Scientific Publishing - Science topic

Hello,

Aside from Beall's List of Predatory Journals and Publishers, are there other lists of the same content? For example, World Scientific Publishing Company is not on the list of Beall, but how to know if this publisher is predatory?

Thanks.

In many of these serious journals authors should pay for publishing (more than in pirate journals) and process of acceptance is unreasonably too long and too formalistic. I found a lot of very good papers (high quality and scientific) published in pirate journals. In some of serious journals engineering approach and practical use are neglected. The most important criterion for the paper acceptance is using of any new statistical method and/or model (in recent time especially machine learning). Remember Klemeš and his papers: Dilettantism in hydrology: Transition or destiny?; Political pressures in water resources management – do they influence predictions? etc.

With the advances in community review and Web3 on the horizon, I've been starting to wonder if the way in which traditional peer-review works is outdated. Have y'all found any systems out there that feel like the future of peer-review?

The Dolos list has started to work well, but I do not think this opposition to predatory publishing is enough. From what I have seen, there is no collective or institute (consisting of researchers) of reference that denounces this sector. It could be a collective whose objective would be to establish regular reports and publish statements about this sector. The collective aspect would give more weight to this opposition. For the moment, I have the impression that these are mostly isolated actions from researchers. What do you think about this idea ?

I just have to warn you of one thing: A researcher who publicly opposes this sector would have to assume unpleasant consequences. For my part, a few days after launching the Dolos list, I was already receiving threatening messages.

Best regards,

Alexandre.

World Scientific Publishing Co Pte Ltd is a Singapore-based publishing company that has been in the business since 1981. They publish a lot of edited books each year. How well accepted are those books in academia? Are they peer-reviewed?

We've all been in circumstances when we couldn't find the literature we were looking for. Other times, we found exactly what we wanted, but very late. Thus, beginners in research are pushed to formulate a clear and innovative title. Keywords rescue us, but, is it enough?

In these days of data mining, what tools can we utilize to structure our research paper titles such that they are search engine optimized (SEO)? How can we write technical titles that are both engaging and readable?

1. Google Trends

Track changes in word usage over time, within a region, etc.

2. Web-of-Science

Regular keyword literature search, to find jargon usage.

3. Semrush

Helps with Keyword Research, Competitive Research, PR, etc. It is a marketing tool, perhaps used by industrial researchers and product developers?

4. What am I missing? What are your tricks and tips?

Thank you!

Recently I visited <https://research.com/> (R) (a platform that lists top scientists around the world from the areas of computer science and electronics) and later I also visited <https://atlas.cern/> (A) (the ATLAS Experiment at CERN). I made the following observations (I intentionally don't mention names):

1. One of the top authors at R has published 1,816 papers.

If one's professional career lasts 40 years, the calculation says:

40 years X 365 days = 14600 days; 14600 / 1816 = 8 days to publish a paper

That means 1 paper is published every 8 days during the entire professional life! That's about 45 papers a year... every year!

2. The same author at R has an h-index of 167.

"The h-index is defined as the maximum value of h such that the given author/journal has published at least h papers that have each been cited at least h times."

The R's top author has 167 papers each one cited 167 times!

3. A paper published by A's researchers had 78 authors!

I realize that CERN is something "big" and quite complex. But... there are 78 authors anyway...

Probably all those people are high-level scientists. But... what makes them hyperprolific? Is it real? How is it possible? Is it more for the benefit of science or is it a kind of business?

What's your opinion?

I have personally experience that its relatively tough to publish in a good journal in social science, for example let us suppose in the field of finance, marketing and so on. In comparison i have seen that in natural sciences the publication chances and frequency are higher. What are the possible reasons for this? 

I have been asked to submit a paper on a special issue of Genes- MDPI. The impact factor of the journal is showing to be 3.4 but I saw conflicting articles about the MDPI journals being a predatory one. Though the editor of the issue is a reputed person in the field, I am bit confused about the journal in general. What are your thoughts?

I recently read a recent publication, that was well done experimentally, results and discussion were excellent, but the abstract contained facts, that were not results of this study, they contrasted the results of the study. It was possible to make a list and put sentences in the abstract against the corrsponding part of the main part and the discussion and to see to difference. The main author did not answer to my question about it.

