Introducing NeuroImmune Pharmacology and Therapeutics (NIPT), the official journal of the Society on NeuroImmune Pharmacology (SNIP)

June 28, 2022

Dear Editors, Authors, and Readers of our NeuroImmune Pharmacology and Therapeutics Journal, Greetings! We are excited to launch our Journal bringing it to our Society on NeuroImmune Pharmacology (SNIP), our world-wide colleagues, students, faculties, and the scientific community at large. Our “in person” 26th Scientific Conference was a raging success with shared friendship and science a short time past in Memphis, Tennessee.

I would like to take this opportunity to update our readership on the birth of our new official journal. This letter serves to welcome the new Society-owned open-access journal, NeuroImmune Pharmacology and Therapeutics (NIPT).

Please let us take you through the history that led us to this occasion and our cause for celebration. Since the start of 2022, our SNIP Journal Publication Committee (JPC, Drs. Santosh Kumar, Sanjay Maggirwar and Jean M. Bidlack) worked diligently and thoughtfully with NIPT’s founding Editor-in-Chief and the publishers, De Gruyter and the University of Nebraska Press. We read, reviewed, and edited many versions of agreements and operational plans. To this end, we must thank each for their wisdom, patience, and thoughtfulness throughout. This culminated in a Journal Publishing Agreement signed on April 27, 2022. We are pleased to announce that NIPT has been accepting manuscripts for peer-reviewed publication. Our editors have pledged to keep reviews to a maximum of two weeks with rapid online publication. To celebrate the birth of NIPT, we are pleased to announce that the total costs of open access will be paid by the journal in toto for the first two years of operation.

Working with many of you through these tumultuous COVID-19 pandemic years has been a challenging and rewarding journey capped with NIPT’s launch and SNIP’s recent conference. After 17 years of SNIP’s direct support in review, board membership, and sustained manuscript submissions at the Journal of Neuroimmune Pharmacology (JNIP), many have asked why launch a new journal? JNIP was certainly aligned with our Society but owned elsewhere. A new opportunity allowed us to develop new policies and broaden the publishing process. Factors underlying the change of SNIP’s official journal included:

1. Broaden our abilities to accept a wide range of manuscripts.

2. Improve production times for the online publication and notably for high-impact accepted manuscripts which will garner broad interest and broaden our field.

3. Make funds available that will compensate our editors for their due diligence, time, and effort into supporting the Journal’s activities.

4. Facilitate direct engagement by society leadership in broad decision-making, support, direction, and input when needed in steering and appointing the Journal’s leadership including the Editor-in-Chief.

5. Facilitate the growth of our field, our authors, reviewers and editors for open contracts and future growth, discussion, and needed negotiations.

6. To begin the open-access journal, substantial moneys already raised from private donors to cover the Article Processing Charges (APCs) for all submissions the first years of operation.

7. Make available immediately open-access submissions free of charge to both members and non-member scientists worldwide. These philanthropic supporters have also contributed to early-career investigator awards at the 2022 SNIP conference and announced in Memphis.

8. Although PubMed indexing will be delayed by up to 18 months during the infancy stage of NIPT, the indexing will be applied retroactively to all accepted/published manuscripts. In addition, when NIH funding is acknowledged, our NIPT articles will be registered in PubMed Central (PMC) and therefore available in all PubMed searches. NIH-funded manuscripts will not face any delays. All NIH-funded manuscripts will be indexed promptly in PubMed Central to comply with the NIH Public Access Policy.

Please read the NIPT’s online presence by visiting the SNIP’s publication page (https://s-nip.org/publications), our ScholarOne submission portal (https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/nipt), and the NIPT website via De Gruyter (https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/nipt/html).

Our editor-in-chief, senior editors, and section editors from JNIP are now at NIPT, along with several new editor additions. Our Society benefits from their experienced leadership. The roster of senior and section editors can be found under the “Editorial” tab of our NIPT website published online by De Gruyter. In addition, the SNIP JPC members are serving on an advisory board for NIPT. They are joined by philanthropic supporters who have made the launch of SNIP’s very own open-access journal possible. Attached, you can find the editors and advisory board governing the journal.

The name of NIPT has retained the capitalization style of our Society, with the “I” capitalized in “NeuroImmune”. The NIPT name also reflects the evolving new frontier of therapeutics in the field of neuroimmune pharmacology. Furthermore, open access is the future of scholarly publishing, and this SNIP-owned journal ensures that the Society will have ownership in the development of our journal for the benefit of future generations of scientists. The journal’s open-access publishing model will facilitate universal access to accepted/published manuscripts by anyone anywhere in the world. This will give authors and contributors from our Society a much larger global audience at an affordable rate from one of the world’s oldest scholarly publishers, De Gruyter. Subsequent print publication of the online-first journal is in development with the University of Nebraska Press. Several theme issues for NIPT are already in development with invited Guest Editors. As would be expected, all manuscripts will undergo rigorous peer review to uphold our highest scientific standards. All accepted manuscripts will appear immediately on the new journal website hosted by De Gruyter. After waiving APCs for all submissions accepted during the first two years of the journal’s operation, we are committed to keeping the price of APCs affordable for our members.

We close this letter with a request to you, our colleagues and reviewers engaged in the field of neuroimmune pharmacology—please always consider NIPT as a priority for your publications. We look forward to reviewing and publishing your work. Your excellent contributions will help NIPT to a strong start. Together, we will ensure mutual success with this important new endeavor.

Sincerely,

Sulie L. Chang, Ph.D.

President, Society on NeuroImmune Pharmacology (2019–2022)

Howard E. Gendelman, M.D.

Editor-in-Chief, NeuroImmune Pharmacology and Therapeutics Journal

Santosh Kumar, Ph.D.

President, Society on NeuroImmune Pharmacology (2022–2023)