Brain Medicine
Introducing Brain Medicine: From Neurons to Behavior and Better Health (Brain Medicine) is a privilege. Despite representing an immense global burden, brain disorders are still addressed in a fragmented manner that hinders progress. Brain medicine is an emerging discipline that breaks artificial barriers and fiefdoms to bring about progress from bench to bedside across brain disorders. Our focus starts with neuroscience and extends to translational initiatives and all brain-based disorders; importantly, we also focus on cross-disciplinary interfaces. As an example, we are equally interested in psychosis and Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and we are also interested in their interface: psychosis occurring in AD. We will publish work that utilizes a range of approaches, including genetics, cellular and molecular neuroscience, the “-omics,” imaging, pharmacology, microbiology including the microbiome, functional neurosurgery, brain stimulation, analyses of “big data,” computational approaches including AI, all the way to societal impact. The gap from neurons to behavior and better health will be bridged through innovation. Let us advance Brain Medicine together! GO TO OUR Early View-AOP page for early access to our content.
Overview and Key Features of Brain Medicine
Brain Medicine: From Neurons to Behavior and Better Health (Brain Medicine) aims to advance progress in fundamental neurobiology, translation, clinical medicine, and societal implications relevant to all brain disorders. The concept of “brain medicine” as a distinct entity has been advanced in the USA by Brown JC et al. (2023, PMID: 37021384) [1] and Canada by Levitt S et al. (2023, PMID: 36719701) [2] and Saravi SFB et al. (2023, PMID: 37227080) [3], particularly for complex clinical presentations. Why is this important? Currently, the brain and its disorders are covered by a myriad of separate disciplines that include, among others, neuroscience, neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, neuropathology, neuropsychopharmacology, microbiology, psychoneuroimmunology, psychoneuroendocrinology, psychiatry, neurology, neurosurgery, ophthalmology, otolaryngology, and rehabilitation medicine. We aim to have in one setting the best venue to advance the emerging integrative discipline of brain medicine, breaking down historical, academic, institutional, and administrative barriers and fiefdoms and showcasing the remarkable progress in research focused on the brain and its disorders.
[1] Brown JC, Dainton-Howard H, Woodward J, Palmer C, Karamchandani M, Williams NR, George MS. Time for Brain Medicine. J Neuropsychiatry Clin Neurosci. 2023 Apr 6:appineuropsych21120312. doi: 10.1176/appi.neuropsych.21120312. PMID: 37021384.
[2] Levitt S, Henri-Bhargava A, Hogan DB, Shulman K, Mitchell SB. The Brain Medicine Fellowship: A Competency-Based Training Program to Treat Complex Brain Disorders. Acad Med. 2023 May 1;98(5):590-594. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000005156. Epub 2023 Jan 30. PMID: 36719701.
[3] Saravi SFB, Mitchell SB, Levitt S. The Brain Medicine Clinic: two cases highlighting the advantages of integrative care. BJPsych Open. 2023 May 25;9(3):e92. doi: 10.1192/bjo.2022.631. PMID: 37227080.
The scope of Brain Medicine, which stands as our hallmark, covers foundational neuroscience, reaches into translational efforts, and encompasses all conditions influenced by the brain. This includes neurological and psychiatric disorders, behavioral alterations as well as other aspects of health and illness that are controlled by the brain, such as obesity and body weight regulation, highlighting the brain’s central role in these areas. Our engagement is deep, spanning from individual disorders to the multifaceted intersections across disciplines, underlining our commitment to understanding and addressing the complex interplay between brain function and health outcomes.
As two examples, we are equally interested in psychosis and AD or depression and Parkinson’s disease (PD), and we are also interested in their interface: psychosis occurring in AD or depression in the context of PD. In this spirit, we are particularly interested in having within our scope areas that are focused on interfaces, such as neuropsychiatry and neuropsychology. We publish work that utilizes a range of approaches, including genetics, cellular and molecular neuroscience, the “-omics,” neuroimaging, neuropsychopharmacology, functional neurosurgery, brain stimulation, microbiology including the microbiome, psychoneuroimmunology, psychoneuroendocrinology, analyses of “big data,” computational approaches including artificial intelligence (AI), environmental contributions, digital health, e-health, all the way to the societal impact of brain disorders, including epidemiology and public health.
Our mission is to be the primary venue supporting brain medicine’s emergence as a new and cross-disciplinary discipline. Brain Medicine will expand knowledge from brain cells and circuits to brain disorders, covering their impact on society to achieve this mission. We are particularly interested in publishing work that is conceptually novel, or that has the potential for translational impact.
