Several UAB Comprehensive Diabetes Center Young Diabetes Principal Investigators (YDPI) were selected to serve on various scientific journal editorial boards. Most terms range from two to three years.

The YDPI club promotes collaborations across departmental and school boundaries by having members meet monthly as a group with the UCDC Director Anath Shalev, M.D., and discuss strategies, future grants, and projects. This has resulted in many collaborative publications and funded multi-PI grant applications.

Those faculty researchers serving on editorial boards include:

• Sushant Bhatnagar, Ph.D., associate professor in the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism is serving on the editorial board of the journal Diabetes. Diabetes is a scientific journal of the American Diabetes Association. Bhatnagar is also a review editor for the Journal Frontiers in Diabetes: Molecular Mechanisms.
• Kirk Habegger, Ph.D., associate professor in the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism, serves as a review editor for the journal Frontiers in Systems and Translational Endocrinology, the journal Frontiers in Neuroenergetics, Nutrition and Brain Health, and the journal Frontiers in Cellular Endocrinology. He is also consulting editor of the journal Molecular Metabolism as well as the Journal of Clinical Investigations Insight.
• Chad Hunter, Ph.D., associate professor in the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism, is serving on the editorial board of the journal Diabetes. In addition, for several years, Hunter has served as topic editor for the journal Comprehensive Physiology, a review journal of the American Physiological Society.
• Jeonga Kim, Ph.D., associate professor in the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism, is serving as the associate editor of Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine, and on the editorial boards of Redox Biology and the American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology and Metabolism.
• Sasanka Ramanadham, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Cell, Development and Integrative Biology, is serving on the editorial board of the American Journal of Physiology, Journal of Diabetes Research and Clinical Metabolism, and the journal Islets.
• Glenn Rowe, Ph.D., associate professor in the Division of Cardiovascular Disease, is serving on the Endocrinology journal editorial board. Endocrinology is a scientific journal of the Endocrine Society.
• Adam Wende, Ph.D., associate professor in the Division of Molecular and Cellular Pathology, serves on the editorial board for the Diabetes & Metabolism Journal.

The inclusion of faculty researchers on journal editorial boards is vital for maintaining the quality, credibility, and integrity of scholarly publications.

Invitation to serve on the editorial board of a scientific journal is both an honor and a responsibility for those asked to serve. Those on the editorial board are directly involved in the peer-review of the research from across the world that is submitted to the journal assessing its novelty, quality, integrity, and potential impact on the field.

Being an editorial board member on scientific journals is a way to give back and provide service to the scientific community at large.

“I’m proud to see our faculty members invited to editorial board positions on prominent journals,” said Shalev. “It is clear that faculty members in our YDPI group are dedicated to promoting the best science and advancing the field of diabetes research in a fair, rigorous, and responsible way.”