination, more debate - that is how we create the world I want my children and grandchildren to experience. Open Access can help, as can open, transparent, pre-publication and post-publication peer review.

You mention journal metrics – what is your view on this?  

I'd like to see the journal-based impact factor replaced - or at least supplemented - by an article-based impact factor. The system of journal-based impact factor breaks down in the modern world of mega-journals like PeerJ and PLOS ONE. That system is a legacy of how journals were packaged and disseminated in a print-based world. The technology for measuring the citations of an individual article or author is fairly straightforward. Let's use it.

What about changing peer review? Do you believe this should become more open too?

Peer review itself needs to change and I would like to see much more open peer review. I understand why peer review occasionally needs to be anonymous. (The case of a junior scholar reviewing the work of a more senior, more powerful scholar comes to mind.) But anonymity should be occasional, not the default as it is today. I suspect the quality of reviews would improve if scholars knew their peers would be reading the reviews. Transparency tends to sharpen the mind, after all. I'd also like to see the "draft-review-revise-review" cycle be shorter, more lively and more open.

In order for the current system of peer review to change, though, scholars need an incentive to contribute to the peer review process. As it is, scholars get little or no academic credit for writing reviews. I don't understand why that should be. The quantity and quality of a scholar's review output should be influential in how that scholar's reputation is built. Scholars should be judged on their output of new, original, high-quality research, to be sure, but they should also be judged on their participation in the debate about that research. (They should be judged and rewarded for other parts of the scholarly process, too, such as teaching and mentoring, but that is fuel for a different debate.)

Electronic Open Access can combine rigorous peer review with great publishing bandwidth and very wide dissemination. In a digital world, costs of printing and shipping journals no longer limit the bandwidth for how much research can be published and disseminated. The price of dissemination has fallen to practically zero.

That does not mean that there are no costs to publication. Creating a rigorous, trustworthy peer review system is labor-intensive, as is the editing process. Finding a sustainable business model is still a challenge.

The quality of a journal has nothing to do with whether it is paywall or OA. Alongside many first-rate paywall journals, there have long existed any number of poor-quality traditional paywall journals publishing questionable, poorly-reviewed research. Similarly, there are great, rigorous OA journals, but there can also be poor-quality OA journals.  (Just Google "predatory journals"!). The quantity of articles reviewed and published also has nothing to do with whether a journal is paywall of OA. Quality and quantity both cost money, however. In the OA world, of course, this is typically addressed via article processing charges.

Scholars are not paid by publishers to write reviews (being paid more generally by their institutions to participate in the scholarly enterprise). But the cost of finding, vetting, and managing the review process for thousands of article submissions is substantial. Indeed, in an electronic journal, where quantity of publications is not limited by printing and shipping costs, a vastly greater number of articles published requires a vastly greater number of reviewers. Simply finding quality reviewers is getting harder and harder, especially since there is little reputation-building incentive to become a reviewer.

You mention quality and the challenge of new business models – how does this apply specifically to OA journals?

The criterion for an article being accepted in an electronic OA journal can and should change from the narrow-bandwidth print past. Articles can be accepted for publication based on the rigor of their scientific method, regardless of whether an article is innovative research that moves a field forward. I don't mean to minimize the extraordinary value of innovative, new research, but the legacy, low-bandwidth publishing model has long been biased against some important types of research, such as negative findings. Electronic, high-bandwidth OA can make vastly more research available to vastly greater numbers of people.

Still, this costs money. Some fields, mainly in the natural sciences, have a long history of APCs, and publication expenses are often covered in grants that finance research. I imagine that in STM publishing, where APC funding is common, more and more articles will shift to OA models. Eventually some paywall STM journals will wither and those library subscription expenses will shrink.

In the social sciences and humanities, however, there often are no grants funding research and so no money to pay for publication. If we are going to shift from the paywall model (funded via library subscription budgets) to an OA model, the costs of rigorous peer review and editing have to come from somewhere. One can imagine money being diverted from library HSS (‘Humanities and Social Sciences’) subscription budgets to pay APCs, but I have a hard time imagining departments being willing to cut their subscriptions before institutional APC funding exists. And in the HSS world there is no obvious source of APC funding until paywall subscriptions are cut. We have a funding standoff.

PeerJ is exploring a couple of very innovative funding models.  The lifetime membership model, at a very affordable price, is gaining traction quickly.  And the institutional membership is very exciting.  Both of these innovations will change the way STM Open Access is done.  PeerJ will prove that there is a sustainable model to encourage and pay for massive dissemination of large amounts of high-quality, rigorously reviewed scientific research. I think the PeerJ model is great for STM publishing, and it just may eventually revolutionize HSS publishing as well.

Note: SAGE Publications is a minority investor in PeerJ. Find out more about our funding.

[peerj]

The PeerJ "Human Motion Project" collection: the 2nd winter symposium of the Human Motion Project

We are pleased to announce that the PeerJ "HumanMotion Project" collection is growing and will be the platform to host abstracts, presentations, preprints and papers of the second Winter Symposium of the Human Motion Project jointly organized by the Human Motion Institute, TUM, LMU, and ETH Zürich, on March 6th 2015, in Munich,Germany.

