How are reviewers selected to review a manuscript submitted for publication? - (Dec/03/2012 )
I know that sometimes, authors can choose or nominate reviewers in the field for their own manuscripts. But how does the anonymous selection process go for non-nominated reviewers? Are they on the editorial board? or these information remain confidential?
Would we ever know who reviewed a particular manuscript?
Chances that some of them might be 'competitors', i.e. people in the field?
-science noob-
science noob on Mon Dec 3 12:41:51 2012 said:
I know that sometimes, authors can choose or nominate reviewers in the field for their own manuscripts. But how does the anonymous selection process go for non-nominated reviewers? Are they on the editorial board? or these information remain confidential?
Would we ever know who reviewed a particular manuscript?
Chances that some of them might be 'competitors', i.e. people in the field?
Indeed.
And thats the problem: if you have competitors, you might end up with problems.
Thats why some journals let you state which people you do NOT want to read your paper, to prevent problems.
But even then, you can face problems;
For example, I am aware of 1 study in my lab that was kept back because another institute was also working on it and the journal (very high impact) kept the study of our lab back for a while and the other lab published theirs while they were months later ... The journal favored a lab from their own country...
And our lab then published a bit later in a low impact journal.. gone was the novelty/big impact post just because of such crap.
Now, if it takes too long, we just send it in to lower impact journals so we do have the first impact paper on a novelty.
(altough, this example is of course rare)
+ I am also aware that some "well known labs" even laugh with results that do not mix/follow with theirs.. For example a lab has found pretty new/strange results (in conflict with a known theory) then the well know labs often just call it idiotic and break it down if they receive it for review. So often the smaller labs or other labs with new insights pick (like said before) small impact journals to publish it , just to get it published..
So its not all that 100% honest.
And it seems that the lowever the journalsimpact factor (and the more its open source) the more honest it gets!
Sadly but true.
-pito-
Probably, its just good to publish in low IF journals.
If your work is good, people will eventually follow your work.
Over the years, the current high IF journals will no longer be able to retain their positions.
So, consider it as an investment you are making now, that will appreciate over time. 
-Ameya P-
Ameya P on Thu Dec 6 09:11:49 2012 said:
Probably, its just good to publish in low IF journals.
If your work is good, people will eventually follow your work.
Over the years, the current high IF journals will no longer be able to retain their positions.
So, consider it as an investment you are making now, that will appreciate over time.
Please explain this? "wont be able to retain their positions", meaning their "impact factor" will drop? Don't see that happening to the big journals like the Nature series, Science and Cell series?
Sad thing is people do look at impact factor. Dilemma is this: try to publish in a high IF and wait months more OR publish easily in open source or slightly lower IF.
pito on Mon Dec 3 13:28:16 2012 said:
science noob on Mon Dec 3 12:41:51 2012 said:
I know that sometimes, authors can choose or nominate reviewers in the field for their own manuscripts. But how does the anonymous selection process go for non-nominated reviewers? Are they on the editorial board? or these information remain confidential?
Would we ever know who reviewed a particular manuscript?
Chances that some of them might be 'competitors', i.e. people in the field?
Indeed.
And thats the problem: if you have competitors, you might end up with problems.
Thats why some journals let you state which people you do NOT want to read your paper, to prevent problems.
But even then, you can face problems;
For example, I am aware of 1 study in my lab that was kept back because another institute was also working on it and the journal (very high impact) kept the study of our lab back for a while and the other lab published theirs while they were months later ... The journal favored a lab from their own country...
And our lab then published a bit later in a low impact journal.. gone was the novelty/big impact post just because of such crap.
Now, if it takes too long, we just send it in to lower impact journals so we do have the first impact paper on a novelty.
(altough, this example is of course rare)
+ I am also aware that some "well known labs" even laugh with results that do not mix/follow with theirs.. For example a lab has found pretty new/strange results (in conflict with a known theory) then the well know labs often just call it idiotic and break it down if they receive it for review. So often the smaller labs or other labs with new insights pick (like said before) small impact journals to publish it , just to get it published..
So its not all that 100% honest.
And it seems that the lowever the journalsimpact factor (and the more its open source) the more honest it gets!
Sadly but true.
Rumour has it that publishing in science involves alot of internal politics - connections with editorial board/editor, selection of 'collaborators' as reviewers, university affiliations with publisher etc.
Where do you see the integrity of scientific publication heading to? The "well known labs" getting all the benefit of the doubt and "smaller labs" perishing?
And another question is has anyone met any tough reviewers or reviewing process? and when do you pull the plug? or do you let the editor/reviewer pull it for you?
-science noob-
Ameya P on Thu Dec 6 09:11:49 2012 said:
Probably, its just good to publish in low IF journals.
If your work is good, people will eventually follow your work.
Over the years, the current high IF journals will no longer be able to retain their positions.
So, consider it as an investment you are making now, that will appreciate over time.
