Editorial board

For many years, the ISJ has been included within the quaintly named "basket" of eight (Bo8) premier journals, an endeavour of the Association for Information Systems' (AIS) College of Senior Scholars (CSS)1 to single out the top journals in the field of Information Systems (IS). At its 2019 meeting in Munich, concerns were expressed that the Bo8's editorial boards were insufficiently diverse and as a result the CSS commissioned a task force to investigate the extent to which the editorial boards of the eight journals reflected the diversity of the AIS itself. The task force chose to define "editorial board" as meaning the people most directly connected with managing submitted articles, that is, the Senior and Associate Editors of a journal, but excluded the advisory board or a more general list of reviewers. It collected publicly-available data (primarily from journal and individual websites), and also consulted with the editors of the eight journals, before compiling a report that is available from the CSS website2 and that has been recently published as Beath et al. (2021). In this editorial, I deal with the report insofar as it pertains to the ISJ. I chart the current state of diversity in the ISJ's editorial board, but also take issue with some of the parameters of the report itself and suggest alternative ways of examining diversity. Finally, I outline some of my plans for further diversification of the ISJ and the ways in which this diversity can be measured. The ideas in and structure of this editorial have been significantly informed by Monideepa Tarafdar (senior editor at the ISJ) and Cynthia Beath (a member of the journal's advisory board and a forthright supporter of the journal). Benchmarking diversity lies at the heart of the CSS Diversity report. As Beath et al. (2021) note, "Editorial board diversity, we believe, is a signal that the journal is open to and inclusive of all authors". The task force decided to limit its assessment of diversity to three demographic indicators, viz. gender, regional and ethnic diversity. Diversity was benchmarked on the data of the 3210 individuals who were paid-up Academic members of the AIS on 31/12/2019. Thus, the diversity of the editorial boards of the Bo8 as a whole and of the eight journals individually were compared to the diversity of AIS Academic members in terms of gender (actually sex, i.e., female or male), AIS region (1, 2 or 3) of current employment, and ethnicity.3 While gender and region of current employment are automatically collected by the AIS as part of membership demographics, ethnicity data was manually created by one of the task force members and mapped onto a simplified template that was restricted to terms adapted from the US census: (a) Chinese, (b) Indian subcontinent, (c) other Asian, (d) Black/African descent, (e) Caucasian/European descent, (f) Middle Eastern descent, (g) Hispanic (only in Region 1 because the term is largely meaningless elsewhere) and (h) Other (e.g., indigenous). In Table 1 below, AIS data for these various demographic indicators are compared with ISJ data (the 68 SEs and AEs of the ISJ, current on 1 January 2021) for the same indicators. Beath et al. (2021) report a similar analysis for all eight journals (with data collected in January 2020) that includes standard deviations, but Table 1 is sufficient for the current purposes. Eyeballing the data in this way is instructive. Superficially, it appears that while the ISJ's gender proportions are roughly in line with the AIS benchmark (in contrast to the basket as a whole), we have too few editorial board members from region 1 (while the basket has too many), too many from region 2 (the basket is about right) and about the right number from region 3 (the basket has too few). Where ethnicity is concerned, we have too many Chinese, too few other Asians (e.g., Thai, Korean, Japanese, Burmese, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Malay, etc.), Caucasians/of European descent and of Middle Eastern descent, and about the right number of Black/of African descent, Indian subcontinent and Hispanic. My immediate observation when I saw the numbers was to think that hitting any of the AIS benchmarks would be entirely fortuitous: while we certainly champion diversity across all aspects of the ISJ and have deliberately sought to bring in more people from historically under-represented groups, we do not deliberately attempt to emulate AIS proportions, hitherto unknown. Indeed, as the AIS membership evolves, so the proportions will evolve and thus any target is going to be a moving one. Nevertheless, I would like to see more diversity in general, and not for a small number of ethnicities to dominate. The AIS CSS report makes six recommendations for change to the CSS itself, 5 to the AIS, and 15 for the consideration of the Bo8 journal editors. I do not plan to list or address all 15 here, but I do note that one of the recommendations is that editors should establish diversity and inclusion indicators that are appropriate for each journal and then to set measurable targets related to those indicators. I caution here that while the AIS benchmarks are instructive they are also limited in their scope. However, I agree that each journal editor should identify a set of diversity and inclusion indicators that make sense in the context of the journal and its readership. Extending these indicators beyond the three that the Task Force has relied on in this report is necessary. An important aspect of the AIS CSS report, and it is one that I share, is the belief that diversity is a good thing. My interpretation of the "diversity is good" argument is that when we include a wider range of perspectives, we will make better decisions and thus enhance quality. We will also demonstrate the openness