These submissions will be added to those published for the first Winter Symposium of the Human Motion Project, last year. We asked Martin Daumer, co-organizer of the symposium, to write a guest blog post explaining some of the motivation for this collection. Dr. Daumer’s guest blog post is below:

"Back in 2010 the following consensus statement from the preparatory conference "ACCELEROMICS MEETS GENOMICS – Physical activity and genes for personalized medicine - results from an international expert panel meeting" was published: "Mobile accelerometry has great potential for improving human health by contributing to the diagnosis of gait and balance disorders in daily life and clinical practice, improving outcome measures in chronic disabling diseases as well as a tool for prescribing and monitoring exercise therapy. It also provides the potential for greater insight into associations between physical activity and disease risks eg, cardiovascular disease either independently or through interaction with genetic variants. Standardization of sampling methods, data formats and validation rules for assessing performance are needed, and sharing and publishing raw data would be advantageous, but entails difficult IP issues. At a later stage decision-support tools may couple information about lifestyle including physical activity profiles and risk genes. This will most likely start with prediction of responders/non-responders to treatment and rare diseases with a strong genetic background component. Independent assessment of the impact of the technologies and tools in clinical practice is desirable."

The vision of the Human Motion Project is to become a successful analogue of the Human Genome Project: improving human health by an open collaborative technology platform for the mobile medical monitoring of human motion. The basis is a growing “critical path toolbox” and a biomedical data warehouse for collecting, archiving, analyzing, and disseminating human motion data including a library of algorithms. 

In a recent article in the New York Times, Dr Michael Joyner concludes with a statement that is related to what such a "successful analogue" could look like: "We would be better off directing more resources to understanding what it takes to solve messy problems about how humans behave as individuals and in groups. Ultimately, we almost certainly have more control over how much we exercise, eat, drink and smoke than we do over our genomes."

The 2nd winter symposium of the Human Motion Project focuses on the opportunities and challenges of using mobile devices to collect information from patients in the "real world", not just in artificial clinical settings or in a gait lab. The symposium brings together physicists, mathematicians, clinicians, electrical engineers, biostatisticians, kinesiologists, natural walking/running experts, bioinformaticians, clinical researchers from academia and pharma and medical device manufacturers to present the current status of using mobile accelerometry to improve clinical research. The dual aspect of physical activity as both an outcome measure and treatment option is reflected in the program. In the keynote "Regulator’s view on the scientific and regulatory challenges in new mobility outcomes & PROs" the BfArM/EMA will present their view and will give the various stakeholders the opportunity to develop a common understanding about what already exists and what needs to be done to establish a new generation of meaningful and valid outcome measures based on mobile accelerometry to improve clinical research." As more preprints are submitted, or peer-reviewed PeerJ articles accepted and published, then they will be automatically added to this growing body of work. For more information about PeerJ Collections, or to learn how they can be an ideal publishing solution for your conference or symposia, check out this blog post.

[peerj]

Announcing PeerJ Picks 2015

Yesterday, PeerJ passed the milestone of two years of publishing articles (we started publishing on Feb 12th 2013). Also yesterday, our new journal PeerJ Computer Science opened for submissions! We celebrated by putting together an infographic and a short video - check them out.

As we did last year though, we also wanted to mark the date by releasing a selection of 20 'staff picks' which represent some of our more memorable and interesting peer-reviewed articles from 2014. Therefore, we are pleased to announce the creation of the "PeerJ Picks - 2015" Collection.

Staff combed through the 471 peer-reviewed articles published in PeerJ during 2014 and picked out 20 highlights which represent the scope and diversity of the articles we have published to date. These articles showcase the full breadth of articles being published in the PeerJ journal.

We encourage you to explore this Collection, as well as all other PeerJ and PeerJ PrePrints publications, and add your own picks to the comments below this blog post.

[peerj]

Celebrating two-years of publishing, and PeerJ Computer Science now open for submissions

Today is a big day for us. Not only does it mark two years since PeerJ began publishing articles in the life sciences and medicine, but our newly launched journal PeerJ Computer Science is now open for peer-review article submissions. Take a look at our short video celebrating all of our milestones over the last two years.

Since we began publishing on February 12th 2013 we have published 749 articles, and 1,000 PrePrints* across all of the life sciences and medicine, culminating in the work of over 4,000 happy authors. All articles published adhere to our original mission, which is to publish the world’s best research openly to the world at a minimal cost to authors.

Right from the outset we wanted to offer authors the opportunity to publish in a high quality journal, but at very minimal cost to them. We always felt that if the cost to sequence an entire human genome is nearing the magical $99 goal, then why shouldn't we be able to publish an article for that as well? In other words, we don’t think that publishing research should cost more than actually doing the research in the 21st Century. We are honoured that over 4,000 authors agree with this sentiment too and have chosen to publish in PeerJ. We are excited to now be offering this opportunity to authors in computer science with the launch of PeerJ Computer Science. Right now, we are offering free publishing credit to anyone registering at PeerJ Computer Science.

After just two years PeerJ is making a global impact. In a recent Author Survey 100% of published authors said they would recommend PeerJ to a colleague. Articles and PrePrints in PeerJ have had over one million views and over 400,000 downloads. With recent articles being covered in world renowned media outlets such as Scientific American, National Geographic, Boston Globe, Newsweek, Huffington Post, New York Times, The Guardian, Nature and El Pais amongst many others. The discoverability of these articles is also helped by the global indexing services PeerJ is signed up to, including most recently the Web of Science which means that PeerJ is due to receive an early Impact Factor this year.

