Short Publication Research Articles

The multifaceted factors affecting the publication times of pediatric ophthalmology and strabismus articles: what has changed in two decades

AbstractExpeditious publication is an important factor when considering publishing ophthalmic research. We investigated the factors associated with shorter publication times in pediatric ophthalmology and strabismus (POS). We analyzed 2487 POS articles from 8 ophthalmology journals publishing POS articles. Time from submission to acceptance, from acceptance to publication, and from submission to publication were calculated for each article. We compared trends over time of factors affecting the publication times from 2002 to 2007 and those from 2014 to 2018. Median peer review durations were 156 days from submission to acceptance; 79 days from acceptance to publication, and 244 days from submission to publication. The American Journal of Ophthalmology, JAMA Ophthalmology, and Strabismus had the shortest submission to publication time. Authors from Africa, East Europe, Central and South America received the fastest processing time in all time categories, although most authors were based in North America and UK. All-time intervals decreased annually, significantly more during the first decade. In the study's second period, more co-authors and affiliated departments correlated with shorter review times. Manuscripts in higher Impact Factor (IF) journals had faster publication times in the first decade. Female senior authors faced longer submission-to-acceptance times in the first decade. This gender gap disappeared in the second period. A general improvement occurred with most journals, specifically those journals with a higher number of co-authors and affiliated departments, indicating an efficient collaborative authorship. Low-income regions benefited from comparatively shorter time intervals. The gender gap in senior authorship diminished over time.

Fast or Slow? Competing on Publication Frequency

Problem definition: For many information goods, longer publication cycles (or batches of information) are more economical, but often result in less timely—and, therefore, less valuable—information. Whereas the digitalization of publication processes has reduced fixed publication costs, making shorter publication cycles more economically viable, competing firms have adapted their publication cycles differently: some of them publish more frequently, whereas others publish less frequently. In the face of growing competition and digitalization, how should information providers change their publication frequency strategies? Methodology/results: In this paper, we build a game-theoretic model to determine how information providers should set their publication cycles and prices in a duopoly. We find that, compared with a monopolistic environment, competition gives rise to differentiation by cycles and expands product variety. Specifically, competing firms should seek to differentiate on their publication frequency when the fixed publication is high and their contents share a high degree of commonality, but not otherwise. Whereas a reduction in the fixed cost of publication tends to yield shorter publication cycles, it could also intensify the competitive dynamics, leading firms to further differentiate their publication cycles, hurting consumer surplus. However, this could be temporary, as firms may ultimately converge in their choices of publication cycles. Managerial implications: The digitalization of publication processes is disrupting many information provision industries (e.g., news, weather, financial). We show that competing firms should anticipate nonmonotone or abrupt changes in their publication strategy as their publication processes get digitalized and may actually be hurt—as well as consumers—in the process of digitalization. Supplemental Material: The e-companion is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2023.0024 .

Interdisciplinarity in translation studies: a didactic model for research positioning

ABSTRACT The seminal role of the Holmes/Toury map within translation studies has led to its use as a didactic tool although neither scholar envisaged this purpose originally. This paper proposes a complementary didactic model to reveal the interdisciplinary layers of research projects after positioning them on the Holmes/Toury map. A critical overview of how maps have evolved from descriptions of the field to having didactic purposes is given, and criticism of the Holmes/Toury map is reviewed to demonstrate its importance for the first positioning of a work. An investigation of eight sample theses indicates the current interdisciplinary research trends and suggests the need for a more refined didactic tool. The proposed model is introduced as a way to fill an evident gap. Its aim is to help students and researchers position their own and other academic work within translation studies to gain deeper awareness in this regard. By presenting a general model for researchers' use, its concrete application to two cases – a book-long and a shorter publication – and a discussion of its strengths and weaknesses, I argue that it is a useful didactic tool for obtaining a clearer overview of the interdisciplinarity typical for research in translation studies.

