- Email: [email protected]
A Janus glance
Reproductive BioMedicine Online (2012) 24, 1– 3
www.sciencedirect.com www.rbmonline.com
EDITORIAL
A Janus glance Thank yous At the start of a new year it is timely to take stock and to look forward. It has been a busy year for RBM Online, not least dealing with the time-consuming, but delightful, aftermath of Bob’s Nobel prize and then with his Knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List – both causes to crack open the champagne with Sir Bob. Caroline Blackwell has, as ever, been a stalwart support to the Editors and to Bob, Ruth and their family, bearing the brunt of the media, mail and phone enquiries and acting as a protective filter. Our deepest thanks to Caroline for all this extra work – in addition to keeping the journal on track! The submission rate continues to rise (470 submissions to end October; 71% rejection rate) making this a challenging task for her, for Catherine Field and Maria Murphy in the office here, to whom like-wise our Editorial deepest thanks. Some changes have eased our Editorial task – notably the introduction of our panel of specialist Section Editors who now undertake the preliminary assessment of each paper and make a recommendation to the three of us – we then make the final decision on each manuscript. Our grateful thanks to our Section Editors! Thanks also to the staff at Elsevier led by Greyling Peoples and Koos Admiraal, for their continuing commitment to the efficient production and promotion of the journal. Also, the Editors would like to express their appreciation to Kamal Ahuja and the Board of Reproductive Health Care for their commitment to the journal, and to Eddie Kuan for all his support with the accounts. Finally, it has been a year in which Fiona Bennett has left Cambridge for well-earned retirement in Yorkshire – Fiona is much missed but remains a wise source of supportive and committed advice for us.
Innovations The past year has also seen some publishing innovations. We are exploring with Elsevier the open access arrangements for RBM Online and trying to balance accessibility with the continuing requirement for an income stream sufficient to cover our costs. Currently all Editorials and Commentaries are open access, together with the Editor’s Choice article
for each issue. We are very pleased to announce that from this issue all Reviews will also be open access, initially for a period of 12 months. This additional open access category joins two further existing categories, each reflecting a new development for the journal – the Young Investigator Reviews, which give a platform for younger scientists and provides them with formative advice on writing (see Editorial in volume 22, p. 505), and the Robert Edwards Prize paper (see below). Our readers may have sensed that we are encouraging authors, senior and junior, to contribute to the Commentaries to maximise opportunities for lively debate and comment – see for example several engaging in interesting and pithy exchanges in volume 22, issue 6 and volume 23, issues 4 and 6. For real-time or live comments, the Robert Edwards Resource Centre (accessible via the RBM Online website) includes a Forum providing new opportunities for enthusiasts. This site was made possible by a grant from Ferring Pharmaceuticals, and also houses a collection of materials relating to Bob and his work, including podcasts. In addition, we are pleased to renew our web links with BioNews and the Progress Educational Trust, which has pioneered public education about reproduction and genetics – a cause close to the heart of our emeritus founding editor, Bob Edwards.
Symposia and supplements The subject matter of Supplements and Guest Symposia reflects what is happening and what is likely to happen in our rapidly changing field, with the aim of shortening the translational phase of innovation and hopefully permitting advances to benefit patients. Thus, Symposia on Reproductive Surgery (Guest Editors T.C. Li and Antoine Watrelot, volume 23, issue 1) and Oocyte Cryopreservation (Guest Editors Nicole Noyes and Peter Nagy, volume 23 issue 3) featured last year, the latter likely to be re-visited sooner rather than later. In addition, the November issue (23[5]) was devoted entirely to the topic of Cross-Border Reproductive Care (Guest Editors Zeynep Gu ¨rtin and Marcia Inhorn) and was followed by four lively responding Commentaries in the December issue of Ethics, BioScience and Life (23[7]). Our thanks go to all the Symposium Editors for their
1472-6483/$ - see front matter ª 2011, Reproductive Healthcare Ltd. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.rbmo.2011.11.005
2
Editorial
Table 1
Long-list papers nominated for the 2010 Robert G. Edwards Prize Paper Award.