We are also currently working with over 130 world-class institutions by offering Institutional Publishing plans that enable the institution to offer free open access publishing for their faculty members. Notable institutions include Cambridge University, Duke University, Max Planck Society, Stanford University and UCLA amongst others.

We built PeerJ with the scientific community in mind, and it has been an exciting journey so far in shaping PeerJ to meet their expectations. Our innovative publishing platform and our high quality but low fee ethos is central to what we do, and always will be. We are delighted so many authors are continuing on this journey with us, and by opening up to the computer science community we hope to be able to bring about as much of a sea change as we have been able to do in the biomedical community.

Most importantly we want to show our gratitude to all of the individuals who have made PeerJ what it is today. It’s thanks to the dedication of our Authors, Reviewers and Editorial Board that we’re now celebrating two years of publishing. We would also like to thank everyone who has believed in PeerJ and given their time, energy and support. We look forward to many more years to come!

Note: *816 Unique preprints to which 20% of authors have added multiple versions totalling 1,020 PrePrints to date.

[peerj]

Tweet linkfest for the launch of PeerJ Computer Science

PeerJ Computer Science was announced exactly a week ago today, and since then we’ve received lots of positive commentary. So to celebrate one week since our launch we’ve rounded up a linkfest to some of the lovely tweets we’ve already received.

In addition to our own blog posts announcing the launch we’ve also received our first computer science PrePrints. Exciting times! Submissions to the peer-review journal open this Thursday 12th February and we’re looking forward to receiving the first of many peer-review articles to come. And what’s more we’ve made it easy for you to submit - simply register your interest and get free publishing credits for you and your colleagues.

The following represents a good example of the Tweets we have received over the last 7 days:

Finally, an open access Computer Science publisher with a reasonable business plan! @CaptainEmerson

Looks interesting and promising: open access, peer-reviewed computer science journal @s_bergmann

PeerJ is a disruptive publishing journal for many reasons. Their second journal will be PeerJ Computer Science @Symbionticism

Check out the advisory board on this new journal.  Very, very impressive @jschneider

Good news for Computer Science academics. New open journal "PeerJ Computer Science" from the nicely-designed @thePeerJ. (@PeerJCompSci) @mclduk

Nice gender diversity on the @thePeerJ Computer Science academic board! Great way to launch @hollybik

O frabjuos day!  PeerJ arrives to Computer Science — open access, preprints, no page limits, *fast*, cheap. @pyzza

PeerJ launches a computer science open access journal, with an impressive set of editors @JMarkOckerbloom

That the field which spawned open source has not previously achieved viable open access is a sad commentary on academic culture @koadman

More affordable open access places to publish! PeerJ Computer Science now exists @afcaber

PeerJ has a finally a CS journal. Time to revise publishing plans @mendezfe

New Open Access CS journal @PeerJCompSci looks promising, with nice features like Source Code, Data, & Review DOIs @IgorBrigadir

PeerJ CS - open access journals like this solve horrible issues with traditional academic publishing @simonwibberley

Much much needed. One of the areas where closed has won over open for far too long @getcrane

Thank you to all those who have written about us, or are following our developments. We couldn’t do it without you! We are accepting PrePrints now and peer-review submissions from Thursday 12th February – we look forward to welcoming you as an author.

[peerj]

PeerJ announces new journal: PeerJ Computer Science

We are excited to announce the launch today of a new addition to the PeerJ family: PeerJ Computer Science, a cross-disciplinary open access journal publishing articles across all fields of computer science.

PeerJ PrePrints is accepting computer science preprints from today. Peer-review articles can be submitted to PeerJ Computer Science from Thursday February 12th, which is also our two-year anniversary of publishing in the biological and medical sciences. Head over to PeerJ Computer Science to read more about the journal and its 322 strong Editorial and Advisory Board (which includes a number of high profile computer scientists including Vint Cerf, Wendy Hall, David Patterson and Mary Shaw).

We are offering free publication to all those who register their email on the journal's homepage, and also to their colleagues simply by providing their email details or tweeting the link. Please help us spread the word!

So why computer science, and why now you may ask? Well, ever since we launched PeerJ two years ago we’ve received a constant stream of requests to bring our unique lifetime publishing model and user design philosophy to other disciplines. We now feel the time is right to build upon our success by offering PeerJ’s services to the computer science community, who have been looking for a modern and improved publishing experience.

Our existing connections with Tim O’Reilly, founder of O’Reilly Media and a member of the PeerJ Board, place us well to build deeper connections within the computer science community and to understand how best to serve their needs.  We can only agree with Tim when he says "Open source software has transformed the practice of software development. So it is about time for an open access computer science journal to bring computer science research publishing into the 21st century.”

We also know from our many discussions with the Editorial and Advisory Board for PeerJ Computer Science that the landscape for academic publishing within computer science is ripe for change. There are very few open access journals currently serving the computer science community, and authors in this field are mainly publishing their work either at academic conferences or in subscription journals. The traditional journal route can be very slow for authors in this field with lengthy review processes, which is one of the reasons why authors often find that disseminating their work at a conference is a much faster route to obtaining a decision. The current system for publishing in computer science is in need of some fresh innovation, and by opening up submissions for computer scientists we aim to bring a 21st century publishing platform to computer scientists.