How is this possible ? Can Abstracts be changed after the review process und go to print without a check ? Or do you think, something like this may have been overseen by referees.

In Germany it is possible to send such findings to a DFG commision.

Dear community,

this seems to have been out there since 2018 in medical sciences, but I only stumbled over it recently:

T&F are offering extremely fast review and publication times for a higher fee, they pay reviewers for handing in reviews in time. How do you feel about this? Will this bias acceptance of papers and just be a new way to buy a publication? Or do you think this is the right incentive for reviewers and a way to recognize the importance of fast and constructive review?

I would be interested in your opinion.

Differentiating Science from Pseudoscience is becoming a challenge at so many levels these days. How can we separate the two and acknowledge a grey area in between?

I received an unsolicited email from Scientia Global and I can't tell if they are a predatory publisher of scientific journal articles or news articles or if they are legit.

"Dear Dr. April Robin Martinig, I hope you do not mind me emailing you directly, I thought it would be the easiest way to make first contact. If you have time for a short discussion I was hoping to speak with you about your research and our interest to feature your work in an upcoming issue of our science communication publication, Scientia. I will run you through this in more detail when we talk. But to give you a very quick insight into Scientia and the style in which we publish, I have attached a few example articles from research groups we have recently worked with. I have attached these as HTML files to reduce the size, but I can send PDF versions if you would prefer. You may also view one of our recent full publications here: https://www.scientia.global/scientia-issue-132/ Please let me know if you might have 10 minutes for a short phone call and advise when would be a good time and day for you to discuss further? I look forward to talking soon. Kind regards, Paris Allen"

Hi everyone,

I am about to define an experiment where we want to investigate 10 - 20 de novo small proteins. We are mainly interested in affinity but also want to show that proteins are folding properly. For that we are thinking about using circular dichroism. I am having seconds thoughts though if this is the right method in the long run. When it comes to publishing, I have the gut feeling that reviewers might ask for a crystal structure of the protein or even the complex. I am working on getting an impression myself by reading nature and science papers but I would like to get to know your advice and experience concerning the matter. What methods are best suited to give our research credibility that might be expected in high impact journals?

cheers

Martin

Does anyone have experience with Columbus Publishers?

trustworthy or predatory journals?

As a researcher, I suffer a lot from the dilemma of global research cooperation, and since I am mainly from a poor African country, and I have no research support and I rely in my research on the laboratory capabilities available in the workplace, I face great difficulties in front of scientific publishing, in which I waste a lot of time and effort..

While research cooperation spawns scientific papers and innovations like the village of ants and at frequent intervals because each member of the group has a small and specific task!

So far I have failed to find a serious research group that suits me and would like to share with me, what are the possible reasons??

Hi all,

I have submitted a paper for publication in June 2017 and I am wondering how long people generally wait? I submitted to a relatively small journal, Impact Factor ~ 1, and waited over 8 months for my first response from them (while their home page says it is generally 185 days ~ 6 months). I emailed them a couple of times during the process for a check, but they just said there is nothing they could do and they are waiting for the reviewer. I worked on the revisions promptly and returned them after a week. I was then told again that I would have to wait (this time about 2-3 weeks for a second revision). I got it back (2 months later) and it was conditionally accepted with more revisions requested. Again I worked on it promptly and re-submitted. Now it has been almost 3 months again. Prior they told me that revisions in this stage only take 2-3 weeks (and last time they had to switch out a reviewer because they took so long, after my requests). Now I am not sure what to do, it feels like their deadlines keep getting pushed back, and they say there's nothing they can do and there has not been an update since the day after I submitted it. Should I request new reviewers or is that just the way it is? It has been over 16 months since I originally submitted the article.

I have heard as good as bad commentaries about this scientific publisher. In my case, I feel that the generalized perception is that this publisher is predatory. Can anyone tell me any experience (good or bad) with this publisher?. Your comments can help me to decide if I publish with this group.

I have just published a book with a big international science publisher (CRC Press, a branch of Taylor and Francis). The multi-author edited book is nice and hopefully useful for many (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321016401_Grasslands_of_the_world_diversity_management_and_conservation), but the experiences with the publisher were so disappointing that some co-authors and I decided to start a public discussion on writing scientific books in the age of greedy publishers.

