A new portal for the INRAE Research Journals on the BMC platform
Annals of Forest Science moves to SNAPP, the new manuscript management system developed by Springer-Nature.
From January 28, 2025 on, all new manuscripts are submitted via the Springer Nature Article Processing Platform (SNAPP), instead of the former Editorial Manager platform.
The new submission link is here:
Manuscripts submitted before January 28 will still be handled via Editorial Manager. The switch to SNAPP will be finalised once these last manuscripts have been published in a few months.
You will experience a completely new user-interface that is much more user-friendly than the earlier one, and offers new services to authors, reviewers and editors. SNAPP is being progressively adopted by all Springer journals. The settings for AFS have however some specificities:
- the review process at Annals of Forest Science remains a double-blind process and na separate “title page” is no-longer required. The corresponding information will be in the metadata of the manuscript but it will not be communicated to the reviewers;
- data and codes related to the manuscript should still be deposited into an open and “FAIR” repository, to align with our open science goals and to promote reproducibility and transparency.
What’s new for authors and reviewers?
- As authors, you can now choose between different paper formats. The three main formats are still “Research paper”, “Review paper”, “Data paper” (now called “Database”). Suitable templates are available on our website to help you formatting such manuscript.
- Some formats that were specific to Annals of Forest Science changed: “Opinion papers” are now detailed in three different formats: “Debates”, “Matters arising” and “Perspectives”. “First reports” are now “Case Reports” with exactly the same features. “Editorial”, which is mainly used by the journal’s editors is still the same. The definition of these formats is now standardised across Springer-Nature journals using SNAPP. We are currently developing new templates for these formats. Should you have any doubt or question, please refer to the descriptions provided in SNAPP and/or send us a message at annforsci@inrae.fr
- You may now provide “Comments” to published papers underlying the importance of the results found in published papers and providing some comments about their contribution to the development of new research ideas and/or applications.
- A fully new format, “Registered Reports”, is already listed, but is not available for AFS authors for the moment. This new format corresponds to a specific publication process disconnecting hypothesis and study design validation, data collection and results analysis and discussion (see https://www.cos.io/initiatives/registered-reports for more details). This procedure is expected to avoid some of the common replication issues and to encourage publication of “negative” (i.e., non-conclusive results) which is a major issue in many disciplines. This format should be available in a few months, once the editorial workflow of AFS has adapted to it.
- We are gradually adjusting the guidelines for publication and the templates for paper preparation to take all these changes into account. They should be ready soon.
As Editors of “Annals of Forest Science”, we will have to get familiar with this new environment. This will require some time and practical experience. However, we are confident that the guidance provided to the editors and the reviewers by SNAPP will help us overcome these difficulties.
The editorial board of Annals of Forest Science is looking forward to this new step in facilitating the experience of authors, reviewers and editors with a tool designed to adapt to the evolutions of scientific publishing
The co-chief editors of Annals of Forest Science and Annals of Forest Science Team.
It is our great pleasure to open this new portal within the BMC platform, (part of Springer Nature) dedicated to six international research journals published on behalf of INRAE (Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement). This portal is an expression of an active cooperation over the last decade between INRAE, Springer and BMC, who publishes the six journals on behalf of INRAE. Publication has been, and continues, under a full Open Access model (with BMC) and a hybrid model (with Springer).
INRAE and Springer Nature share a strong commitment to disseminate science and research results within the Open Science framework. This commitment to open the content of our journals as much as possible to all, the scientific community (who are the main users of the information we disseminate), but also the broader public, is the backbone of our cooperation and in the centre of many shared decisions.
The Open Science framework refers to, in part, immediate access to journal articles, which is possible through access to (i) archiving the final versions of the manuscripts in public repositories like HAL (which is usually referred to as “Green Open Access”) and to (ii) the Final publication of the version of record (VOR) via the Publisher ’s platform commonly known as “Gold Open Access” publishing. This is a growing fraction of the papers that INRAE publishes. This is indeed a first and important step.
But our journals also promote accessibility to the data backing the published results. Open Access to data means that the data sets are structured following the FAIR principles (they are findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable), and that they are deposited by their authors in public repositories with a permanent identifier, preferably a DOI, and described in explicit meta-data files. The journals are not directly involved in the maintenance of such repositories (this is rather the duty of the institutions employing the researchers, research communities or third parties. Moreover, the authors are solely in charge of the actual deposits of their data set and keep full credit for the production of the datasets. The journals, with the continuous support of Springer-BMC, actively promote this approach.
INRAE journals are also promoting the publication of Data Papers that describe large and potentially very useful datasets shared among interested scientists. This increases the visibility of important data sets and provides an incentive to reuse them. It also helps colleagues involved in data production to gain credit for their invaluable contribution to the advancement of research.
Another important contribution of our journals to Open Access is that they accept the submission of preprints, i.e., of manuscripts that have been made available in a preprint server. In the case the preprint has already been assessed and possibly recommended by peers (like in the case of a Peer Community in…, Peer Community In - free peer review & validation of preprints of articles), we even use the reviews and recommendations made by such a community in addition to our own internal assessment.
Each journal is edited by an independent and international Editorial Board under the lead of one or more Chief Editors. Neither INRAE, Springer or BMC will interfere with any decision made by the Editors. Our aim is however to promote the journals, increase their visibility and bring them any support they might need to maintain their scientific quality.
The present portal invites you to further discover the diversity of topics covered in each of our journals. All journals are briefly described, and links are provided to the individual websites of all journals, to read their contents or to submit your manuscript. It also highlights some original content of the different journals.
January 2023
Erwin Dreyer and Sabine Arbeille on behalf of INRAE.