Does Density Foster Shorter Public Transport Networks? A Network Expansion Simulation Approach

One argument for containing urban densities is that cities need a critical population density to sustain sufficiently available public transportation. However, the question of whether denser cities foster shorter public transport networks empirically is problematic because real-world transport nets are a product of many additional factors presumably not related to urban form. This paper adopts a network expansion simulation approach to generate and analyze counterfactual data on network lengths for 36 world cities, in which all networks are generated with similar expansion restrictions and objectives. Denser cities are found to have shorter simulated public transport networks, regardless of the tested model parameters. This provides additional proof that densities are needed to facilitate the provision of proximate public transport infrastructure, with potentially self-reinforcing effects.

Quality Regarding the Systematic Reviews in Breast Plastic Surgery.

There are few data in the literature evaluating the quality of systematic reviews in breast plastic surgery. This study aimed to evaluate the quality of SR in breast plastic surgery. This is a secondary, observational and analytical study. SR studies on breast plastic surgery, published until 2020, were included. The search for articles was performed in the CCTR, LILACS, MEDLINE and SCIELO databases. After selection and full reading of the studies, they were evaluated according to the AMSTAR-2 instrument. The search identified 810 references, among which 583 did not meet the eligibility criteria, and 227 studies were evaluated. The median publication time of the articles was 57.0±59.0 months, the average impact factor was 0.65 citations per month, and the AMSTAR-2 score was 66.2±32.3. Among the articles evaluated, 39.65% performed a meta-analysis, 52.42% used PRISMA, and most articles pointed out the need for further studies to answer their proposed question (92.95%). Articles that used PRISMA had shorter publication times (39.0±34.0 months) and higher AMSTAR-2 scores (77.6±17.7). An increase in the number of publications and a tendency to increase the AMSTAR-2 score and decrease the impact factor of the article were observed (p<0.001). In conclusion, the quality of SR in breast plastic surgery has been improving over the years; however, improved methodology and the development of randomized clinical trials are still needed to serve as a basis for SR.Level of Evidence III This journal requires that authors assign a level of evidence to each article. For a full description of these Evidence-Based Medicine ratings, please refer to the Table of Contents or the online Instructions to Authors www.springer.com/00266 .

Favouring Responsible Publishing: Creating a Database of Researchers and Surveying Their Knowledge, Attitudes and Opinions towards Open Access Publishing and a New Field-Specific Journal

Introduction: There may be value to understanding the interests and needs of a journal’s audience, particularly regarding open access publishing (OAP) and behaviours associated with predatory publishing while establishing a new field-specific journal. As a new journal facing potential challenges in the publishing space, the Journal of Natural Health Product Research (JNHPR) undertook a stakeholder and community feedback initiative on publishing research in the field of natural health products (NHPs). To our knowledge, this is the first study where academic representatives of the journal used this method to examine the knowledge, attitudes, and opinions of its potential audience. Methods: A database of international researchers in the NHP field was built using publicly available online data. Most NHP researchers were identified by a keyword-based, systematic search, with a small percentage discovered through snowball sampling. A survey was distributed to all identified researchers to collect their knowledge, attitudes, and opinions about OAP and the JNHPR. Results: The survey was completed by 167 NHP researchers and demonstrated a wide range of attitudes and opinions about OAP. Most respondents were familiar with OAP and preferred the OAP model over a subscription-based journal. Additionally, responses indicated that OAP is a polarizing and controversial subject. Positives included the wider circulation and potential for shorter publication times, while negatives included the potential for less rigorous peer-review standards and generally higher costs. Regardless of perceptions on OAP, impact factor, reputation, scope, and indexing were the most valued factors when choosing a journal for submission. Discussion: According to the survey results, the JNHPR excels in some areas while also needing to improve in others. The journal succeeds in two areas: its broad scope, which attracts NHP researchers from a variety of disciplines, and its rapid publishing time. Indexing and further reduced publication fees for low-income nations were mentioned as areas in need of improvement. Conclusions: This approach may be useful to researchers who wish to launch their own journal in the future to gain a better understanding of their potential audience’s knowledge, attitudes, and opinions, allowing for better engagement and service.