Here are some key facts of our collaboration with CRC/Francis and Taylor:

· The communication with the publisher was very unreliable and inefficient: e.g. did we receive various requests multiple times and the publisher “forgot” about previous written agreements.

· The typesetting as the only service provided by the publisher was very poor: about 90% of the changes made by the publisher introduced errors into previously correct text or tables and it was very time-consuming for us to find all these errors and remove them again.

· Instead of paying the authors a honorarium for their work, the publisher forced us to pay for the colour figures in our articles.

· The publisher refused to give the authors a complimentary print copy of their book (only the editors got one).

· First the publisher wanted to provide an electronic version of the chapter/book only to each corresponding author, not to all authors, and only after serious negotiations they accepted to provide e-books to all authors. We assumed that these would be functional pdf’s, but instead they received the books in a very weird e-book format with a display in an ugly and hardly readable layout (e.g. all text in bold), not allowing proper printing nor sharing parts of the content (e.g. single pages or figures) with others. This means that the authors did not receive any printed or electronic copy of that exactly corresponds to the published version of their own work.

I am extremely frustrated about the behaviour of CRC/Francis and Taylor and consider the last point as being at the edge of unethical. My feeling is that CRC might only reflect the strategy of most international science publishers to maximise profit by pressing money out of both authors and readers/libraries, while at the same time minimising the service they provide. On the other hand my gut feeling tells me that nowadays with cheap print-on-demand technology and the possibility to distribute printed or open access e-books without the need to involve a big marketing/distribution machinery should allow for other solutions.

Therefore, I would like to ask you two questions:

· Did you make similar experiences with other science publishers, or are they better or even worse?

· Do you see ways how those among us who would like to continue to write nice and useful books can do this without sacrificing themselves to profit-maximisation strategy of the big international science publishers?

Looking forward to your responses and hoping for a lively debate,

Prof. Dr. Jürgen Dengler

(ZHAW, Wädenswil, Switzerland)

Lets say you know very well the basics about writing, contents, formatting and style. Right before submission (your research is complete), do you focus only on the instructions for authors of the selected journal? Do you try to make the best/catchy title ever? Select a specific editor? do you contact the editor/journal before you submit? In short, Do you have a formula/method you apply? would you share it?

Colleagues,

do you know some UAV-dedicated Special Issues that are open for submission now? Both Magazines and Journals SIs will be highly appreciated! No discrimination on the publishers (IEEE, Frontiers, MDPI, Elsevier, River....)!

Thank you :)

PS: I think following this discussion will be useful. both to find Special Issues and/or to advertise them

Despite certain disadvantages, peer-review is generally accepted as a quality control of manuscripts submitted to scientific journals. The higher the rank of the journal, the more often manuscripts are rejected by the Editor for various reasons (lack of novelty, routine work, low technical quality etc.). Getting you manuscript back with staggering reviewer comments is a rather frustrating experience. What are your personal tips and tricks to avoid rejection?

In many cases, the reviewer may suggest that the author reads this or that article to supplement their literature review.

But it is correct to get suggestions for various quotes?

What would you do? Would you argue against suggestions? Would you inform the editors? Would you give up the publication?

I came across various types of Impact factors like GIF, SJIF, SCImago, h-Index, Eigen factor etc .Please help me in knowing more details of these and which one among them is valid.

Delhi, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala Ophthalmological societies have their own journals which are unfortunately not indexed in pubmed? What's your take on publishing works in these journals as first choice?

Recently, one of my papers has been published after five year of its final acceptance by a SCI index journal, that to after lot of reminders. Can anybody suggest about fixing the upper time-limit for the publication of manuscripts at least in peer reviewed Journals?

What is the future of scientific publishing in light of the trend of most journals to open access? And will this affect the quality of the scientific publication, as the view is still that the open-access is of lower quality and prestigious than the non-open one?

Dear RG colleagues,

Let us discuss on what basis are the authors sequence in multi-authored publications is arranged? Does it depend only on the contribution’s weight of each author? How to estimate the contribution’s weight of each author? Are there other criteria to determine this arrangement? Thank you very much for sharing your opinions with us,

Kind regards

Although the costs of scientific publishing are on a continuous decline, especially with the development of electronic publishing, the APC for publishing in scientific journals are constantly increasing. Why do major publishing houses try to exploit researchers to this degree. How should the scientific community respond and what measures should be taken against them?