Authors
Title
Reference (RBM Online volume and pages)
De Neubourg et al. Dixit et al. Fong et al.
Cumulative live-birth delivery after IVF/ICSI since the progressive introduction of single-embryo transfer Genes governing premature ovarian failure Derivation efficiency, cell proliferation, freeze–thaw survival, stem-cell properties and differentiation of human Wharton’s jelly stem cells Ovarian reserve determinations suggest new function of FMR1 (fragile X gene) in regulating ovarian ageing Improvement in diminished ovarian reserve after dehydroepiandrosterone supplementation Polymorphisms of nucleotide-excision repair genes may contribute to sperm DNA fragmentation and male infertility Miscarriage risk for IVF pregnancies in poor responders to ovarian hyperstimulation Experiences of offspring searching for and contacting their donor siblings and donor Blastocysts from patients with polycystic ovaries exhibit altered transcriptome and secretome IVF treatment should not be postponed for patients with high basal FSH concentrations Corifollitropin alfa for ovarian stimulation in IVF: a randomized trial in lowerbody-weight women Is the birthweight of singletons born after IVF reduced by ovarian stimulation or by IVF laboratory procedures? Erythropoietic differentiation of a human embryonic stem cell line harbouring the sickle cell anaemia mutation Comparative functional genomics of mammalian DNA methyltransferases
20, 836–842
Gleicher et al. Gleicher et al. Gu et al.* Haadsma et al. Jadva et al. Katz-Jaffe et al.* Maman et al. Mannaerts/Ensure study group Pelinck et al. Pryzhkova et al. Rodriguez-Osorio et al. Tur-Kaspa et al. Yovich & Stanger *
PGD for all cystic fibrosis carrier couples: novel strategy for preventive medicine and cost analysis Growth hormone supplementation improves implantation and pregnancy productivity rates for poor-prognosis patients undertaking IVF
20, 724–740 21, 391–401 20, 768–775 21, 360–365 21, 602–609 20, 191–200 20, 523–532 21, 520–526 21, 631–635 21, 66–76 21, 245–251 21, 196–206 20, 243–255 21, 186–195 21, 37–49
Short-listed for the 2010 Robert G. Edwards Prize Paper Award.
dedication to the task. Supplements are more likely to be historically rather than scientifically driven, intentionally to highlight the human face of scientific progress and achievement. Thus, a supplement featuring the magnificent contributions of Sir Bob to the journal was edited by Richard Gardner and Martin Johnson, and although published online as a Tenth Anniversary Issue at the end of 2010, its publication in hard copy in January of 2011 was made possible by a generous grant from Merck Serono S.A. The publication of a Supplement celebrating 50 years of the clinical use of human gonadotrophins followed in February, again made possible by the support of Merck Serono S.A. July saw the publication of a magnificent Bob Edwards tribute issue, comprised of over 100 personal recollections and tributes to the ‘father of IVF’. In the coming year, we are already well advanced in the preparation of a Symposium on Trophoblast Development edited by Myriam Hemberger and Rosalind John, with two others in advanced planning: one on Evidence-Based Medicine (Yacoub Khalaf and Jacques Cohen) and the other on Implantation (Andrew Sharkey and Nick Macklon).
Scientific writing workshops To consolidate on our endeavours in earlier years, we have now conducted workshops on scientific writing at the annual MSRM meeting in Paris, as well as prior to ESHRE at Stockholm and ASRM in Orlando. We are grateful for the support, both financial and scientific, from Merck Serono S.A. notably for the last two workshops. The Chinese delegation’s feedback from the ASRM-linked event was very positive. We expect to be offering these workshops within the overall Elsevier strategy to act as a resource not only for young scientists at the beginning of their publishing careers, but also for existing authors and readers to acknowledge the changes in scientific publication technology, its benefits and pitfalls. It is notable that one of the lectures entitled ‘‘Self-copying, plagiarism and ethics in publishing’’ was particularly wellreceived: this problem, a manifestation of the downside of the electronic age, is one with which editors of all journals in our area are grappling seriously – authors be warned!
