Current editorial challenges: Criteria for selecting articles for publication

Abstract

Since its foundation in 2002, Experimental and Clinical Sciences (EXCLI Journal) published more than 760 original articles and reviews, particularly in the field of cancer research (Abbastabar et al., 2018; Nojadeh et al., 2018; Karimian et al., 2018), cell biology (Li et al., 2017; Niknami et al., 2017; Ahmadi et al., 2017), toxicology (Randjelovic et al., 2017; Hassani et al., 2018; Nakhaee and Mehrpour, 2018), neurosciences (Farajdokht et al., 2017; Ebrahimi et al., 2017), drug discovery (Li et al., 2018; Khedher et al., 2017) and immunology (Fahimi et al., 2018; Sarvari et al., 2018). However, the editors are keen to keep a broad view of science and technology and also welcome manuscripts from other fields of life sciences and interdisciplinary studies. Our main criterion during the review process is the scientific quality of the study. Editors and reviewers focus particularly on whether the methods are sufficiently described, results are presented in a transparent way, have been sufficiently reproduced in independent experiments and justify the main conclusions. If this is the case, also confirmatory studies or studies reporting negative results may be published. Each manuscript should include a statement on the aim of the study and convincingly explain why the experiments are relevant. While a high degree of novelty is welcome, it is not our most important criterion in selecting manuscripts for publication.