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Volume 173, Issue 2, of Toxicological Sciences, published in February 2020, continues to incorporate innovations for the Society’s official journal. “It is essential to continually improve ToxSci because its stature and reputation in the field is a direct reflection of the Society of Toxicology,” ToxSci Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey M. Peters notes in his February 2020 editorial, explaining that the ToxSci leadership is introducing developments that “will influence authors, editorial board members/reviewers, the peer review process, and the ‘readability’ of articles in the journal.”

Such innovations include updates to the Manuscript Preparation Guidelines, including regarding the criteria for authorship qualification and more detailed and rigid standards for content allowable within manuscripts. Also evolving is the Editorial Board, which in addition to new members also now includes two Deputy Editors. These updates are intended “to provide diverse expertise to cover the spectrum of science required to evaluate article submissions from the diverse field of toxicology,” Dr. Peters notes, a reflection of the broadening scope of the journal. Updates also are underway for the review process, which Dr. Peters details in his editorial.

Work also is ongoing to improve the readability of the manuscripts published in the journal, including through efforts to avoid excessive abbreviations as well as through “a more consistent approach for introducing the subject of interest, justifying and describing the studies of interest, and presenting more structured results,” all of which will “increase the relative rigor and timeliness” of articles to enhance the reader experience, according to Dr. Peters.

In addition to these updates from Dr. Peters, Volume 173, Issue 2, includes cutting-edge research spanning the toxicological field, from molecular, biochemical, and systems toxicology and nanotoxicology to regulatory science, risk assessment, and decision-making.

Four Tox Spotlight articles are featured in the February issue, reporting findings on biomarkers; computational toxicology and databases; developmental and reproductive toxicology; and emerging technologies, methods and models, respectively:

• “Identification of Serum Biomarkers to Distinguish Hazardous and Benign Aminotransferase Elevations”
• “Genome-Scale Model-Based Identification of Metabolite Indicators for Early Detection of Kidney Toxicity”
• “High-Content Image-Based Single-Cell Phenotypic Analysis for the Testicular Toxicity Prediction Induced by Bisphenol A and Its Analogs Bisphenol S, Bisphenol AF, and Tetrabromobisphenol A in a Three-Dimensional Testicular Cell Co-culture Model”
• “Fluorescent Reporter Zebrafish Line for Estrogenic Compound Screening Generated Using a CRISPR/Cas9-Mediated Knock-In System”

The mission of Toxicological Sciences is to publish a broad spectrum of impactful research in the field of toxicology. ToxSci: Your science. Your journal.