PeerJ Computer Science will operate in exactly the same way as PeerJ – articles will be published through CC BY licensing ensuring that the content is freely accessible to the world. Authors will still only pay a low cost fee to publish their article, starting at $99 for lifetime publication. Although it remains to be seen how fast the new journal will be, our life science and medicine authors currently receive a first decision in a median time of 22 days, which would help to address the need for quick turnaround times for computer scientists. By publishing cross-disciplinary research across the full spectrum of computer science, PeerJ Computer Science hopes to engender more cross-fertilisation between fields and to become a hub for the computer science community as a whole to interact.

We intend to work closely with the computer science community from the outset to help shape the journal as it grows. We’ll be listening intently to our Authors, Reviewers, Editorial and Advisory Boards and taking on board their suggestions and recommendations. We know computer scientists want a better way to publish their research, and we will aim to provide that by shaping the platform to meet their requirements. We’re excited to see how we can move publishing in computer science forward and better serve the needs of this community.

[peerj]

Good morning kinematics - Author Interview

Earlier this month, we published “Effects of load on good morning kinematics and EMG activity”. In this study, Andrew Vigotsky and his colleagues examine how muscle activation and joint angles change with load in the "good morning" exercise in trained individuals.

Andrew comments on his research and his experience publishing with us.

PJ: Can you tell us a bit about yourself? AV: Within the world of research and academia, I’m a young’un. I’m currently an undergraduate Kinesiology student at Arizona State University, and am particularly interested in lower extremity biomechanics. PJ: Can you briefly explain the research you published in PeerJ? AV: Generally, how load affects exercise form and muscle recruitment is not fully understood, nor is the good morning. Thus, the purpose of our study was to examine how muscle activation (hamstrings and spinal erectors) and joint angles (lumbar spine, hip, knee, and ankle) change with load in the good morning in trained individuals. Although we weren’t surprised by our findings, they weren’t what we hypothesized. The only kinematic variable that experienced remarkable changes with load was knee flexion, which increased with load. This change in knee flexion is directly related to the change in hamstring length, meaning that participants’ hamstrings underwent a greater amount of stretch with lighter loads. And, generally, muscle activity increased with load. These findings have implications for both strength & conditioning and rehabilitation & injury prevention. PJ: Do you have any anecdotes about this research? AV: This was my first study, and it was a colossal learning experience. It’s given me a great feel for the research process, and I’m very excited for future endeavors. PJ: What surprised you the most with these results? AV: To me, the most surprising finding was that the kinematics of the lumbar spine, hips, and ankle were largely unaffected by load. I’d have thought that an increase in load would lead to more rounding of the lumbar spine, but this did not occur.

Photos credit Andrew Serrano

PJ: What kinds of lessons do you hope the public takes away from the research? AV: I hope this research is able to provide a few contentions. Particularly, it is important for practitioners to realize that load ipso facto may affect how a movement is performed and how muscles are recruited, and the trends are not necessarily linear and intuitive. Also, the good morning may be an effective exercise in preventing hamstring strains in sport, especially sprinting; however, this requires a training study to substantiate, but in theory and given these data, it makes a lot of sense. PJ: Where do you hope to go from here? AV: I would love to do more research on this and how it relates to injury prevention and performance changes, but those studies are certainly not imminent. We’ve just finished collecting data for a few studies related to hip extension, foam rolling, sitting, and the Thomas test; I’m pretty excited about our findings. PJ: If you had unlimited resources, what study would you run? AV: Wow, that’s a tough one. I think I would run a massive RCT on the proclaimed dose-response relationship between sitting and “tight” hip flexors. I’d like to measure everything from muscle length (using MRI) to EMG/H-reflex of the hip flexors, in addition to passive hip extension stiffness using a dynamometer. PJ: Why did you choose to reproduce the complete peer-review history of your article? AV: I’m a huge believer in transparency. I’d like people to be able to see how my article evolved through, and was bettered by, the peer-review process, and I hope other authors can learn from my mistakes. PJ: How did you first hear about PeerJ, and what persuaded you to submit to us? AV: I first came across PeerJ this summer, with the release of Lombardo & Deaner (2014). Despite being a large OA proponent, I hadn’t heard of the journal before, so I did some reading and fell in love with PeerJ’s mission and ideology. I was just finishing up my manuscript at the time, so I thought I might as well support the “cause”. PJ: Do you have any anecdotes about your overall experience with us? Anything surprising? AV: I’m highly impressed by the responsiveness, competence, and quality of the PeerJ staff, editors, and website. As a former web developer and software engineer, I can appreciate the website’s features and ease of use. Clearly, a lot of thought went into the entire process and user interface, which is made evident by PeerJ’s user experience. PJ: How would you describe your experience of our submission/review process? AV: Fast and easy. Typically, I was my own bottleneck in the peer-review process. I’d typically receive new reviews back within 2-3 weeks, which is extraordinarily fast for peer-review. The submission process was a breeze to say the least. The forms were user friendly, and the upload page was extremely well done. I’ve seen other submission UIs, and there’s a night and day difference. PJ: Did you get any comments from your colleagues about your publication with PeerJ? AV: Yes! An acquaintance of mine commented that it was nice to see some exercise science research in PeerJ, and I’m apt to agree with him. PJ: Would you submit again, and would you recommend that your colleagues submit? AV: Yes, I’d certainly submit to PeerJ again, and I have already recommended it to a number of friends and colleagues in the field. PJ: Anything else you would like to talk about? AV: I would like to extend a special thank you to my advisor, Erin Harper, who enabled and encouraged me to carry out this study. And of course to my other co-authors, David and Bret, who were essential in completing this study. PJ: In conclusion, how would you describe PeerJ in three words? AV: Transparent. Fast. Game-changing. PJ: Many thanks for your time! AV: My pleasure! Join Andrew Vigotsky and thousands of other satisfied authors, and submit your next article to PeerJ.

