Ensuring the quality of data published in JBC is a team effort [Editorial] (Journal of Biological Chemistry)

Publishing a research article is a multi-stage endeavor. Most researchers are aware of the early stages when they identify an important question in their scientific field, design experiments and methods to address the question, gather data, develop interpretations, and write up their findings for publication. The next stage is quite familiar too: A review process unfolds once a paper is submitted with a goal of assessing the quality of the experiments and determining if the conclusions are compelling (1). But, there are later stages that are crucial to the publication workflow at JBC! We want the content of JBC to meet the highest standards of data quality. Consequently, we invest a great deal of time and energy to ensure that readers can trust the results reported in JBC. We are writing this editorial to describe these later and less familiar stages in the manuscript-handling process at JBC and to de-mystify the steps we take post-review to quality control our published content.To ensure data integrity and to improve figure presentation when needed, the JBC has implemented image screening in all manuscripts accepted after the peer-review step as part of the publication process (2). One driving factor in adding the screening step was to enhance the author experience by having staff dedicated to helping authors prepare publication quality figures, with the added benefit of improving the overall figure quality. Moreover, we realized that we needed to be more proactive in scrutinizing the science we publish. First, correcting the published literature appropriately is...