The core values of Brain Medicine include
- Excellence
- Academic integrity and scientific rigor
- Passionate purpose to be instrumental in the emergence of the new discipline of brain medicine
- Relentless innovation leading to translation from bench to bedside, and
- Inclusive and cross-disciplinary team science.
We foster a culture of fairness and respect by assessing the quality of papers regardless of origin. In that regard, we evaluate each manuscript that comes to us solely on its merits and potential contributions to the field, not where the paper comes from.
Our major goal is to attain the highest levels of scientific achievement, that can only be based on transparency and honesty. Therefore, as an integral part of our mission to uphold the bedrock of scientific integrity, Genomic Press has instituted procedures to meticulously scrutinize any allegations that come into our purview, irrespective of their channel of emergence. Whether raised prior to publication or post-release, or when proffered by whistleblowers, these charges are met with rigorous examination. Our pledge to sustain scholarly excellence propels us to diligently investigate any suspicions of scientific malfeasance, which may run the gamut from academic fraud, recurrent manuscript submissions, spurious data creation or manipulation, to ethically dubious research participant interactions, contested authorship, falsified reviewer endorsements, and cloaked vested interests.
In this spirit all our papers will be subjected to plagiarism check for text and, as the technology evolves, also for figures.
While our operational ethos is chiefly harmonized with the principles articulated by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), we retain the latitude to embark on divergent strategies when exigent circumstances call for such. This latitude may entail establishing a dialogue with the questioned authors’ academic institutions, funding agencies, or other germane oversight authorities for rigorous scrutiny.
As for amending the published record, we employ a contextually-based approach, executing modifications through either errata or retractions, based upon broad considerations: errata typically correct inadvertent errors in discrete aspects of published work that do not change the overall findings and conclusions. In contrast, the criteria for retraction may include any of the following: (a) evidence of calculated manipulation, (b) the level of correction would change the nature of the overall findings and conclusions, (c) extensive plagiarism, or (d) there is an overall lack of confidence in the work. We also support COPE’s observations that Editors consider retracting a publication if:
- They have clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of major error (eg, miscalculation or experimental error), or as a result of fabrication (eg, of data) or falsification (e.g., image manipulation).
- It constitutes plagiarism.
- The findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper attribution to previous sources or disclosure to the editor, permission to republish, or justification (ie, cases of redundant publication).
- It contains material or data without authorization for use.
- Copyright has been infringed or there is some other serious legal issue (e.g., libel, privacy).
- It reports unethical research.
- It has been published solely on the basis of a compromised or manipulated peer review process.
- The author(s) failed to disclose a major competing interest (a.k.a. conflict of interest) that, in the view of the editor, would have unduly affected interpretations of the work or recommendations by editors and peer reviewers.
When deliberating on rescinding an article’s acceptance, initiating the retraction of an already disseminated piece, or emitting an editorial cautionary note, it is our standard protocol to engage in communications with the concerned authors’ institutions as part of our procedures. As supporters of COPE’s policies, we adhere to COPE guidelines in managing investigations of possible misconduct, which are accessible here). This document includes the following language “The COPE Code of Conduct for Journal Editors (Clause 11.4) notes that, in cases of suspected or alleged research or publication misconduct ‘editors should first seek a response from those suspected of misconduct. If they are not satisfied with the response, they should ask the relevant employers, or institution … to investigate.’ COPE therefore advises that investigations into possible misconduct should generally be undertaken by the researcher’s institution and not by editors. If a journal has published unreliable or fraudulent information, the editor has a duty to correct or retract this. However, responsibility for disciplining researchers and ensuring they do not commit further misconduct lies with their institution / employer. Therefore, even when faced with apparently strong evidence of misconduct (e.g. plagiarism or inappropriate image manipulation), and a clear need to correct the published record, editors should liaise with institutions and ensure they are informed.”
The scaffolding of the scientific evaluation system, peer review, is paramount in assessing research funding (grants) and scholarly outcomes (papers). We enthusiastically uphold the integrity of the editorial process, grounded in unbiased peer review.
The peer review process can be configured in different ways, with the vast majority of journals worldwide adhering to one of three formats: (i) Single-blind peer reviews are anonymous only to the authors. Authors do not know the reviewers’ names or backgrounds, but reviewers know theirs. (ii) Both authors and reviewers in double-blind peer reviews are anonymous; only the editor knows their identities. A truly double-blind peer review process is hard to attain, as a knowledgeable review can infer authorship based on specific methods and areas of research and cited work. (iii) In open peer review the identity of the author and the reviewer is known by all participants, during or after the review process.
