A trio of authors has, during a 12 months period, submitted - by their own account - 20 manuscripts to academic journals they broadly identify as being in disciplines or fields of study associated with 'academic grievance studies'. From what I gather they are not too terribly fond of social constructionist colleagues in their own academic disciplines, and presumably other disciplines. Let me say at the outset that I am sympathetic to some of their concerns. They rightly lament that what they broadly label as 'academic grievance studies' has led to thought crimes prosecutions of sorts (just think about the Hypatia controversy involving an article by Rebecca Tuvel - mob justice might be one way to describe what happened to Tuvel). Ironically, Hypatia is again among the offending journals, which is interesting in so far as it isn't a journal entirely dedicated to publishing social constructivist content, another bugbear of the initiators of the Sokal-on-steroids hoax.
In any case, they apparently spend their while producing 20 hoax articles that they planned to submit to top journals in different disciplines or areas of study that they find disagreeable. I am genuinely curious whether this research project was submitted to their institution's ethical review committee, because it uncontroversially involved involuntary human research participants (identifiable journal editors, reviewers).
Here's the result of their efforts: Of these 20 papers 7 were accepted, 6 were rejected outright, and the rest were somewhat in-play, including a number that received a revise and resubmit verdict. The hoax initiators claim that two papers received a verdict of 'revise and resubmit' that they took to mean 'usually results in publication.' For what it's worth, at the journals I co-edit this verdict means renewed external review with the possibility of an outright rejection. So, no, not 'usually results in publication.' I wonder whether this interpretation is self-serving in so far as they needed to, of course, bolster their case as good as they could.
At the end of the day, they had 20 submissions, 7 acceptances.
I agree with the team of hoaxters that this constitutes egg on the faces of the editors of those journals, and more so, on their reviewers' faces. It's embarrassing.
I read a few comments on this project along the lines that in STEM subjects journals also face large numbers of retractions each year, and so it's not surprising that terrible content also passes peer review in humanities' areas. While that is true, it shouldn't distract from the fact that well-established, influential journals were coaxed here into accepting garbage. Of course, that matters!
My problems really lie elsewhere. One is that a study where n=20 doesn't demonstrate that a particular discipline has methodological problems. It simply means that - when all is said and done - 7 crappy papers were accepted by non-specialist journal editors based on their reviewers' recommendations. Big whoop! Frankly, this shows us that on this occasion reviewers failed. On 7(!) occasions. We do not know whether the same would have transpired if hundreds of such papers had been submitted to the same journals. It's one such paper per journal. Talking anecdotal, this is as anecdotal as it gets.
Let me be honest here, as an editor of journals that rarely if ever publish social constructionist papers, I could also be accepting papers that succeeded in fooling our peer reviewers. I don't have the subject expertise to be confident in evaluating all the manuscripts that are submitted to my journals. I rely on - these days - mostly reluctant reviewers who hopefully provide me with good (sometimes excellent, detailed) comments and recommendations. I rely on competent reviewers being diligent. I rely on colleagues I ask to review a manuscript to come back to me if they do not consider themselves competent. I rely on unpaid reviewers spending a considerable amount of time doing their job, when they could spend that time writing their own papers, or on a grant application, or a job application, or they could simply spend time with their loved ones. Not all of them, all the time, deliver a reliable review. Big whoop. If a faulty paper gets published (and it hasn't happened to us yet), I'm confident, over time responses to such a paper would eventually show where the paper we published went wrong, and why. A case in point is this Editorial I wrote. One of the articles flagged there was making false empirical claims, it has since been retracted. The article in question passed external peer review, but it is clear that the reviewers took the empirical claims made by the authors to be true, referenced as they were. It turns out that that was a mistake.
All of that happens without hoaxters wasting my time and that of our reviewers.
The hoaxter trio takes these 7 accepted manuscripts as evidence for the methodological failings of what they refer to as 'social constructivism'or 'radical constructivism'. They apparently 'corrupt' scholarship.
The thing is, that might well be true, and social constructivism scholarship is truly a naked emperor. Unfortunately, pointing to 7 anecdotal papers as evidence that that is the case, is plain ludicrous. As far as I can see, there wasn't even a control group (say, 20 manuscripts submitted to analytical journals, 20 manuscripts submitted to STEM subjects).
To my mind, if you wish to criticize social constructivism (and much critical that I wholeheartedly agree with has been published over the last few decades) don't avail yourself of childish activities like these kinds of hoaxes. Show by means of analysis and argument that, and why, the social constructivism emperor is naked.
The process of producing and publishing peer reviewed academic content relies on an assumption of good intent and genuineness among authors. Obviously, this is not justified in all cases, that's where critical responses and retractions come in handy. The last thing needed is a cottage industry of 'gotcha authors' like our hoaxter trio. They could and should have spend their time producing one sound academic paper taking on social constructivism, placing it in a top-notch journal, and subsequently enjoying the fireworks of rebuttal and response. That's how progress in the academy is facilitated.
