What is JMIRx? – JMIR Publications

Presentation from the Peer-Review Congress in Chicago, Sept 8, 2022 "Early Experiences of the Preprint Overlay Journal JMIRx" by Gunther Eysenbach (Abstract)

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JMIRx (jmirx.org) is a new journal series (announced end of 2019) and new type of journal, which we call "superjournals" [1]. Superjournals, as we define them, sit on top of preprint servers and organize peer-reviews and also curate (edit, copyedit, publish) the version-of-record, i.e. the final accepted version.

This workflow is sometimes referred to as PRC model, but there are substantial differences across publishers in how this is implemented; for example, more recently, the PRC model was also adopted by eLife, but the JMIR model - which precedes eLife - differs in important ways, most importantly our editors still provide a binary accept/reject decision, which eLife does not have, as a result of which eLife lost its' impact factor. In contrast, we make traditional binary editorial decisions, and are widely indexed.

The first superjournal was JMIRx-Med, launched in 2020, which now published hundreds of preprint peer-reviews, author responses, and accepted/published papers (they can be found at http://xmed.jmir.org). Our vision was to create a fully indexed journal series that can be used as a formal, indexed outlet for community-reviewed preprints.

In March 2022, JMIRx-Med was accepted as the first overlay journal in the world for PubMed Central/PubMed.

In 2023, we published the first articles in JMIRx Bio, and this new journal is now also open for submissions (editorial board members wanted!).

A Superjournal, as defined by Eysenbach [1], is a type of "overlay" journal, which is sitting on top of preprint servers and offers peer-review and copyediting/archiving/indexing, thus does everything a "normal" journal does, except that authors no longer have to submit their manuscript to a journal - instead, our community reviewers, acquisition and review editors find the papers they want to publish and extend conditional offers of publication to interesting articles published in Preprint servers, as well as soliciting reviews and commentaries. In addition to the "editorial prospecting" workflow, authors can also self-nominate their existing preprints for publication (which is the equivalent to a traditional journal submission), using a submission form that essentially only points to the preprint. Peer-review communities are alerted of preprints in their area of interest, and provide peer-review (see below for the different innovative models we are supporting). If reviewers ask for revisions, these revisions are also uploaded to the Preprint server.

We see this as the future of publishing, as predicted 20 years ago in the year 2000, when JMIR-founder Gunther Eysenbach proposed a "preprint-first" publication model [2]:

Researchers could submit type-1 electronic papers [non peer-reviewed preprints] to preprint servers for discussion and peer-review, and journal editors and publishers would pick and bid for the best papers they want to see as ‘type-2 papers’ [version of record] in their journal.” [2]

This vision was also articulated in 1999, in one of the very first editorials published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research:

Perhaps even a new generation of journals will be established - journals which do not publish primary papers themselves, but which only evaluate, weight, comment, and put into context information that has been published elsewhere on the Web. Traditionally, the primary aim of journal publishers is to establish quality control mechanisms and to establish a reputation for the reliability of their information. In the near future, publishers - without putting any ink to paper or producing another medium - may get back to this fundamental truth of publishing - to be a credible source and to establish trust, to evaluate and describe information which perhaps is already published on the Internet. [3]

The model was later refined by JMIR editorial board member Jim Till, who suggested a two-stage review process with commenting on Preprints and subsequent solicited peer-reviews if the community deems a preprint worthy of publishing [4]. It is important to understand that - in order to comply with current policies of indexing services and libraries - in our current superjournal series JMIRx we do not just publish links, but work with authors to improve the preprint and then also publish the Version-of-Record of the final paper in the journal.

More recently, 20 years after these initial proposals, this model also has been referred to as PRC (Publish - Review - Curate) [5], with "publish" referring to publication of a type-1 publication (preprint) and "curate" referring to publication of a type-2 publication (peer-reviewed, version of record) in a journal (E or F in the figure below). During the COVID19 pandemic, the adoption of preprints skyrocketed.

In 2022, Plan P was developed to create a business model for what we now call Plan P journals (journals implementing a PRC process) and freestanding peer-review services.

Starting in 2020, JMIR Publications launched the following superjournals:

JMIRx Med - sitting on top of the medRxiv preprint server and covering the subjects covered in medRxiv (launched 2020)
JMIRx Bio - sitting on top of the bioRxiv preprint server and covering the subjects covered in bioRxiv (launched in 2023)
JMIRx Psy - sitting on top of the PsyArXiv preprint server and covering the subjects covered in PsyArXiv (forthcoming)
JMIRx CS - on top of Arxiv (forthcoming)

In addition, manuscript submissions can be transferred from the JMIR preprint server and JMIR journals to JMIRx and vice versa.