Disparities in positive results and dissemination of randomized controlled trials in immuno-oncology

Background This cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis aimed to demonstrate the disparities in positive results and dissemination patterns of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in global immuno-oncology (IO). Methods Phase II–IV RCTs with results reported by article publications registered on ClinicalTrials.gov in 2007–2018 studying immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), adoptive cell transfer, cancer vaccines, and immune modulators were included. Results Twenty-eight percent of trials were positive (72 of 258), most of which were pharma-sponsored and focused on ICI and multiple IO therapies in lung cancer, melanoma, and multiple cancer types. The recent period of trial start year, upfront registration, large sample size, high strictness score on corticosteroid/infection-related criteria, and survival endpoints were associated with positive results. Trials from Mainland China had a faster publication timeline of positive results but lacked study diversity or full reporting of negative results compared with US and multinational trials. Compared with phase II trials, phase III–IV trials had a higher average proportion of positive results (28.9% vs. 22.2%) and a more stable change over the past decade (23.65% vs. 49.24%). Positive trials yielded more secondary manuscripts (10 vs. 4), a shorter publication process of approximately two years (P < 0.001), and a superiority in the dissemination of journals with an h-index >90 (P < 0.001) compared with negative trials. Conclusion Disparities in positive result dissemination are widespread in IO RCTs and affected by trial features. We proposed improvements in upfront registration, procedural integrity, and adequate inclusion of rival trials reporting negative results within the earlier two years in future reviews.

Factors affecting time to publication in information science

Publication speed is one of the important aspects of scholarly communication since various research performance evaluation systems are based mostly on published papers. This study aims to reveal the factors affecting the publication speed of journals. In this context, six information science journals: ASLIB Journal of Information Management, Journal of Documentation, Journal of Informetrics, Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, Online Information Review, and Scientometrics are analysed in terms of time to publication (from submission to decision). Our results show that publication time is significantly shorter when an editorial board member or a productive author of a given journal is one of the authors, in compare with the articles. submitted by other authors. The number of authors has a time-prolonging effect on publication time, as expected. On the other hand, publications with more citations were accepted in a shorter time. The papers with authors from central countries and high-income countries have an advantage of shorter publication time. Thus, this study shows that researchers who publish papers with popular and successful researchers from central countries have the advantage of the speed of publication which may have substantial effects on the future academic work, especially of early career researchers.

Do scientific publications by editorial board members have shorter publication delays and then higher influence?

Do scientific publications by editorial board members have shorter publication delays and then higher influence?

Most published meta-analyses were made available within two years of protocol registration

IntroductionMeta-analyses are considered the highest form of evidence and are, therefore, important for clinical guidance. Fast publication times are desirable as they ensure that up-to-date knowledge is available for the consumers. This study aimed to determine the time from registering the protocols for meta-analyses in PROSPERO until the results were publicly available either via ePub ahead of print or journal publication. MethodsThis observational database study was reported according to the RECORD guideline. The biomedical databases PubMed and EMBASE were searched on 11th March 2020 for published meta-analyses that were registered in PROSPERO. The meta-analyses were linked to their PROSPERO registrations via their 14-digit PROSPERO registration number in the abstract. Registration date, publication date, and characteristics of reviews were extracted from PubMed, EMBASE, and PROSPERO during March 2020. ResultsWe included 2475 published meta-analyses. The median publication time was 16 months, interquartile range 10–24 months. After publication, 26% had updated the review's status in PROSPERO to published. Fewer authors were associated with shorter publication times. No difference was seen in publication times between the ‘big five’ journals and other journals. ConclusionsOf all published meta-analyses with PROSPERO registrations, 75% were published within two years of the registration of their protocol. Few authors updated the status of their PROSPERO registrations after publishing, which may make identifying abandoned reviews difficult.

