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WINTER 2019/2020 ISSUE 43 Nine group leaders selected Meet the first EMBO Global Investigators PAGE 6 Accelerating scientific publishing EMBO publishing costs Review Commons Making our journals’ platform announced finances public PAGE 3 PAGES 10 – 11 Welcome, Young Investigators! Contract replaces stipend Marking ten years 27 group leaders join the programme EMBO Postdoctoral Fellowships EMBO Molecular Medicine receive an update celebrates anniversary PAGES 4 – 5 PAGE 7 PAGE 13 www.embo.org TABLE OF CONTENTS EMBO NEWS EMBO news Review Commons: accelerating publishing Page 3 EMBO Molecular Medicine turns ten © Marietta Schupp, EMBL Photolab Marietta Schupp, © Page 13 Editorial MBO was founded by scientists for Introducing 27 new Young Investigators scientists. This philosophy remains at Pages 4-5 Ethe heart of our organization until today. EMBO Members are vital in the running of our Meet the first EMBO Global programmes and activities: they screen appli- Accelerating scientific publishing 17 journals on board Investigators cations, interview candidates, decide on fund- Review Commons will manage the transfer of ing, and provide strategic direction. On pages EMBO and ASAPbio announced pre-journal portable review platform the manuscript, reviews, and responses to affili- Page 6 8-9 four members describe why they chose to ate journals. A consortium of seventeen journals New members meet in Heidelberg dedicate their time to an EMBO Committee across six publishers (see box) have joined the Fellowships: from stipends to contracts Pages 14 – 15 and what they took away from the experience. n December 2019, EMBO, in partnership with decide to submit their work to a journal, it will project by committing to use the Review Commons Page 7 When EMBO was created, the focus lay ASAPbio, launched Review Commons, a multi- allow editors to make efficient editorial decisions referee reports for their independent editorial deci- specifically on fostering cross-border inter- Ipublisher partnership which aims to stream- based on existing referee comments. sions, and to seek only minimal additional expert EMBO Committees in the spotlight actions between molecular biologists across line scientific publishing by peer-reviewing input. If the editors decide to reject the work, the Europe. Today, we focus on supporting and research manuscripts in the life sciences before authors can reuse the peer review evaluation for Pages 8 – 9 connecting the life sciences community world- they are submitted to a journal. AFFILIATED JOURNALS submission to another journal. In this way, Review wide. It is therefore a particular pleasure to Papers submitted to Review Commons will Commons reduces re-reviewing at multiple jour- announce in this issue our 27 new Young be assessed by expert referees without regard nals and accelerates publishing. Investigators as well as the first nine Global to any journal to which they might ultimately "We are pleased to have such a strong group of Investigators. be submitted, and will be judged exclusively community-minded academic journals joining this With the aim of driving positive change for their scientific rigour and merit.Review ambitious project,” said Maria Leptin, Director of for the life science community, we recent- Commons will enable authors to publicly post EMBO. “We all share the desire to work with scien- ly announced two initiatives in scientific the reviews and their own response to them on tists to address important issues in peer review: A decade of transparent peer review publishing: In October we made our journals' the preprint server bioRxiv and to submit their transparency, objectivity, and efficiency." finances public to provide transparency about reviewed manuscript to one of the journals affili- Pages 16 – 17 what it costs to publish in high quality, selec- ated with Review Commons. Looking to the future tive journals (pages 10-11). In December we Review Commons is supported by a grant to The publishing costs at EMBO EMBO community launched Review Commons, which will offer Avoiding wasted reviews ASAPbio from The Leona M. and Harry B. Page 10 – 11 independent and high-quality peer review In the traditional scholarly publishing process, Helmsley Charitable Trust and is operated by Updates from across Europe before journal submission (page 3). reviewers evaluate manuscripts after submission EMBO Press. During an initial evaluation peri- Would you consider submitting your to a journal. Beyond the requirement for techni- od, the partners will monitor the efficacy of the Pages 18 – 20 manuscript to Review Commons? Once you cal rigour, editors and reviewers tend to be most service and share results with the community in tried it, what was your experience with it? As concerned about whether the work