I have sat on this for a good week, because I wasn't sure whether I should bother writing a response. On the one hand I share many of their concerns, on the other hand, this was such a time wasting pointless exercise, it boggles the mind smart people would have resorted to that sort of thing.
Showing posts with label peer review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label peer review. Show all posts
Monday, October 08, 2018
Monday, December 29, 2014
Academics running OA journals - a new variety of academic self-exploitation?
An interesting phenomenon can currently be observed in the humanities - academics engaging in new forms of self-exploitation. It's linked to the OA hype gripping the academy. How does it work?
Well, in the old days for-profit publishers essentially took over the production and distribution of our peer reviewed content for us. We managed the academic side of the process (peer review etc), they managed the rest. They made (well, still make) a killing on our labour by virtue of being able to force university libraries to pay often exorbitant subscription fees so that we can access research that we produced in the first place.
Came OA, the idea that research paid for mostly by taxpayers should be made available free of charge to anyone anywhere. I call this the having-your-cake-and-eating-it model. Academics typically loves these sorts of models. Thing is, you can't actually have your cake and eat it. OA turned out to be - by and large - a model whereby costs were switched to the producers of the research. Academics suddenly had to pay huge amounts (typically these days about 3000 $ per pop) to be able to play (hence I coined these publishing models 'pay-to-play'). So, while in the not so great old days our libraries were bled dry by greedy publishers, under the new model the only academics capable of publishing their research outputs would be those with research funds able to cover those fees.
That can probably work for folks in the STEM subjects, but this can't work for humanities scholars. Most of us typically produce our research during term breaks, most of us don't sit on large quantities of research funding. In fact, most of us don't have research funding at all.
Here kicks the self-exploitation model in that I started of with. Some well-intentioned humanities scholars have since decided to set up their own OA journals, where neither readers pay, nor those who submit their content for review. Given that barriers to entry are fairly low these days (you need a webserver and publishing software), that is prima facie not a terrible idea. And yet, it does sound like yet another having-your-cake-and-eating-it model, doesn't it? It kind of is. Essentially, those who run those journals have embarked on a never-ending journey of self-exploitation. Nobody pays for anything, you volunteer your time (in return for your name on a journal website masthead), you rely probably to some extent on grad students and postdocs to keep your enterprise afloat, you divert research funding to keep the administrative side of your publishing operation ticking, universities provide the web-server, etc.
The reality here is that academics so volunteer to undertake the tasks publishers (be they OA or subscription based) typically undertake. Will these academics see a benefit from the institutions whose libraries would save large amounts of money if this model took hold (there would be no costs involved in subscribing to journals or in submitting content to them)? The long and short of it is that that is not the case. That funding will disappear elsewhere (a new soccer stadium anyone? new Principal's residence? ) So, really we see a case of academics exploiting themselves, no more, no less. They volunteer their time to undertake administrative (ie journal publishing) tasks that other professionals should undertake, and that these professionals should be paid to undertake, and that these professionals have been undertaken for a very long time.
Now, I'm the last to think that an argument from tradition is a good argument, but it is worth noting that the model whereby those who produce journals are paid for their labour has worked pretty well for us in the academy. You can have a legitimate argument about the cost side of things, about publishers' ever diminishing support services to academic journals, all of that, but fundamentally things work. We get our content out in reputable academic journals, and the content is available ever more easily and at ever greater speed to other academics. On the other hand, the publishing landscape is littered with the corpses of journals that relied on volunteers to keep all aspects of their operations alive because they insisted on being 'free'. The truth is though, well-paid academics spend their time undertaking administrative tasks involved in producing these journals when they could be doing actual research, teach, or provide other services to their employers, ie the universities where they work.
There was a time when I was worried about what would happen to the published peer reviewed content after the failure of these kinds of publications. Would they also disappear into the rubbish bins of the internet? Thankfully that doesn't have to be the case. We have today numerous repositories where such outlets can store their articles after their demise. So, as long as that occurs, at least the content can survive the demise of the journals themselves.
Still, if I was a budding academic thinking about where to place my first or second peer reviewed journal article, would these kinds of journals be my first choice? Probably not.
Well, in the old days for-profit publishers essentially took over the production and distribution of our peer reviewed content for us. We managed the academic side of the process (peer review etc), they managed the rest. They made (well, still make) a killing on our labour by virtue of being able to force university libraries to pay often exorbitant subscription fees so that we can access research that we produced in the first place.
Came OA, the idea that research paid for mostly by taxpayers should be made available free of charge to anyone anywhere. I call this the having-your-cake-and-eating-it model. Academics typically loves these sorts of models. Thing is, you can't actually have your cake and eat it. OA turned out to be - by and large - a model whereby costs were switched to the producers of the research. Academics suddenly had to pay huge amounts (typically these days about 3000 $ per pop) to be able to play (hence I coined these publishing models 'pay-to-play'). So, while in the not so great old days our libraries were bled dry by greedy publishers, under the new model the only academics capable of publishing their research outputs would be those with research funds able to cover those fees.