JMIRx journals are all Diamond journals, funded by institutions and research funding agencies through Plan P [6] (see below and http://planp.science). For example, authors of Plan P member organizations enjoy benefits such as priority peer-review of their preprints (pathway B in the diagram above), free publication in a JMIRx journal (if funding is available, we also ask for $1000 from the funder), and $1000 off the APC of a ethical "Plan P compatible" gold open access journal.

As of 2024 we consider the University of California a Plan P member. For other authors we waive the requirement of being a Plan P member as long as they fill in a referral form so we can talk to the library/institution.

All JMIR journals (Portfolio) are compatible with Plan P as they also pick manuscripts from the JMIRx manuscript marketplace.

How to submit (tentative process)

To submit a preprint to JMIRx, the easiest way is to upload a Preprint to MedRxiv (or BioRxiv, respectively) and use the JMIRx submission forms on JMIRx.org, e.g. JMIRx-Med submission form (JMIRx-Bio submission form).

This "one-click" submission to a JMIRx superjournal takes only 3 minutes - we are sure this is the worlds' shortest submission form!

For detailed instructions and other submission options see How to submit to a JMIRx journal

Innovative Peer Review Models

For Authors:

In the submission form, authors can select various modalities for peer-review, which include

traditional narrative review reports: The editor will try to find experts to review your preprint
Live reviews, in partnership with PREreview, which are topic-centered, interactive preprint review calls via a video conference tool such as Zoom. Outputs from Live Reviews can be used to improve a manuscript or be integrated into journal review workflows. Authors revise their manuscripts based on the comments provided from a PREreview live review.
annotation-based, crowdsourced reviews (forthcoming), using peer-review communities (we call these hashtag communities)
if the preprint was already reviewed by a Plan P accredited peer-review service, JMIRx will accept these peer-review reports and publish the preprint (or transfer it to a Plan P compatible journal)

For Reviewers:

Important for peer reviewers: Accepted papers in JMIRx superjournals are published along with the related Peer Review Reports and Author Responses to Peer Review Reports, providing an additional layer of transparency to the scholarly publishing process. By default, when peer reviewers accept an invitation to review a manuscript for JMIRx Med, JMIRx Bio, or JMIRx Psy, they are consenting to the publication of their peer review report with attribution to them as the author of the peer review report.

Peer reviewers should also note that peer review reports are also indexed in Pubmed Central (PMC) and Pubmed along with the final published manuscript and author response(s) to peer review reports.

Manuscript Marketplace: Transfer to other JMIR journals and Plan P compatible journals

After peer-review, a manuscript will be put on a manuscript marketplace and can either

be rapidly published in JMIRx (accepted papers for JMIRx Med currently live on https://xmed.jmir.org/),
or be published in a COAP partner journal

We put manuscripts and their peer-review reports on a manuscript marketplace, which currently consists of all JMIR Publications journals and journals from other publishers who joined the COAP coalition. Editors of these participating journals can make offers to publish the peer-reviewed papers in their journals, often with a significant discount, and often with minimal or no further changes required.

Publication in the JMIRx-series of journals is always the "fallback" (JMIRx journals will ultimately be indexed and have impact factors etc).

Library and national consortia partnerships

JMIRx is a diamond journal. Authors must be affiliated with a Plan P member. Individual memberships are available.
We aspire to create more institutional memberships such as the University of California partnership, that enables faculty and students from all 10 UC campuses to publish free of charge in JMIRx (subject of reimbursement of US$1000 by UC for each article peer-reviewed and published in a JMIRx journal).
We call this "subscribe-to-peer-review / subscribe to Open Science" product "Plan P" (What is Plan P?). See also planp.science.

References:

1. Eysenbach G. Celebrating 20 Years of Open Access and Innovation at JMIR Publications.
J Med Internet Res 2019;21(12):e17578

2. Eysenbach G. The impact of preprint servers and electronic publishing on biomedical research.
Curr Opin Immunol. 2000 Oct;12(5):499-503

3. Eysenbach G. Challenges and changing roles for medical journals in the cyberspace age: Electronic pre-prints and e-papers.
J Med Internet Res 1999;1(2):e9. DOI: 10.2196/jmir.1.2.e9

4. Till J. Peer Review in a Post-Eprints World: A Proposal
J Med Internet Res 2000;2(3):e14 DOI: 10.2196/jmir.2.3.e14

5. Stern BM, O’Shea EK (2019) A proposal for the future of scientific publishing in the life sciences. PLoS Biol 17(2): e3000116. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000116

6. Eysenbach G. Plan P - A Publishers' Offer to Institutions and Funders to Transform to Open Science. Eysenbach, G. (2021, December 16). Force11. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5786370

Further Reading:

Corker, Katherine S., Ludo Waltman, and Jonathon A. Coates. 2024. “Understanding the Publish-review-curate (PRC) Model of Scholarly Communication.” MetaArXiv. October 10. doi:10.31222/osf.io/h7swt.

https://doi.org/10.31222/osf.io/h7swt

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