Editorial
Affiliated societies We have also sought to be more actively involved with our affiliated societies, encouraging greater use of the journal pages available to them to highlight their business matters and events, and offering shared resources such as the writing workshops. We shall continue our efforts and welcome your ideas, especially on how we can attract the interest of younger society members, who are more aware of the benefits of the new publication technologies as well as being more comfortable with these innovative platforms.
Robert G. Edwards Prize Paper Award for 2010 The winning paper for the first-ever award of this prize was announced on 21 November 2011 as: ‘‘Polymorphisms of nucleotide-excision repair genes may contribute to sperm DNA fragmentation and male infertility’’ by Aihua Gu, Guixiang Ji, Yong Zhou, Yan Long, Xiangguo Shi, Guangbo Fu, Shoulin Wang, Ling Song, and Xinru Wang, which appeared in Reproductive BioMedicine Online in November 2010 (volume 21[5], pp. 602–609) (http://www.rbmojournal. com/article/S1472-6483(10)00434-7/abstract). This award has been established by Elsevier Ltd. for the purpose of recognizing excellence in our field of study, and will be awarded annually. All original research or review articles published in journal volumes 20 and 21 (including Ethics, Bioscience and Life, but excluding supplements) were considered for this first prize. The winning authors received a certificate of recognition, 1000 Euros, and a complimentary ScienceDirect Ambassador Account, which allows full access to the entire library of books and journals published by Elsevier. In addition, the prize-winning paper was made open access. Where the prize is awarded, as this year, to a multi-author paper, the more junior of the main authors received the year’s access to the ScienceDirect database. All names appear on the award certificate. The winning paper was selected by a panel consisting of the Senior Editor and the two Editors. A long-list was first compiled from nominations provided by the Section Editors (Table 1). The Section Editors were invited to explain why the paper nominated deserved the prize award. They also confirmed that reaching their decision involved no conflict of interest and that there was no reason that might disqualify them from acting as nominator, other than was made
3 clear in the nomination letter. Section Editors were also asked to reach their decision independently without discussion with any other Editors or Section Editors. The three Editors then produced a short-list. In doing so they used the following criteria: (i) Any paper receiving more than one nomination went forward automatically; (ii) preference was given, all else being equal, to new investigators and/or less senior authors. Each of the three Editors declared if any short-listed papers presented for them a possible conflict of interest and none did. Short-listed papers were run through CrossCheck and subjected to a confirmatory analysis for statistical validity. There were two clear papers ahead of the field – both marked with an asterisk in Table 1. The Editorial panel’s decision is final. We congratulate the authors of the winning paper and all those short-listed authors for their excellent contributions to our journal. The winner of the 2011 prize will be announced in the early summer of 2012.
