[BIC-announce] FW: NeuroImage and Imaging Neuroscience

[Sridar Narayanan, Dr.]

For those of you who haven’t heard already…

From: Managing editor <managing-editor at imaging-neuroscience.org>
Reply-To: "managing-editor at imaging-neuroscience.org" <managing-editor at imaging-neuroscience.org>
Date: Wednesday, May 24, 2023 at 10:02 AM
To: "stephen.smith at ndcn.ox.ac.uk" <stephen.smith at ndcn.ox.ac.uk>
Subject: NeuroImage and Imaging Neuroscience

You don't often get email from managing-editor at imaging-neuroscience.org. Learn why this is important<https://aka.ms/LearnAboutSenderIdentification>

Dear Colleague

We are writing to you about a recent big change in the neuroimaging world. Although this has been announced and discussed on twitter and email lists, we know that some colleagues may not be aware of these events - therefore, we are emailing this one-time update to all corresponding author email addresses appearing on NeuroImage papers from the last 10 years. We hope that you find this email useful - but if not, please be reassured that we do not currently expect to send another mass email of this kind. The following is largely taken from our public announcement in mid-April, plus some updates on progress with the new journal, Imaging Neuroscience. We would be grateful if you could forward this email to your colleagues, and we very much hope you will submit your work to Imaging Neuroscience!

Many thanks, Stephen Smith, Editor-in-Chief, Imaging Neuroscience.

Summary:    NeuroImage has long been the leading journal focusing on imaging neuroscience, with both the highest impact factor and the largest number of papers published annually. NeuroImage’s editorial team had tried to convince Elsevier to reduce the publication fee from $3,450, as we believe large profit is unethical and unsustainable. Elsevier is unwilling to reduce the fee; therefore, with great regret, all editors (more than 40 academic editors) of NeuroImage and NeuroImage:Reports have resigned. We have started Imaging Neuroscience, a new non-profit Open Access journal with MIT Press, that intends to replace NeuroImage as our field’s leading journal. We are already handling new submissions at imaging-neuroscience.org and are aiming to start publishing papers in July.

Background and APC    NeuroImage was started in 1992. It published almost 1,000 articles per year and currently has an impact factor of 7.4. NeuroImage became fully OA (Open Access) in 2020. NeuroImage:Reports is a companion-journal started in 2021, promoting the publication of null findings and article types such as Registered Reports. Elsevier set the NeuroImage APC (article processing charge) at $3,450 USD. Scientists and funders increasingly feel that it is wrong for publishers to make very high profits, particularly given that the publishers do not fund the original science, or the writing of articles, or payments to reviewers, and pay minimal editorial stipends. As a result, authors and reviewers are increasingly refusing to work with high-profit journals.

APC discussions with Elsevier    In June 2022 the NeuroImage editors formally requested that Elsevier reduce the APC to under $2,000. As no reduction was offered, we wrote again in March 2023 explaining that we would all resign and start a new journal if the APC was not reduced. In April, Elsevier responded to all editors stating that the APC would not be reduced because they believe that market forces support the current APC.

Resignation and handling of current submissions    As a result, all editors (more than 40 Handling Editors, Associate Editors, Senior Editors, and Editors-in-Chief) across the two journals have resigned. To avoid adverse impact on authors of papers under current consideration, we will continue to handle ongoing papers that were submitted before our resignation. However, we will not handle new submissions; currently, Elsevier are using new internal staff to handle those. At present the editors at NeuroImage:Clinical have decided to stay on with Elsevier, though they have expressed public support for our move to reduce publication fees.

New non-profit journal, Imaging Neuroscience    The outgoing NeuroImage/NeuroImage:Reports editors have collectively started a new Open Access, non-profit journal, published by MIT Press. The APC will be held as low as possible: the initial APC will be $1600, which we hope to lower further as the economy of scale improves over time, and/or if we are able to obtain philanthropic sponsorsip. The APC will be waived for low- or middle-income countries. Our ambition is for Imaging Neuroscience to replace NeuroImage as the top journal in our field, focusing on imaging of the brain and spinal cord, in humans and other species, also including neurophysiological and stimulation methods. The overall scope, quality level and entire editorial team is the same as it had been at NeuroImage (combined with the editorial team from NeuroImage:Reports).