The Adoption and Use of the Word ἘΚΚΛΗΣΊΑ in the Early Christ-Movement

Abstract This article engages with two recent monographs and three shorter publications to offer a fresh approach to the origin and some aspects of the use of the word ἐκκλησία in the Christ-movement of the first century ce. It argues that the word was first used as a collective designation by mixed groups of Greek-speaking Judean and non-Judean Christ-followers who were persecuted by Paul. Their intimate table-fellowship (especially of the one loaf and one cup of the Lord’s Supper) was regarded as involving or risking idolatry and thus imperilling the ethnic integrity of the Judean people. These Christ-followers adopted the word ἐκκλησία from instances in the Septuagint where it meant not ‘assembly’ but ‘multitude’ or ‘group’, most importantly of all in 1 Sam. 19.20. As Paul founded new communities in the cities of the Eastern Mediterranean that were recognisably similar to Greco-Roman voluntary associations, the word acquired new connotations that reverberated with the role of ἐκκλησίαι as civic voting assemblies in the Greek cities. Paul’s groups were not anti-Roman, nor did he believe that the Christ-movement would replace ethnic Israel, but rather that the two would co-exist until the End. The Pauline view on this matter finds theological endorsement in a 2015 document from the Vatican’s Commission for Religious Relations with Jews.

Gender disparities in middle authorship

Women increasingly occupy jobs in psychological research, but continue to face career barriers. One such barrier is fewer authorship and publication opportunities, with women often having fewer first authorships than men. In this research, we examine the overlooked role of middle authorship. Middle authorship contributes to various indices of productivity, while having lower costs. Study 1 looks at five years of authorship in two major journals in social and personality psychology. Study 2 examines publication records of all social psychology faculty in the Netherlands. Both studies find that women have fewer authorship possibilities: In Study 1, women were underrepresented as authors in academic journals, while women in Study 2 had shorter publication lists. More importantly, this tendency was exacerbated for middle authorship positions. Furthermore, the percentage of middle authorship publications were positively related to more publications overall. A focus on middle authorship highlights previously underestimated challenges women continue to face in psychological research.

Investigating the article processing charge of journals in the gold open access market: A game theory approach

AbstractAs a promising solution for enhancing knowledge communication as well as alleviating financial pressure of institutional libraries, gold open access (gold OA) has attracted wide attention all over the world. But it is a hard work to fully disclose how the equilibrium article processing charge is established in the gold OA market. To deal with this challenge, this paper firstly formulates the competition among journals in this market as a three‐stage Hotelling duopoly game, which is able to reveal its dynamic and competitive features affected by academic reputation, publication delays and article processing charges of journals. Then backward induction is applied to derive the market equilibria. Finally, an empirical study with 1,346 journals is conducted to verify the credibility of the theoretical solutions. The results show that gold OA journal with relatively higher academic reputation and shorter publication delay could charge higher article processing charge. And the publication delays of gold OA journals tend to cluster together in a limited time interval.

A Multi-Bit Fully Homomorphic Encryption With Shorter Public Key From LWE

There has been a great deal of work on improving the efficiency of fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) scheme. Our approach, in this regard, is to use the idea of packed ciphertexts to construct a multi-bit FHE with a short public key on the basis of the learning with errors (LWE) problem. More specifically, our FHE scheme builds on a basic encryption scheme that chooses LWE samples from the Gaussian distribution and adds Gaussian error to it. This results in decreasing the number of LWE samples from 2nlogq to n + 1. We prove that our FHE scheme is pragmatically feasible and its security relies on the hardness of the LWE problem. In addition, we form a new process of key switching for multi-bit FHE based on the ideas adopted by Brakerski et al. for optimizing the process of key switching. Finally, we analyze and compare the concrete parameters between our FHE scheme and BGH13 scheme. The result shows that compared with the BGH13 scheme, our scheme has a smaller public key by a factor about logq.

Representing a \u201crevolution\u201d: how the popular press has portrayed personalized medicine

PurposeThis study investigated the portrayal of “personalized” and “precision” medicine (PM) in North American news over the past decade. Content analysis of print and online news was conducted to determine how PM has been defined and to identify the frames used to discuss PM, including associated topics, benefits, and concerns.MethodsA data set was built using the FACTIVA database, searching for popular North American publications with the terms “personalized (personalised) medicine” and/or “precision medicine” from 1 January 2005 to 15 March 2016. The final set of publications totaled 774.ResultsPM is almost exclusively defined as related to genetics and is often part of a story related to cancer. The PM story is overwhelmingly one of highlighting (potential) benefits and optimism, especially in shorter publications, and ones where PM is not the main focus. This promotional PM discourse has remained fairly consistent over the past decade.ConclusionThe numerous concerns associated with PM have received little attention over the past decade, especially in articles more likely to be encountered by a more general audience. This promotion of PM serves as an example of the science hyping that takes place in science reportage and may have implications for consumers, public expectations, and related health policy.

