Connecting with the immunological community

As an immunologist with a research group at the University of Florence and as Secretary of the Italian Society of Immunology, Clinical Immunology and Allergology (SIICA), I am highly connected with the immunology community. This is true for all Executive Committee (ExCo) members of the European Journal of Immunology (EJI), with these connections not being limited to Europe given that Ken Murphy and Wenjun Ouyang are based in the USA and Shimon Sakaguchi in Japan; our Editorial Board further extends this international reach. This connection with, and understanding of the challenges faced by researchers, led to the formulation of the fast and fair review policies, including extra fast review if you know that there is a competing group either about to publish or who have recently published data similar to yours, established by Andreas Radbruch when he was Chair of the ExCo [1]. Policies regarding clinical papers were included when the scope of EJI was broadened [2]. We are now extending our connections with the community by publishing the Abstracts of selected immunological meetings. In particular, this initiative supports young researchers who are often presenting at a conference for the first time in their career, whether by way of a poster or talk, and their published Abstract will be preserved online in perpetuity. It’s important to highlight that an often overlooked role that journals play is to maintain a permanent archive in contrast with conference websites that typically disappear a year or so after the event. In addition, the Abstract books published in EJI will be listed in key indexing services such as PubMed and the Web of Science. In 2016, we published the Abstracts of the International Congress of Immunology held in Melbourne [3], thereby showing our support for the international immunology community and the individual Abstracts complete with authors’ names are listed in the Web of Science ensuring full credit for young researchers. In 2017, we have published two Abstract books: one for SIICA’s XI National Congress [4] held in Bari in May 2017, and one for the 47th Annual Meeting of the German Society of Immunology (DGfI) [5] held in Erlangen in September 2017 which celebrated the 50th Anniversary of the DGfI [6]; there will be more Abstract supplements to come in 2018. Another service that EJI provides to the community is to not be afraid of publishing papers that we know are controversial, provided that the data are solid as can be. As a case in point, we published two papers reaching contradictory conclusions about the role of RIPK3 and MLKL signaling in NET formation along with a Commentary [7–9]. We also published a paper on the role of homeostatic proliferation in CD8+ memory T lymphocyte generation [10] knowing that a previous paper from the same group on the topic [11] had already generated a lot of discussion [12–16]; a Commentary highlighting the pros and cons of the study [17] was published alongside the article. We appreciate that the article was from an ExCo member, and that ExCo and Board members regularly publish in EJI, but I want to stress that all papers are externally reviewed before a decision is reached and the review process is published online for all to see [1]. Regarding the controversial papers, our philosophy is that only if the data are published and accessible to the Community can they be assessed, discussed and the field move forward in whatever direction that eventually takes. As well as controversial papers, there may be infrequent cases when experiments haven’t been repeated as often as the editorial team would like due to e.g. ethical approval not being received for repeat experiments or time limitations; however, in all papers published the editorial team always tries to ensure that the number of experiments, samples and replicates are included in the Figure legends so that readers of EJI can accurately assess the data presented. We hope that we are as open and clear about our policies as we can be and that EJI fulfils its remit of being a journal that successfully serves the immunology community and advances immunological knowledge. If not, we welcome your feedback. Before I close my first editorial of 2018, I would like to thank some key people who have contributed to EJI. Firstly, HansMartin Jäck and Silvano Sozzani stepped down from the ExCo in 2017 as result of the end of the term of service and new commitments respectively. Secondly, Karen Chu (Deputy Managing Editor of EJI) moved to pastures new as a project manager at TRON (Translational Oncology at the University Medical Center of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz). All three were active driving forces at EJI and will be missed, and I thank them for all their hard work on the Journal. Of note, Karen was vital for the flow cytometry guidelines published in 2017 [18] that are highly successful as measured by feedback