Prof. Dr. Yang Zhang Appointed Section Editor-in-Chief of Section “Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience” in Brain Sciences

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Yang Zhang has been appointed Section Editor-in-Chief of the “Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience” Section in Brain Sciences (ISSN: 2076-3425).

Name: Prof. Dr. Yang Zhang
Email: zhanglab@umn.edu
Affiliation: Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences & Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
Homepage: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Yang-Zhang-57
Research keywords: auditory neuroscience; social neuroscience; speech and voice perception; music perception; neurolinguistics; computational modeling; hearing loss; autism spectrum disorder; schizophrenia

Prof. Dr. Yang Zhang is a full professor of the Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences and Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He obtained his Ph.D. in speech and hearing sciences from the University of Washington, Seattle (advisor: Dr. Patricia K. Kuhl) and received training in electrophysiology and brain imaging research, including magnetoencephalography, at the Basic Research Laboratories of Nippon Telephone and Telegraph Corporation and Tokyo Denki University in Japan (team leader: Dr. Toshiaki Imada). He was awarded the Early Career Researcher Prize in 2010 by the Developmental Science journal and currently leads an international interdisciplinary team to study speech and language with an emphasis on the social, cognitive, and affective foundations that help build up the human mind and shape interpersonal communication.

The following is a short Q&A with Prof. Dr. Yang Zhang, who shared his vision for the journal with us, as well as his views of the research area and Open Access publishing:

1. What appealed to you about the journal that made you want to take the role as its Section Editor-in-Chief?
   Brain Sciences is one of the fastest-growing open access, international journals in neuroscience. It has repeatedly attracted emerging and influential scientists and scholars in related disciplines to publish their high-quality research articles. In my own experience as a contributor, reviewer, and editor, I found the editorial staff to be highly efficient, responsive, respectful, and professional. The peer reviews that I received for my manuscripts were fast, rigorous, and constructive. In return, I have served as a reviewer and handling editor—a position that recognizes the reviewers' and editors' time and effort by providing a discount voucher towards their submissions—for the journal dozens of times. Over the past decade, Brain Sciences has established itself as a high-quality SCI journal that is recognized by the Web of Science and is recommended by the popular free online journal selector website https://jane.biosemantics.org/. In comparison with many other journals that promised the time to first decision to be within a month but often failed to deliver, Brain Sciences has successfully developed a database of reliable peer reviewers and a conscientious editorial staff that take the timeline of the reviewing process very seriously. I am impressed by the journal's rising impact factor over the years and its broad coverage in basic, clinical, and translational neuroscience research, as well as its democratic openness to sharing the editorial responsibility with the scientific community and its diversity/inclusiveness of international authorship and readership. Ultimately, the responsibility for ensuring scientific rigor, accountability, and constructive criticism in the peer-review system comes down to the editors and the volunteer reviewers who care greatly about the substance and quality of the journal. In this regard, I am glad to accept the invitation to play an important role in strengthening and promoting the journal.
2. What is your vision for the Section?
   The "Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience" Section is devoted to basic, clinical, and translational studies on all behavioral, system, neural circuit, single-cell, cellular, and genetic levels, including in animal models. Neuroimaging, pharmacological perturbation, and neuromodulation methods hold great promise to provide a better understanding of basic social, cognitive, and affective processes in terms of how these processes interact and develop in neurotypical individuals and how they may break down to account for the various mental and physical health problems in psychiatric disorders. The Section welcomes original and review submissions that identify biomarkers linking behavioral symptoms with anatomical and functional brain imaging results in conjunction with etiological, epidemiological, and clinical manifestations of psychiatric conditions such as autism, schizophrenia, depression, affective disorders, and Alzheimer's disease.
3. What does the future of this field of research look like?
   As a researcher specializing in neurolinguistics in the field of speech, language, and hearing sciences, I have become increasingly aware of the limitations of the trichotomies of some influential theoretical frameworks that treat language, emotion, and cognition as independent modules without much attention to the social and cultural context of speech communication and human interaction. In the years to come, it will take multidisciplinary efforts to develop theories and models to guide our scientific neurobehavioral endeavors to further understand the connections and mutual influences of the cognitive, affective, and linguistic processes in the larger socio-cultural context of human communication and development.
4. What do you think of the development of Open Access in the publishing field?
   Open Access journals have witnessed increasing success and influence in every academic field. More and more traditional subscription-based journals have started to accept and incorporate the Open Access model. Instead of asking the general public and any potential readers or their affiliated institutions to pay for access, the Open Access model eliminates this barrier to the dissemination of information and scientific discoveries. While challenges still remain in strengthening the administrative, financial, and ethical practices and standards of Open Access publishing, more and more governmental and private funding agencies are now supportive of publishing in Open Access journals. I believe the transitional efforts to open science and Open Access will ultimately prevail and become the dominant force in the publishing field.

We wish Prof. Dr. Yang Zhang every success in his new position, and we look forward to his contributions to the journal.