Establishing Prevention Reporting in Bavaria - Concept, Implementation and First Results

Bavaria is currently embarking on the endeavour of building up systematic prevention reporting. Prevention reporting is meant to support the implementation of the Bavarian Prevention Plan and the German Prevention Law and to further the ongoing development in the field of health promotion and health-related prevention in Bavaria. Prevention reporting in Bavaria aims to draw on general health reporting and complement it with specific prevention-related data taking into special consideration the Bavarian Prevention Plan. Particularly, data on prevention-amenable health determinants, prevention interventions, prevention spending and on indicators related to the targets of the Bavarian Prevention Plan are meant to be included. Periodic reporting will allow ongoing monitoring and the observation of trends. The reporting system will encompass shorter publications for the general public as well as more extensive reports for an expert audience. Where possible, data will be reported not only Bavaria wide but also on a smaller regional level to support local action. An extensive stocktaking of prevention and health promotion activities in Bavaria in 2014/2015 as well as a survey of the partner organisations in the Bavarian Prevention Alliance in 2016 presented an overview of the prevention scene in Bavaria. A core indicator set to support the implementation of the Bavarian Prevention Plan was developed in 2016 and a first short data brochure for the public was published. A comprehensive compilation of prevention-related data and a Bavarian prevention report are planned for 2017 and 2018. Like health reporting, prevention reporting, as conceptualised in Bavaria, presents overview data and thus allows a monitoring of prevention. For specific planning or evaluation purposes, it needs to be supplemented by more in-depth analyses. Current challenges include the development of valid, prevention-specific indicators, the generation of an empiric database and the attempt of a coordinated approach amongst the federal states within Germany.

Characteristics of monographic special issues in Ibero-American psychology journals: visibility and relevance for authors and publishers

This paper aims to determine the existence of differential characteristics between monographic special issues and regular non-monographic issues published by psychology journals according to different bibliometric indicators. The materials studied consisted of a total of 1120 articles published in 10 Ibero-American psychology journals included in the JCRs from 2013 to 2015. The number of monographic articles was 286 and the non-monographic works were 834. The results indicate that the articles published in monographic special issue journal receive a higher number of citations and that their publication times are shorter. A greater presence of journal committee members as authors of the papers in monographic special issues was also observed, and the number of authors per paper was lower compared to articles published in non-monographs. As a conclusion, publishing papers in monographic special issues versus non-monographic in the reviewed journals has some advantages for both journals and authors, such as greater international visibility and shorter publication times.