of the journal to a diversity of authors. Thus, while I am generally in favour of indicators as useful ways of thinking about diversity, and there are many indicators in this editorial, I feel that hard targets are risky because it means that we embark on the slippery slope that leads to quotas and bean counting, both of which I wish to avoid. Nevertheless, I report data for the ISJ below so as to provide an indication of the current situation with respect to various indicators. Readers can decide for themselves if more specific targets are warranted. A second area relates to transparency: journal editors need to report on their diversity and inclusion statistics somewhere, either on the journal website or else in some other public way, such as this editorial, which is freely accessible from the ISJ website. I plan to update these data on an annual basis, either in future editorials or elsewhere on the ISJ website. While the level of diversity in the ISJ is high (at least according to the AIS indicators), it could be higher, particularly with regard to the extent to which minority groups are represented. The same comment, of course, applies to the AIS itself. Achieving a higher level of diversity will require attention to a range of indicators that I outline below. However, diversity must never come at the expense of merit: we expect that SEs and AEs will fit and enhance the ethos of the journal. I have no intention of descending to the point where I cherry pick individuals exclusively for their contribution to a diversity indicator irrespective of other attributes of their suitability for the position. This brings me to a more detailed critique of the AIS report and data. Firstly, I find that the AIS region and ethnicity coding to be coarse: just three regions and eight ethnic groups. Splitting AIS members into (only) three regions conceals a huge lack of diversity. The vast majority (88%) of Region 1 AIS members live in one country, the USA, but as a journal editor, I would like to seek submissions from authors distributed across the region. This will have an impact on targets: while I think we do need more Region 1 editorial board members, they do not all have to come from the USA. They should come from across the region. Thus, I plan to search for potential SEs and AEs from all countries within Region 1. To that end, I recently appointed an AE from Brazil and I am actively seeking other qualified individuals. A similar problem exists in Region 2, where the vast majority of AIS members work in Western Europe, with very few in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and all of Africa. The almost complete absence of African scholars grossly limits the diversity of the AIS. A similar pattern applies to the ISJ editorial board, and while we do have African scholars on the ISJ editorial board, none of them currently live in Africa. Finally, Region 3 has better diversity data both among AIS members and with respect to ISJ editorial board members, who come from various parts of Asia and Australasia, though none from the Pacific Islands at the time of writing. That said, while we do have Indian scholars among our SEs and AEs, none of them actually live in India and only one received her PhD from India. Diversity is not just gender, country of birth and ethnicity: it is also where one studied, was professionally socialised, where one lives, works and breathes. Thus, using the region of employment or residence but not the natal origin or the location of postgraduate study as the basis of regional classification is quite problematic because the AIS regions are so large and conceal so much diversity. I do not find the AIS regions a good proxy for anything very useful except the most general kind of assessment of where editorial board members live. As I argue below, the actual state of diversity in the ISJ's editorial board is much richer than the data in the AIS CSS report suggests. But what we need to do is to examine some different aspects of the diversity. My first step was to look at the country of current employment, the country where a PhD was obtained and the natal origin (country) of the ISJ's SEs and AEs. This is presented in Table 2 below. Here, a more detailed picture emerges, with 36 countries indicated. Our editorial board members live in 16 countries, earned their PhDs in 17 countries and have natal origins in 29 countries. While 24% of our editorial board members were born in, studied in and now live in the same country, most of them moved at some stage, which I suspect parallels behaviour across the AIS more generally. Considering our SEs and AEs, some stayed at home to study and then moved away (11%) while others moved away to study and then returned (8%). Others moved away to study and then stayed there (32%). A final group moved away to study and then moved elsewhere to work (24%). These figures attest to a global diversity of the ISJ's editorial board in a way that is not captured by the AIS benchmark comparative data. However, a new bias emerges here: while 26 SEs/AEs were born in the global south (developing countries), only two received their PhDs in the global south and only five currently live in the global south. This is a matter for some concern, though it probably reflects global educational movements and cannot easily be addressed at the scale of one journal. Beyond editorial board data, I also felt that it would be instructive to examine the provenance of our authors. Who are they? Where do they live? Obtaining raw data from manuscript central is not too difficult, but parsing it by gender is not at all simple and prone to error. Although genderizing software programmes exist, these tend to be more accurate with "western" names that often tend to be gender specific, and tend to be much less accurate with