Microbiology Editors Q&A Gavin Thomas and Tracy Palmer
The Microbiology Society is proud to announce that our founding journal, Microbiology , has flipped to Open Access (OA) as of January 2023. This transformation of our most established journal demonstrates our dedication to Open Science and to sharing knowledge more widely and transparently for scholars everywhere.
A s a Society, inclusivity has always been one of our core missions, and we are bringing it to life with this flip: not only does OA allow wider access to research across the globe, but greater visibility for authors. Publishing OA with the Society can help you to: Expand your reach OA research can be read by anyone, anywhere in the world, with no restriction on reading, sharing or reusing. Increase your impact Articles published OA in Society titles get on average 3 times more citations and 4 times more usage than paywalled content, based on data from Web of Science. With Microbiology now being fully OA, what are your hopes for the journal’s impact? Microbiology has been operating as a hybrid journal for several years, with authors being given the option of making their work fully OA. Plan S, which is backed by all of the major science research funders including UKRI and Wellcome requires that hybrid journals should transfer to a full OA model in order to be compliant. It is exciting for us that Microbiology is the first hybrid journal in the Society’s stable to transition to full OA. In practice this means that publishing with us will satisfy all of the requirements of research funders, and authors can submit their work to us in full confidence that they are meeting the terms of their awards as well as supporting the discipline of microbiology. Transitioning to OA expands the journal’s readership; why is this beneficial to authors? As authors, we want our work to be read widely and cited by others. Articles published behind a paywall are by definition only accessible where an institution or individual has paid for a subscription. This limits their visibility and ultimately their utility to others. There is nothing more frustrating than reading an interesting article abstract only to find out that you cannot access the full text! Publishing your work OA expands the reach of your research to anyone who might be interested. This includes other scientists at institutions across the world, but also interested members of the public. What has been the most rewarding part of working on Microbiology ? It has been particularly rewarding to work for the journal as it celebrated its 75th year. Looking back at some of the seminal papers we have published over the years and seeing how they have influenced multiple different research fields has been a real highlight. How can members support or get involved with Microbiology ? Microbiology has broad scope, and we publish research across bacteria, archaea and eukaryotic microbes. Our wide remit means
Support your community Publishing with the Microbiology Society raises funds for grants, events and professional development for microbiologists across the world. With over 75 years of publishing advances across the field, Microbiology’s move to OA is a milestone in the Society’s Open Science future, empowering more international researchers to make an impact. We spoke with the Editor-in-Chief, Professor Gavin Thomas, and Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Professor Tracy Palmer, about this exciting transformation for the journal. that Microbiology would be a good home for research articles from many of our members, and the best way that members can support us is to publish in the journal. Members can also get involved by reviewing, for example by applying to be on the board of reviewers, or as editors. What excites you about the future of microbiology research? What most excites us about where microbiology is going is that we are now in a period when we are not afraid to study microbes in their natural complex communities, clearly helped through massive advances in genomics that give us insight into ‘who’s there’ and now enable us to ask the question ‘and what do they do’? Whether it be the gut, the skin, a plant root or an anaerobic digester, we are opening up all these black boxes which until now have been impregnable. It also forces us to consider vertical interactions in these communities from bacteriophage, bacteria, archaea and fungi to protists, and their multitude of positive and negative interactions, and makes us broader, more inclusive general microbiologists.
Gavin Thomas Editor-in-Chief, Microbiology University of York, UK gavin.thomas@york.ac.uk @GavinHThomas
Tracy Palmer Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Microbiology Newcastle University, UK tracy.palmer@newcastle.ac.uk @proftracypalme
8 Microbiology Today May 2023 | microbiologysociety.org
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