Editorial

With this current issue, Vol. 14, No. 1–2, January 2017, our journal Plasma Processes & Polymers (PPaP) is now entering the fourteenth year of its existence. Since Volume 11 (2014), PPaP has been appearing as an e-only journal, among a steadily increasing trend in this industry as proportions of subscriptions to printed versions continue to shrink. Fortunately, this has been well accepted by both authors and readers, obvious advantages to both groups being the elimination of charges for color figures that so greatly enhance the appearance and clarity of articles. Below, we shall mostly be citing data pertaining to Vol. 12 (2015) because statistics for 2016 are still incomplete at the time of this writing. In 2015, 232 manuscripts were submitted of which 123 were accepted, resulting in a record number (1469) of published pages. But 2016 promises to be the journal's best year in number of submissions because we fully expect to surpass the 2014 record of 251. The acceptance rate for submitted manuscripts, 53% in 2015, has been roughly constant over the years, between a minimum of 49% and the maximum of 63% ten years ago. Since the year 2011, all articles in Wiley Online Library receive Google specific metadata tagging to allow better extraction of information by Google Scholar. For PPaP, this has led to an enormous boost in the development of full-text downloads, which rose from ca. 80,000 in 2011 to almost 93,500 in 2015. A pie-chart showing the geographic distribution of submissions and downloads for selected countries in 2015 is presented in Figure 1. As can be seen, our current readership is more than 40% from Australasia, 25 to 30% European, 15% from the Americas, with the rest from Russia and African countries. Issues and articles that tended to be most accessed in the course of 2015/16 remained, as before, those related to biomedical applications of plasmas, for example Vol. 7, No. 3/4 (Plasma Medicine), and Vol. 11, No.12 (Plasma and Cancer), but other topics such as Innovative Analytical Techniques for Plasma Polymers, Vol. 12, No. 9, are also receiving great attention. Among other subject areas of special interest to our readership are plasma processes for optics, solar cells and microelectronics; regarding the latter, Professor C. Vallée from France will soon submit a Review Article on Plasma Processing and Moore's Law. Among other noteworthy initiatives, let us underline the following: “Expert Opinions” (“ExOp”), our former “Debates” section, is now re-established. A first paper on Derivatization by C.-P. Klages and S. Kotula appeared in the Vol. 13 (12) issue; several other experts have already signalled their intent to react to it in future pages of PPaP. Plasma-based Decontamination, another topic that can stimulate lively debate, will be the object of the next ExOp in late 2017 or 2018, guest-edited by Professor K.-D. Weltmann (INP, Greifswald, Germany). A series of “White Papers” on future trends in plasma science will also be started with his kind cooperation, six major topics having already been identified, but this too will not likely come into being before 2018. Fast-track Communications that we introduced to encourage authors to submit short reports of high novelty, a mechanism that can guarantee appearance on “Early View” within 30 days, are still regrettably not being used as much as foreseen and hoped. We redraw our readers’ attention to this feature and re-encourage them to benefit from it. By the way, may we point out the New Article Design, introduced in 2016, one that is characterized by a more streamlined layout, less typesetting errors, and shorter publication times. With a 2015 impact factor (I.F.) of 2.718 PPaP ranks among the best of journals specializing in plasma processing science. Finally, we wish to sincerely thank members of PPaP's International Advisory Board (IAB) who left us in 2016, Professor Jae Koo Lee (Pohang, S. Korea) and Dr. Mark Strobel (St. Paul, USA), for their years of dedicated service to this journal! At the same time, we welcome our new IAB members Eun-Ha Choi (Seoul, Korea), Yuichi Setsuhara (Osaka, Japan), Rony Snyders (Mons, Belgium), Luc Stafford (Montreal, Canada), and Ai-Min Zhu (Dalian, China). In closing this Editorial, we proudly underline that our journal is as always open to suggestions from its readership on any topic of general interest; for example, we welcome suggestions of themes for Special Issues, Expert Opinions, or White Papers which in selected cases can be linked to workshops or special symposia on hot topics. For more details about Plasma Processes & Polymers, go to www.plasma-polymers.org. Riccardo d'Agostino Pietro Favia Christian Oehr Michael R. Wertheimer Editors in Chief Renate Foerch Managing Editor December 10th, 2016