Our regret and conviction    Our editorial team wishes to be clear that we resigned with great regret. We love our field, and are immensely proud that NeuroImage has represented the very best of our science. The editors have invested enormous effort into NeuroImage over many years, and none of us wanted to see it disappear. We have an extremely committed set of editors who are leaders in our field - a very special and highly functional team. We were torn between wanting NeuroImage to continue as our top journal vs our conviction that we need to take a stand on unjustifiable publisher profits. We believe that journals like NeuroImage cannot succeed in the long-term, and we agree with researchers worldwide who increasingly object to unreasonably high costs of publication and access. We therefore believe strongly that we are taking the right action. In that regard, we are reassured by having full explicit support for our action from the four most recent past NeuroImage Editors-in-Chief: Michael Breakspear (Newcastle, Australia), Peter Bandettini (NIH, USA), Paul Fletcher (Cambridge, UK), and Karl Friston (UCL, UK).

Our hope for the future    We are committed to Imaging Neuroscience not only being the top journal in our field, but also demonstrating the way forward in non-profit publishing. Although we appreciate that commercial publishers need to make some profit, we feel that the era of extreme levels of profit made by some publishers is coming to an end. We are very excited about the new journal. Support for our move has been tremendous - our resignation announcement tweet in April has been viewed 2M times, and resulted in 1200 researchers signing up to become reviewers for Imaging Neuroscience within a week. It also elicited coverage by both scientific and popular media (including Nature News and Times Higher Ed). While we had not anticipated this strength of response, we are proud that our action is garnering attention outside our immediate field. Comments have been overwhelmingly positive, with many also stating that they will no longer submit to or review for NeuroImage.

The original announcement was signed by all editors:    Stephen Smith (Oxford, UK), Til Ole Bergmann (Johannes Gutenberg, Mainz, Germany), Birte Forstmann (Amsterdam, Netherlands), Alain Dagher (McGill, Montreal, Canada), Shella Keilholz (Emory / Georgia Tech, USA), Kristen Kennedy (UT Dallas, USA), Sonja Kotz (Maastricht, Netherlands), Cindy Lustig (University of Michigan, USA), Bruce Pike (University of Calgary, Canada), Marc Tittgemeyer (Cologne, Germany), Mark Woolrich (Oxford, UK), Thomas Yeo (NUS, Singapore), Andrew Alexander (Madison, Wisconsin, USA), Janine Bijsterbosch (Wash U, St Louis, USA), Tjeerd Boonstra (Maastricht, Netherlands), Mallar Chakravarty (Quebec, Canada), Chris Chambers (Cardiff, UK), Catie Chang (Vanderbilt, USA), Bradley Christian (Madison, Wisconsin, USA), Sarang Dalal (Aarhus, Denmark), Nai Ding (Zhejiang, Hangzhou, China), Audrey Duarte (UT Austin, USA), Audrey Fan (UC Davis, USA), Alexandre Gramfort (Paris-Saclay, France), Gesa Hartwigsen (University of Leipzig and MPI-CBS Leipzig, Germany), Mbemba Jabbi (UT Austin, USA), Ulrike Krämer (Lübeck, Germany), Martin Lindquist (Johns Hopkins, USA), Jean-Francois Mangin (NeuroSpin, France), Kevin Murphy (Cardiff, UK), Jonathan Polimeni (Harvard, USA), Emma Robinson (KCL, UK), Monica Rosenberg (University of Chicago, USA), Sepideh Sadaghiani (UIUC, Illinois, USA), Mohamed Seghier (Khalifa University, UAE), Yen-Yu Ian Shih (UNC Chapel Hill, USA), Axel Thielscher (TU Denmark, Denmark), Lucina Uddin (UCLA, USA), Dimitri Van De Ville (EPFL and UNIGE, Switzerland), Wim Vanduffel (KU Leuven, Belgium), Chao-Gan Yan (CAS, Beijing, China), Anastasia Yendiki (Harvard, USA).






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