What is JMIRx?

JMIRx (jmirx.org) is a new journal series (launched end of 2019) and new type of journal, which we call "superjournals". Superjournals (a type of "overlay" journal) are sitting on top of preprint servers and offer peer-review and copyediting/archiving/indexing, thus do everything a "normal" journal does, except that authors no longer have to submit their manuscript to a journal - instead, our 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), without going through another submission process. If superjournals 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:

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.” [1] 

We are currently launching the following superjournals:

• JMIRx|Med - sitting on top of the medRxiv preprint server and covering the subjects covered in medRxiv
• JMIRx|Bio - sitting on top of the bioRxiv preprint server and covering the subjects covered in bioRxiv
• JMIRx|Psy - sitting on top of the PsyArXiv preprint server and covering the subjects covered in PsyArXiv

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

Library and national consortia partnerships

Our primary funding model is that 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).

Publishing in JMIRx is cheaper than any other known Article Processing Charge (APC) of hybrid or legacy publishers. So instead of signing transformative agreements with large commercial publishers and reimbursing them thousands of dollars in APCs, how about encouraging your faculty and students to embrace an open science workflow that implements green open access with subsequent gold OA (peer-review/archiving)? We can also deliver final copyedited/typeset papers to institutional repositories.

If you are a librarian and wish to arrange a similar agreement, please contact us at [support at jmir.org].

Article Processing Charges

If the authors are not affiliated with a library/consortium with which we have a partnership agreement, we employ a unique "pay what you can" approach. Preprint authors suggest to us how much grant funding or money they have for getting a specific paper peer-reviewed and published, and we will make a decision on a case-by-case basis, also taking into account the impact and quality of the preprint. One aspect of our emerging "superjournal" infrastructure is that journals actually "bid" for the most interesting preprints.

References:

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

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

See also:

• What are JMIR's innovations?