Dogmatism and the Scientific Process: A Need for Change

ANZJOG in 2016: Passing the baton.

Peer Review: The Best of the Blemished?

Writing and publishing scientific works are crucial parts of any scientist's career. Therefore, it is important, especially for those new to the process, to understand how to navigate the publication process. This study was designed to investigate the publication process in ethnobotany and to stimulate discussion among authors, reviewers, and journal editors. A survey was created and sent to ethnobotanists who had published between the years 2000 and 2009. Of the 166 invitations sent, 44 resulted in valid answers from researchers. Although the majority of the ethnobotanists who participated in this study were researchers in the early stages of their careers, the data showed that the most experienced scientists published more articles and received fewer rejections. It is likely that these more experienced researchers had a greater number of rejections early in their careers but that they had since adjusted to the requirements imposed by the journals. This study serves as a starting point for reflection on the scientific publication process in ethnobotany and about authors' perceptions.

In my initial letter to you, with the first quarterly issue 96(1), I indicated that journals are making constant improvements to disseminate the latest research and development findings. An investigation is presently under way to adopt the best technologies and services available to reinvigorate International Surgery. In this process, we are seeking advice and input from several knowledgeable and experienced persons, whose years of great experience with scientific and medical journals will serve us well. We are doing this with emphasis on peer-reviewed original scientific articles covering important clinical observations, surgical techniques, experimental surgery, research, and cultural and historical topics pertinent to surgery and related fields. We wish to stimulate readership and increased manuscript submission by making International Surgery articles more accessible, with significant emphasis on the increasing prevalence of electronic publishing.In this editorial, I focus on manuscript submission and peer review. We must provide better guidelines on the submission process—and we are working to do so. Once the articles are received, then we must give more quality and efficient attention to the peer review process. We believe that a large percentage of researchers rate peer-reviewed articles as very important in their respective research endeavors. As Editor-in-Chief, I have significantly expanded the peer review process by sending manuscripts to those individuals within the International College of Surgeons who have an interest in improving International Surgery and who are willing to promptly give their attention not only to reviewing submitted articles but also to making suggestions, as appropriate, to authors for improving their respective manuscripts for publication and, most importantly, for advancing the field of surgery. We are tracking this process and ultimately we will be able to determine who are best suited for an eventual, formally designated Editorial Review Board.To assist the peer review process and to make this process more efficient, we are now giving consideration to electronic peer review systems and to which systems will better serve us. The purpose is to give fair, objective, and ethical consideration to all submitted manuscripts, an increasing number, that are submitted for initial processing and evaluation. Clearly, as we progress, those persons who participate in the electronic peer review process will need to have the information technology capacity to enable participation and timely responses.We are beginning to invite authoritative commentaries from internationally renowned leaders on articles to add perspective and enhance the quality of the scientific and educational content. Additionally, a greater effort will be made to publish more articles on topical, innovative areas, with invitations targeted at researchers to publish in International Surgery.Overall quality and timeliness in the publication process are critically important, not only to increasing the importance of International Surgery, but also to advancing the education and communications process, which are critical in improving global surgery. Our goal is to be in the vanguard of scientific, technical, and medical publishing, and the foregoing are some of the initial considerations and actions that we now have under way.I ask for your continued support and for your ongoing suggestions as we proceed.Thank you.

This weekend I was at SciFoo, an invitation-only unconference by O'Reilly Media, Nature and Google that took place at Google. I was fortunate to be invited, and I'm still digesting all the impressions and discussions that I had (there were many). This post is the indirect result of two sessions and several related discussions on one particular topic that I'm most interested in – the process of scientific publication.

Editorial Policy

Peer review under the spotlight in the UK

Editorial Policy

Editors play a central role and form an essential link in the publication process. Consequently, they hold considerable influence as to how the literature is molded, and what eventually gets published. In addition to their standard editorial responsibilities, holding that amount of power, editors have extremely high responsibilities to declare any conflicts of interest (COIs) internal to, and external to, the peer review process, particularly those involving personal relationships and networks. This is because they also exist in the peer community, can be high-profile public figures, and form a very unique and restricted – in terms of size, membership and exclusivity – set of individuals. Consequently, editors need to declare their COIs openly, transparently, and publicly on their editor board profiles, and as part of their curriculum vitae. Without such declarations, the greater risk is that editors might have unregulated freedom to enforce their own individual or group biases, through hidden relationships and networks, including the possibility of hiding instances of favoritism, cronyism and nepotism. In the worst-case scenario, this might reflect editorial corruption. Hidden COIs in authors, which tend to be the focus of the academic publishing establishment, including in codes of conduct and ethical guidelines such as those by COPE and the ICMJE, tend to down-play editorial COIs, or restrict them to scrutiny during the peer review process. This opinion piece examines whether there is a systemic problem with under-reported editorial COIs, particularly personal and non-financial COIs, that extend beyond the peer review process and their editorial positions. Greater awareness, debate, and education of this issue are needed.