At Brain Medicine, the conventional single-blind peer review will be employed because it is the most commonly used globally.
Brain Medicine‘s content will undergo comprehensive peer review, except for informational editorials and interviews, penned or edited as broad commentaries by the Editor-in-Chief, and marked as such.
Every contribution to Brain Medicine, encompassing original research, reviews, letters, and all manuscript variants, will be unreservedly sent to external authorities for single-blind peer review. We are committed to sustaining the international complexion of Brain Medicine from its genesis. Therefore, submissions will be typically routed to eight scholars from different countries, ensuring a global distribution of reviewers. We strive to base editorial judgments on at least three critiques, though two may suffice.
Publishing your research in Brain Medicine offers the distinctive merits of swift, individualized review, global propagation of your findings, widespread accessibility through press coverage, equitable cost, and an attentive yet expansive concentration on pioneering research in myriad domains, emphasizing advancements across the broad scope of brain medicine.
Applications are being made for Brain Medicine’s ISSN and E-ISSN. We are now registered with Crossref, providing all our publications with searchable DOI links. As a scholarly-driven publication, we intend to assemble a substantial portfolio of various manuscript types, enabling eligibility for additional databases, such as Medline/Pubmed/Index Medicus, Scopus, Embase, Clarivate including Emerging Sources Citation Index, Journal Citation Reports and Web of Science, and others. We have an indexing strategy to pursue listing by highly respected databases upon satisfying requisite standards, thereby rendering prior submissions accessible retrospectively through those platforms.
Genomic Press is a signatory of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and as such we support the adoption of multiple practices in research assessment. DORA’s first general recommendation is not to use journal-based metrics, such as Journal Impact Factors, as a surrogate measure of the quality of individual research articles, to assess an individual scientist’s contributions, or in hiring, promotion, or funding decisions.
The notion of a “journal impact factor,” alternately abbreviated as IF or JIF, conceived by Eugene Garfield, was created at the Philadelphia-based Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). The IF was originally created as a tool to help librarians identify journals to purchase, not as a measure of the scientific quality of research in an article. Broadly, the IF is indicative of a journal’s influence, as it has regularly assessed annually since 1975 for those journals enumerated in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR). This establishment, first identified as Thomson ISI, fell under the ownership of Thomson Scientific & Healthcare in 1992. A series of transactions in 2018 saw Thomson Reuters divest itself of ISI, transferring ownership to Onex Corporation and Baring Private Equity Asia. In the current epoch, Clarivate, an emergent corporation formed by these organizations, presides over the publication of the JCR.
The term “impact factor” is constituted by the quotient derived from dividing the total citations received in one year by articles published within the preceding two years, divided by the number of articles published within that same two-year timeframe. As an illustration, the highly regarded journal Cell (published by Cell Press, a subsidiary of Elsevier) boasted an impact factor of 66.850 for 2022. This number indicates that each scholarly piece published in 2020 and 2021 by Cell was cited, on an average scale, close to 67 times in the year 2022. It must be emphasized, however, that the computations for the impact factors for the year 2022 were only disclosed in June of the year 2023, for the calculus can only be performed post the thorough perusal and processing of all scholarly output for the year 2022 by the indexing company.
In summary, the IF is a mathematical index, calculated by Clarivate, quantifying the citations in one calendar year (e.g., 2023) of all papers published within a specified journal in the preceding biennial period (e.g., 2021–2022), divided by the total number of articles published within that same two-year timeframe (e.g., 2021–2022). All of the data used in the calculation of the IF originates from the database of Clarivate’s Web of Science.
This quantifiable metric, far from being a mere statistic, frequently mirrors a journal’s standing and sway within its academic discipline. Those journals with lofty impact factor scores are universally acknowledged as repositories of prestige and influence, starkly contrasting to their counterparts languishing with diminished values.
The use of the impact factor is subject to controversy, however. Its adoption by universities and financial benefactors as a yardstick for gauging professional advancement and the merit of research propositions has not gone unchallenged. Accusations of it fostering deformations in commendable scientific conduct have been levied, a topic elaborated upon in the scholarly piece by EC McKiernan and associates, published in 2019.
For the specific case of Brain Medicine, the calculation and subsequent disclosure of its Impact Factor will only transpire post the journal’s third year of publication.
