To mark the anniversary of the British Journal of Biomedical Science moving to a new publisher and becoming gold open access, Simon Hoggart explains how members can submit their work to the journal for free.
Have you considered submitting to the British Journal of Biomedical Science (BJBS) but are nervous about what peer review is and what happens to your paper once you submit it? Or are you unsure about what’s new now the journal is published by Frontiers? This article is here to help demystify the peer-review process.
When a manuscript is submitted to the BJBS it passes through a number of steps:
- First, the manuscript is assessed by the Editorial Office to check that the manuscript adheres to the journal guidelines. If there are any problems the manuscript will be returned to the author to be corrected.
- The manuscript is then passed to the Editor-in-Chief who checks if the manuscript fits within the journal’s Scope and Mission and is of interest to the readership of the journal. At this stage, the Editor-in-Chief will either reject the manuscript or pass it on to a Deputy Editor.
- The Deputy Editor’s role is to check that the research is scientifically rigorous. The Deputy Editor then either recommends that the Editor-in-Chief rejects the manuscript, selects appropriate reviewers, or occasionally asks the author to make revisions before sending it for review.
- The manuscript then moves to the Independent Review phase. At this stage, the reviewers assess the manuscript independently from each other (and from the authors). In general, two reviewers are sought who are asked to analyse the work in detail.
- The manuscript then moves to Interactive Review. During this phase, authors and reviewers can interact with each other through real-time comments in the discussion forum to address all concerns about the manuscript. The Deputy Editor oversees the review process, and, if required, the Editor-in-Chief can also enter the Review Forum. This Interactive Review stage replaces the revision stages that are common in other journals and has the benefit of speeding up the peer-review process for authors.
- The Deputy Editor evaluates the reviewers’ reports and the discussion from within the forum and writes a recommendation to the Editor-in-Chief to either accept or reject the manuscript.
- The Editor-in-Chief evaluates the Deputy Editors’ recommendation and the reviewers’ reports and decides on whether to accept or reject the manuscript.
Now that the journal is published by Frontiers, the key changes, alongside the Interactive Review stage, are that all papers are published online only and Open Access. Open Access provides free and immediate online access to scholarly literature for anyone in the world to read.
To enable Open Access, authors are required to pay an Article Processing Charge. However, if you are an IBMS member, you can publish in the BJBS for free.
Simon Hoggart is a Partner Journal Development Manager at Frontiers. For more information, visit the website bit.ly/_BJBS or email Simon on [email protected]
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