Stop Drinking the Kool-Aid: The Academic Journal Review Process in the Social Sciences Is Broken, Let’s Fix It

2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 277-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Overall
Author(s):  
Thomas König

Open Access is a simple idea that has resulted in a confusing landscape of business models, competing policy prescriptions, and vested interests. Academic debates about the pros and cons of Open Access publishing often lack insights into the operational needs for setting up an Open Access publication. This is true particularly for the social sciences, where experiences with Open Access from the production side still seem sparse. Covering the period between 2010 and 2015, this article recapitulates one of the few cases where an existing academic journal in political science has been converted to an Open Access publication. The Austrian Journal of Political Science (OZP) is an Open Access journal since 2015; and it was the academic community that conducted the conversion process. Remaking the OZP may thus entail some broader lessons for the social sciences communities about what is important in Open Access publishing.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes Wilm

Scholarly communication is undergoing a revolution with the move to open access. This has opened new opportunities and also new challenges. One of the most problematic issues are the costs of publishing. Some of this may be excessive profits of some publishers, but another part are actual costs associated with typesetting and document conversion.In 2012, the open source Fidus Writer editor was born with the vision of creating a fully web-based semantic editor for academics that would not require manual typesetting after the authors are finished with their text. Since 2015 the GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences and University of Bonn have been working on the “Open Scholarly Communications in the Social Sciences” project. The project is financed by the German Research Foundation, DFG, and it has been enhancing Fidus Writer and connecting it with a number of other tools, such as citation databases for automatic citation retrieval and the Open Journals Systems (OJS) to offer an integrated peer-review process. The aim is to create a fully integrated system for social Scientists and others that does away with conversion steps and makes scientific text creation both less costly and improves the tools available, also for non-technically inclined users.While several other projects have come into being simultaneously with Fidus Writer, their focus has been somewhat different: ShareLatex/Overleaf have focused on LaTeX users and is therefore not suitable for scientists who do not code. Other editors are either not open source, not working as collaborative editors or do not provide the tools needed by humanists and social scientists.We have written several papers collaboratively using our combined tool that have been submitted and published and are now working with two journals to obtain real-world experience using Fidus Writer with social scientists in the journal peer review process. In this poster I would like to present the current status of our tool and project.


2012 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 96-97
Author(s):  
James R. Welch

With the recent multiplication of traditional and electronic venues for publishing in ethnobiology, the social sciences, the life sciences, and related fields, it is increasingly important that authors practice self-diligence to ensure that the contents of their publications meet criteria of veracity and ethical soundness. Although the peer-review process encourages high standards, it is an insufficient means for verifying the ethical worthiness of most publications. The ethical merits of published research derive from a cumulative process including formulating a research design, obtaining permissions, collecting and analyzing data, and finally composing and submitting a manuscript. Unfortunately, there is no failsafe ethical gatekeeper at any stage of the process. The importance of ethical publishing is all the more important in the field of ethnobiology, as professionals in the field  often cross the intellectual and methodological boundaries between disciplines, and their research often involves multiple stakeholders in widespread jurisdictions.


2004 ◽  
Vol 26 (s-1) ◽  
pp. 143-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven J. Kachelmeier

This commentary offers some “big picture” reactions to points raised by the American Taxation Association Panel on academic journal reviewing (Omer et al. 2004), along with advice for both reviewers and authors. Comments are integrated with recent contributions from the supporting literature on the journal review process.


2007 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 121-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynn P. Eldershaw ◽  
Maria Mayan ◽  
Anne Winkler

In a 2005 interview with doctoral and postdoctoral students Arthur W. Frank discusses a variety of topics related to qualitative research, such as methodology, narrative, power, rigor, and the peer review process. He reflects on his own work and the artists, philosophers and sociologists who have influenced him. He provides a selective history of research in the social sciences and discusses changes in health care and the practice of medicine.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hendrik J. Kockaert

It is my pleasure and honor to present the proceedings of the 10th International Translation Conference, which are the result of a careful selection by peer reviewers. This special issue in QScience Connect Journals is dedicated to the papers submitted to the 10th International Translation Conference “Translation Beyond the Margins.” The Call for Papers for this conference invited contributions that fit in the following thematic area: “Translation, by nature, deals with margins. Translators and interpreters still hold a marginal position in society, as they often work in the shadow, and go unseen, even though global economy and politics hinge on their work. Translation Studies (TS) holds a similar position in the Humanities and the Social Sciences. This has multifold consequences on professional recognition, leads to further marginalization of vulnerable minorities or invisible end-users, publics and audiences, and has an impact on the advancement of knowledge in and beyond translation. As a discipline, Translation Studies challenges and transcends disciplinary frontiers, as it converges with and diverges from sister disciplines of the Humanities and Social Sciences, while mapping new territories in dialogue with other domains. Translation Studies not only crosses over in terms of the subject matters of the materials (verbal, auditory, visual, or otherwise) it works with, but also imports, appropriates and expands on knowledge and methods from other disciplines. In so doing, Translation Studies contributes to advancing new knowledge in interrelated domains of enquiry. One of the remits of higher education, and of science in general, is to expand the borders of knowledge and that can only be achieved if researchers, teachers, students, professionals and all those involved in reflective practices look beyond the margins of what is presently known. Looking beyond the margins may mean to tackle topics that have never been addressed, or to address mainstream topics from a new angle. It may also mean taking the viewpoint of other disciplines or simply running the risk when applying innovative or crosscutting approaches to practices and/or research.” [https://tii.qa/en/tenth-annual-international-translation-conference] The 10th International Translation Conference Program was an excellent occasion to start enriching the conference experience by inviting the speakers for a Call for Papers in a peer-reviewed venue so that their conference presentations be anchored in an academic journal, which could at the same time been seen as a Festschrift celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Translation Conferences organized by the Translation and Interpreting Institute (TII), part of Hamad bin Khalifa University’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences. As a result of the Call, we received five outstanding papers and we are proud of bundling these in a first special issue of QScience Connect, the academic open access publication of HBKU.


Methodology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Knut Petzold ◽  
Tobias Wolbring

Abstract. Factorial survey experiments are increasingly used in the social sciences to investigate behavioral intentions. The measurement of self-reported behavioral intentions with factorial survey experiments frequently assumes that the determinants of intended behavior affect actual behavior in a similar way. We critically investigate this fundamental assumption using the misdirected email technique. Student participants of a survey were randomly assigned to a field experiment or a survey experiment. The email informs the recipient about the reception of a scholarship with varying stakes (full-time vs. book) and recipient’s names (German vs. Arabic). In the survey experiment, respondents saw an image of the same email. This validation design ensured a high level of correspondence between units, settings, and treatments across both studies. Results reveal that while the frequencies of self-reported intentions and actual behavior deviate, treatments show similar relative effects. Hence, although further research on this topic is needed, this study suggests that determinants of behavior might be inferred from behavioral intentions measured with survey experiments.


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