non-western names. For instance, the Chinese name that is rendered as "Li Li" in the Roman alphabet (i.e., family name and given name are both Li), could involve a number of different characters in Chinese, and so could be male or female. Here are some examples: 李俐, 李力, 黎莉, 黎厉, 厉俪. All five would be romanised as Li Li (in Mandarin), but the act of romanisation removes any way of even guessing at the gender based on the characters. Incidentally, the first, third and fifth are more likely to be female, while the second and fourth are more likely to be male, but these are not absolute. Sometimes females have "male" names and vice versa. Since manuscript central only captures the romanised form, it is impossible to determine gender unless someone does an intensive search for the named individual and ideally finds a photograph or some other gender-identifiable evidence on the Internet, such as a website that uses the male or female personal pronoun. An easier solution is that we ask ScholarOne to request the inclusion of gender when a paper is submitted. However, this is controversial: some believe that the submission of gender data should never be mandatory and indeed, in some countries, it is illegal to collect it. Despite these genderising challenges, I attempted to assess the gender distribution of submissions to ISJ, in response to a request that I look for change in gender distribution of submissions to the journal pre- and during-pandemic. I was able to assign genders to the first authors of 95% of the papers submitted in March–May of 2019 and in the same months of 2020. The results showed that the gender distribution in 2019 was very similar to the gender distribution among AIS Academic members: 35% female/65% male. In 2020, the proportion of submissions from females was actually higher: 40% female/60% male. While this is a very limited analysis of the gender distribution of submitters to ISJ, it does suggest that even during challenging times, the journal is attracting significant submissions from females. Nevertheless, manuscript central data for the ISJ do indicate the country from which the first author is submitting and this provides a very rough indicator of geographical diversity. Therefore, I downloaded the metadata for all submissions to the ISJ from 2011–2020, that is, 10 years of data. This reveals that we have received 2933 submissions from first authors working in 95 countries. See Table 3. Although 95 countries seem to provide considerable evidence of diversity, only 11 of them are in AIS Region 1, while 63 are in Region 2 and 21 are in Region 3. [AIS itself has members from 14 Region 1 countries, 63 Region 2 countries and 22 Region 3 countries]. Within Region 2, 16 countries in Africa are represented among our submitting authors [There are AIS members from 18 countries in Africa]. Where accepted papers are concerned, the situation is not quite so diverse (see Table 4). Over the same 10-year period, we accepted papers from authors based in 28 countries: three in Region 1 (only one, Brazil, is outside North America), 16 in Region 2 (though none from Africa) and 9 in Region 3. On balance, I feel that this more detailed analysis presents a richer picture of the diversity of the ISJ, but there is still room for improvement. The fact that we have submitting authors from 95 countries, and have accepted papers from authors located in 28 countries, sounds impressive, but there is no basis for comparison with other journals. What is critical is that authors should feel welcome, no matter who they are, where they come from, what kind of IS research they do. This spirit of inclusiveness is what diversity really means. It may be that we cannot accept their papers, but at the very least, we must offer constructive feedback that will help them to enhance the quality of their research and writing. This is something that we already do, and indeed I am positively biased to appoint AEs and SEs on the basis of such constructive reviews and reports, because they demonstrate affiliation with the journal's mission. Having a globally distributed editorial board helps if those board members promote the ISJ in their own communities as a desirable journal in which to publish, and as a journal that will give them constructive feedback. In appointing an AE or SE, while the ability of the individual to perform in this role at a high level is essential, I am also interested in the network of the individual concerned. AEs often assign papers to be reviewed by colleagues in their network. AEs and SEs can also promote the journal within their network. Thus, greater diversity in the editorial board is likely to lead to greater diversity in the submitting authors. This is a worthwhile objective. I hope that the AIS CSS will consider a more sophisticated analysis of diversity in future years. Finally, I come to the tricky issue of identifying diversity and inclusion indicators. As I mentioned above, I am loath to be too specific: I do not think it is sensible for us to set precise quotas for any particular AIS region, gender or location of current work. Nevertheless, I do consider that the current levels of diversity (on multiple indicators) are not only respectable and appropriate for the journal, but also self-sustaining. We have excellent networks among authors and reviewers, ensuring that the ISJ will continue to attract suitably qualified individuals in multiple roles. Nevertheless, I recognise that we have few editorial board members who either received their PhDs in or live in the global south: I am striving to appoint more. The AIS CSS Task Force suggested that editors appoint AEs on a trial basis with some mentoring from more senior members of the editorial board. I find that this is a sensible suggestion that fits well with an SE-AE structure, such