New introductory editorials

We are in the process of launching around 50 new titles. Introductory Editorials are available for viewing for the following journals:

• Open Journal of Cardiovascular Surgery
• Cancer Growth and Metastasis
• Healthy Aging and Clinical Care in the Elderly
  

Please support these journals by signing up for email newsletters and RSS feeds. We are still seeking Editorial Board members for most of these journals, so please contact me with a CV or biosketch if you're interested in applying.

Libertas Academica journals on ChemSpider

I was excited this morning to receive an email from Antony Williams at ChemSpider notifying me that ChemSpider wished to include Libertas Academica journals, particularly Analytical Chemistry Insights, in the list of open access publishers searchable via ChemSpider. As a relatively new open access publisher it's wonderful to find ourselves in the company of many admirable publishers and journals. I look forward to working with Dr Williams in the future to ensure that ChemSpider users have the best possible access to our open access journals.

Links:

• ChemSpider blog entry on Libertas Academica
  
• ChemSpider Literature Search page
  

Five tips for getting through peer review without pain

Since April 2005 when Libertas Academica launched its first two journals (Cancer Informatics and Evolutionary Bioinformatics) we have published somewhere in the region of 550 articles. Allowing for a small minority of papers not subject to peer review like editorials means that we've undertaken roughly 500 peer reviews.

Because effective peer review is the cornerstone of academic publishing I take a great deal of interest in the peer review process, to the extent that I read almost all the completed peer review reports before they're sent. Having read so many reports, I have noticed some common types of mistakes that authors make. Based on my observations here are some common pitfalls to avoid:

1. Cite the latest research. Peer reviewers will notice this, especially if the research you're not citing is theirs!
2. Write to be read. Polish your manuscript before you submit it. Messy prose can imply a messy rationale for your conclusions. If you want to see just how much greater the impact of spare elegant prose is, compare Samuel Richardson with Ernest Hemmingway. Use headings, page numbering, and figures and tables to illustrate your points. Get a third party to read your manuscript before you submit it to spot any flaws you might have missed. If English isn't your first language consider having your manuscript copy edited by a native speaker before submission.
   
3. Clear figures. Figures should be in high-resolution, non-pixellated files, and any text must be clear. If in doubt, zoom in at 150% and look for pixellation. Ideally use a non-compressed format like TIFF. Be able to produce higher-resolution files if necessary.
   
4. File formats. Submitting files in obsolete or obscure formats like Wordstar, MacPaint or Corel isn't helpful! If you have to use them convert the output to PDFs. Use commonly used formats like MS Office formats, RTF or PDF. Ideally use formats that aren't restricted to a particular program or platform. Submit figures in separate files. No file should be more than 3 MB: if reviewers can't download or view your submission then they can't review it.
   
5. Make sure you provide support for all your conclusions. Obviously.
   

To summarise, the basic suggestion I make is that you should make it as easy as possible for the peer reviewers to assess your paper on its true merits without unintentionally putting barriers in their way. All the errors I've described above are suprisingly common, and depending on their severity they can have a serious impact on the outcome of your peer review. It's important to remember that reviewers agree to undertake reviews as an unrewarded professional obligation. Anything you can do to make their task less onerous is worthwhile.

New journal spotlight: Journal of Experimental Neuroscience

Libertas Academica is aiming to have around 100-120 journals by the end of this year. All will be open access, and we hope that all will find happy homes with their audiences. The new journal in the spotlight today is Journal of Experiemental Neuroscience.

Launching new journals isn't by any means easy, but it is made considerably easier by having a proactive Editor in Chief. Libertas Academica is very lucky to have Dr Raphael Pinaud as Editor in Chief of JES, who I have enjoyed working with greatly to date. Dr Pinaud has succeeded in bringing together a stellar Editorial Board.

We expect to formally launch the journal within the next one to two weeks with the publication of Dr Pinaud's Introductory Editorial. In the meantime, anyone interested in the field should subscribe to the RSS feed or sign up for new article email notifications, calls for papers, or the journal's Inside View newsletter. For more information, including the journal's aims and scope, please visit the JES home page.

The iPhone and open access journal articles

Welcome to Libertas Academica's new blog! This is the forerunner of a blog we intend to launch on our website (here) soon. At this initial stage all content is authored by me (Tom Hill, Publisher and Managing Director) but I hope readers will also contribute to the comments section.

I probably don't need to say that an enormous amount has been written about the iPhone since its launch in 2007 (Google returns 233 million hits on the admittedly very broad search term "iphone".) The excitement around the device seems to have actually increased since the launch of the impressive 3G model, which adds higher potential data bandwidth and various other features. A lot of people have rightly noted that these features have been available for quite some time in other devices, but Apple brings its two great strengths to the smartphone market: its exceptional design standards and it's 'walled-garden' approach to quality and user experience. No one else matches this, and consequently the iPhone 3G is quite justifiably (in my opinion) considered an exceptional phone, albeit with some minor weaknesses.

I find the iPhone particularly interesting for what it offers readers of open access journals. I think this can be reduced to two elements:

• The availability of an software development kit (registration requied for deeper content)
• The strength of the display capabilities

I suggest that what this boils down to for open access publishers is the ability to deliver their content to iPhone users wherever they may be.

Libertas Academica and Maffey.com are now working on a basic iPhone application which will allow users to create customised searches of our journals and view article metadata of articles of their interest. Users will also be notified when new articles within their sphere of interest have been published. It's exciting to be in the vanguard with this, and I hope that we can build on it by adding additional services to application users.

There are various other iPhone apps or sites which may be of interest to readers:

• Mimvista
• Pubget (but be careful with those big PDFs - this suggests it may be problematic)
• Unbound MEDLINE and Unbound References