Editorial Policy and Style Information

Editorial Policy and Style Information

The increasing use of AI-based approaches such as machine learning (ML) across diverse scientific fields presents challenges for reproducibly disseminating and assessing research. As ML becomes integral to a growing range of computationally intensive applications (e.g. clinical research), there is a critical need for transparent reporting methods to ensure both comprehensibility and the reproducibility of the supporting studies. There are a growing number of standards, checklists and guidelines enabling more standardized reporting of ML research, but the proliferation and complexity of these make them challenging to use. Particularly in assessment and peer review, which has to date, been an ad hoc process that has struggled to throw light on increasingly complicated computational supporting methods that are otherwise unintelligible to other researchers. Taking the publication process beyond these black boxes, GigaScience Press has experimented with integrating many of these ML-standards into the publication process. Having a broad-scope that necessitated looking at more generalist and automated approaches. Here, we map the current landscape of artificial intelligence (AI) standards, and outline our adoption of the DOME recommendations for Machine Learning in biology. We developed a publishing workflow that integrates the DOME Data Stewardship Wizard and DOME Registry tools into the peer-review and publication process. From this case study we provide journal authors, reviewers and Editors examples of approaches, workflows and strategies to more logically disseminate and review ML research. Demonstrating the need for continued dialogue and collaboration among various ML communities to create unified, comprehensive standards, to enhance the credibility, sustainability and impact of ML-based scientific research.

Consensus-Oriented Group Peer Review: A New Process to Review Radiologist Work Output

BackgroundA good peer review process produces well‐constructed and analysed studies for scientific world. Reviewer’s issues regarding peer review process need to be addressed to improve the quality of scientific manuscript.AimTo analyse knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) of Indian transfusion medicine (TM) experts on peer review process.MethodsThis prospective online survey‐based KAP study was conducted from 1 October 2019 to 29 February 2020. Thirty‐three multiple‐choice questions were sent to 573 TM experts through e‐mail. Monthly reminders were sent for 3 months before inactivation of survey, and responses were analysed.ResultsOut of 573, only 80 (13·96%) experts completed the survey. To become a reviewer, active participation in research community was the most common reason (45%). Double‐blind peer review was the most preferred type (76·25%) of review which was mostly reviewed within 2–5 days (49·37%). TM reviewers primarily focused on methodology (67·50%) and results (68·75%) sections, while reasons for rejection was poor study design and methodology (65%). Access to cited article in a manuscript by editorial office was expected by 76·25% reviewers. 80% reviewers were aware of peer review guidelines but only 30% regularly updated themselves. Reviewers (70%) did not attend any workshop related to peer review process. Free journal subscription (61·25%) and acknowledgement certificate (58·75%) are preferable kind of encouragement for TM reviewers.ConclusionFormal training and workshops on peer review process needs to be introduced on a national or international scale along with acknowledgements for reviewers to motivate them for refined manuscripts.

The scientific publishing process has during the past few years undergone considerable changes. The socio‐economic structures have, however, not changed much, and many academics and librarians view the current situation as highly unsatisfactory. This has triggered a number of initiatives to set up e‐print repositories and electronic peer reviewed journals, which usually offer the full text for free on the Web. Serious in‐depth research studying the way the scholarly communication system is affected by the Internet is needed. In this article a formal process model of the scientific publishing process is presented (the Scientific Publication Life‐Cycle Model). The model has been developed in particular to provide a basis for studying the cost implications of different business models. It describes the life‐cycle of the single publication, in particular the refereed journal article, from the research leading to it and writing it, to being read by other researchers years later or used as a catalyst for practical implementation. Conclusions are drawn about the usefulness of the modelling methodology for this particular purpose as well as of future uses of the model itself. In addition to providing a basis for cost studies the model could function as a road map for different types of open access initiatives.