That can probably work for folks in the STEM subjects, but this can't work for humanities scholars. Most of us typically produce our research during term breaks, most of us don't sit on large quantities of research funding. In fact, most of us don't have research funding at all.
Here kicks the self-exploitation model in that I started of with. Some well-intentioned humanities scholars have since decided to set up their own OA journals, where neither readers pay, nor those who submit their content for review. Given that barriers to entry are fairly low these days (you need a webserver and publishing software), that is prima facie not a terrible idea. And yet, it does sound like yet another having-your-cake-and-eating-it model, doesn't it? It kind of is. Essentially, those who run those journals have embarked on a never-ending journey of self-exploitation. Nobody pays for anything, you volunteer your time (in return for your name on a journal website masthead), you rely probably to some extent on grad students and postdocs to keep your enterprise afloat, you divert research funding to keep the administrative side of your publishing operation ticking, universities provide the web-server, etc.
The reality here is that academics so volunteer to undertake the tasks publishers (be they OA or subscription based) typically undertake. Will these academics see a benefit from the institutions whose libraries would save large amounts of money if this model took hold (there would be no costs involved in subscribing to journals or in submitting content to them)? The long and short of it is that that is not the case. That funding will disappear elsewhere (a new soccer stadium anyone? new Principal's residence? ) So, really we see a case of academics exploiting themselves, no more, no less. They volunteer their time to undertake administrative (ie journal publishing) tasks that other professionals should undertake, and that these professionals should be paid to undertake, and that these professionals have been undertaken for a very long time.
Now, I'm the last to think that an argument from tradition is a good argument, but it is worth noting that the model whereby those who produce journals are paid for their labour has worked pretty well for us in the academy. You can have a legitimate argument about the cost side of things, about publishers' ever diminishing support services to academic journals, all of that, but fundamentally things work. We get our content out in reputable academic journals, and the content is available ever more easily and at ever greater speed to other academics. On the other hand, the publishing landscape is littered with the corpses of journals that relied on volunteers to keep all aspects of their operations alive because they insisted on being 'free'. The truth is though, well-paid academics spend their time undertaking administrative tasks involved in producing these journals when they could be doing actual research, teach, or provide other services to their employers, ie the universities where they work.
There was a time when I was worried about what would happen to the published peer reviewed content after the failure of these kinds of publications. Would they also disappear into the rubbish bins of the internet? Thankfully that doesn't have to be the case. We have today numerous repositories where such outlets can store their articles after their demise. So, as long as that occurs, at least the content can survive the demise of the journals themselves.
Still, if I was a budding academic thinking about where to place my first or second peer reviewed journal article, would these kinds of journals be my first choice? Probably not.
Tuesday, November 25, 2014
On peer review
The debates among journal editors and other academics about
the merits or otherwise of particular forms of peer review continue. A growing
number of academics in the STEM subjects seem to think that post-publication
peer review provides for higher quality control than the traditional
post-submission pre-publication review. Their logic is that mistakes in
manuscripts are less likely to be found during a process involving only a
handful of reviewers. They furthermore argue that post-publication peer review
will submit journal articles to scrutiny by a much larger number of readers.
Methodological, statistical and other mistakes would almost certainly be found
out in post-publication scrutiny with a higher likelihood simply due to the
much larger number of expert reviewing (ie reading, analysing and commenting
on) manuscripts post publication. It is difficult to argue with this
contention, except to note that post publication peer review sites today
suggest that only some of the manuscripts there receive such desirable academic
community review. What does this proposal mean then for papers that are ignored
altogether by peers. Will they still count as some kind of peer reviewed
publications or are they just blog-equivalents? Who counts as a reviewer? Would
the authors’ best friends be viable options? University administrators and
appointments committees will want to know.
Of course, traditional peer review doesn’t preclude post-publication
review. It happens that manuscripts that passed pre-publication review are eventually
found to be seriously methodologically flawed. Many of those are withdrawn, but
reluctant publishers and editors have also gained notoriety by leaving flawed
manuscripts in the public domain without errata. Post-publication review
depends to some extent on easy access to the manuscripts in question (Open
Access being a bonus here), as well as the existence of sophisticated web-based
moderated platforms permitting reader-peers to leave comments. It goes without
saying that relentlessly profit-driven publishers of academic journals will be
reluctant to invest in the staff necessary to manage this process.
I think, for humanities manuscripts, for the time being,
pre-publication anonymous peer review remains the way to go. Anonymous peer
review guarantees honest reviews from reviewers. Open review, whereby the
reviewers and authors are disclosed to each other, will often prevent honest reviews,
simply because reviewers inclined to be critical of a particular submission
will be reluctant to burn their bridges by speaking frankly to the quality of a
particular submission submitted by a close colleague or friend. Anonymous
reviews are not in their own right a guarantee of quality. That’s where journal
editors step in. They need to evaluate reviewers’ comments and decide what to
do if reviewers’ verdicts vary significantly. You might be surprised to learn
that this does not happen all that frequently. Reviewers almost always reach similar
verdicts.