In our contemporary era, the information superhighway is greatly enriched by the veins of social media, providing a diverse and expansive arena for the conveyance of knowledge. Brain Medicine takes this cue to amplify the resonance and reach of your scholarly contributions through the multifaceted utilization of various online platforms.
Through Facebook’s expansive network, your work is cast across an intellectually ravenous populace, igniting sophisticated debate and contemplation across a spectrum of viewers. X’s (formerly Twitter) ephemeral nature caters to pivotal discoveries from your studies into the laps of a planetary coterie of scientists, scholars, and aficionados.
LinkedIn, with its orientation towards professional spheres, offers a conduit to expose your work to shapers of industry, potential synergists, and organizations harboring a keen interest in your research. Through a lens of visual centrality, Instagram demystifies abstruse concepts, thus rendering your work palatable to a broader constituency. Furthermore, YouTube’s capacity for video summarizations and author dialogues sheds light on your research in an enlightening and engaging manner.
Our invigorated strategy within social media seeks not merely to publish your work but to trumpet it, augmenting its perceptibility and influence within the scholarly fraternity and extending its impact across various communities.
With Brain Medicine, publishing your labor is but an inaugural step in a grander odyssey. The latent dynamism of scientific innovation is activated when it permeates diverse strata, inciting conversation and fostering growth within the scientific sphere and its penumbra. Guided by this ethos, we are committed to the judicious use of press releases as beacons to illuminate your innovations, thereby assuring they attain merited accolades.
Our pledge to uplift scientific understanding and holistic well-being guides us to make our revelations broadly accessible. We forge robust liaisons with authors and their institutions, cooperatively sculpting poignant press releases for all salient articles. Crafted with conciseness, vivacity, and approachability, our press communiques capture the fascination of a heterogeneous readership. We maintain an alignment with institutions that prefer to issue their dispatches, though we retain the prerogative to independently conceive and distribute our press releases unless otherwise instructed.
To guarantee that your work enjoys extensive global prominence, our Press Releases will be disseminated by the auspices of EurekAlert!, a philanthropic platform for news-release distribution orchestrated by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, publishers of Science). Birthed in 1996, EurekAlert! serves as a repository for announcements from universities, publishers, medical establishments, government bodies, enterprises, and diverse entities engaged in the full breadth of scientific inquiry. Journalists hailing from all terrains make recourse to these releases.
This endeavor signifies our resolute commitment to buttress your research voyage and actively champion your triumphs. Our investment in your pioneering efforts equips them with the stage they require to stimulate dialogue, catalyze novelty, and infuse positivity into our global civilization.
Subscribe to our newsfeeds to keep up with the latest updates when we launch in 2024.
Julio Licinio, MD, PhD, MBA, MS has made significant contributions to the fields of psychiatry and neuroscience, particularly through his extensive research and editorial leadership. Over his illustrious career, Dr. Licinio has been instrumental in advancing our understanding of complex psychiatric disorders, with a focus on depression, stress-related circuits, circadian rhythms, genetics, pharmacology, and pharmacogenomics. Dr. Licinio’s work has delved into the intricate mechanisms underpinning conditions such as obesity and depression, exploring their genetic and pharmacogenomic dimensions. This research has not only enriched the scientific literature but also paved the way for novel therapeutic strategies, contributing significantly to the field of precision medicine. His exploration of the human microbiota and its impact on health further underscores his commitment to uncovering the multifaceted interactions between our environment, our biology, and psychiatric conditions. As a testament to his prolific output, he has authored over 300 publications, which have had over 42,000 citations; his h-index is 90.
In addition to his scientific accomplishments, Dr. Licinio has been recognized with prestigious honors, including his fellowship with the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences, Matthew Flinders Distinguished Professor, and his role as State University of New York Distinguished Professor, highlighting his exceptional contributions to academia and medical research. One of Dr. Licinio’s notable contributions involves the implications of climate change on mental health, where he has explored the profound psychological impacts resulting from climate-induced stress and trauma. This work is particularly relevant in the context of increasing global environmental challenges, highlighting the intersection between psychiatry and broader societal issues.
Dr. Licinio has over 30 years of experience as Editor-in-Chief, having founded and led four journals from inception to full indexing and high impact. In the last seven years, Dr. Licinio has edited and published 44 articles by 9 Nobel Prize laureates, including 19 by the late Nobel laureate Paul Greengard. Dr. Licinio rapidly raised the impact factor and rankings of the first journal he launched, which went from non-existent to number 1 worldwide in 13 years.
