This news release is available in Japanese.
The nonprofit American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), publisher of the Science family of journals, plans an expansion of its scientific communication efforts with the launch of a new title, Science Advances, as an extended forum for high-quality, peer-reviewed research.
"This new publication is designed to encourage transformative research and attract a wide readership," said Science Editor-in-Chief Marcia McNutt. "Science is becoming more integrated and interdisciplinary. This is why we decided to establish a single new journal with the broadest possible array of outstanding content, encompassing all fields of science."
Spanning science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and the social sciences, the new digital publication will leverage Science's uniquely broad scope to help speed scientific progress by promoting the rapid communication of current research. Science Advances will be published online—on an open-access basis, with articles freely available to the public—through the payment, by authors, of an article processing fee. The 134-year-old journal Science, which is available for a modest annual subscription fee equivalent to about $3 US per issue, annually prints 800 to 900 research articles, following peer review—from a pool of some 14,000 submissions.
As an online-only, open-access journal, Science Advances will help AAAS make more outstanding research available to researchers and others, according to Alan I. Leshner, the association's chief executive officer and executive publisher of Science. "Since the mid-1990s, technology has posed new challenges for traditional scholarly publications, but it is also creating new opportunities, particularly for online collaboration among researchers," said Leshner, who added that enhancing scientific communication has long been a primary goal for AAAS. "Our new journal will expand authors' choices as well as the amount of scientific information that reaches the public."
Editors at the new journal, which is expected to debut in 2015, will also work to help promote public trust in the integrity of science broadly, by upholding the highest possible standards for peer review, McNutt said. The journal will be staffed by a lead editor, who will report to the Science editor-in-chief, as well as a business manager, to be supervised by the Science publisher. In addition, Science Advances will have a managing editor, who will report to the Science executive editor. AAAS will conduct a broadly inclusive search to fill each of these new positions.
In addition to Science, the premier global science weekly, AAAS publishes Science Signaling, the leading journal of cell signaling and regulatory biology, and Science Translational Medicine, integrating medicine, engineering and science to promote human health. (See http://www.sciencemag.org.)
AAAS, the world's largest general scientific society, was founded in 1848 and encompasses 261 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving an estimated 10 million individuals. Science's daily online news is always free to the public, as are editorials, any paper with broad public health significance, and all research articles 12 months after publication. Science further participates in various efforts to provide free access for scientists in the world's poorest countries.
AAAS is open to all and fulfills its mission to advance science and serve society through initiatives in science policy, international programs, science education, public engagement, and more.
ONLINE LINK: A Science editorial about the new journal will be freely available to the public, as soon as the embargo lifts, at http://scim.ag/1b2anME (short link) or http://www.sciencemag.org/lookup/doi/10.1126/science.1251654 (full link).