[peerj]

Can inhaled oxygen cause cancer? - Author Interview

Yesterday we published the work of Kamen Simeonov and Daniel Himmelstein in which they show a relationship between increased elevation and reduced lung cancer rates by examining publicly available data sets. After accounting for multiple factors, the findings suggested that inhaled oxygen may actually be carcinogenic.

We were very interested in hearing more about this work so we invited them to comment on their research and their experience publishing with us.

Photo credit Kamen Simeonov PJ: Can you tell us a bit about yourself? KS (on the left): I'm an MD-PhD student in the Medical Scientist Training Program at the University of Pennsylvania with an interest in cancer and an unconditional love for research. Prior, I lived and worked in San Francisco and attended undergrad at Stanford. Born in Bulgaria and raised in West Virginia, the move to Philly ended a long westerly march.

DH (on the right): I'm a data biologist in the era of computation, making for an enjoyable PhD experience in UCSF's Biological & Medical Informatics program. After spending my first 22 years in the Northeastern United States, primarily New Hampshire, I moved to San Francisco where I became roommates with Kamen. PJ: Can you briefly explain the research you published in PeerJ? KS: Inspired oxygen leads to formation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), which are mutagenic and ultimately carcinogenic. We asked whether this phenomenon was present and observable in humans living at different oxygen pressures due to geographic elevation: Across counties of the Western United States, we found that lung cancer incidence decreased dramatically with rising elevation. Adjusting for demographics and known risk factors, including smoking, further sharpened the inverse association. Environmental correlates of elevation, such as particulate pollution and sun exposure, did not explain the trend. Notably, the association was not present for other common cancers, such as breast and colorectal, those arise from tissues without direct atmospheric exposure. As a whole, these findings pointed toward an atmospherically-tied (i.e. inhaled) carcinogen inherently and inversely linked to elevation, suggesting that oxygen is a player in human carcinogenesis. PJ: Do you have any anecdotes about this research? DH: After Kamen moved to Philadelphia for medical school, my mom assumed I had a new long distance girlfriend, due to the lengthy phone calls at odd hours that consumed our entire monthly allotment of cell phone minutes.

KS: Progress dipped following that incident as our discussions became limited to nights and weekends. PJ: What surprised you the most with these results? DH: The magnitude (βz = -0.35) and significance (p < 10-16) of the lung cancer association. Many ecological studies report on associations with a small effect size and moderate significance. Although confounding cannot be definitively ruled out under our study design, the risk of an entirely spurious association decreases with effect size. PJ: What kinds of lessons do you hope the public takes away from the research? DH: With the rapid spread of public datasets over the last decade, data scientists have an enormous new playground. And since the best tools are open source and the data is free online, anyone can play. PJ: Where do you hope to go from here? KS: While I greatly enjoyed this foray into epidemiology, I'm an experimental biologist at heart. As I continue my training, I would like to explore our findings mechanistically in a controlled wet lab setting. PJ: If you had unlimited resources, what study would you run? KS: While a similar analysis employing cohort data could further minimize potential confounders, only an experimental approach can truly resolve oxygen's proposed role as the driver of the association. Furthermore, in vitro and especially organismal models of carcinogenesis are crucial to interrogating the molecular and cellular pathways involved. PJ: Why did you choose to reproduce the complete peer-review history of your article? DH: Science is a collaborative activity. It thrives alongside interaction and feedback. Open review provides an initial discussion, available upon publication, to seed further interaction. Journals are too often graveyards for research: static documents play the immortalizing role of a tombstone, while the process of discovery and the resulting scientific content are rarely revisited, as if secluded deep underground in a casket. Open review is one small step towards a more transparent, accessible, and interactive future. PJ: How did you first hear about PeerJ, and what persuaded you to submit to us? DH: When PeerJ was first announced, I was intrigued by its affordability. Later when deciding on journals, several additional features appealed to us: CC-BY licensing, open review, review transfer, rich article annotation and discussion, and an elegant user experience and submission interface. Finally, days before we submitted, I met several members of the PeerJ team at a Bay Area open access event and was impressed with their expertise and devotion to transparent science. PJ: Do you have any anecdotes about your overall experience with us? Anything surprising? KS: Prior to publication, we posted a preprint of our manuscript to PeerJ PrePrints – a practice I was unfamiliar with and had even been warned against in the past. However, I am now a big proponent of the preprint and will carry on the tradition with my future work. Beyond the immediacy and ease of communication our preprint provided, PeerJ's system was efficient and allowed for quick updates with new information. PJ: How would you describe your experience of our submission/review process? KS: Refreshingly civilized and contemporary. PJ: Did you get any comments from your colleagues about your publication with PeerJ? DH: Awareness of PeerJ has been growing quickly. After discussing PeerJ with several colleagues at UCSF, one colleague submitted his manuscript detailing the first open source implementation of a state-of-the-art machine learning method. He was pleased with the quick response by reviewers, which took under two weeks. PJ: Would you submit again, and would you recommend that your colleagues submit? KS: I think anyone who is interested in publishing rapidly, yet with thoughtful, respectful, open peer review should consider PeerJ. Daniel and I both certainly fall into that category. I believe many others do as well. PJ: Anything else you would like to talk about? KS: Publishing is a necessity but in the current system can often become a distraction. We need more publishers that minimize the distractions while streamlining scholarly communication, so we can all get back to what we love: Discovery! PJ: In conclusion, how would you describe PeerJ in three words? Both: Joy of Publication PJ: Many thanks for your time! Join Kamen Simeonov, Daniel Himmelstein and thousands of other satisfied authors, and submit your next article to PeerJ.