The challenge today is, of course, to find knowledgeable
reviewers. I have lamented this problem here before. Senior colleagues are
often reluctant to undertake this vital work. In fact, a few of them refuse to
undertake reviews outright. That does not stop them from complaining bitterly
if their manuscripts are, in their view, in the review process for an
extraordinary amount of time. Perhaps we ought to institute a policy whereby as
editors we would be well within our right to refuse to evaluate submissions
from colleagues routinely unwilling to accept review requests.
Another issue arises when it comes to sourcing true peers to
review particular content. Having now been an Editor of this journal and its
companion journal for the last 15 years, I still struggle on occasion to find a
suitable competent reviewer for a particular manuscript. It takes time,
especially if the subject matter of a particular manuscript is highly
specialised, to find the right peer reviewer. At this journal as well as its companion
journal our standard operating procedure is that we as Editors have to find
appropriate reviewers. We ask authors only in the rarest of exceptions to
suggest possible reviewers to us. It turns out that choosing our own reviewers
is a good idea, more so than we thought it is. Journals who ask authors for
reviewer suggestions have been hit in fairly significant numbers by fake
reviews, written under pseudonym by submitting authors, or by commercial
outfits in the business of drafting fake reviews.[i]
Post publication peer review publications should take note. You never stop
learning when it comes to these matters, and sadly, nothing much surprises me
any longer. The public or perish culture in today’s universities has clearly
led to unreasonably pressures on academics, leading quite a few of us to stray
from the right path.
Courtesy of the rise of open access on-line ‘journals’ we
have reason to be weary of claims that the papers published in many such venues
have been peer reviewed. As I write this, several incidents were reported where
bogus papers have been accepted for publication by such outlets, for a
processing fee, of course, delivered to the ‘editor’ via PayPal. Bound to be a
classic is undoubtedly this one: The authors conjured up a fake paper with the
title ‘Get me off your fucking mailing list’, directed at a SPAM Open Access
outlet inviting contributions. Their paper was accepted, ostensibly after peer
review.[ii]
As any academic with a university affiliation will be able to testify to these
days, the same outfits don’t discriminate as editors of more discerning
journals would, in terms of competence to review particular academic outputs. A
journalist employed at an Ottawa based newspaper reports that his submission of
a fake article to a dodgy Open Access outfit ended up with him being now
inundated with requests to review manuscripts he is utterly unqualified to
review for said ‘publisher’.[iii]
It is fair to say that on the odd occasion every editor will call on the wrong
reviewer for a particular submission, but that is usually caught by the second
or third reviewer, usually the invited reviewer declines. Apparently many
pay-for-play Open Access publishing operations are primarily concerned about extracting
author processing fees out of the submitting authors. That they can only
achieve after they accept submitted content.
An issue remains apparently the Conflict of Interest declaration.
There are all sorts of standards deployed by all sorts of publishing outfits,
grant giving bodies and so on. Let me just say that I think reviewers would be
well advised to err on the side of caution when they declare conflicts of
interest. One good yardstick would be to ask yourself whether, if you were at
the receiving end of your review, you would want to be advised (as an editor)
of particular information that you are considering disclosing. Conflicts of
interest could include knowledge of the authors’ identity, financial conflicts,
but also that you might be an author harshly criticised or praised in the
manuscript that you are reviewing. None of this would disqualify you per se
from reviewing, but knowing about these potential conflicts would help editors
to assess your comments more competently.
It is pretty obvious to anyone who has been in
the business of publishing as an author or editor – or both – that anonymous
peer review is far from perfect, and it is conceivable that new publishing
platforms will eventually lead to the rise of better peer review processes. I
for one am looking forward to those.
[i] Ferguson, C. 2014. It’s happened again: Journal
cannot rule out possibility that author did his own peer review. Retraction Watch November 10. http://retractionwatch.com/2014/11/10/it-happened-again-journal-cannot-rule-out-possibility-author-did-his-own-peer-review/
[accessed November 25, 2014]
[ii]
Bealls, J. 2014. Bogus
Journal Accepts Profanity-Laced Anti-Spam Paper Scholarly Open Access November 20. http://scholarlyoa.com/2014/11/20/bogus-journal-accepts-profanity-laced-anti-spam-paper/
[accessed November 25, 2014]
[iii] Spears, Tom. 2014. How my fake science paper earned me a shot at
an editor's job. Ottawa Citizen. November 25. http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/ok-no-problem-fakery-is-fine-at-bottom-feeding-journal
[accessed November 25, 2014]
Wednesday, May 08, 2013
Long live the Open Access Movement ... Not!
And here we go again, true story, I received this email today from an Open Access 'publisher'. Obviously I am not qualified to assess this manuscript, yet the administrators of this publisher see fit to invite me to review a manuscript that clearly I am not qualified to review. As far as email mass mailings are concerned, this crap shoot takes the crown. I hope you appreciate the 'journal' title, 'Science Journal of Medicine and Clinical Trial'. You could not make it up. The worst thing is that academics in a number of countries are forced by government edict to submit to Open Access 'publishers'. Quality requirements: zero, as long as it is Open Access. So, please do submit to 'Science Journal of Medicine & Clinical Trial' to get your governmental brownie points. Academic freedom be damned. Make sure to swipe your credit card though, otherwise 'Science Journal of Medicine and Clinical Trials' and its infinite number of sister publications won't be interested in your output any longer.
