#StayHome, #COVID19, #WeNeedPPE. Our world is spinning in what might seem an uncontrollable manner. Laboratories are in hibernation, most clinical studies are suspended, physicians are converting to telehealth, schools are closed, and we are all trying to stay safe and be productive.At Research and Practice in Thrombosis and Haemostasis, we have implemented several policies to ease the stress of the science community with regard to publishing with us and allow innovation at this time. As an open‐access journal, our goal is to get the science out to the world community without barriers.
On COVID‐Related Science
We are waiving open‐access fees for COVID‐related Original Articles, Brief Reports, Review Articles, Illustrated Reviews, Case Reports and Forum articles for the next 3 months.Original Articles and Brief Reports: If you have final or interim research results, we want to publish them.Review articles: We are interested in reviews on focused COVID topics across the basic, translational, and clinical spectrum.Forum articles: Share your perspectives or an intriguing hypothesis.Rapid Review: We will provide very rapid turnaround for COVID science aiming for <7 days to a decision.We will publish accepted COVID science immediately upon acceptance, and broadcast for digital discussion on Twitter @
RPTHJournal.
On Regular Science
We have implemented measures to continue to advance progress in thrombosis and hemostasis science:Patience in review: We will do our best to maintain a time to first decision of ~20 days, but will also be patient with our valuable peer reviewers and extend review times as needed to accommodate them.Kindness in review: We are advising peer reviewers to consider the current situation when recommending revisions. While we want to publish the highest‐quality work, the wheels of science must keep moving, so unreasonable peer review requests will be discouraged.Flexible revision: In revision preparation, we will not hold authors to requirements for further experiments that simply cannot be done at this time. However, on resubmission, we ask authors in their Discussion section to point out limitations to interpretation of missing experiments that might be important, and to cover this in the “response to reviewers” document.Flexible revision timeline: If authors need more than the suggested time to complete their revision, we are happy to extend deadlines.In addition to our efforts, the ISTH is pursuing many activities to support the needs of the global thrombosis and hemostasis community in the coming days and weeks, including the conversion of the Milan Congress to a virtual Congress. RPTH will be involved in supporting these activities.These are truly trying times. At RPTH, our editorial team believes we will all emerge from this pandemic with a different view on the world and enhanced innovative spirits that will change our future for the best.