Abstract
“I am mindful of the role of the Journal in our community: It is one of the institutions that binds us and bounds us. It participates in defining the field, what is to be included and what is to be excluded. It should encompass the whole field, both what currently seems core and what currently seems peripheral. It can be difficult to maintain representation from the most prosperous areas, as they are so much in demand by the institutions of bigger polities. It can also be difficult to maintain representation from what are seen as peripheral areas, for not everyone wants to hear from “distant cousins,” but I think it’s important to keep in touch with family members far afield. Finally, the Journal should encourage visits from our neighbors, on behalf of the field, and welcome them, as I was welcomed long ago.”
In his inaugural editorial, Marty Zatz set the tone for the journal under his 13-year stint as the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Biological Rhythms. He pondered the “fields and the fences in science” and how chronobiologists could lead with a welcoming journal. At a time when the field was small and suddenly mighty, he made it clear that JBR would publish findings across all levels of biology, from molecules to behavior, and across phyla, from protists to people. Marty passed away recently, and I wondered what he would say about JBR today.
In my first 4 months as the Editor-in-Chief, I have handled ~90 original submissions, 11 review articles, and 1 journal club commentary; sent 30 out for peer review; and accepted 19 for publication. Where Marty could run the journal and keep us laughing, I am trying to meet some new challenges in publishing. For example, I must learn how to detect whether these submissions were written by, or with, AI (Aside: JBR requires you to disclose if and how you use AI, more on that in a future editorial). But some things have remained the same: you can publish for free in JBR; JBR articles meet the open access requirements of all funding agencies around the world; all members of the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms have open access to JBR; and JBR is a top destination for publishing on chronobiology. Now, 26 years since Marty set his course, you will still find the latest on advances in basic chronobiology like new molecules involved in circadian regulation and responses. More than ever before, you will learn about rhythms in organisms from protists to people. Surprising fact: nearly half of our submissions leverage wearable technologies in humans acrossnearly all ages and backgrounds. In JBR, shift workers toil with chronodisruption, and healthy subjects live in temporal isolation to reveal the relative contributions of circadian time vs. sleep homeostasis on dozens and dozens of biological pathways and diseases. Once published, research on humans is typically the most cited work in JBR. Marty, I think, would be proud to see chronobiology so broadly :applied as effective circadian medicine. He would also be content to see the journal continue to celebrate breakthroughs in rhythms broadly defined:new discoveries in sleep and circadian biology, new methods for rhythm analysis, and new databases profiling the molecules of life as a function of time . Notably, the first 19 papers I am chaperoning to publication come from authors in at least 10 countries. Thus, JBR remains faithful to its mission to serve the needs of the chronobiology community.
While I enjoy participating in bringing this family together, I also revel, as Marty did, in a good fight. I will use this space in the coming months to address unfounded and founded attacks on science by politicians and funding concerns that are driving future scientists away. Marty noted, there are also geographical and conceptual fences that impede scientific progress. These gaps in our knowledge deserve some saber rattling today. Databases overwhelmingly report results from adult male mice or male humans. We await breakthroughs in the cellular and molecular basis for sex differences in common processes like daily glucocorticoid secretion. We wonder about the cellular and molecular origins of circalunar, circatidal, and circannual rhythms, timescales previously described as incompatible with a career in science. Some parasites have emerged from our nightmares as circadian, but at which stages in their life cycles? We hunger for insights into rules for how rhythms are gained or lost in development, between individuals, and between collaborating and competing species. As hypotheses are forwarded and rejected, think of JBR as your piste to fight for scientific rigor, to defend science for the sake of science, to debate policies such as permanent Daylight Saving Time and nighttime lighting spectra, and to challenge standards of care that ignore biological rhythms.
Why do we desk reject over 70% of submissions to JBR? The majority of these are papers that do not address issues of interest to JBR readers; I sometimes invite these authors to confirm that they are not AI bots. None have responded. Some are rejected because they execute meta-analyses on the existing literature or databases without demonstrating expertise or providing new insights into how biological rhythms arise, are perturbed by environmental factors, or contribute to a disorder. Often these studies appear to have been assisted by AI with little effort to reach the expectations of the JBR reviewers and readers. Sometimes a rejected manuscript precipitates a rebuttal directed at me. One author wrote an email, not quite as long as the original submission, asking for clarifications and noting how hard it is to collect new data and to meet the standards for replication of circadian data held by JBR. I had summarized, for the authors, what I expect is needed to satisfy the reviewers and me, distinguing between the essential major concerns and the less critical minor concerns. After a few emails with thrusts and parries, I concluded that JBR welcomes their revision: “Write it as if the reviewers are family.” In this way, JBR aspires to be for the growing community of chronobiologists–the trusted source of new insights and ongoing debates around biological rhythms.
