PNAS was established by the
National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in 1914, with its first issue published in 1915. The NAS itself was founded in 1863 as a private institution, but
chartered by the
United States Congress, with the goal to "investigate, examine, experiment and report upon any subject of science or art". Prior to the inception of
PNAS, the National Academy of Sciences published three volumes of organizational transactions, consisting mostly of minutes of meetings and annual reports. For much of the journal's history,
PNAS published brief first announcements of Academy members' and associates' contributions to research. In December 1995,
PNAS opened submissions to all authors without first needing to be sponsored by an
NAS member. Members were allowed to communicate up to two papers from non-members to
PNAS every year. The review process for these papers was anonymous in that the identities of the referees were not revealed to the authors. Referees were selected by the
NAS member.
PNAS eliminated communicated submissions through NAS members , while continuing to make the final decision on all
PNAS papers. 95% of papers are peer reviewed Direct Submissions and 5% are contributed submissions. In 2022 NAS established
PNAS Nexus, an interdisciplinary open-access journal published by
Oxford Academic.
American national security concerns In 2003,
PNAS issued an editorial stating its policy on publication of sensitive material in the life sciences.
PNAS stated that it would "continue to monitor submitted papers for material that may be deemed inappropriate and that could, if published, compromise the public welfare". This statement was in keeping with the efforts of several other journals. In 2005
PNAS published an article titled "Analyzing a bioterror attack on the food supply: The case of botulinum toxin in milk", despite objections raised by the
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The paper was published with a commentary by the president of the Academy at the time,
Bruce Alberts, titled "Modeling attacks on the food supply".
Contributed review concerns The controversial
Younger Dryas impact hypothesis, which evolved directly from pseudoscience and now forms the basis for the pseudoarchaeology of
Graham Hancock's
Ancient Apocalypse, was first published in PNAS using a nonstandard review system, according to a comprehensive refutation by Holliday et al (2023). According to this 2023 review, "Claiming evidence where none exists and providing misleading citations may be accidental, but when conducted repeatedly, it becomes negligent and undermines scientific advancement as well as the credibility of science itself. Also culpable is the failure of the peer review process to prevent such errors of fact from entering the literature. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 'contributed review' system for National Academy members...is at least partially responsible. The 'pal reviews' (as some refer to them) were significantly curtailed in 2010, in part due to the YDIH controversy." ==Editors==