Indeed, the big change is that we are going towards open source journals.
The high impact journals are very expensive and many (new generations) researchers are not paying for it anymore.
Or they are protesting against the way how those "journals" (organisations, the ones that print it etc) deal with the universities etc
(for example: you need to buy a lot of crappy journals in order to get a acceptable price for the better ones)
On the other hand: older generations (or some new researchers) still focus too much on the impact factor..
To become a professor for example, they often look at the journals you published in.. Even if your work is good, without a (good) paper in a high ranked journal you have a small change to become a professor.
Same with having many papers, but not enough papers as a first or last author.
(even this is often idotic)
science noob on Thu Dec 6 10:59:08 2012 said:
Ameya P on Thu Dec 6 09:11:49 2012 said:
Probably, its just good to publish in low IF journals.
If your work is good, people will eventually follow your work.
Over the years, the current high IF journals will no longer be able to retain their positions.
So, consider it as an investment you are making now, that will appreciate over time.
Please explain this? "wont be able to retain their positions", meaning their "impact factor" will drop? Don't see that happening to the big journals like the Nature series, Science and Cell series?
Sad thing is people do look at impact factor. Dilemma is this: try to publish in a high IF and wait months more OR publish easily in open source or slightly lower IF.
As said before: many start to protest against how they sell their journals. Also the price to publish in those journals is very high, people are more and more protesting against this and picking open source journals.
When more and more professors/researchers start to deny moderating papers for those "high impact" journals they will face problems.
Also many of them will refuse to publish in them and more and more (now) low impact, free journals will become popular and their impact factor will rise.
Another problem is that, for example, nature is very diverse in what they publish. So whats the point to publish something specific about a certain cancer for example in a journal that also contains papers about computers/evolutions/physics and not publish it in a journal more specific about cancers.
It will change, but very slow.
A lot depends on the future generations...
pito on Mon Dec 3 13:28:16 2012 said:
science noob on Mon Dec 3 12:41:51 2012 said:
I know that sometimes, authors can choose or nominate reviewers in the field for their own manuscripts. But how does the anonymous selection process go for non-nominated reviewers? Are they on the editorial board? or these information remain confidential?
Would we ever know who reviewed a particular manuscript?
Chances that some of them might be 'competitors', i.e. people in the field?
Indeed.
And thats the problem: if you have competitors, you might end up with problems.
Thats why some journals let you state which people you do NOT want to read your paper, to prevent problems.
But even then, you can face problems;
For example, I am aware of 1 study in my lab that was kept back because another institute was also working on it and the journal (very high impact) kept the study of our lab back for a while and the other lab published theirs while they were months later ... The journal favored a lab from their own country...
And our lab then published a bit later in a low impact journal.. gone was the novelty/big impact post just because of such crap.
Now, if it takes too long, we just send it in to lower impact journals so we do have the first impact paper on a novelty.
(altough, this example is of course rare)
+ I am also aware that some "well known labs" even laugh with results that do not mix/follow with theirs.. For example a lab has found pretty new/strange results (in conflict with a known theory) then the well know labs often just call it idiotic and break it down if they receive it for review. So often the smaller labs or other labs with new insights pick (like said before) small impact journals to publish it , just to get it published..
So its not all that 100% honest.
And it seems that the lowever the journalsimpact factor (and the more its open source) the more honest it gets!
Sadly but true.
Rumour has it that publishing in science involves alot of internal politics - connections with editorial board/editor, selection of 'collaborators' as reviewers, university affiliations with publisher etc.
Where do you see the integrity of scientific publication heading to? The "well known labs" getting all the benefit of the doubt and "smaller labs" perishing?
And another question is has anyone met any tough reviewers or reviewing process? and when do you pull the plug? or do you let the editor/reviewer pull it for you?
Its indeed possible that there a is a lot internal politics involved. Its said to be pro usa in general.
And indeed: you can have a very irritating person as a reviewer or for example someone from another lab.. that will break down your research because he does not want your lab to publish something better then his lab or something like that.
But when to pull the plug? Hard to tell.. depends on the situation..
-pito-
science noob on Thu Dec 6 10:59:08 2012 said:
Ameya P on Thu Dec 6 09:11:49 2012 said:
Over the years, the current high IF journals will no longer be able to retain their positions.
So, consider it as an investment you are making now, that will appreciate over time.
Please explain this? "wont be able to retain their positions", meaning their "impact factor" will drop? Don't see that happening to the big journals like the Nature series, Science and Cell series?
Sad thing is people do look at impact factor. Dilemma is this: try to publish in a high IF and wait months more OR publish easily in open source or slightly lower IF.
Pito, pretty much explained it and like he said it, it is a slow process. We can make it quicker by staging a sort of boycott of the bigger journals but its probably risking too much for young researchers who are trying to make a mark in the scientific world.