Dear Colleagues
How are you? I am sure you are busy with many activities right now. However, I hope you could help us review a manuscript, entitled"Quantiferonassay versus tuberculin skin test in detection of latent TB in hemodialysis patients" that has been submitted for publication in SCIENCE JOURNAL OF MEDICINE & CLINICAL TRIAL if you are able to take on this task as well as whether you can return the Review Form by 15TH May, 2013 or earlier.
The Manuscript, Reviewer's Guide and Author Guidelines will be E-mail to you if you are interested.
In particular, please make sure that the paper addresses issues of value to our broad-based audience, and that it cuts through the thick layers of theory and verbosity for them and makes sense of it all in a clean, cohesive manner.
On behalf of the Editorial Team of the Science Journal Publication, I thank you very much in advance for your effort in this endeavor.
ABSTRACT:
Background:Patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) and Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection pose a high risk of developing active TB disease. It is therefore important to detect latent TB infection (LTBI) to be able to offer treatment and prevent progression to TB disease.
Objective: to compare the performance of Quantiferon-TB Gold test (QFT-G)in the diagnosis of latent tuberculosis infection with tuberculin skin test (TST) among patients undergoing hemodialysis.
Patients and methods: sixty patients undergoing hemodialysis at Al-Azhar and Assiut university hospitals were subjected to TSTand QFT-G. Theagreement between both tests was evaluated with respect to age, sex, BCG vaccinationand history of contact to a known TB case.
Results: The percentage of positive TST results (induration cut off 10 mm) and positive QFT-G test results was found to be 45% & 31.7% respectively. The overall agreement between the QFT-G and the TST in hemodialysis patients was 44/60 (73.3%) and it was found to be statistically significant (P=0.001). BCG vaccination had no effect on either TST or QFT- G results in hemodialysis patients. Positive TST and QFT-G results were found to be 90% and 100 % respectively in hemodialysis patients with history of contact to known TB cases. Both QFT-G and TST results were not significantly related to age or sex. In conclusions, Both QFT-G and TST may be complementary to each other in the diagnosis of latent tuberculous infection in hemodialysis patients.
Dear Colleagues
How are you? I am sure you are busy with many activities right now. However, I hope you could help us review a manuscript, entitled"Quantiferonassay versus tuberculin skin test in detection of latent TB in hemodialysis patients" that has been submitted for publication in SCIENCE JOURNAL OF MEDICINE & CLINICAL TRIAL if you are able to take on this task as well as whether you can return the Review Form by 15TH May, 2013 or earlier.
The Manuscript, Reviewer's Guide and Author Guidelines will be E-mail to you if you are interested.
In particular, please make sure that the paper addresses issues of value to our broad-based audience, and that it cuts through the thick layers of theory and verbosity for them and makes sense of it all in a clean, cohesive manner.
On behalf of the Editorial Team of the Science Journal Publication, I thank you very much in advance for your effort in this endeavor.
ABSTRACT:
Background:Patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) and Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection pose a high risk of developing active TB disease. It is therefore important to detect latent TB infection (LTBI) to be able to offer treatment and prevent progression to TB disease.
Objective: to compare the performance of Quantiferon-TB Gold test (QFT-G)in the diagnosis of latent tuberculosis infection with tuberculin skin test (TST) among patients undergoing hemodialysis.
Patients and methods: sixty patients undergoing hemodialysis at Al-Azhar and Assiut university hospitals were subjected to TSTand QFT-G. Theagreement between both tests was evaluated with respect to age, sex, BCG vaccinationand history of contact to a known TB case.
Results: The percentage of positive TST results (induration cut off 10 mm) and positive QFT-G test results was found to be 45% & 31.7% respectively. The overall agreement between the QFT-G and the TST in hemodialysis patients was 44/60 (73.3%) and it was found to be statistically significant (P=0.001). BCG vaccination had no effect on either TST or QFT- G results in hemodialysis patients. Positive TST and QFT-G results were found to be 90% and 100 % respectively in hemodialysis patients with history of contact to known TB cases. Both QFT-G and TST results were not significantly related to age or sex. In conclusions, Both QFT-G and TST may be complementary to each other in the diagnosis of latent tuberculous infection in hemodialysis patients.
Wednesday, December 05, 2012
Being a good academic citizen
A lot of ink has been spilt about the pro’s and con’s of
academic peer review. I am not going to add to the existing literature on this
matter in this blogpost. Suffice it to say that I subscribe to the
view that anonymous peer review is still the least deficient of the available
mechanisms to determine the quality of a given article submission. As an editor of two international journals I am painfully aware of the fact that occasionally the quality of peer review is not
as good as it should be. Usually enraged or not so enraged emails from authors
give us editors an indication that one or another of the reviewers we invited
to review a particular manuscript might not have been as diligent as would have
been desirable. In some of those cases
we tend to embark on a second round of reviews. Either way, we depend on volunteers, also commonly known
as good academic citizens, to review articles submitted to the journal. Our
Editorial Board members have graciously agreed to review a minimum of four
submitted articles for us in any given year, many review quite a few more
submissions.