Our Editorial Board consists of eminent international experts. Confirmed members of the Editorial Board include:
Schahram Akbarian, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York 10029, USA
Daniel Barbosa, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina 29425, USA
Tatiana Barichello, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, Texas 77054, USA
Stefan R. Bornstein, TUD Dresden University of Technology, 01307 Dresden, Germany
Emiliana Borrelli, University of California, Irvine, California 92697, USA
Paolo Brambilla, Università degli Studi di Milano, 20122 Milan, MI, Italy
Joshua C. Brown, Harvard Medical School and McLean Hospital, Belmont, Massachusetts 02478, USA
Annamaria Cattaneo, Università degli Studi di Milano, 20133 Milan, MI, Italy
Udo Dannlowski, University of Münster, D-48149 Münster, Germany
Hamed Ekhtiari, University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55454, USA
Massimo Filippi, Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, 20132 Milano, MI, Italy
Kostas N. Fountoulakis, School of Medicine, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece
Sam Gandy, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York 10029, USA
Ruben Gur, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA
Casey H. Halpern, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA
Alan G. Harris, New York University Grossman School of Medicine, New York, New York 10016, USA
Ian B. Hickie, University of Sydney, Brain and Mind Institute, Camperdown, New South Wales 2050, Australia
Atsushi Kamiya, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 21287, USA
Keith M. Kendrick, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China
Ronald C. Kessler, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA
Adrienne Carol Lahti, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama 35294, USA
Tatia M. C. Lee, The State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong SAR
John Mantsch, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53226, USA
Valeria Mondelli, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College, London, SE5 9RT, UK
Ruth O’Hara, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA
Anilkumar Pillai, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, Texas 77054, USA
Jelena Radulovic, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York 10461, USA
Gavin Reynolds, Queen’s University Belfast and Sheffield Hallam University, UK
Marisa Roberto, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California 92037, USA
Isabelle M. Rosso, Harvard Medical School and McLean Hospital, Belmont, Massachusetts 02478, USA
Jonathan Savitz, Laureate Institute for Brain Research, Tulsa, Oklahoma 74136, USA
Akira Sawa, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 21287, USA
Helen Blair Simpson, Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, New York 10032, USA
Nuno Sousa, School of Medicine, University of Minho, 4710-057 Braga, Portugal
Weihong Song, Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, 325015, China and University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z3, Canada
Li-Huei Tsai, Picower Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
Kuei Y. Tseng, University of Illinois Chicago – College of Medicine, Chicago, Illinois 60612, USA
Lucina Uddin, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA
Guido van Wingen, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 1100DD, The Netherlands
Roger Walz, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Santa Catarina 88040-970, Brazil
Yunlei Yang , Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York 10461, USA
Wei-Dong Yao, State University of New York, Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, New York 13210, USA
Keqiang Ye, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT), Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, 518055, Guangdong, China
Allan H. Young, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London, London, SE5 8AF, UK
Tifei Yuan, Shanghai Mental Health Center, Brain Health Institute, 200030 Shanghai, China
Mone Zaidi, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York 10029-5674, USA
Edna Grünblatt, University of Zurich, CH-8952 Schlieren, Switzerland
At Genomic Press, the intricate labyrinth that researchers often navigate during the stages of manuscript submission and eventual publication has yet to escape our attention. We aspire to unravel this Gordian knot and smoothen your passage to publishing, thus allowing you to channel your energies into the creation and promulgation of pioneering studies.
To this end, we have orchestrated our authorial directives to sing in unison across all our scholarly receptacles, including but not limited to Brain Medicine, Genomic Psychiatry, and Psychedelics. This concerted harmony ensures an unambiguous and uniform consistency in what we will accept as manuscript types and the dicta we expect our authors to abide by. We have sculpted this unified approach with the sole objective of refining your journey, rendering it not only unencumbered but pleasantly expeditious.
Our singular compendium of authorial directions awaits at your fingertips. We cordially invite you to avail yourself of this compendium by following this link (https://journals.genomicpress.com/author-instructions/), wherein you will find an exhaustive elucidation on the arts of manuscript preparation and submission.
We designed Brain Medicine to optimize your publishing experience, making it straightforward and efficient. Stay tuned for more details about our journal. We will work with you to facilitate the process of publishing and disseminating your articles after they undergo rapid and fair single-blind peer review to enhance your discoveries’ impact. Welcome aboard!
Stay tuned as we provide updated info for our launch