[peerj]

Sizing up the giants that live in the ocean

Today we are very pleased to publish an amazing study by Craig McClain et al: "Sizing ocean giants: patterns of intraspecific size variation in marine megafauna".

In this study, a team made up of a mix of scientists and students sifted through multiple datasets and historical records to produce accurate and comprehensive size measurements for 25 species including the Blue Whale, Giant Squid, and Great White Shark. Their project powerfully demonstrates both the challenges of arriving at exact measurements and the human bias toward larger individuals.

  Download & print the full size infographic (available under CC BY 4.0)

To cast a wide net, Craig McClain (the assistant director of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, N.C. and Chief Editor of the Deep-Sea News) brought on board graduate and undergraduate students to help select and research the marine species that most fascinated them. The species range from well-known behemoths like the Great White Shark, Giant Octopus, and walrus to more obscure creatures such as the Giant Tubes Worm and the Colossal Squid. All told, the paper collates a wealth of data showing the typical and maximum sizes of some of the most charismatic megafauna alive in the oceans today.

In tackling a search that would become quite gigantic itself, the authors contacted fisheries, marine centers, and other scientists. “It’s one part a databasing effort and one part historical research: double-checking museum specimens; talking with other scientists and collectors; and even checking eBay for specimens for sale,” McClain says.

Social media also helped. McClain created a website, The Story of Size, where the authors posted regularly. The students promoted their work by sharing updates and their own impressions. With posts like, “Why You Should Give a Damn about a Giant Clam,” the site added a playful tone to the scientific discourse and also made the project more accessible to the general public.

Despite challenges in obtaining much of the data, McClain is pleased with his team’s results, which he thinks will slowly replace the erroneous measurements found in academic papers, fishery databases, textbooks, and more.

“Precise, accurate, and quantified measurements matter at both a philosophical and pragmatic level,” McClain says. “Saying something is approximately ‘this big,’ while holding your arms out won’t cut it, nor will inflating how large some of these animals are.”

[peerj]

Launch of PeerJ Subject Pages

Over the last few months we’ve been very busy behind the scenes taking the time to listen to all of our users, and asking them what more they’d like to see. We built PeerJ with the scientific community in mind, so it is extremely important to us that we not only listen to our users, but also deliver the best possible platform based on their feedback.

So, in response to some of the feedback, we are delighted to announce the launch today of our subject pages for each of the 92 subject areas that PeerJ covers. As a cross-disciplinary journal we know that our users often want to focus on the subject areas that matter most to them, and our subject pages will enable that.

We also hope that these pages will become community driven over the coming months by giving our users a more focused space to interact with their peers, and by highlighting the Reviewers and Editors in each field.

Our article submissions are increasing month on month, so as more content is published in PeerJ we want to make it as easy as possible to find the research that matters most to you. Next year we will also receive our first Impact Factor, which is likely to drive an increase in article submissions to PeerJ, therefore we wanted to build subject pages that help get you to the content you want faster.

We have already received some favourable comments on Twitter today as the early news spread:

'Cool, @thePeerJ now has a Palaeontology index page...Think of it as the PeerJ Journal of Palaeontology' @MikeTaylor

'Awesome - @thePeerJ have just launched new subject pages!' @protohedgehog

New: @thePeerJ now has subject pages so it's easier to find papers in your field! @kirstyjean

'Love the new @thePeerJ subject pages' @docdez

'@thePeerJ adds subject pages for all 92 areas they cover: https://peerj.com/subjects/ . Check out recent and popular PeerJ papers in your field' @JournalGuide

We look forward to you stopping by the subject pages too, and as always we welcome any feedback you may have.

[peerj]

Announcing a new PeerJ Spotlight Collection for our Top Animal Behavior Articles

The academic study of 'Animal Behavior' attempts to comprehend the actions and interactions of different animal species within diverse ecosystems. Ultimately, this is a field which has the potential to educate ourselves about our own behavior and our own unique place within the web of interactions which make up life on Earth. To showcase the outstanding animal behavior research currently being published in PeerJ we have created a new "PeerJ Spotlight" Collection which collects some of the best articles we have published so far.

