Tom Kleyman, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.112.13

There has been a remarkable growth in the number of open access journals over the past 15 years, led by the Public Library of Science (PLOS) and its open access initiative. The leadership of The Physiological Society and the American Physiological Society recognised the need to establish an open access journal with a physiologic focus, which led to the founding of Physiological Reports by the two societies in 2013, with Susan Wray as Editor-in-Chief. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to work with Sue on the journal’s first editorial team for five years, and transitioned to Editor-in-Chief in January.

From its inception, The Journal has had an international editorial team and editorial board. Our founding lead editors established an editorial team from the UK and US that provide oversight of journal activities. We initiated a collaboration with the Scandinavian Physiological Society, and  asked Morten Thomsen to join our editorial team as its representative. Morten has transitioned to the position of Deputy Editor-in-Chief. Our new editorial team, as of January 2018, has members from the UK, Denmark and the US. We recently recruited a social media coordinator from the US. The editors also work closely with the Directors of Publication and Executive Editors of The Physiological Society and the American Physiological Society, Simon Rallison and Rita Scheman. Given the international composition of the leadership groups associated with the journal, face-to-face meetings are generally scheduled in the UK or US, often coinciding withmeetings sponsored by The Physiological Society and the American Physiological Society. In fact, our next editors’ meeting will be held in London at Europhysiology 2018.

Physiological Reports authorship and readership have broad international representation. Our submissions are from authors throughout Europe, including the UK, the Americas, Asia and other countries. Just under half of our submissions are from North America, and about 30% are from Europe. Our readership, based on downloads, also has an international flavour. About 30% of our readership are from Europe, and a similar percentage are from North America. In summary, the journal is clearly an international collaboration at all levels.