Sue Wray &Tom Kleyman
Editors of Physiological Reports

Fiona Seymour
Managing Editor at Wiley

https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.98.12

It may come as a surprise to you that Physiological Reports has been publishing physiology articles across a broad range of areas for more than two years. Since the journal’s beginnings back in March 2013 with one transfer and 10 direct submissions in its first month, total submissions have now risen to more than 800, with 200 of those received as direct submissions. We may still be the new kid on the block but we are now jettisoning the trainer wheels.

To what do we owe this success? Without doubt there seems to be a real appetite for an open access physiology journal and, when combined with a quality peer review and support from two esteemed Physiological Societies – ours and the American Physiological Society – the formula appears to be a winning one (Wray, 2013). The good news is that we can all take pride in the success of Physiological Reports, as its concept is very much based on prioritizing the needs of our international research community, and ensuring that profits are returned to our society, as the world of academic publishing diversifies.

But before we get too ahead of ourselves: we cannot understate the tremendous support we have had from the editors of the societies’ sister journals, to help cascade selected manuscripts. There has been a consistent determination since the launch, and still is, to transfer appropriate manuscripts to Physiological Reports. We can get articles published which otherwise would not have been able to ‘squeeze’ into those journals. With so much useful and insightful data available, it was a shame the other journals previously had to return many of these papers to authors without any message other than rejection. We hope that the sister journals will continue to see Physiological Reports as a service to their authors, offering a rapid decision without the need for a further round of reviews, followed by a streamlined publishing process. As you may know, our criterion for acceptance does not include a judgement on the papers’ anticipated impact. We are not simply chasing an impact factor. In addition we welcome absolutely every corner of physiological research; we have no subject bias.

We have worked hard to develop our niche beyond being a great place to publish conventional papers. We have for example championed the need to publish negative findings and replication studies, as described in an editorial outlining our initiative, ‘At the risk of repeating ourselves’ by Associate Editor Meena Rao (Rao, 2014). More recently we have helped lead the debate on open data and physiological research. We held a well-attended session on this subject at Physiology 2014, where views from scientists, publishers and managers were shared. Physiological Reports wants to be the home for open data in our field, and in October we published an original paper ‘Discharge patterning in rat olfactory bulb mitral cells in vivo’ by Associate Editor Gareth Leng (Leng, 2014). This coincided with us accepting and having commentary on Excel data spread sheets accompanying the published article to further this goal. We are also open to suggestions from The Society’s members – what else could we be doing to support physiological research and publishing?

Another example of our success is the Virtual Issues we have put together from our published content in Physiological Reports over the last year. These compilations have highlighted selected papers on ‘Gender and Age’, ‘New directions in muscle research’, ‘Obesity’, ‘Neuroscience’ and ‘New directions in biophysics’. They showcase new techniques, approaches and insights that are changing the landscape of physiological research and reflect scientific advances across the spectrum of physiology.

General feedback to date suggests that our readers enjoy the variety and timeliness of articles being published. To understand what appeals to our readers, Altmetrics was rolled out a few months ago as a service to authors and readers. Altmetrics tracks the broader impact that scholarly articles can have across social media, mainstream media and public policy documents. It monitors the wider reach of research through these online sources for mentions of scholarly articles, and scores the article, indicating the quality and quantity of attention that it has received. The score is derived from three main factors – volume, sources and authors.

Cardiovascular research and exercise lead the way in terms of papers received but there is steady growth in neuroscience, respiratory, endocrine and renal papers. Further, the journal is experiencing an increase in article distribution by country. We are pleased to see our reach beyond the USA and Europe growing, and part of our strategy for the journal is to further encourage this growth. Our editorial board has a global profile, reflecting the international support and confidence in Physiological Reports from the outset. As we hoped for an open access journal, downloads of our papers come from across the globe and from all sorts of institutions. We are proud to see that the wealth of physiological information we have published is of interest on a global basis. The ability to provide open data surely provides additional inspiration and opportunities for any researcher wishing to solve today’s questions.

Given the journal’s impressive progress over the last year, eyes are undoubtedly on our next moves as we look to venture into new territory for open access and physiological research. The editorial team is looking to see if the Virtual Issues concept can be further developed to enable guest editor choices or indeed reader custodianship of topics. Open access to additional data will continue to be expanded. We will be increasing our podcasts and examining other ways of adding value to the papers we publish. Excitingly, we are now having our first Call for Papers in the field of Translational Physiology. Please use this opportunity to submit your original research to Physiological Reports, and be part of the success of this initiative. Details of the call can be found on our webpage.

Give us your ideas and your papers and help shape the future of Physiological Reports.

Finally thanks to all the physiologists, acting as editors, reviewers and authors of our papers, who have fuelled our success and keep us so enthused about Physiological Reports.

References

Wray S (2013). Bright future for physiological research in Physiological Reports. Physiol Rep 1(1), e00001

Rao MC (2014). At the risk of repeating ourselves… Publishing data replication and negative data is good practice. Physiol Rep 2 (3), e00273

Leng G, Hashimoto H, Tsuji C, Sabatier N & Ludwig M (2014). Discharge patterning in rat olfactory bulb mitral cells in vivo. Physiol Rep 2 (10), e12021