Without dependable reviewers Bioethics and Developing World Bioethics could not function and deliver high-quality outputs. One problem we encounter frequently is that it often is very
difficult to find reviewers for submitted manuscripts. We know from
conversation with fellow editors at other bioethics and medical ethics journals
that we are not alone in this. The ‘very difficult’ refers to a number of
different problems, the accumulated effects of which have a deleterious effect
on our operations. For starters, too many academics are very happy to submit
their manuscripts for review but they think little of returning the
professional courtesy of their reviewers by responding positively to
invitations to review manuscripts for the journal. As a result, some of those
good academic citizens, who review diligently for us, get arguably overburdened
with review requests, while those who prefer not to review content get a free
ride. I wonder whether the Golden Rule might actually be more frequently
written about by academic ethicists than it is actually followed by us. It is
notable that junior academics tend to be more generous with their time while
many (but by no means all) of the more established scholars are among the more
frequent non-responders. The former also tend to provide longer, more in-depth
and more constructive reviews. This, of course, is very much appreciated by
authors keen to improve their papers prior to submitting their final draft for
publication.
Other problems that typically delay – sometimes very
significantly – decisions on submitted manuscripts have to do with invited
reviewers not responding to our invitations, lagging significantly behind
agreed-upon deadlines for the delivery of the reviews, not delivering promised
reviews at all, but also producing reviews so devoid of critical substance that
they are useless for all intent and purposes.
Part of the problem is undoubtedly that many academic
institutions encourage free-riders by not giving serious credits for
undertaking per reviews for academic journals, funding agencies and the like. If
annual performance reviews, or tenure reviews do not include credits for such
work it is understandable why academics turn down such work. This is very
unfortunate indeed. As academics we
should flag this issue within our institutions with a view toward establishing
formal institutional recognition of demonstrable, quantifiable services to the
academic community.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
News from BIOETHICS and DEVELOPING WORLD BIOETHICS
The journals
We got our annual report from our publisher a few days ago. Much of the stuff there is confidential, of course (and would likely bore you, too). However, there's bits and pieces of statistics that you might find interesting. In case you don't know the journals, or don't know them well, Bioethics is now in its 25th year of existence. It publishes 9 issues per calendar year. Developing World Bioethics is now in its 11th year of existence. It publishes 3 issues per calendar year. The journals come in a package, so what it boils down to is a monthly publication schedule. Bioethics is also the official publication of the International Association of Bioethics. This essentially entails us publishing every two years a special issue with the best contents form the IAB Congress, as well as us offering deeply discounted subscriptions to paid-up members of the IAB. We continue to sponsor events held during the IAB Congress every two years. Recently we have also provided sponsorship to a postgraduate bioethics conference held in the UK.
Our reach and academic success
We have been able to increase the reach of both journals quite significantly in 2010. The journals are available in about 3,500 university libraries by regular subscriptions. A further 6,000 libraries in developing countries have access to the journal at this point in time. I should like to add that this - to my mind - puts to rest claims about the unavailability of our academic content in the developing world due to high subscription fees. A further 5,200 libraries worldwide are able to access our content a year after it has been published. So, in total, slightly less than 15,000 libraries across the globe provide access to our content.
This wide availability has also resulted in another significant boost to article downloads from our journals. In total about 250,000 articles from both journals were downloaded in 2010.
The European Science Foundation has given Bioethics the highest ranking available in the philosophy category.
Our upcoming content
Ruth Chadwick, Bioethics' other Editor, and I have lined up a whole range of interesting special issues over the next few years, covering topics all the way from synthetic organisms to ageing. In case you're one of our readers, give us a shout with suggestions for special issue topics. We are always keen to hear from you!
Publication ethics
On the publication ethics fronts, we have introduced extensive regulations on authorship and conflict of interest matters that we hope will keep us out of the firing line on these issues for the foreseeable future.
Editorial board, bias and peer review
Last but not least, following our most recent review, invitations will be going out to a few academics to join our Editorial Board. Funny enough, that should also put to rest any suspicions that you might have with regard to editorial bias. Of the new members on the Editorial Board of the journal two are colleagues with whom I had quite serious professional conflict in the distant and in the very recent past, respectively. None of that made any difference to our decision to appoint to our Editorial Board. What matters crucially are competence and reliability. Reliability of reviewers is becoming sadly an ever bigger challenge. You would expect that academics who themselves publish academic contents in academic journals would be willing to review colleagues' academic content (the golden rule and all that jazz). The truth is though that that is becoming ever more difficult. All too often the most experienced peer reviewers decline and editors have to move lower down the list of experienced and knowledgable academics. The same authors, in other words, who would be all too keen to have their paper reviewed by a top academic like themselves are all too often not prepared to provide a similar courtesy in return when they are being asked to review academic content. This is quite disappointing, but equally, until university administrations and research funders give credit to academics for providing such services to the academic community, it is understandable that individual academics vote for working on their own paper rather than reviewing someone else's paper. All I can say is that some academics are paradigms of how a professional should act in this context and others are paradigms of the how-not-to. The former probably do not know how grateful we really are to them, as journal editors, for their services.