The coming year A major event in 2012 is the co-sponsorship with the University of Cambridge of a Symposium called Futures in Reproduction to celebrate the award of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine to Sir Bob. The meeting will take place in Churchill College, where Bob is a fellow, on Saturday 15 and Sunday 16 December 2012. There will be a special dinner in the Great Hall of St John’s College on the Saturday evening. The conference, which is made possible by an educational grant from Merck Serono SA, invites speakers and participants to attempt to capture something of the radical, far-sighted, wide-ranging and challenging spirit of enquiry that characterizes Bob Edwards’ career. A strong focus on the exciting and unconventional is the highest tribute that we can pay to this remarkable man. Details of the meeting and how to book will be on our website soon – so watch this space! We wish a productive and exciting 2012 to all our contributors and readers. Jacques Cohen, Gedis Grudzinskas, Martin Johnson E-mail address: [email protected] (M Johnson)
www.sciencedirect.com www.rbmonline.com
EDITORIAL
A Janus glance Thank yous At the start of a new year it is timely to take stock and to look forward. It has been a busy year for RBM Online, not least dealing with the time-consuming, but delightful, aftermath of Bob’s Nobel prize and then with his Knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List – both causes to crack open the champagne with Sir Bob. Caroline Blackwell has, as ever, been a stalwart support to the Editors and to Bob, Ruth and their family, bearing the brunt of the media, mail and phone enquiries and acting as a protective filter. Our deepest thanks to Caroline for all this extra work – in addition to keeping the journal on track! The submission rate continues to rise (470 submissions to end October; 71% rejection rate) making this a challenging task for her, for Catherine Field and Maria Murphy in the office here, to whom like-wise our Editorial deepest thanks. Some changes have eased our Editorial task – notably the introduction of our panel of specialist Section Editors who now undertake the preliminary assessment of each paper and make a recommendation to the three of us – we then make the final decision on each manuscript. Our grateful thanks to our Section Editors! Thanks also to the staff at Elsevier led by Greyling Peoples and Koos Admiraal, for their continuing commitment to the efficient production and promotion of the journal. Also, the Editors would like to express their appreciation to Kamal Ahuja and the Board of Reproductive Health Care for their commitment to the journal, and to Eddie Kuan for all his support with the accounts. Finally, it has been a year in which Fiona Bennett has left Cambridge for well-earned retirement in Yorkshire – Fiona is much missed but remains a wise source of supportive and committed advice for us.
Innovations The past year has also seen some publishing innovations. We are exploring with Elsevier the open access arrangements for RBM Online and trying to balance accessibility with the continuing requirement for an income stream sufficient to cover our costs. Currently all Editorials and Commentaries are open access, together with the Editor’s Choice article
for each issue. We are very pleased to announce that from this issue all Reviews will also be open access, initially for a period of 12 months. This additional open access category joins two further existing categories, each reflecting a new development for the journal – the Young Investigator Reviews, which give a platform for younger scientists and provides them with formative advice on writing (see Editorial in volume 22, p. 505), and the Robert Edwards Prize paper (see below). Our readers may have sensed that we are encouraging authors, senior and junior, to contribute to the Commentaries to maximise opportunities for lively debate and comment – see for example several engaging in interesting and pithy exchanges in volume 22, issue 6 and volume 23, issues 4 and 6. For real-time or live comments, the Robert Edwards Resource Centre (accessible via the RBM Online website) includes a Forum providing new opportunities for enthusiasts. This site was made possible by a grant from Ferring Pharmaceuticals, and also houses a collection of materials relating to Bob and his work, including podcasts. In addition, we are pleased to renew our web links with BioNews and the Progress Educational Trust, which has pioneered public education about reproduction and genetics – a cause close to the heart of our emeritus founding editor, Bob Edwards.
Symposia and supplements The subject matter of Supplements and Guest Symposia reflects what is happening and what is likely to happen in our rapidly changing field, with the aim of shortening the translational phase of innovation and hopefully permitting advances to benefit patients. Thus, Symposia on Reproductive Surgery (Guest Editors T.C. Li and Antoine Watrelot, volume 23, issue 1) and Oocyte Cryopreservation (Guest Editors Nicole Noyes and Peter Nagy, volume 23 issue 3) featured last year, the latter likely to be re-visited sooner rather than later. In addition, the November issue (23[5]) was devoted entirely to the topic of Cross-Border Reproductive Care (Guest Editors Zeynep Gu ¨rtin and Marcia Inhorn) and was followed by four lively responding Commentaries in the December issue of Ethics, BioScience and Life (23[7]). Our thanks go to all the Symposium Editors for their
1472-6483/$ - see front matter ª 2011, Reproductive Healthcare Ltd. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.rbmo.2011.11.005
2
Editorial
Table 1
Long-list papers nominated for the 2010 Robert G. Edwards Prize Paper Award.