Editorial

Our younger readers may not know, but it was not so long ago that the arrival of the monthly issues of Helvetica Chimica Acta (HCA) were eagerly awaited and read cover-to-cover by chemists worldwide. It held a special place among the ‘must-read’ journals of the 20th century and the venue of choice for top publications – from authors not only working in Switzerland in particular but also worldwide. Your editors – although still young by some standards – still remember reading freshly open paper copies of HCA as graduate students in the 1990s in Pasadena and West Lafayette. With the rapid increase in the number of publications and journals in the 21st century, many legacy journals, such as HCA have struggled to find a unique identity. In the view of too many chemists, HCA went from being a venue for latest discoveries in the chemical sciences to just one more journal. But for many of us, there will also be a special place in our hearts for Helvetica Chimica Acta. When we were asked by the Swiss Chemical Society to take on the editorship of the journal, we elected to ‘relaunch’ it by returning to its roots: high quality, full papers that tell stories about cutting edge molecular science. In other words, not only the details but also the why and the how. With the full support of the Swiss Chemical Society, our publisher Wiley, and the talented and diverse researchers working across Switzerland, we are delighted to bring you the first issue of the relaunch Helvetica: A Journal of the Swiss Chemical Society. We hope it will be the first of many issues that restores the vision of the founders – 99 years ago – to be a journal one can trust, not only for its data but also for a commitment to recognizing and inspiring excellence. Switzerland has based its reputation not only on accuracy, craftsmanship, entrepreneurship, and flexibility, but also on humility and open-mindedness. The progress in science and technology relies on these qualities, and Helvetica will provide a medium to report accurate data and be a forum to discuss chemistry across all fields. Through its strong and diverse chemical industry, its forefront academic research and teaching program and its ties to international networks, Switzerland is ideally placed to be a leader in the conduct of innovative, responsible 21st century science. We see in Helvetica the opportunity to build on its foundations as one of the primary delegates of modern chemistry to become an ambassador for molecular science in a changing world. Science is evolving very fast, facing many challenges including the increasing amount of reported data. Chemistry is moving toward more complex systems, where molecular understanding can play a central role in generating function by design. It is by essence a multidisciplinary science at the leading edge of biology, physics, and material and engineering sciences; it bridges the world of inorganic and organic matters, it relates to single atoms/molecules or much larger assemblies (polymers, assemblies and solids), it requires to understand physical phenomena and to develop new analytical/physical techniques. We welcome papers that blur the boundaries between disciplines and divisions, as well as detailed studies in traditional areas that contribute to our fundamental understanding of science and nature. The relaunch of Helvetica brings many changes to the journal – a new editorial board, a distinguished international advisory panel, a new submission and reviewing system, shorter publication times, a new layout, full free color, and a dedicated editorial staff based in Zurich. It brings a renewed committed of the Swiss Chemical Society, Wiley, and our authors to make it a highly visible and respected place to our best work. And most importantly, it brings a focus on high quality full papers – not too many, not too few – just the right amount to make reading Helvetica once again a highlight of our month. We rely on you to make this adventure a success and we look forward to your contribution in the coming months and years.

Survey of digestive health across Europe: Final report. Part 1: The burden of gastrointestinal diseases and the organisation and delivery of gastroenterology services across Europe.

United European Gastroenterology (UEG) which represents gastroenterology and hepatology and its sub-disciplines across Europe relies on accurate and up to date information on the burden of gastrointestinal diseases in Europe, the availability and quality of diagnostic and therapeutic services and the economic impact of these diseases across the member countries of the European Union to inform its strategy in advising relevant agencies on future clinical services and research priorities. Determining the trajectory of the morbidity and mortality of digestive diseases is vital in planning health services for the future and in making the case for investment in research where there are clear gaps in knowledge. In addition there are marked economic differences across the member nations in Europe and this is reflected in the funding available to support health services, making it highly likely that there are important disparities in the accessibility to high-quality healthcare. In September 2012 the UEG Council accepted a proposal from the UEG Future Trends Committee to commission a detailed survey of digestive health across Europe. The Future Trends Committee developed an outline framework for the study, following which there was an open, competitive process across Europe to identify a competent research group to undertake the project. The contract was awarded to an experienced group within the College of Medicine, Swansea University, United Kingdom, and the project was formally initiated in April 2013. The research group at Swansea has worked closely with the Committee, including an interim update meeting with the Committee in October 2013. The Committee also had the opportunity to make specific comments on a draft final report submitted in May 2014; a final report, Survey of Digestive Health Across Europe was received in August 2014. The final report is organised into two parts: Part 1, The burden of gastrointestinal diseases and the organisation and delivery of gastroenterology services across Europe and Part 2, The economic impact and burden of digestive disorders. We present here the executive summaries of the two parts of the survey, but the full report can be found on the UEG journal website. It is anticipated that several shorter publications will follow, focusing on some specific topics of particular importance and interest. Michael Farthing President United European Gastroenterology