We got our annual report from our publisher a few days ago. Much of the stuff there is confidential, of course (and would likely bore you, too). However, there's bits and pieces of statistics that you might find interesting. In case you don't know the journals, or don't know them well, Bioethics is now in its 25th year of existence. It publishes 9 issues per calendar year. Developing World Bioethics is now in its 11th year of existence. It publishes 3 issues per calendar year. The journals come in a package, so what it boils down to is a monthly publication schedule. Bioethics is also the official publication of the International Association of Bioethics. This essentially entails us publishing every two years a special issue with the best contents form the IAB Congress, as well as us offering deeply discounted subscriptions to paid-up members of the IAB. We continue to sponsor events held during the IAB Congress every two years. Recently we have also provided sponsorship to a postgraduate bioethics conference held in the UK.
Our reach and academic success
We have been able to increase the reach of both journals quite significantly in 2010. The journals are available in about 3,500 university libraries by regular subscriptions. A further 6,000 libraries in developing countries have access to the journal at this point in time. I should like to add that this - to my mind - puts to rest claims about the unavailability of our academic content in the developing world due to high subscription fees. A further 5,200 libraries worldwide are able to access our content a year after it has been published. So, in total, slightly less than 15,000 libraries across the globe provide access to our content.
This wide availability has also resulted in another significant boost to article downloads from our journals. In total about 250,000 articles from both journals were downloaded in 2010.
The European Science Foundation has given Bioethics the highest ranking available in the philosophy category.
Our upcoming content
Ruth Chadwick, Bioethics' other Editor, and I have lined up a whole range of interesting special issues over the next few years, covering topics all the way from synthetic organisms to ageing. In case you're one of our readers, give us a shout with suggestions for special issue topics. We are always keen to hear from you!
Publication ethics
On the publication ethics fronts, we have introduced extensive regulations on authorship and conflict of interest matters that we hope will keep us out of the firing line on these issues for the foreseeable future.
Editorial board, bias and peer review
Last but not least, following our most recent review, invitations will be going out to a few academics to join our Editorial Board. Funny enough, that should also put to rest any suspicions that you might have with regard to editorial bias. Of the new members on the Editorial Board of the journal two are colleagues with whom I had quite serious professional conflict in the distant and in the very recent past, respectively. None of that made any difference to our decision to appoint to our Editorial Board. What matters crucially are competence and reliability. Reliability of reviewers is becoming sadly an ever bigger challenge. You would expect that academics who themselves publish academic contents in academic journals would be willing to review colleagues' academic content (the golden rule and all that jazz). The truth is though that that is becoming ever more difficult. All too often the most experienced peer reviewers decline and editors have to move lower down the list of experienced and knowledgable academics. The same authors, in other words, who would be all too keen to have their paper reviewed by a top academic like themselves are all too often not prepared to provide a similar courtesy in return when they are being asked to review academic content. This is quite disappointing, but equally, until university administrations and research funders give credit to academics for providing such services to the academic community, it is understandable that individual academics vote for working on their own paper rather than reviewing someone else's paper. All I can say is that some academics are paradigms of how a professional should act in this context and others are paradigms of the how-not-to. The former probably do not know how grateful we really are to them, as journal editors, for their services.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Webmedcentral - an early 1st April joke?
A few days ago I received an invitation from a computer to review a manuscript. The computer's name is Webmedcentral, it seems, and it's the latest incarnation of Open Access file uploading. At the moment you can publish (ie upload a file to said computer) free of charge, but that's gonna change by January 2012. None of the computer's content is indexed in any databases at all, except tragically by google scholar. The paper I was asked to review consisted of 427 words and 2 references. The computer explained to me that the paper had been published already, and that the review would take place after publication of the article in question. Authors could then publish revised versions of their article in response to the reviews received, or ignore the reviews altogether. Either way, said computer (hardwarewise not that different from other Open Access 'journals' - and neither quality wise in all too many instances) explains on its website that it has 'have full faith in the honesty and integrity of the scientific community and firmly believe[s] that most researchers and authors who have something to contribute should have an opportunity to do so.' Despite strong evidence of widespread cheating in academia trust is what drives this computer.
How does this thing work then? 'We have introduced a novel method of post publication peer review, which is author driven. It is the authors' responsibility to actively solicit at least three reviews on their article. During the submission stage the authors are asked to provide details of three reviewers who are contacted by the WebmedCentral team when the article is published. Authors can seek more reviews, if they so wish. We discourage authors from choosing their reviewers selectively.'
