Coating at NIH cuts, a top science journal stops accepting submissions
Environmental health perspectives, which are generally regarded as the first -class journal for environmental health, have announced that the acceptance of new studies on the publication would be the case because the future federal cuts have made themselves unsure.
The Journal has been receiving funds from the National Institutes of Health for more than 50 years to review studies on the health effects of environmental toxins – from “Forever Chemicals” to air pollution – and publish research free of charge.
The editors decided to stop the acceptance of studies, since “a lack of trust” that it will be completed according to their upcoming process data for critical expenses such as copy processing and editorial software, said Joel Kaufman, the top editor of the journal.
He refused to comment on the future prospects of publication.
“If the journal is actually lost, it's a big loss,” said Jonathan Levy, Chairman of the Department for Environmental Health at Boston University. “It reduces the ability that people have good information that can be used to make good decisions.”
The editor of Nejm described the letter as “vague threatening”. On Tuesday, Journal Obstetrics and Gynecology published by the American College of Obstricians and Gynecologists announced that it had received such a letter.
Scientific magazines have long been a goal of top health officers in the Trump administration.
In a book published last year, Dr. Martin A. Makary, the new commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, the editorial team of the journal for “Gate-Keeping” and only published information that supports a “Grouthink narrative”.
In an interview with the podcast “Dr. Hyman Show” last year, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is now a secretary for health and human service, said he planned to pursue medical magazines according to the corruptional federal laws.
“I will find a way to sue you unless you have a plan to show how you start publishing real science,” he said.
However, the announcement of EHP amazed researchers who pointed out that the funding cuts with the priorities of the Trump government stated that it seemed to be conflict.
For example, Mr. Kennedy has repeatedly emphasized how important it is to examine the role of the environment for causing diseases. The new administration is also interested in the transparency and public accessibility of scientific magazines, an area in which EHP was a pioneer.
EHP was one of the first “Open Access” planals, which made it possible for everyone to read without a subscription. And in contrast to many other open access magazines, in which researchers often calculate thousands of dollars for the publication of their work, the support of EHP was to publish scientists from smaller universities without taking care of a fee.
“There are several Ironie layers here,” said Dr. Levy.
EHP is not the only diary that is trapped in the crossfire of the financing cuts in the Department of Health and Human Services.
In a budget for the department preserved by the New York Times, two magazines for Axing, which were published by the centers for the control and prevention of diseases, propose: emerging infectious diseases and the prevention of chronic diseases. Both are published free of charge to authors and readers and are among the best magazines in their fields.
Andrew Nixon, an HHS spokesman, said that “no final decision was made”.
Emerging infectious diseases that have been published monthly provides state -of -the -art reports on threats to infectious diseases from all over the world.
It has contributed to forming the willingness and reaction to outbreaks, said Jason Kindrachuk, a virologist at the University of Manitoba, who has published research on the Marburg and MPOX viruses in the magazine.
The message “is very discouraging,” he said.