As all of us are familiar with the different journal ranking systems and requirement conditions, in many cases we meet different kind of fees, charges for publishing our researches. Usually only the submitting and the previewing cost US$ 50-250, which is non-refundable and the paper may be rejected by the editors without being sent for review. Others introduce fees for the publishing US$ 500 -1000 (extra fees for colour graphs, maps etc. or for appeals against a Chief Editor's decision). For good English, they offer some links for the grammar review: US$ 100-200. Besides all of this, they employ embargo for 12-36 months, and ask US$ 600-2500 for open access. I think these fees sometimes unreasonable, so it is hard not to find the business factor behind them.

What are some of the difficulties or disadvantages, if any, of publishing in high impact journals?

Thanks in advance for your participation!

How to distinguish between a predatory journal and genuine journal in publish our research work??? Every now and then we get emails for the publisher to submit our work to their journals......

Dear Colleagues, I hope someone can provide some answer :

I recently had notified by Research Gate that ELSEVIER editorial did notified them that they needed to take one Scientific Article I had on my Research Items down, due to violation of ELSEVIER's Copyright.

This article was published on the Journal "Nano Energy", of ELSEVIER's, and I appear as the first autor.

Is there a way to keep one of this articles on your RG Items without infringing the Copyrights of ELSEVIER ?

Can I try to upload it again? This time under the "Private" mode (not open sharing, but via request)

Or it's better to leave the matter alone? Meaning that all ELSEVIER's editorial articles cannot be shared freely on Research Gate ?

Thank You! Best Regards !

There are several journals with varying impact factors. Still we find journals having no impact factor. I want to know whether the impact or importance of a researcher becomes less to a scientific community when he/she publishes a paper in a journal with low impact factor or no impact factor?

I need a co-author for a scopus article to participate in ІСSF 2021, Innovative Approaches for Solving Environmental Issues Workshop (IASEI-WS'2021), Kyiv. The article has already been written and is ready for publication. I am the main athor of this article. It is is an overview article about means of remote monitoring of air quality, and the possibility of their use for operational monitoring in Ukraine. I place a discreet emphasis on using the UAV.

link to the conference website: https://icsf.ccjournals.eu/2021/index2.html

Requirements for a co-author: student, PhD student, or any other researcher who works in a scientific institution at a given time. The institution should not be located in Ukraine or in the Russian Federation (such co-authors already exist).

If you are interested, please contact me as soon as possible.

Deadline of this offer - 28.12.2020

Anastasiia Turevych,

e-mail: ognetyr@gmail.com

Thank you!

In the scientific world, some terms and practices are universal. Look at botanical names that are uniform in all nations for example. I think global standardization should apply to research paper formatting too. It is very challenging and stressful to keep reformatting a research paper to suit each new journal you want to submit to. Some formats are very dissimilar that the effort is sometimes more than writing the paper. I propose the motion that there should be a universal format for all research papers to make it easier on authors and publishers.

We in the scientific community often hear about and are aware of some unworthy individuals copying and reproducing results (without due recognition of authors right). How shall we create responsibility and make aware of those who may do such unlawful acts presumably without knowing?

The peer review system has been the cornerstone of scientific publishing for centuries.

I am looking for research papers copied (in full or in part) by other papers to identify a "percentage of plagiarism". Authors can be different. Can you help me find any papers?

plagiarism free check

I just found Viper but I'm having some problems with it. Is there any other plagiarism software online?

Hi,

I'm working with a set of soil analyses obtained from an external laboratory.

Studying the results, I am highly confident that one of the analyses gave incorrect results because the values are extremely unlikely (in total disagreement with what is normally naturally occurring).

Besides, I have conducted additional analyses to triple-check this analysis.

The results I have obtained contradict, as I expected, the anomalous data.

The problem is, that the method I used is not the same as the initial method (unavailable at my lab), but is supposed to measure the same variable.

Now that it is time to write a research article, what would you do to overcome this problem?

Should I explain that for this particular analysis, results were abnormal and were not considered further?

Should it be done early in the results section, or later in the discussion section?

How have you dealt with unexpected/erroneous data with your research, when you cannot repeat the same analysis?

Will a journal accept to publish results which include one bad apple, while the rest of the basket is fine?

