scholarly journals Reflections following the ASAPbio Peer Review conference

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Lidsky

The ASAPbio initiative makes a major call for renovation in scientific publishing in biological sciences. The suggested reforms include open access preprints and a fully transparent review process. If introduced into practice, these changes should result in a dramatic cultural change in scientific publishing, probably making it more predictable and consistent. Innovate ways for evaluation of scientific impact were also discussed during the meeting in February 2018. The aim of this essay is to discuss possible developmental trajectories and a possible strategy of changing publishing practices to make citation-based indexes more reliable, fair and informative and thus to complement the ASAPbio proposals.

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 20-35
Author(s):  
Eva Sauvage ◽  
Siv Olsen

Predatory journals –a debate Introduction: The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten revealed extensive problems with predatory publishing in an article that led to headlines in Norwegian news media in August 2018. Many were concerned about how the rise of open access journals had led to the growth of publishers with uncertain peer review processes, and worried about the consequences this may have for the public trust in science. A few weeks later, the Norwegian government joined the European Coalition S, which aims to mandate researchers who receive grants from the Research Council to publish in gold open access journals.  Method: Qualitative content analysis Results: Researchers are deeply concerned about public trust in science. The debate displayed a clearly either pro and con opinions towards open access publishing, and researchers are especially concerned about the peer review process. Some actors believe there is a strong connection between open access and predatory journals. Other actors blame the international competition and pressure to publish as a cause for the rise of predatory publishing. Some actors applaud the radical transformation of scientific publishing and of the peer review process, while others fear this development. Discussion: We discuss how this may affect research support at university libraries. Coalition S faced great opposition among the majority of Norwegian researchers, while the librarians who participated in the debate were in unison positive. The challenges of predatory publishers may intensify in the years to come with the introduction of Coalition S and a radical reorganization of scientific publishing. Conclusion: The debate shows that there is a clear need for a "white list" of peer-reviewed and quality-assured publishing channels, where the Nordic list is a good start.  Librarians have special expertise on metadata formats and knowledge about information literacy that can help researchers with quality assessment.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 15-19
Author(s):  
Bishnu Bahadur Khatri

Peer review in scholarly communication and scientific publishing, in one form or another, has always been regarded as crucial to the reputation and reliability of scientific research. In the growing interest of scholarly research and publication, this paper tries to discuss about peer review process and its different types to communicate the early career researchers and academics.This paper has used the published and unpublished documents for information collection. It reveals that peer review places the reviewer, with the author, at the heart of scientific publishing. It is the system used to assess the quality of scientific research before it is published. Therefore, it concludes that peer review is used to advancing and testing scientific knowledgeas a quality control mechanism forscientists, publishers and the public.


Author(s):  
Ann Blair Kennedy, LMT, BCTMB, DrPH

  Peer review is a mainstay of scientific publishing and, while peer reviewers and scientists report satisfaction with the process, peer review has not been without criticism. Within this editorial, the peer review process at the IJTMB is defined and explained. Further, seven steps are identified by the editors as a way to improve efficiency of the peer review and publication process. Those seven steps are: 1) Ask authors to submit possible reviewers; 2) Ask reviewers to update profiles; 3) Ask reviewers to “refer a friend”; 4) Thank reviewers regularly; 5) Ask published authors to review for the Journal; 6) Reduce the length of time to accept peer review invitation; and 7) Reduce requested time to complete peer review. We believe these small requests and changes can have a big effect on the quality of reviews and speed in which manuscripts are published. This manuscript will present instructions for completing peer review profiles. Finally, we more formally recognize and thank peer reviewers from 2018–2020.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Khaled Moustafa

Over the past few years, different changes have been introduced into the science publishing industry. However, important reforms are still required at both the content and form levels. First, the peer review process needs to be open, fair and transparent. Second, author-paid fees in open access journals need to either be removed or reconsidered toward more affordability. Third, the categorization of papers should include all types of scientific contributions that can be of higher interest to the scientific community than many mere quantitative and observable measures, or simply removed from publications. Forth, word counts and reference numbers in online open access journal should be nuanced or replaced by recommended ranges rather than to be a proxy of acceptance or rejection. Finally, all the coauthors of a manuscript should be considered corresponding authors and responsible for their mutual manuscript rather than only one or two.


Publications ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bo-Christer Björk ◽  
Sari Kanto-Karvonen ◽  
J. Tuomas Harviainen

Predatory journals are Open Access journals of highly questionable scientific quality. Such journals pretend to use peer review for quality assurance, and spam academics with requests for submissions, in order to collect author payments. In recent years predatory journals have received a lot of negative media. While much has been said about the harm that such journals cause to academic publishing in general, an overlooked aspect is how much articles in such journals are actually read and in particular cited, that is if they have any significant impact on the research in their fields. Other studies have already demonstrated that only some of the articles in predatory journals contain faulty and directly harmful results, while a lot of the articles present mediocre and poorly reported studies. We studied citation statistics over a five-year period in Google Scholar for 250 random articles published in such journals in 2014 and found an average of 2.6 citations per article, and that 56% of the articles had no citations at all. For comparison, a random sample of articles published in the approximately 25,000 peer reviewed journals included in the Scopus index had an average of 18, 1 citations in the same period with only 9% receiving no citations. We conclude that articles published in predatory journals have little scientific impact.


2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (5) ◽  
pp. 607-619 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonhard Dobusch ◽  
Maximilian Heimstädt

Predatory journals have emerged as an unintended consequence of the Open Access paradigm. Predatory journals only supposedly or very superficially conduct peer review and accept manuscripts within days to skim off publication fees. In this provocation piece, we first explain how predatory journals exploit deficiencies of the traditional peer review process in times of Open Access publishing. We then explain two ways in which predatory journals may harm the management discipline: as an infrastructure for the dissemination of pseudo-science and as a vehicle to portray management research as pseudo-scientific. Analyzing data from a journal blacklist, we show that without the ability to validate their claims to conduct peer review, most of the 639 predatory management journals are quite difficult to demarcate from serious journals. To address this problem, we propose open peer review as a new governance mechanism for management journals. By making parts of their peer review process more transparent and inclusive, reputable journals can differentiate themselves from predatory journals and additionally contribute to a more developmental reviewing culture. Eventually, we discuss ways in which editors, reviewers, and authors can advocate reform of peer review.


2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 260-263
Author(s):  
Seyed Mohammad Hossein Mahmoodi ◽  
◽  
Amir Hossein Jalali Nadoushan ◽  

Predatory journals exploit open access publication method; they do not carry out the peer review process and editorial assessment properly and publish unassessed articles for financial gain. According to a recent investigation published in the Lancet Psychiatry Journal, about 20% of authors or co-authors of articles published in predatory psychiatric journals have been Iranian. This substantial contribution needs attention and seems to be compatible with previous studies inspecting involvement of other academics from Iran in predatory publications.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pan Pantziarka ◽  
Lydie Meheus

Background. A number of recent high-profile cases have focused attention on scientific misconduct and other problematic issues with the peer review process. The retraction of journal publications is an important part of the scientific publishing process that serves to remove flawed articles, (including, but not limited to, fraudulent results), from the literature. To date there have been few formal studies of journal retractions in the area of oncology. Methods. This article outlines the results of a bibliometric study of journal retractions from 1983 to 2018. Results. Analysis shows that article lifetime – that is the time period from initial publication to ultimate retraction – has decreased in recent years. It also shows that retraction rate has also increased over the same period. The causes and context of these trends are discussed and reference made to the dangers of scientific misconduct in oncology.


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