meets the an effort to promote broader improvements to always, we are very interested in engaging in subjective criteria of the journal. If the paper is peer review. After this period, and as warranted Awards and publications discussion about our activities. I look forward rejected, the peer reviews are typically not reused by the evaluation outcomes, Review Commons Achievements and papers by members of to your feedback. by another journal. In this way, journal rejections could expand to include additional partners, both across all fields waste an estimated 15 million journals and preprint servers. the EMBO community Maria Leptin, hours of reviewer time each year and contribute “Review Commons has the potential to demon- Page 21 Director, EMBO to long publication delays for authors and read- strate a path toward a more open, time- and ers.[1][2] resource-efficient future for scholarly communica- Molecular Systems Biology: Review Commons aims to accelerate and tion, as well as being compatible with the existing EMBO events streamline the process of publishing by conduct- journals’ publishing system,” said EMBO Associate a new Chief Editor ing high-quality, in-depth peer review of manu- Member and ASAPbio President Ron Vale. Page 12 Upcoming courses, workshops and scripts before journal submission. Peer reviewers conferences will be asked to evaluate the technical rigour of www.reviewcommons.org Page 22 the work, make suggestions for improvements, and comment on the potential value of the work [1] Peer Review: How We Found 15 Million Hours to specific communities. of Lost Time | AJE. https://www.aje.com/arc/ Fresh from EMBO Press Authors can direct Review Commons to post peer-review-process-15-million-hours-lost-time/ reviews and their own responses to bioRxiv [2] Vale, Ronald D. “Accelerating Scientific Five of EMBO’s latest publications at a glance through the server’s new Transparent Review in Publication in Biology.” www.pnas.org, Page 23 Preprints (TRiP) project, where it will provide rich doi:10.1073/pnas.1511912112. context for readers of their preprint. If authors 2 EMBOencounters | Winter 2019/2020 | [email protected] ©2020 EMBO ©2020 EMBO EMBOencounters | Winter 2019/2020 | [email protected] 3 EMBO NEWS EMBO NEWS Welcoming the Young Investigators of 2019 27 life scientists join the EMBO Young Investigator Network Alexey Amunts Tuncay Baubec Petter Brodin Cécile Charrier Bert De Rybel Daniele Fachinetti Elif Nur Firat-Karalar Function and regulation of Principles of protein epigenetic patterns Shaping of human immune Mechanisms and human- Unravelling plant Impact of centromeric Spatiotemporal regula- EMBO congratulates 27 life scientists synthesis and folding in Zürich, CH systems by environmental specific regulations of synaptic vascular development DNA on centromere tion of the centrosome- organelles influences early in life development and plasticity Ghent, BE formation and integrity cilium complex on their selection as new EMBO Solna, SE Solna, SE Paris, FR Paris, FR Istanbul, TR Young Investigators. They join a network of 129 current and 340 former Young Investigators. During their four-year programme tenure The programme EMBO will provide financial and practical support, as well as training at a glance and networking opportunities. During their four-year tenure, EMBO Young Yaron Fuchs Paul Guichard Martin Guilliams Edouard Hannezo Ping-Chih Ho Harnessing stem cell apop- Architecture and Tissue signals and transcrip- Physical principles of biologi- Immunometabolic editing Investigators receive a range of benefits: “Each of the new Young Investigators tosis for tissue regeneration assembly of the tion factors driving Kupffer cal systems in facilitating immune has demonstrated their ability to carry Haifa, IL centriole cell differentiation Klosterneuburg, AT evasion in melanomas Support for Young Investigators Geneva, CH Ghent, BE Lausanne, CH ➔ 15,000 euros award out research at the highest level, and ➔ Up to 10,000 euros additional funding it is a pleasure to welcome them to ➔ Childcare support the EMBO community,” says EMBO ➔ EMBO Research Leadership course Director Maria Leptin. “The first years as an independent researcher Support for their labs and lab members ➔ Young Investigator PhD course and local courses can be a particularly challenging time ➔ Meeting grants and Nobel laureate meeting in a scientist’s career, and we look ➔ Visits to other labs Jan Philipp Junker Siddhesh Kamat Wanda Kukulski Madeline Lancaster Prisca Liberali forward to supporting these twenty- ➔ Systematic analysis of A chemoproteomics and How molecular architec- Development of human brain Self-organization during Access to EMBL core facilities seven researchers in establishing variability and plasticity in metabolomics
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