'Our peer review process is author driven. With our innovative method of publishing, peer review takes place after publication. It is authors' responsibility to organise at least three reviews for their articles. We aim to generate an open debate on the article after its publication. WebmedCentral reserves the right to invite additional reviews as and when necessary.
All pretty clear: any crook can pick his or her best mates to 'review' content they have already 'published'. They're strongly encouraged not to be crooks, of course. That should just do the trick.
The computer mentions in passing that it has neither an Editor nor an Editorial Board: 'With our model of publishing, we do not need an editor or editorial board for our journal. Authors are completely in charge of the entire publication process including soliciting reviews and submitting revised versions of the manuscripts if needed.' It's kinda unclear how a journal without Editor or Editorial Board is going to solicit further reviews, 'if needed', but hey, minor detail in the big swing of the Webmedcentral universe.
There is a bit of confusion, too (well, I remained confused about the modus operandi). It seems as if you'd upload your papers free of charge to the computer, then have the article send to your three best mates whose compliments will also be 'published'. If they review more than three other files they can send more of their own non-reviewed drivel for publication purposes to the Webmedcentral server. Basic maths would suggest that soon review co-operatives identifiable by one's three best mates will monopolize much of Webmedcentral's file uploading activities. According to Webmedcentral the comments are also considered publications. It goes without saying that in this uploading orgy minor details such as doi identifiers are missing, but hey, it's a minor detail while you 'publish' a paper per hour to beef up your publications record.
It's all pretty random and no doubt databases controlled by people as opposed to algorithms will not index stuff emanating from webmedcentral. Google scholar at least is happily indexing the contents on the Webmedcentral server. The price you pay for letting machines do the job humans arguably should be doing.
The only nice thing is that webmedcentral could easily be confused with biomedcentral. It couldn't hit a nicer 'publisher' :-).
Oh, the list of shame, aka academics prepared to be associated with this charade, is here. What people confuse with academic publishing here is academics publishing anything they feel like. No different to my blog really... feel free to comment (aka 'review' in Webmedcentral lingo).
Wednesday, September 01, 2010
The Open Access industry - basement based academic 'journals' in action
and here, an invitation I (a bioethicist/philosopher) received to review a manuscript. Do note the title of the journal (not my field) and the title of the article they need reviewed (has nothing to do with either my field or the journal).
moronia in academia...
moronia in academia...
International Journal of Peace and Development Studies |
Dear Colleague,
We received a manuscript titled "
CRISIS IN THEORETICAL PHYSICS:
THE PROBLEM OF SCIENTIFIC TRUTH
" I wish to inquire if you can create time to review this manuscript. We will be most grateful if the manuscript can be reviewed and sent to us within 2 weeks.Please find the abstract below:
Abstract: The problem of truth in science - the most urgent problem of our time - is discussed. The correct theoretical analysis of the generally accepted foundations of theoretical physics is proposed. The principle of the unity of formal logic and rational dialectics is a methodological basis of the analysis. The main result is as follows: the foundations (i.e. classical thermodynamics, the special theory of relativity, quantum mechanics) contain logical errors The existence of logical errors is irrefutable proof of incorrectness of the theoretical foundations and means that theoretical physics enters the greatest crisis. The crisis in physics leads inevitably to the general crisis in science. The crisis as effect is explained by existence of the global cause: the crisis is a collateral and inevitable result of inductive method of knowledge of the Nature.
I am looking forward to your response and will be grateful to hear from you.
Kindly acknowledge the receipt of this mail
Best Regards,
Emekagbor Richard,
Editorial Assistant,
International Journal of Peace and Development Studies (IJPDS).
Monday, January 18, 2010
On blogging
To whom it may concern (yes, YOU :-):It seems there's quite some people out there who have decided for some reason or other that I am 'important' in one context or another. So they have taken to monitoring this blog and going after me whenever I say something they find offensive, outrageous, unpalatable, name it. Indeed, bits and pieces from this blog are being used to brief 'higher up' authorities about me. Who are you trying to kid people?
Let me be clear once and for all then about what the purpose of this blog is: It is my personal soap box. I step onto it, wave my hands and rave about XYZ and the universe. Some of the views expressed are reflective and mirror views I also hold professionally. Other views expressed on this blog are kinds of gut reactions to something that irritated me. There is no pretense that every single post is the result of deep philosophical or ethical analysis. Indeed, there's plenty of posts that got nothing to do with my area of expertise (bioethics), such as comments on airport security. In fact, you will even be able to find me fly kinds of test balloons to see how a particular argument goes, and dump it subsequently when I discover that someone shot it down with good reasons.
So, please, you lurkers out there (you know who you are): This is my blog soap box, not a peer reviewed locus of intellectual content. Treat it as such! In case of doubt, check whether I have provided substantive analysis on a given issue in my peer reviewed publications (hey, for crying out loud, even in book chapters!). If I have, go after me (the professional) for what I have said there. If all you can find is a ranting on this blog, take it for what it is, and no more.
Getting off my soap box now.
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