that we need to be open to new junior AEs, so long as they are mentored by more senior SEs. Including junior AEs from the global south will be an effective way of ensuring that our diversity extends beyond the developed countries. Indeed, I suggest that the AIS CSS Task Force consider a 6-region split, with separate identification of developed and developing countries (global north and global south) in each of the current AIS regions. This will encourage journal editors to consider how they can achieve diversity in a more nuanced way than the current 3-way split. Where gender is concerned, if anything we should be looking to appoint more female board members since we expect the AIS proportions to shift towards parity over time. Overall, I believe that the ISJ will be best served by a variety of people in SE and AE roles across multiple indicators. If our SEs and AEs perfectly matched the AIS benchmarks for gender, location and ethnicity, but had received their professional training in a small group of countries/universities, spoke the same language, subscribed to the same epistemological beliefs and undertook the same kind of research, then that would not count as a diverse editorial board in my view. I note that while approximately half of our SEs and AEs received their PhDs and currently work in countries where English is the "national language", less than 14% were born in a country where English is the "national language". This in part reflects the global educational migrations that I referred to earlier. It also suggests that well over 80% of our SEs and AEs have successfully made that transition from a first language other-than-English to succeed in an English-dominated academic culture. I regard this as a valid aspect of diversity that we need to uphold and celebrate. I also hope that these non-native English speakers will be more understanding of the difficulties that similar authors face, will be constructive and developmental in their reviews and reports and will encourage them to submit to the ISJ. A polyglot editorial board is an asset to the journal and is something we should maintain or enhance. As I mentioned above, I believe that a diverse editorial board will help us to attract a diverse set of authors (and for that matter readers). At this point, I will also mention the editorial advisory board, which for the ISJ consists of 36 people. Many of them are associated with the same countries as the editorial board, but to that list of 36 countries, I can and It is my hope that the editorial advisory board members actively encourage potential authors to submit to the ISJ, where and so actively to the diversity of the journal. All the to this point has diversity as by multiple of demographic indicators. I suggest that this is are also indicators to which we have not the of a submitting is a journal open to and of different of research, different different epistemological It is for an editor to a of But how does that of openness into the papers that are submitted to and accepted for Here, I see two indicators, each of which is though with some Firstly, what are the of of the editorial board At the ISJ, we do collect this each AE and SE is to provide to 10 that identify We this to assign Since the are there is a considerable and many But in terms of diversity, I would like our editorial board members to be diverse to be able to any paper that is within and that is submitted to the ISJ. At the time of we have and I consider that this indicator is with further diversification not At the same it is important that members of the be very with authors should not have to the on of for instance, since an accepted should not include a to the that is The may be for an that makes an at the ISJ, we have recently the as a new of how diverse is the research that is actually submitted and Although it would not be hard to a of research though it would be more to each to this Nevertheless, such an would certainly have the of what is what we and what we I would not to do this analysis for submitted but it could be for each submitted and each published in the 10 years. However, such a will take more time than I have at my at least for the time Finally, I have to that each journal has its It would be if all journals with the same the same the same people. as diversity and inclusiveness are journals need to maintain their individual often a journal to submit to because of that indeed, I encourage authors to an with a specific journal in since if the fit is good then the of is In this issue of the ISJ, we In the first et al. (2021) the problem of and context in research in IS and the potential of research They argue that many of the associated with research are and also to their and They further argue that these may in the if do not actively on how they the research They a research for research, research as a and on three levels of and In the second and (2021) how when of their They on and study the a which is both for personal and in for professional purposes. from they that when they will using the a or their The authors to the a to they identify that are for than and they the that these In the third and (2021) examine which both an state of and how that state is with the in the context of a study with and data, the authors that with and a while and and and actual to The study to the of the by the new of based on a and that that many are an the and the of a In the fourth et al. (2021) how using as a for individuals identify has But is about how individuals to potential The authors related to from a the number of an was as the of the reports, the of the on and the of the The results showed that work to encourage and the most on related to to and with I am to my colleagues at the ISJ and elsewhere for their to multiple of this Cynthia Monideepa