I know it gives another chance to resubmit after major revision. But could corresponding author consider "Reject & Resubmit" as a simple reject, and submit the article to another journal? Should corresponding author ask for permission of previous journal?

In some journal papers, I am included in the acknowledgement section. Reason for this is, I have helped them in taking some measurements. How should we mention such contributions in the CV?

Or, put another way, all the new journals that are created are really necessary?

Here you are our contribution to the debate:

Urbano, C.; Rodrigues, R.S.; Somoza-Fernández, M.; Rodríguez-Gairín, JM. (2020). “Why are new journals created?". Profesional de la Informacion (2020) 29(4) 1-19.

Are you a publisher or an editor who has recently participated in the launch of a new journal ... What is your opinion?

I am curious to know why a methodology will get acceptance in one journal for a given topic and get rejected in another journal for another topic. Take Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) application in Civil Engineering problems for an example. You find Civil Engineering journals accepting or rejecting papers with ANN methodology. How can one overcome these barriers?

As a reviewer, in your view what are the criteria you use to accept or reject a paper with machine learning applications?

If a machine learning method that has not been previously used is applied to a model (a common topic ), how do you as a reviewer respond?

I am graduating from business school as part of my med school program in two weeks. I'm working on a paper with a team that will be ready to submit for publication this week. Most likely, I will actually have my degree by the time the manuscript is in front of a reviewer, and definitely by the time it's published. Is it permissible for me to include my MBA in the author's section since I will have it before publication, or am I required to leave it off because I do not officially have the degree at the time of submission?

The highest impact factor journals are often criticized for rejecting too many too fast, and often too unfairly, a high proportion of the manuscripts they receive. Since they receive a larger amount of manuscripts relative to lower IF Journals, they are considered (assumed?) able to select the best quality research in their field. But, are they really publishing better science than lower impact journals? Many excellent scientists across the globe are unable to publish in High IF journals because they are unable to afford the publication fees. One may think that in many (most?) cases the quality of science high IF journals publish is not necessarily better than lower IF journals (note that High vs Low IF is a relative comparison, there is not a line/value separating both). What do you think? For instance, are the papers you have published in the highest IF Journal, your best quality papers? Do you see a positive relationship between IF and the quality of the science being published?

I just received a request for a review from "Internal Medicine Journal". I had a surprise recently with Journal of rare disease research and treatment for whom I wrote an "invited commentary" that appeared to be not so free (over 1000$), and I wonder if this one could also be a "predatory publisher". Has anyone information about this journal? Thanks

I was and am interested in this topic because I was wondering how much it would actually cost (annually) to run a technical journal for environment, including all costs starting with office space (if one sticks to that tradition) paying staff and expenses (servers etc.). I was wondering if it would be possible to run a small technical journal for environment without publication costs on alterative funding (without excessive need of volunteers). I thank you for your helps and cooperation that will be given to us!

We know that rejection of research papers is very common in academic publishing, but what really bothers the authors is rejecting their papers without stating the reasons for rejection by editors, particularly when the paper matches the scope of the journal and the writing of the paper is academically acceptable, but it still somehow not enough to get accepted. The decision letter only informs the authors about the decision without any further explanations as to why such a decision was taken, many editors do this, it happened to me a couple of times. Why do editors do this? Why don't they care to explain the reasons for rejection? This is completely unfair to authors, especially if the submitted paper complies with the journal requirements. It's very frustrating. What should the authors do in this case?

Suppose a paper have been reviewed by three different reviewer's.

Two reviewer's suggested acceptance of the article, and one suggests not to accept the article.

In such situations, what the editor does?

In the medical discipline, the first and the last authors are the most contributed authors and the middle author is the least (in a curve). In contrast, in the Engineering discipline, contribution level goes from the who contributed the most to the least: first (most contribution), second, third, fourth..... last author (least contribution).

If an author is working in both medical and Engineering disciplines, how should he/she fix the author order in publications?

As the scientific community does not follow a uniform standard to express authorship, the readers have no clue about the contributions made by each co-author. Any thoughts?

Some journal listed as good journal in SCImago Journal & Country Rank (http://www.scimagojr.com) with relatively good h-index for example Journal of Computer Science (from Science Publication) is identified as possible predatory Journal in Beall's list. Which one I should follow?

Does that imply different levels in the process of admission to JCR?

