On 25 January 2022, the OECD held a webinar on Adverse Outcome Pathway (AOP) co-operative activities between Scientific journals and the OECD. This webinar was organised primarily for Scientific Journal editors or publishers who are interested in reviewing/publishing AOPs and collaborating with the OECD in this activity. The objective of the webinar was to present the basis for cooperation between scientific journals and the OECD and discuss the lessons learnt so far. Dries Knapen (University of Antwerp, Belgium) and Jason O’Brien (National Wildlife Research Centre, Canada) presented lessons learnt from the pilot study conducted at Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (ET&C) and at Environmental and Molecular Mutagenesis (EMM), with the first AOPs and how the journal review process was optimised in this context. Access the webinar replay at: https://oe.cd/testing-assessment-webinars

1. Case study and lessons learnt from ET&C and EMM
Dries Knapen (University of Antwerp, Belgium)
Jason O’Brien (Environment and Climate Change Canada)
WEBINAR ON AOP CO-OPERATIVE ACTIVITIES BETWEEN SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS AND THE OECD
January 25, 2022

2. Current status
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Two Wiley journals publish AOP Reports
 Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry
2 published
1 under review
 Environmental and Molecular Mutagenesis
3 submitted
1 completed review
 AOP Reports have similar structure and title convention for both journals
 AOP Reports are published open access or free access
 Virtual issues are available collecting all published AOP Reports

3. AOP Report structure
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1. Introduction and background
• Scientific context
2. Brief AOP description
• AOP context: AOP networks, rationale for development
3. Overview of AOP development approach
• Data sources, search queries, systematic methods, collaboration
4. Summary of scientific evidence assessment
• Biological plausibility, empirical evidence, essentiality
• Quantitative understanding, applicability domein
5. Potential applications
6. Acknowledgements, including names of reviewers and editors

4. AOP Report annexes
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1. AOP-wiki pdf snapshot used for review
2. All reviewer comments and author responses
3. Final AOP-wiki pdf snapshot after modifications

5. Review process principles
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 Content to be reviewed
 Journal manuscript
 AOP in the AOP-wiki
 Open and transparent
 Reviewers are not anonymous
 Names of reviewers, reviewer comments and author responses are published
 Cooperative among reviewers
 Reviewers are encouraged to cooperate and coordinate the review with one another
 Collaborative among reviewers and authors
 At the discretion of the editor, discussions between reviewers and authors may be arranged
 Credit
 Reviewers and editors are credited for their work in the journal publication

6. The review process
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 Compliance check by editor
 Review team
 3-4 reviewers: topic experts and at least one AOP expert
 One lead reviewer is appointed
 Review kickoff meeting
 Explaining the review principles, review procedure and communication strategy
 Providing all relevant resources
 Review process
 6 weeks review time: reviewers meet and discuss as needed; contact editor in case of questions
 Reviewers submit one consolidated review report
 Revision process
 Authors revise AOP and manuscript, one or several iterations as appropriate
 Discussions between authors and reviewers may be arranged

7. Available resources
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 Authors
 OECD: AOP development handbook
(Users' Handbook supplement to the Guidance Document for developing and assessing AOPs)
 Journal: specific instructions for authors
 Reviewers
 OECD: Guidance Document for the scientific review of AOPs
 OECD: introduction to AOP review video
 Journal: specific instructions for reviewers
 Editors
 OECD: compliance checklist
 Current editors are fully familiar with AOP development and review principles

8. Evaluation of the review process
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 Considered essential by the reviewers
 Extra time
 Having early access to all resources
 The kickoff meeting
 The ability to get feedback from the editor
 Having at least one AOP expert in the team
 Having a lead reviewer to write the review report
 Perceived challenges
 The required depth of the review, both for the AOP itself as for the AOP network context
 The relationship between the journal publication process and the OECD endorsement process:
where, when, will the review comments be used, in addition to accepting the journal article?
 Relationship between the content in the AOP-Wiki and the content in the AOP report: topical
overlap, but no verbatim text allowed (licensing, duplicate publication/plagiarism, …)

9. Available resources
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10. Successful examples
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AOP 360
AOP 263
 Based on the journal publication, both AOPs were
 Added to OECD AOP development programme workplan
 Submitted to EAGMST for approval without further scientific review

11. Challenges when more journals join the initiative
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 Finding or training editors that have sufficient experience to
 Ensure that the AOP is compliant to development principles
 Ensure the review is performed according to OECD principles for AOP review
 Finding or training reviewers that have both
 Sufficient experience within the general scope/context of the journal
 AOP development experience
 Coordinating across journals
 MoU implementation and communication with OECD
 Naming convention (“AOP Report”), aligning style and format
 Virtual issue across publishers: AOP-wiki?