A New Era

DOAJ is a unique and extensive index of diverse open access journals from around the world, driven by a growing community, committed to ensuring quality content is freely available online for everyone.

Starting with this issue, the Editorial duties for the JCI move to Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As we begin our five-year tenure at the helm of this prestigious journal, the tradition of excellence that these two schools typically display on the basketball court now enters the editorial boardroom.

In the current era of evidence-based medicine, scientific publications play a crucial role in guiding patient care. While the lack of diversity among orthopaedic surgeons has been well documented, little is known about the diversity of orthopaedic journal editorial boards. The purpose of this study was to assess the racial/ethnic and gender diversity of U.S. orthopaedic journal editorial boards. The editorial boards of 13 orthopaedic journals were examined, including 10 subspecialty and 3 general orthopaedic journals. Race/ethnicity and gender were determined for each editorial board member. The representation observed on orthopaedic journal editorial boards was compared with representation at other phases of the orthopaedic pipeline, as well as within the various subspecialty fields of orthopaedics. Logistic regression and t tests were used to evaluate these comparisons. We identified 876 editorial board members of the 13 journals; 14.0% were Asian, 1.9% were Black, 1.9% were Hispanic, 2.4% were multiracial/other, and 79.7% were White. Racial/ethnic representation was similar across the subspecialty fields of orthopaedics (p > 0.05). The representation of women on orthopaedic editorial boards was 7.9%, with differences in gender diversity observed across subspecialty fields (p < 0.05). Among journals in the subspecialty fields of spine and trauma, female editorial board representation was lower than expected, even after taking into account the representation of women in these subspecialty fields (2.0% versus 9.0% [p = 0.002] and 3.8% versus 10.0% [p = 0.03], respectively). In this study of 13 subspecialty and general orthopaedic journals, the representation of racial/ethnic minorities and women on editorial boards was similar to their representation in academic orthopaedics. However, these values remain low in comparison with the population of patients treated by orthopaedic surgeons. Given the importance of scientific publications in the current era of evidence-based medicine, orthopaedic journals should continue working to diversify the membership of their editorial boards.