Emerging Sources Citation Index (Is the waiting list to be evaluated for JCR?): http://wokinfo.com/media/pdf/S024651_Flyer.pdf

Does it mean they found it interesting at first?

I'm a new researcher. All inputs would be appreciated. Thank you very much.

There are times when I think that articles are rejected or comments are too mean based on ethnicity and just being female.

Depending on your experience in scientific publishing in the field of marketing, there are scientific areas that you recommend taking into consideration the conditions of copyright, cost and time and ranking.

Dear one & all Kindly give the details for the similarities and difference between Article, Communication, Notes, Reports, Full paper, Featured Article, Perspectives, Review, & Tutorial ... How to select the suit one? What are the criteria for this? Most us select on the basis of length our findings; and present and previous work summery. This discussion is seems to be very simple.... but it is always better if we get an better idea of each one... May be it will help for research beginners..

I have a short article, which I would like to submit to a broad ecological journal and I'd value a few suggestions.

Dear fellows,

I would like to know your opinion, as authors of academic papers, on your preferred peer-review type(s). Different journals implement different policies, from completely open to double-blind in various shades.

Here is a starting list of existing and more creative options:

- Single-blind review. A classic. The name of the reviewers is not known to the authors, but the reviewers know the names of the authors. The reviewers may choose to disclose their identity during the peer review process or upon publication.

- Double-blind review. Increasingly popular. The name of the reviewers is not known to the authors, and the reviewers do not know the names of the authors. The identity of the reviewers might be disclosed upon publication.

- Open review. The name of the reviewers is known to the authors at any stage of the peer review, and it's published with the paper afterwards.

- Fully open (all-in). The name of the reviewers is known at any stage of the peer review and afterwards. In addition, the reviews are published online with the accepted paper.

- Open discussion. The manuscript is immediately published as a preprint. Reviewers (which may choose to remain anonymous or not) are appointed by an editor. Their reviews appear online as soon as they are submitted. The authors post their response online together with the revised manuscript, and so on until the editor makes a final decision.

- Very open discussion. Like the open discussion, but also members of the community can post (signed) online comments to the manuscript, and the authors may reply and account for them in the revised manuscript.

- Triple-blind. The review process is not public. The authors don't know the reviewers, the reviewers don't know the authors, and even the handling editor doesn't know the authors.

- Quadruple-blind (poker). The authors don't know the reviewers, the reviewers don't know the authors, the editor doesn't know the authors, the editor doesn't know the reviewers (which are chosen from a pool of eligible reviewers through keywords).

- Quintuple-blind. Like the quadruple blind, but the authors don't know the name of the handling editor.

- Sestuple-blind. Like the quadruple blind, but even the reviewers don't know the name of the handlind editor.

- Hardcore-blind. The authors submit their manuscript to the publisher, without the possibility of indicating the target journal. After anonymous peer review, the publisher suggests the suitable journal based on the reviewers scores. The authors may agree or appeal.

Other variants/suggestions are welcome!

I am going to have printed a scientific book with illustrations. They are small screenshots grabbed from historical books (e.g. 18th-century). The books are available freely online in digital libraries across the world. Can I use such illustrations (they are small-area images cropped from single pages) in my book? The book will be sold by a scientific publishing house. Any experience regarding legal aspects of this will be welcome. Shall I obtain any license or permission? This is neither using the entire source scanned by someone, nor a re-edition of such.

Some researchers acknowledge anonymous reviewers for reviewing their manuscripts. Do you think that reviewers know that they have been acknowledged? Do you think that reviewers care to read these acknowledgements? Any benefits to reviewers if they are acknowledged when their identities are not known/revealed?

There are a number of different databases available to determine how many times an article has been cited by other articles.Does the number of citations reflect the quality or originality of the work?

I am interested in exploring whether criteria for academic success for professors are culture-sensitive. Is it the academic rank, publications, or teaching excellence?

Studies have shown that as many as 50% of submissions are declined directly by editors after being submitted. If the paper receives a “yay” instead of a “nay,” the journal sends it to reviewers. How do journals select competent reviewers?

