A central goal of the Editorial group at Johns Hopkins is to accelerate the transmission of cutting-edge biomedical science. There is often a tension between the timeliness of publication and the completeness of a story. We are interested in stories that are complete, and even if brief, a part of the message should be definitive. The definition of definitive is often in the eye of the beholder (i.e., editors and reviewers) and the mandate of the publication venue. We will maintain a rigorous standard for publication in the JCI but do wish to solicit brief, elegant, and captivating reports — memorable scientific short stories.

In this spirit, we have reconfigured the Brief Report category and renamed it Concise Communication, with the goal of publishing brief but complete pieces of science. The Concise Communication has a 4,000-word limit, with up to four display items (combinations of figures and tables) and may include a supplement. The final format of the Concise Communication is: Abstract, Introduction, combined Results and Discussion, followed by Methods. The Methods section may be entirely online, but for clinical studies, the study approval information must be reported in the main text. The supplements for Concise Communications will not have a length or word limit. The change from the Brief Report to Concise Communication format will occur with the November 2017 edition of the JCI, therefore, any submitted Brief Reports published after this date will appear in the Concise Communication format.

Another goal of our Board is to make submission to the JCI easier for authors. In order to streamline the submission process, we are allowing for more flexibility in the format of original science that comes to the JCI. We know that our authors have a number of venue choices for publishing their work, and liberalizing the format will allow authors to avoid having to change their manuscript for submission to the JCI. Revisions to align with the JCI’s format will only be required of manuscripts that are considered for publication. We seek the timely publication of discoveries in basic and clinical biomedical science that will advance the practice of medicine. We look forward to the opportunity to evaluate your work.

Footnotes

Reference information: J Clin Invest. 2017;127(11):3915. https://doi.org/10.1172/JCI97531.

约翰·霍普金斯大学（Johns Hopkins）编辑小组的主要目标是加快尖端生物医学科学的传播。出版的及时性和故事的完整性之间常常存在紧张关系。我们对完整的故事感兴趣，即使是简短的故事，其中的一部分也应该是确定的。权威人士的定义通常是旁观者（即编辑和审阅者）和发布场地的任务。我们将在JCI上维持严格的出版标准，但也希望征求简短，优雅且引人入胜的报告-令人难忘的科学短篇小说。

本着这种精神，我们重新配置了“简报”类别，并将其重命名为“简明交流”，目的是发布简明而完整的科学著作。简明通讯的字数限制为4,000个字，最多包含四个显示项目（图形和表格的组合），并且可能包括补充内容。简明交流的最终格式是：摘要，引言，结果和讨论的合并，然后是方法。“方法”部分可能完全在线，但对于临床研究，必须在正文中报告研究批准信息。简明通讯的补篇没有长度或字数限制。从简要报告格式到简明交流格式的更改将在JCI 2017年11月版中进行，因此，在此日期之后发布的所有提交的简要报告将以简明交流格式显示。

董事会的另一个目标是使作者更容易向JCI提交论文。为了简化提交过程，我们允许JCI所采用的原始科学格式具有更大的灵活性。我们知道我们的作者可以在出版作品时有很多场所选择，而格式的自由化将使作者不必更改稿件即可提交给JCI。仅对于考虑出版的手稿，才需要进行修订以符合JCI的格式。我们寻求及时出版基础和临床生物医学科学方面的发现，以促进医学实践。我们期待着有机会评估您的工作。

脚注

参考信息：J Clin Invest。2017; 127（11）：3915。https://doi.org/10.1172/JCI97531。