As NIH publication halts manuscript acceptance, ToxSci steps in

A toxicology-focused journal is stepping in after the decision by Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP), which is published by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), to pause the acceptance of new manuscripts after receiving a letter from the US Department of Justice.

On April 23, both EHP and the Journal of Health and Pollution (JHP)—which are supported by the NIH’s National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS)—announced the pause, citing “changes in operational resources.”

The journals said they will communicate directly with researchers whose papers were in the process of being considered for publication and will provide updates as soon as possible.

“To better align with this mission, enhance efficiency, and reduce costs, contract support for EHP will gradually wind down as current work concludes,” Jesse Saffron, acting director of the Office of Communications and Public Liaison at the NIEHS, tells C&EN. “We are actively exploring sustainable models to ensure EHP continues to serve the scholarly community effectively in the future.”

On May 8, Toxicological Sciences, the official journal of the Society of Toxicology, announced that they will consider manuscripts that were under review at EHP if authors submit them to the journal. Moreover, if authors provide the peer-review reports produced at EHP, the publication will consider not sending the studies out for further review.

“If you have a manuscript that fits within the broad scope of ToxSci that was pending revision or decision after at least one round of peer review at EHP, please consider submitting to ToxSci,” writes Jeffrey Peters, editor in chief of Toxicological Sciences, in a blog posting. “Include a tracked copy, a clean copy, and a supplemental file that contains all previous reviewer comments and your detailed responses. Editors will consider these previous efforts, which should facilitate swift peer review,” he continues. 

Daniel Gorelick, a biomedical scientist at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston who has published papers in EHP, is disappointed with the journal’s recent developments. “My guess is that someone in the Trump administration decided that money should not be spent on publishing these journals,” he says, pointing to recently proposed cuts to the NIH budget.

“It’s one of the top journals in my field,” Gorelick adds, noting that EHP publishes under a diamond open access model, which means that its papers are free for anyone to read, reuse, and distribute, and it doesn’t charge authors article processing charges to publish studies. “There are certainly no journals that are the number one journal in their field that do this,” he adds.

What’s unique about these two journals is that all the funds needed to run them are provided by the NIH, Gorelick notes, while most publications are run by for-profit publishers, scientific societies, or other third parties. Gorelick was impressed by how EHP officials managed conflicts of interest. “They didn’t show preference for NIH-funded research,” he says. “It was really an example of how publishing could work.”

“It’s very clear that environmental science has been challenged by the recent information from the current US administration,” says Cynthia Sears, an infectious diseases researcher and physician at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Sears edits The Journal of Infectious Diseases, which was one of six signatory publications to a recent editorial expressing concerns about recent policies introduced by the Trump administration, including removing education materials from government websites, funding freezes on health initiatives, and restricting use of certain terminology in scientific communications.

In the last few weeks, medical journals have also received letters from the US Department of Justice. One such letter, dated April 14, that Edward R. Martin Jr., the interim US attorney for the District of Columbia, sent to the journal Chest, says that many publications are “conceding that they are partisans in various scientific debates.”

Martin then went on to ask a series of questions from Chest about the journal’s responsibility to protect the public from misinformation, publish articles presenting alternative viewpoints, and properly handle allegations of authors whose studies may have misled readers. The letter provided a deadline for a response of May 2.

Laura DiMasi, senior specialist of communications and public relations at the American College of Chest Physicians, confirmed to C&EN that Chest had responded to the US Department of Justice, but the journal currently isn’t sharing that response publicly. 

On May 9, US president Donald Trump announced that he would pull Martin’s nomination after Democrats and a key Republican voiced concerns.