Authors
Title
Reference (RBM Online volume and pages)
De Neubourg et al. Dixit et al. Fong et al.
Cumulative live-birth delivery after IVF/ICSI since the progressive introduction of single-embryo transfer Genes governing premature ovarian failure Derivation efficiency, cell proliferation, freeze–thaw survival, stem-cell properties and differentiation of human Wharton’s jelly stem cells Ovarian reserve determinations suggest new function of FMR1 (fragile X gene) in regulating ovarian ageing Improvement in diminished ovarian reserve after dehydroepiandrosterone supplementation Polymorphisms of nucleotide-excision repair genes may contribute to sperm DNA fragmentation and male infertility Miscarriage risk for IVF pregnancies in poor responders to ovarian hyperstimulation Experiences of offspring searching for and contacting their donor siblings and donor Blastocysts from patients with polycystic ovaries exhibit altered transcriptome and secretome IVF treatment should not be postponed for patients with high basal FSH concentrations Corifollitropin alfa for ovarian stimulation in IVF: a randomized trial in lowerbody-weight women Is the birthweight of singletons born after IVF reduced by ovarian stimulation or by IVF laboratory procedures? Erythropoietic differentiation of a human embryonic stem cell line harbouring the sickle cell anaemia mutation Comparative functional genomics of mammalian DNA methyltransferases
20, 836–842
Gleicher et al. Gleicher et al. Gu et al.* Haadsma et al. Jadva et al. Katz-Jaffe et al.* Maman et al. Mannaerts/Ensure study group Pelinck et al. Pryzhkova et al. Rodriguez-Osorio et al. Tur-Kaspa et al. Yovich & Stanger *
PGD for all cystic fibrosis carrier couples: novel strategy for preventive medicine and cost analysis Growth hormone supplementation improves implantation and pregnancy productivity rates for poor-prognosis patients undertaking IVF
20, 724–740 21, 391–401 20, 768–775 21, 360–365 21, 602–609 20, 191–200 20, 523–532 21, 520–526 21, 631–635 21, 66–76 21, 245–251 21, 196–206 20, 243–255 21, 186–195 21, 37–49
Short-listed for the 2010 Robert G. Edwards Prize Paper Award.
dedication to the task. Supplements are more likely to be historically rather than scientifically driven, intentionally to highlight the human face of scientific progress and achievement. Thus, a supplement featuring the magnificent contributions of Sir Bob to the journal was edited by Richard Gardner and Martin Johnson, and although published online as a Tenth Anniversary Issue at the end of 2010, its publication in hard copy in January of 2011 was made possible by a generous grant from Merck Serono S.A. The publication of a Supplement celebrating 50 years of the clinical use of human gonadotrophins followed in February, again made possible by the support of Merck Serono S.A. July saw the publication of a magnificent Bob Edwards tribute issue, comprised of over 100 personal recollections and tributes to the ‘father of IVF’. In the coming year, we are already well advanced in the preparation of a Symposium on Trophoblast Development edited by Myriam Hemberger and Rosalind John, with two others in advanced planning: one on Evidence-Based Medicine (Yacoub Khalaf and Jacques Cohen) and the other on Implantation (Andrew Sharkey and Nick Macklon).
Scientific writing workshops To consolidate on our endeavours in earlier years, we have now conducted workshops on scientific writing at the annual MSRM meeting in Paris, as well as prior to ESHRE at Stockholm and ASRM in Orlando. We are grateful for the support, both financial and scientific, from Merck Serono S.A. notably for the last two workshops. The Chinese delegation’s feedback from the ASRM-linked event was very positive. We expect to be offering these workshops within the overall Elsevier strategy to act as a resource not only for young scientists at the beginning of their publishing careers, but also for existing authors and readers to acknowledge the changes in scientific publication technology, its benefits and pitfalls. It is notable that one of the lectures entitled ‘‘Self-copying, plagiarism and ethics in publishing’’ was particularly wellreceived: this problem, a manifestation of the downside of the electronic age, is one with which editors of all journals in our area are grappling seriously – authors be warned!