Figure 1 from Plotnik and de Waal. Photograph taken by E. Gilchrist at the Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation, Chiang Rai, Thail

A wide cross-section of the general public is fascinated by this field, and so it is particularly significant that so many animal behavior researchers are choosing to publish their work in an open access format ('animal behavior' is in PeerJ's top five most highly published subject areas) .

This collection of articles represents some of the most noteworthy animal behavior research which PeerJ has published from launch through November 2014. To compile the list we asked some of our most active Academic Editors in this area (as noted here) to nominate articles which stood out to them. The result is a subjective snapshot of the most interesting animal behavior research appearing in PeerJ today. This selection of articles ranges across the entire field, from studies on primates, to mammals, to songbirds, crabs and bees! The authors of almost all of these articles also chose to make their peer-review history public, making them even more useful for the community.

This Collection will remain live for 4 months, after which time we will have new papers to highlight in a new collection. If you would like to nominate a subject area for future PeerJ 'top' Collections, just email us at [email protected] or tweet us with the hashtag #peerjspotlight.

We thank our Academic Editors Jennifer Wagner, Dezene Huber, Alex Ford and Dany Garant for their invaluable input in compiling this list.

If you are a researcher working in this area, then we encourage you to submit your next articles to PeerJ (and don't forget we have a free publication offer from now till Dec 19th).

[peerj]

The future is open to all - a perspective on OpenCon 2014

As part of our involvement in this year's OpenCon we supported an early career researcher with their travel fees to the event. Jon Tennant was nominated by OpenCon to receive our travel grant, and as a big advocate of OA and already published in PeerJ we were delighted to support his attendance at OpenCon. We asked Jon to give us his thoughts on the event and who inspired him there. Here's what he said:

One is rather inspired. OpenCon 2014 was a wonderful time bringing together 175 of the best minds in early career research and the 'world of open' to discuss how we make access to knowledge, data, and educational resources better for everyone. Over the weekend, we heard from some of the leading people making the strongest cases for openness. This was topped off with a day in Capitol Hill, hearing from and engaging with people who work in the policy domain. It wasn't so much an event, as a milestone.

From left to right: Jack Andraka, John Wilbanks, Jon Tennant, Erin McKiernan

There are some people I wish to directly acknowledge from OpenCon as true leaders in the open community. Their talks, or discussions with them, were the most influential on me personally.

Erin McKiernan is where everyone will be in 5-10 years, right now. Her views and practices regarding open access are something that we could, and probably should, follow. She made a simple statement, which for many is why we were there: “Access to research is not an issue for academics, it’s an issue for everyone.” She has pledged to make her research completely open, to not review for closed access journals, to use blogs and pre-prints where possible, to not publish in Nature, Cell, or Science, and to refuse co-authorship if co-authors refuse to be open; an admirable stance to take.

Erin McKiernan and Jon Tennant displaying their support for PeerJ

Ross Mounce is disruptive technology manifest. His work with Peter (see below) is truly revolutionary, in extracting data from multiple papers so that others may use them as a resource. A noble task indeed. I'm also happy to point out that Ross was one of the first people who introduced me to the issues of access to research, and it's always great fun learning from him as a friend. Myself and Ross will be talking about open data on Nov 26th at the OpenCon satellite event in London.

Peter Murray-Rust is the embodiment of righteous fury, aimed directly at legacy publishers. He set my heart on fire (I actually got heart burn!) with a passionate speech regarding exactly how the practices of many publishers are directly inhibitive to science, and what he is doing to combat this (e.g., the content mine). We need more senior researchers like Peter, so that early career researchers can be validated by their actions.

Jack Andraka needs no introduction. His views on open access, the fundamental human rights to knowledge, and education should be spread to every young person on the planet. He is a wonderful role model that we can all learn from, and I can't wait to see what the future holds for him - including getting his research to pass peer review ;) A favourite quote from Jack was ‘If a Katie Perry song costs $0.99, and a research paper costs $30, is it any wonder why kids aren’t into science?’

Joe McArthur and David Carroll are, simply, awesome. They are the brains behind the Open Access Button, and examples of how it is possible to initiate change from any step of the academic pipeline. As undergraduates, the pair of them successfully developed and launched the Button, creating what is undoubtedly one of the most exciting and hopefully change-initiating projects currently in the world of publishing, with plenty of exciting ideas for the future.

These were the people and the talks that stood out for me, although each and every person who came up to that stage was incredible. Hearing from Patrick Brown about how he originally set up PLOS was rather inspirational. He, among others, emphasised the role of and need for a community vibe for ‘openness’. I loved his thoughts on academics ‘taking the power back’ from publishers, by being part of an entrepreneurial, subversive, and open community. Other inspirational talks include one by Heather Joseph of SPARC, on that our goal should be to set the default for academia to ‘open’, a goal echoed by every single person in that room.