Editorial Policy

Editorial: Twenty‐Five Years Later…

PD33-05 A SEAT AT THE TABLE: AN 18 YEAR ANALYSIS OF FEMALE REPRESENTATION ON UROLOGIC JOURNAL EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERSHIP

Gender representation on editorial boards of leading oncology journals

The Australian Occupational Therapy Journal (AOTJ) is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), an organisation that supports editors, editorial boards, and publishers to ensure a culture of ethical practices. In accordance, the publication arrangements and policies of the journal must be ethically sound and transparent. It is particularly important that AOTJ, a society journal working with both Occupational Therapy Australia and the publisher Wiley, establish governance practices that are clear and transparent. The editorials within this volume of AOTJ have spoken to quality and research integrity, and it is time to take an inward view. The introduction of a publicly advertised expression of interest for board membership in late 2019 was a first step in creating transparent processes. A new structure was created within the editorial board: the Associate Editors continue to assist the Editor-in-Chief with the management of submitted manuscripts; and the Editorial Board Members (EBM) provide support for initiatives and reviews. The role of EBM supports new members to learn the business of the journal, including governance and publishing ethics, prior to their entry into role of Associate Editor and manuscript management. All members of the editorial board now have terms of appointment to support a regular turnover of members while ensuring continuity of knowledge and succession planning. The members of the editorial board are volunteers for Occupational Therapy Australia, and we are building a system of governance while recognising the importance of editorial independence. We are introducing an induction process for all new members to clearly outline journal policies and processes, code of conduct expectations, confidentiality statements, etc. The induction process includes a conflict of interest declaration and the board is examining how to manage conflicts of interest within meetings, management of manuscripts, and publishing. An upcoming, independently facilitated session will further develop our understanding of conflicts of interest in the context of a journal editorial board. As incoming Editor-in-Chief, I gave due consideration to perceived or actual conflicts of interest and implemented the following approaches early in 2020. Firstly, I consider that I have a conflict of interest during editorial and review processes for other occupational therapy journals. I have therefore made myself unavailable for the duration of my term with AOTJ. Secondly, I have identified a perceived conflict of interest for manuscripts submitted to the journal with a current colleague or collaborator as an author. It is now editorial policy to allocate these manuscripts to an Associate Editor for management, removing the potential for any perceived influence, and ensuring confidence in the rigorous review process and final editorial decision. The more difficult issue, for all members of the editorial board and myself as Editor-in-Chief, relates to publication within the journal. As leaders in the profession, the editorial board have collaborators and research students who wish to publish in their professional association journal. COPE advice that there are examples of when an editor may publish in their own journal but that every effort must be made to minimise bias (COPE, 2005). This advice has been applied across all members of the editorial board with the following processes. Any manuscript submitted by a member of the editorial board is managed by the Editor-in-Chief and the manuscript is reviewed by experts external to the board. Any manuscript submitted with the Editor-in-Chief listed as a co-author is automatically allocated by the publishing assistant at Wiley to an Associate Editor. The Editor-in-Chief has no access to the manuscript during any stage of the review process or the editorial decision. Finally, we are introducing a policy that any manuscript authored by members of the editorial board will include a conflict of interest statement that clearly outlines their association with the journal and how this conflict was managed during the review process. To be clear, the pursuit of ethical practices in publishing have always been a focus of the AOTJ Editorial Board. This year, with the support of Occupational Therapy Australia and Wiley, we are formalising existing policies and processes and enhancing governance practices. The AOTJ has a strong commitment to ethical and transparent practices that maintain the highest standards in publication ethics.

