Sociobiology 67(3): 335-336 September (2020) DOI: 10.13102/sociobiology.v67i3.5873 Open access journal: http://periodicos.uefs.br/ojs/index.php/sociobiology ISSN: 0361-6525 Editorial Bringing Innovations to Set Up a Better Scientific Journal for Publication of Your Research Sociobiology is a scientific journal dedicated to the study of social insects since 1976. Its 45th anniversary is coming up and the Board of Editors is pleased to celebrate this milestone with the announcement of a set of changes that will leverage the journal to modern and innovative editorial standards. Aiming to simplify the process of manuscript submission, effective immediately, we are accepting the initial submissions in the format of authors’ preference. This should allow authors, editors, and referees to focus on the quality of the science being reported, saving valuable time of everyone involved. The editors will access this version and decide whether its standards justify further analysis by the referees. Only after a manuscript is accepted and enters the editing stage authors will be required to present a version in Sociobiology's format. For more information we invite you to access the new Authors' Guidelines. Starting on January 2021, articles will be published in continuous flow, immediately after the final acceptance. Thus, we expect to reduce the time from submission to publication to four months in average (working on a minimum of two and a maximum of six months). As a commitment to provide a richer view of the journal visibility and performance, Sociobiology is now a signatory of DORA, the San Francisco Declaration of Research Assessment[1]. Effective immediately, the Board of Editors will pursue ways to explore new indicators of significance and impact. A range of journal metrics that inform authors about the interest of the scientific community on the published content will be made available in the months to come. Currently, predatory journals and unethical authorship are coupled factors contributing to the decrease of credibility in scientific publications. Sociobiology is deeply concerned with these deplorable editorial practices and chose to take action to reinforce the principle of responsible authorship and replicability of research. Also, the Board of Editors is committed to the promotion of ethical publication practices according to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines [2]. That is why, from now on, each submitted manuscript will be checked regarding plagiarism. Aiming that readers have an accurate and detailed description of the diverse contributions of each author to the published work, articles will have a section named Authors’ Contribution, based on CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy)[3]. This taxonomy was created aiming to recognize individual author contributions, reduce authorship conflicts, and facilitate collaboration. The peer-review process will assume the double-blind review model, neither authors nor reviewers will know the identity of each other. To assure replicability of research, and peer-verification, authors will be strongly encouraged to make research data, computer codes and other relevant materials available through supplementary files or deposit in open digital preservation repositories. In the upcoming months, the journal will start a search for new section editors, so that more scholars can contribute to the evaluation of the submitted manuscripts, covering as much subjects as possible on social insects research. By adopting this action, the Board of Editors expects to promote a faster and better review process. As a commitment to increasing the visibility of the published content, effective for the next published issue, the editorial team will work with authors to prepare graphical abstracts suited for publication in social medias, either by the editorial team or the authors themselves. Thus, the published content will reach more visibility and use by the scientific community. It is worth reassuring that all these improvements will not change our innovative open science model, in which publication is free of charge for both the author and the reader. We like to call it “Diamond Open Access”, as opposed to “Gold” or “Green” open science models. This is only possible because Sociobiology is financially Sociobiology An international journal on social insects Sociobiology 67(3): 335-336 September (2020) DOI: 10.13102/sociobiology.v67i3.5873 Open access journal: http://periodicos.uefs.br/ojs/index.php/sociobiology ISSN: 0361-6525 supported by a public state university which receives endowments from the State Treasure. Costs of editing the journal are entirely covered by public money. Furthermore, editors and editorial office staff are public employees spending part of their work hours in the journal management. Hence, if the financial support comes from public funds, the authors and readers must benefit from this. The Board of Editors considers that scientific knowledge financed by public money cannot be appropriated in a private fashion at any step of the editorial business chain. We are totally committed to open access publishing and the promotion of free content aiming to support a greater global exchange of knowledge. Evandro N. Silva, Og DeSouza, Kleber Del-Claro and Gilberto Marcos M. Santos The Associate Editors [1] https://sfdora.org/read/ Accessed on September 20, 2020. [2] https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Guidelines Acessed on September 20, 2020. [3] Brand, A., Allen, L., Altman, M., Hlava, M. and Scott, J. (2015). Beyond authorship: attribution, contribution, collaboration, and credit. Learned Publishing, 28: 151-155. doi: 10.1087/20150211.