Call for Papers: Advanced Geographic Data Science and Modelling for Vector-Borne Diseases and NTDs

General
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Dear all,

I hope this message finds you well.

I just want to take this opportunity to share news on this platform about our Special Issue with those working with Bayesian models applied to vector-borne diseases (or neglected tropical diseases) within the context of spatial epidemiology.

I appreciate your time, thank you! Please see the information below:

I am delighted to announce that our Research Topic, “Advanced Geographic Data Science and Modelling for Vector-Borne Diseases and Neglected Tropical Diseases”, in Frontiers in Tropical Diseases is now open for submissions.

I am very pleased to be serving as a Topic Editor alongside Dr Winfred Dotse-Gborgbortsi and Dr Kelly Elimian.

Through this Research Topic, we are interested in research demonstrating how advances in Geographic Data Science, including spatial and spatiotemporal modelling, GIS, remote sensing, artificial intelligence and other emerging methods, can contribute to our understanding, surveillance, prediction and control of vector-borne diseases and neglected tropical diseases (NTDs).

We particularly welcome research from the Global South, where the burden of many vector-borne diseases and NTDs remains substantial, as well as research examining the emergence and changing geographical distribution of vector-borne diseases in the Global North. We also welcome work that explores these challenges across regions and geographical scales.

This is an area of research that is particularly close to my own interests, and so I am very much looking forward to seeing the different methodological and applied contributions to the Research Topic.

Submissions are now open via the link: HERE

Deadline: March 16th, 2027

If you are working in this area, please consider submitting your work, and kindly share the Research Topic within your networks.

Thank you very much.

Best wishes,
Anwar Musah

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This is a pay-to-play venue: Frontiers | Fee policy

We receive payment in the form of article publishing charges (APCs) on articles

Arxiv is free.

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it is interesting to see that more impactful is your research, more you need to pay :/ but technically they should be interested in publishing impactful research by themselves, because it’s what brings them fame

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not only arXiv is free, but there is medrxiv or biorxiv. I would say that some peer-reviewed field-related journals like Emerging Infectious Diseases or Eurosurveillance are also free

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@aakhmetz @mitzimorris,

Thank you both for raising this. I just want to say that my intention in posting was simply to make the Stan community aware of the Research Topic that I’ve put out with Frontiers, given its focus on geographic data science and modelling and, of course, its relevance to researchers working with Bayesian spatial and spatiotemporal models.

But just for clarity, and for those who may be interested in the Research Topic, to the best of my understanding, Frontiers operates an APC-based open-access model, with charges applying following acceptance, and fee support is available in some circumstances, meaning that authors may be eligible for partial or full support towards the publication fee. This is my snapshot understanding of how it works.

I also appreciate your points on the alternatives, i.e., arXiv and Emerging Infectious Diseases. Thanks again for raising these points and for the discussion.

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In alot of European countries if someone has national or EU funding they will also have access to ways to publish for free.

Examples:
https://wellcomeopenresearch.org

https://open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu

On top of that many EU countries have agreements with commercial journals for publishing open work. Examples
https://deal-konsortium.de/en/for-authors

If one doesn’t know if they have this access or not, asking the university library is a good starting point - they usually are very keen to support this.

Basically if you are publicly funded researcher in Europe, there is likely some way to publish open access for free.

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Sorry we’re jumping on the open access part of this, @UCLPG-MSC-SGDS. I don’t even know if there are open-source alternatives in your field of tropical diseases that anyone takes seriously. It’s unreasonable to expect someone to not submit to journals in their field just because none of them are free open access.

I only review for free, open-access journals, but sometimes my colleagues twist my arm into submitting to something that’s not free and open access. What I won’t do is pay for this out of my own group’s budget. But then I have reasonable open-source alternatives like Bayesian Analysis, Computo, JMLR, and the open access software journals. Left to my own devices, I’d just write case studies, arXiv papers, and Stan documentation :-).

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Sadly, nobody ever got tenure for publishing arXiv papers. I suppose Radford Neal was pretty close to this. Despite having some prestigious publications in top journals, he mostly just wrote brilliant tech reports.

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Thanks very much, @Bob_Carpenter, I really appreciate your perspective and understanding. The discussion has got me looking into some of those journals though! 😅