The history of <scp>NFOG</scp> and <i>Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica</i> 1921–2011

The Launch of PRS GO

Chaos as opportunity

INTRODUCTION: Despite substantial progress for women in medicine, women remain underrepresented in many aspects of the scholarly publication process. Appointment to an editorial board conveys a degree of prestige that may influence hiring, tenure, or promotion decisions and provides opportunities for intellectual growth and networking that can improve the quality of a research program. Women face multiple challenges in representation in medicine and our aim was to look at the representation of women in the scholarly publication process. The purpose of this study was to analyze the proportion of female representation in editorial boards of the major gastroenterology journals. METHODS: We examined the four major gastroenterology journals, American Journal of Gastroenterology, Gastroenterology, Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, and Hepatology. The editorial boards of each journal from 2020 were included. The gender of each person, and the total number of individuals as editors and on the editorial board were abstracted. The number of females on the editorial boards were compared to the total number of individuals. RESULTS: There were a total of 511 individuals across the four major journals included as editors, associate, or deputy editors and on the editorial boards of the journals. The total number of women included as associate or deputy editors varied but remained significantly below that of men. (See Figure 1). None of the editors in chiefs of the major gastroenterology journals were females. Similarly, the representation of women on editorial boards was extremely low and significantly below that of men. (See Figure 2). CONCLUSION: There were significant disparities in female representation in editorial boards across the major gastroenterology journals. Addressing these disparities may promote academic advancement for female gastroenterologists and promote greater equality of participation in the scholarly peer-review process.Figure 1

Acta Diabetologica has gone through a number of important changes this past year. First, and for the better, its Impact Factor enjoyed an impressive rise. Second, more worryingly, its authoritative and well-experienced Editorsin-Chief stepped down after achieving this rewarding result. Fortunately, Professors Guido Pozza and Renato Lauro, to whom heartfelt thanks are due for their steady guidance of the journal, will continue to make their experience available as Founding Editor and Honorary Editor, respectively. Thirdly, having been established in 1964 as Acta Diabetologica Latina, the journal celebrates its 50th birthday and is the oldest active diabetes journal in Europe. It is with such awesome thoughts in mind that this new Editor-in-Chief took charge last June. His predecessors led Acta Diabetologica to first league among Endocrine and Metabolism publications and entrusted him with the ability to continue their good work. Some of the action to this effect will go under the sign of continuity and some will have to take note of changing times. Rigorous selection of the manuscripts received by the Editorial Office will continue to be enforced, jointly with the two long-serving Managing Editors, Professors Massimo Federici and Antonio Secchi, and with old and new members of the Editorial and Advisory Boards. We shall have to be tough and maintain the current 80 % rejection rate. However, more importantly, we shall strive to be as fair as possible. This Editorial Board believes that quality is more important than quantity and that publishing good articles is better than publishing few articles. No good papers left behind should be our motto, probably not shared by all those authors who will see their submissions rejected. Alas, journal Editors do not make many friends! But a good Impact Factor is not all there is to life of journals, editors, authors, and publishers. More important is the choice of an editorial line that will do its modest share to genuinely stimulate original research in the field of human diabetes and metabolism. This may sound matter of fact but a number of signals emerging from the world of science should be taken very seriously indeed. Karl Popper based his view of scientific progress on the concept of ‘‘Falschungsmoglichkeit’’ or empirical falsification of data, meaning that current wisdom can constantly be proven false when newer concepts are applied to previous knowledge and suggesting that science tends to evolve by correcting itself [1]. But in Popper’s time, scientific research was still an educated hobby for affluent gentlemen. In his ‘‘Gattopardo,’’ Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa provides us with the memorable description of a Sicilian prince who, among other nightly enjoyments, could afford a private observatory to explore the terse skies above his land and even discover one or two new celestial objects, which he duly communicated to the learned societies of his day [2]. Until perhaps the first half of the twentieth century, many new things could be described with a lot of amateurial dedication, sharp intelligence, and relatively affordable means. Today, research is a profession, costly, competitive and requiring complex technical skills, deep knowledge and full-time dedication. Rewards derive mostly from the dissemination of one’s own results, and in today’s ‘‘publish or perish’’ environment, powerful forces tend to derail research(ers) from pursuing the straight line of advancement of knowledge for the ultimate benefit of mankind. Pressure to publish is sometimes stronger than prudence. Staff at a leading biotech firm were able to replicate the results of only 6 out of 53 landmark papers in cancer [3] M. Porta (&) Department of Medical Sciences, University of Turin, Turin, Italy e-mail: massimo.porta@unito.it