The trend for openness on a global scale is increasing. Several examples include the RCUK policy on open access, a memorandum in the US stating that data from federally funded research must be made publicly available, the establishment of Open Access Nigeria, and the SciELO initiative, to name a few among thousands of progressive changes. Heather stated that in spite of this progress, it’s still important that we make changes to the current system, and keep the global trend going for the benefit of everyone. One of my favourite quotes from OpenCon has to be from Ahmed Ogunlaja “Open access wins all of the arguments all of the time.” 

However, one primary issue that still requires addressing within the open discussion regards careers, and the potential that dedication to OA publishing can lead to self-sabotage. Ironically, this claim often comes from those making decisions about others' careers, and is based around the very real fact that we currently don't have formal assessment criteria for academics that stretch far beyond the impact factor and perceived prestige of the journal in which an article was published. Clearly, this model is deeply flawed, and fortunately some policies such as that used by the REF in the UK explicitly forbids the use of the impact factor in assessments, instead relying on 'impact case studies'. You can sign Initiatives like DORA, pledging to find alternative and better modes of assessing academics.

The reason why I'm discussing this is that it is a real part of the open discussion which needs to be developed. Whether it is based on evidence or not, this is still one of the primary causes of resistance to open access, in my experience. Victoria Stodden addressed this point in her talk, stating that it should not be expected of early career researchers to ‘martyr’ themselves for the sake of open scholarship, but instead it should be senior academics leading the way forward. What we need to strive towards is a career structure that rewards people for being open and sharing their research. This isn't easy - it's going to require a community development strategy combined with a top-down policy framework within which to manage it. At OpenCon, we saw many of the people who are going to make the change. We also saw so many success stories of open access 'advocates' remaining highly successful within academia or redeploying their skills elsewhere to try and invoke change. The change is going to happen - we need to make sure that it is community-driven, and remove the element of risk - whether you believe it exists or not - from the 'anti-open' frame of mind. One great example of this at OpenCon was the discussion of establishing an ‘O-index’ as a metric of how open a researcher is, and something I cannot wait to see be developed.

So I have a few recommendations or points for not just the 'open access community', but for everyone in academia, largely synthesised from numerous discussions and presentations at OpenCon:

Help your colleagues. Scholarship is all about collaboration and the sharing of knowledge, and requires that we receive help from and help our colleagues. We are the informed community, and our friends and co-workers should be equally well informed about the issues with open access, impact factors, and all the others.

If you have an idea, put it into practice. The community is there to help - you’re not alone.

Don't sacrifice your career. Unfortunately, many of the ideals we hold are incompatible with the reality of the current system. Peter Murray-Rust said it best, that for any revolution blood will be spilled. If you're making someone angry, you're probably doing it right. But when you're 'advocating' for open access, maintain one simple rule: don't be an idiot.

The last thing I want the open community to become is it's own worst enemy. For this, I think we need to be really strategic about what we say, exactly how we say it, be aware of who is listening, and consider the perspectives of those whom we are trying to engage with. For example, I really don't think calling this progress the 'open movement' or that we are 'open advocates' does little more than alienate those who could otherwise be supportive.

Most importantly, have fun being part of the open community. All I saw at OpenCon were happy, energetic, smiling faces. It was great to be part of that, and makes me confident that what we're all doing is right.

Final thanks to the organising committee, everyone involved to support the logistics of the conference, SPARC, the R2RC, PeerJ for their generous scholarship so I could attend, and every wonderful mind present. You all represent the future, and it is now.

Delegates thanking the organising committee at OpenCon 2014

Additional links:

OpenCon satellite event in London (free)

Science is Broken, Part 1, by Lorraine Chen

Twitter archive of #opencon2014

Generation Open: A diary of OpenCon 2014, by Ross Mounce

Blog post by Karin Purshouse, who left her scarf on Capitol Hill.

An ode to open access, by Dominique Morneau

Generation Open: sneak peek into science’s future at OpenCon 2014, by Hilda Bastian

[peerj]

It’s a double celebration for our homepage launch!

We’re in celebratory mood here at PeerJ – not only does today see the launch of our brand new home page, but also by way of celebration and due to popular demand, we are extending our offer to publish your article free for another four weeks until December 19th.

Over the last few months we’ve been very busy behind the scenes taking the time to listen to all of our users, and asking them what more they’d like to see. We built PeerJ with the scientific community in mind, so it is extremely important to us that we not only listen to our users but also deliver the best possible platform based on their feedback. Our new homepage, combined with refreshed navigation and new features, is at the very start of the journey to ensure we do just that.

For instance, we now offer on our homepage improved search functionality, and feature recently cited articles and selected Article Collections. We'll have further developments launching over the coming months that enrich the user experience of PeerJ, making it one of the best places to publish your research at maximum speed, for minimum cost. We look forward to sharing these new developments with you as and when they launch.

Our excellent recent Author Survey results demonstrate that we are getting a lot of things right, but we don’t ever want to rest on our laurels. Innovation is at the core of everything we do, which means constantly iterating on our existing platform, whilst building out new features.

So, what better way to test out PeerJ as an author than by submitting an article? When asked in our survey, 100% of published authors said they would recommend us to their colleagues, so why not join them and see what all the excitement is about? To make it even easier to try us out, and in celebration of our new homepage, we are now extending our offer to publish your article for free until December 19th, 2014. By doing so we hope you’ll see why 100% of our published authors would recommend us to their colleagues. We look forward to welcoming you to PeerJ.