Common sense says that more experience and a higher rank translate to better reviewing skills. However, a PLOS Medicine study in 2007 showed no such relationship. The authors examined 2,856 reviews by 308 reviewers for Annals of Emergency Medicine, a revered journal that for over 15 years has rated the quality of each review using a numerical scoring system. The results showed that experience, academic rank, and formal training in epidemiology or statistics did not significantly predict subsequent performance of higher-quality reviews. It also suggested that, in general, younger reviewers submitted stronger reviews.

So what? When presented the opportunity, any physician can and would produce a scrupulous review of a manuscript — right? Wrong.

Flashback to 1998, when Annals of Emergency Medicine cleverly put together a fictitious manuscript riddled with errors and distributed it to 203 reviewers for evaluation. The errors were divided into major and minor categories. The major errors included such blunders as faulty or plainly unscientific methods, as well as blatantly erroneous data analyses. Minor errors consisted of failure to observe or report negative effects on study participants, incorrect statistical analysis, and fabricated references — just to mention a few. According to the authors, the majority of peer reviewers failed to identify two-thirds of the major errors in the manuscript. Forty-one percent of reviewers indicated that the manuscript should be accepted for publication.

What about consistency? In 1982, two authors took twelve papers that had been published by prestigious psychology journals within the previous three years and resubmitted them to the respective journals. The names of the authors for the resubmitted papers, and the names of their affiliations, were all changed to fictitious ones. Three manuscripts were recognized as being duplicates. Of the nine remaining papers, eight were rejected for “methodological inconsistencies,” not for lack of originality. One paper was accepted again.

Last week, I received an email from a well-respected medical journal. The editor wanted my help reviewing a manuscript that was being considered for publication. Noticing the request was addressed to “Dr. Spencer,” I shot back a quick reply saying there’d been a mistake. I’m not a doctor; I’m a medical student.

Hours later, I got this response:

Thank you for your email. We would very much appreciate your review of this manuscript. Your degree information has been corrected.

The peer review process clearly has flaws. It’s no wonder so many publications are retracted every year, or that each issue of a journal includes several corrections of previously published articles. Without universal standards, manuscript reviews remain subjective, imperfect, and inconsistent at best. The time has come to re-examine the quality of this system.

Meanwhile, those who rely on medical journals for practice guidelines should be educated on the flawed nature of this system and should be encouraged to judge publications on their merit rather than the apparent prestige of a journal.

Now, if you’ll please excuse me, I have a manuscript to review.

Robert Spencer is a medical student.

Hi all,

I have found my experience with Elsevier to be increasingly frustrating over the years, especially with the copy-editing. Once a paper gets accepted (assuming it is in TeX format with perfect formatting), a month can easily pass by until the corrected proofs are actually available. The publisher seems to be careless and irresponsible about the typesetting and copy-editing (which is the only job they actually do in addition to selling our work!), e.g. in my recent Corrosion Science paper I had to submit a long list of comments when they simply messed up the paper layout completely and inserted incomprehensible symbols ("-->") everywhere in the text.

I am wondering what is your experience with other publishers, e.g. AIP, IOP, or Springer? Now I am deliberately trying to choose suitable journals that are not published by Elsevier for my next publication, and so far I've found one belonging to AIP and another to IOP.

Thanks

N.B.: There's almost a monopoly of the above-mentioned publisher in certain scientific fields, which is alarming to me!

Hey,

please, can anyone provide an explanation to me what is the scientific publisher in the worldwide and tell me how many they are and named them?

Based on what they are rated?

Also, what is the relation between the scientific publisher and the database (Scopus and ISI)?

Before, in my country and several countries was considered the first author more important than the corresponding author. Recently the situation has changed.

I believe that first author is usually carried out most of the practical part of the research and must be the correspondence author too. Co-authors do part of the work.

What is the difference between first and corresponding author? Can PhD students be a corresponding author?

Dear all respected researchers; kindly let me know your opinion.

What do you think the future of scientific publishing? Do you think that all journals will move to open access journals? or do you think open access journals will gradually disappear? What is the future of this area?

In the era of open access publication and the emergence of a huge number of journals that barely follow publishing ethics (no peer review/pay and publish). It becomes necessary that all journals must be screened by an authority based on editorial/reviewer board/scientific content and other criteria.

I have noted some online journals publishing >150 papers quarterly.

I understand today that scientific publishing, to contribute effectively to science, must follow specific strategies. What are the main tactics that should be followed?

(If you liked this question, please recommend it to extend the scope of this discussion.)