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Ensuring the quality of data published in JBC is a team effort

Publishing a research article is a multi-stage endeavor. Most researchers are aware of the early stages when they identify an important question in their scientific field, design experiments and methods to address the question, gather data, develop interpretations, and write up their findings for publication. The next stage is quite familiar too: A review process unfolds once a paper is submitted with a goal of assessing the quality of the experiments and determining if the conclusions are compelling (1). But, there are later stages that are crucial to the publication workflow at JBC! We want the content of JBC to meet the highest standards of data quality. Consequently, we invest a great deal of time and energy to ensure that readers can trust the results reported in JBC. We are writing this editorial to describe these later and less familiar stages in the manuscript-handling process at JBC and to de-mystify the steps we take post-review to quality control our published content. To ensure data integrity and to improve figure presentation when needed, the JBC has implemented image screening in all manuscripts accepted after the peer-review step as part of the publication process (2). One driving factor in adding the screening step was to enhance the author experience by having staff dedicated to helping authors prepare publication quality figures, with the added benefit of improving the overall figure quality. Moreover, we realized that we needed to be more proactive in scrutinizing the science we publish. First, correcting the published literature appropriately is a time-consuming process, and by screening images before final acceptance, we anticipated that we could drastically reduce the number of postpublication corrections, withdrawals, and retractions. More importantly, by including this step, we hoped to increase scientific reproducibility and maintain the integrity of the Journal. We want readers to trust the validity of the science published in the JBC. Finally, with this check, the JBC joined the ranks of other publishers who have been pioneers in data integrity, such as Rockefeller University Press, the American Physiological Society, the American Society for Microbiology, and EMBO Press. With the above in mind, we have assembled a team consisting of the two of us and two other talented individuals John Kennan and Hugo Minera, with backgrounds in print production and illustration, respectively. Having a team comprising both scientists and graphic artists has created powerful synergy by combining technical skills of evaluating images and constructing usable figure files with strong scientific expertise. So, what does this process look like in practice? After a manuscript is reviewed and the Associate Editor decides to accept a manuscript at the editorial level, authors are notified that their manuscript is “tentatively accepted for publication.” This e-mail signals that their manuscript will be sent for an image analysis check and that they may be contacted by an Image Analyst for revisions. There are a number of checks the Image Analysts perform to ensure that the figures will convey the scientific message clearly and reproduce well when published. For example: