Engaging the Gene and Cell Therapy Community in China: 一步一个脚印
Authors: Robert M. Frederickson
Journal: Molecular Therapy (2019)

There was a palpable buzz and energy at this year’s annual meeting of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (ASGCT) held in Washington, DC. Record crowds swamped the meeting locale such that, in many cases, it was literally standing room only. Of course, not a bad problem to have for a field that has seen its fair share of ups and downs. The annual Editorial Board meeting of the Molecular Therapy journals was actually held in one of three tents set up in the hotel courtyard to accommodate the greater than expected number of meeting attendees. In some ways, I thought the tent venue quite appropriate for a journal family that sees itself as a “big tent” enterprise, in the sense that there are diverse subfields that fall under what we term “molecular therapy”, spanning oligonucleotide, protein and gene, and cell therapies among many others. Our tent is growing in other ways too, as the journals find themselves straining under the vast increase in numbers of submissions from Asia—and most notably China in particular. A lively discussion following the presentation of our 2018 journal results dealt with how to deal with this sudden surge in submissions from a part of the world with which we currently have insufficient links and knowledge. Overall, the 2018 performance of the journal family has far exceeded our targets and expectations and continues to do so this year. We expect increases in the impact factors (IFs) of all our journals (based on extrapolation of data available in Scopus), with Molecular Therapy (MT) topping 8 for the first time and Molecular Therapy - Nucleic Acids and Molecular Therapy - Oncolytics both topping 5. The official numbers will be released in late June, so stay tuned. We’ve also experienced large growth in our publication levels, due almost entirely to the open-access sibling journals, which collectively now publish twice as many papers as MT itself. Submissions of course have also risen, nearly doubling overall in the past couple of years, and are continuing to increase heavily this year. This large increase in submissions seems likely to be a direct result of the increases in the IF of the journals. As I have noted many times now, the importance of the IF in driving author decision making has not seemed to have diminished despite all the talk of the development of a post-IF science publishing landscape. The IF continues to play a role in funding and career promotion in many places around the world. Other factors are at play with which we were unaware. It was brought to the group’s attention by MTMCD Deputy Editor Ling Chen that some authors in China may be reacting to a recent journal ranking system developed by the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS) that placed the Molecular Therapy journals in tier 1 out of 4, based partly on their assessment of MT as the leading international journal of gene and cell therapy. Details about this journal ranking system are hard to find in English, but a basic description can be found here: https://www.wiley.com/network/journaleditors/editors/the-impact-of-cas-journal-ranking-system-in-china-4. The CAS rankings are not universally followed, and many universities and institutes use alternative journal rankings. It is clear that the journal family needs a plan to deal with both the overall increase in submissions and the increase in submissions from China in particular. Over the past year, we have begun to reach out to leaders in the gene and cell therapy community in China. This task is made difficult by the fact that there is no Chinese equivalent to ASGCT. Instead, there are loose associations based on regions and large cities. Our aim in this outreach is to identify partners in China to join our editorial team as Deputy Editors and reviewers. It is key that we engage individuals who understand our ethos as a journal team and who can help uphold our standards while continuing to provide rapid and fair review, but who also have a good understanding of the strengths, weaknesses, and idiosyncrasies of the Chinese research environment. Interestingly, an analysis by our publishing partner Cell Press has shown that the majority of the papers we publish from China perform quite well as far as citations, even though the overall accept rate of papers from China is much lower than that from the US for example. Clearly, the quality of Chinese research is increasing quickly and it is key that our journal family welcome and integrate this community under the MT tent. The editors thus encourage researchers in the gene and cell therapy communities in China to contact us, and we look forward to visiting these communities and forging new connections. It is clear we have a lot of work to do, but, as the Chinese proverb goes, 一步一个脚印, every step makes a footprint.