Editorial
Affiliated societies We have also sought to be more actively involved with our affiliated societies, encouraging greater use of the journal pages available to them to highlight their business matters and events, and offering shared resources such as the writing workshops. We shall continue our efforts and welcome your ideas, especially on how we can attract the interest of younger society members, who are more aware of the benefits of the new publication technologies as well as being more comfortable with these innovative platforms.
Robert G. Edwards Prize Paper Award for 2010 The winning paper for the first-ever award of this prize was announced on 21 November 2011 as: ‘‘Polymorphisms of nucleotide-excision repair genes may contribute to sperm DNA fragmentation and male infertility’’ by Aihua Gu, Guixiang Ji, Yong Zhou, Yan Long, Xiangguo Shi, Guangbo Fu, Shoulin Wang, Ling Song, and Xinru Wang, which appeared in Reproductive BioMedicine Online in November 2010 (volume 21[5], pp. 602–609) (http://www.rbmojournal. com/article/S1472-6483(10)00434-7/abstract). This award has been established by Elsevier Ltd. for the purpose of recognizing excellence in our field of study, and will be awarded annually. All original research or review articles published in journal volumes 20 and 21 (including Ethics, Bioscience and Life, but excluding supplements) were considered for this first prize. The winning authors received a certificate of recognition, 1000 Euros, and a complimentary ScienceDirect Ambassador Account, which allows full access to the entire library of books and journals published by Elsevier. In addition, the prize-winning paper was made open access. Where the prize is awarded, as this year, to a multi-author paper, the more junior of the main authors received the year’s access to the ScienceDirect database. All names appear on the award certificate. The winning paper was selected by a panel consisting of the Senior Editor and the two Editors. A long-list was first compiled from nominations provided by the Section Editors (Table 1). The Section Editors were invited to explain why the paper nominated deserved the prize award. They also confirmed that reaching their decision involved no conflict of interest and that there was no reason that might disqualify them from acting as nominator, other than was made
3 clear in the nomination letter. Section Editors were also asked to reach their decision independently without discussion with any other Editors or Section Editors. The three Editors then produced a short-list. In doing so they used the following criteria: (i) Any paper receiving more than one nomination went forward automatically; (ii) preference was given, all else being equal, to new investigators and/or less senior authors. Each of the three Editors declared if any short-listed papers presented for them a possible conflict of interest and none did. Short-listed papers were run through CrossCheck and subjected to a confirmatory analysis for statistical validity. There were two clear papers ahead of the field – both marked with an asterisk in Table 1. The Editorial panel’s decision is final. We congratulate the authors of the winning paper and all those short-listed authors for their excellent contributions to our journal. The winner of the 2011 prize will be announced in the early summer of 2012.
The coming year A major event in 2012 is the co-sponsorship with the University of Cambridge of a Symposium called Futures in Reproduction to celebrate the award of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine to Sir Bob. The meeting will take place in Churchill College, where Bob is a fellow, on Saturday 15 and Sunday 16 December 2012. There will be a special dinner in the Great Hall of St John’s College on the Saturday evening. The conference, which is made possible by an educational grant from Merck Serono SA, invites speakers and participants to attempt to capture something of the radical, far-sighted, wide-ranging and challenging spirit of enquiry that characterizes Bob Edwards’ career. A strong focus on the exciting and unconventional is the highest tribute that we can pay to this remarkable man. Details of the meeting and how to book will be on our website soon – so watch this space! We wish a productive and exciting 2012 to all our contributors and readers. Jacques Cohen, Gedis Grudzinskas, Martin Johnson E-mail address: [email protected] (M Johnson)