Having limited reviewers can often lead to a bias. Scientific content too should be available like videos on YouTube and let people (primarily scientists, later the common man too could pitch in, its his money that researchers spend) decide which makes more sense to them. They can like/ dislike it and that should be the way of judging the impact of the study (not the citations a paper receives in a given year).
-Ameya P-
Ameya P on Fri Dec 7 07:10:58 2012 said:
science noob on Thu Dec 6 10:59:08 2012 said:
Ameya P on Thu Dec 6 09:11:49 2012 said:
Over the years, the current high IF journals will no longer be able to retain their positions.
So, consider it as an investment you are making now, that will appreciate over time.
Please explain this? "wont be able to retain their positions", meaning their "impact factor" will drop? Don't see that happening to the big journals like the Nature series, Science and Cell series?
Sad thing is people do look at impact factor. Dilemma is this: try to publish in a high IF and wait months more OR publish easily in open source or slightly lower IF.
Pito, pretty much explained it and like he said it, it is a slow process. We can make it quicker by staging a sort of boycott of the bigger journals but its probably risking too much for young researchers who are trying to make a mark in the scientific world.
Having limited reviewers can often lead to a bias. Scientific content too should be available like videos on YouTube and let people (primarily scientists, later the common man too could pitch in, its his money that researchers spend) decide which makes more sense to them. They can like/ dislike it and that should be the way of judging the impact of the study (not the citations a paper receives in a given year).
I do disagree with you!
But not entirely.
I am big fan of open source journals and "open source" reviewing. However I realise this is a very idealistic idea. And it also has some disadvantages because rival labs could break it down publicaly just to give the rival lab a bad reputation.
In an ideal situation the reviewers would be people that have no interest at all in the paper they read (and I do not mean they are not "interested", but I mean that they are not rivals or have no advantage/disadvantage by reviewing the paper).
However: about the "let the people" judge it.. its too wide.. Ok, you said primarily scientists and then the common man later, but how are you going to do this?
Not a lot of scienists will be prepared to judge papers and use their real name (publicly available paper/comments) .. And how are you going to select on who can read/judge the paper at first?
Because, if you open everything for the common man..you will see idiots (for example extreme religious people) entering the debate and causing problems..
And how do you select the scientists in the first place?
Having a limited number of reviewers is bad, but having too many is bad too..
We should have 100% objective reviewers! People that do not make money with research.. So in an ideal world (or at least in my ideal world) we would have reviewers that review 100% . They do not do any research, gather funds, do not work for a lab, they do not need to publish.... their sole job is reading papers in their field and reviewing them and thats it. And from different countries/nationalities because even this might influence reviewers.
They could be people with a MSc degree or PhD that became reviewers right after their thesis or after they did some work in the industry.
So I would not like people that have done a few post docs (or professors) at 1 lab (and even a PhD is allready possibly a problem because they allready have an idea (love-hate relationship) with their/other labs.
One thing people often tell me is that the papers should be send anonymously to reviewers, but even if this is done: its a small world and they will know which lab wrote the paper in the end..
-pito-
Just out of curiousity, has anyone published in a Nature-like journal? Was wondering how rigourous or extensive the publication process is like (from submission, review, revision and acceptance).
Do you get 'invited' to publish in something like Nature or you assume high novelty in your work and give high IF journal a shot?
Also, in reply to Ameya: published scientific content is already very readily available to the general public isn't it? e.g. open source journals, scientific blogs, video-based journals (JOVE). But I can't see how anyone would put say, an unpublished novel work in open space - or at least patent it before you place it online?
-science noob-
science noob on Sat Dec 8 01:35:15 2012 said:
Just out of curiousity, has anyone published in a Nature-like journal? Was wondering how rigourous or extensive the publication process is like (from submission, review, revision and acceptance).
Do you get 'invited' to publish in something like Nature or you assume high novelty in your work and give high IF journal a shot?
Also, in reply to Ameya: published scientific content is already very readily available to the general public isn't it? e.g. open source journals, scientific blogs, video-based journals (JOVE). But I can't see how anyone would put say, an unpublished novel work in open space - or at least patent it before you place it online?
It is pretty rigourous... But a big part of the selection allready starts at the beginning: because its so rigourous a lot of people just dont bother to send in their paper anyway. People only send in papers if they know its something special (or have a lot of money).
(not all papers in nature are so spectacular or good)
It costs a lot to publish in nature, so not all labs can afford this.
And you dont really get invited.
about your second question: more and more work is indeed free avaible, but its still not enough! In the future it will become more and more the norm.
(a new idea is the payment you can make to journals to make your paper freely avaible (but this costs a lot, not all labs want to pay for this while the same time they do want to publish in nature for example).
And yes, people will patent it first or just not publish it at all.. (not all things are patented and thus published.. some rather decide to keep the idea (dont share it), use it and not patent it).
And about the open space: researchers should do this more often and especially the wrong things! The problem is that people only publish or bring out things that went ok or are good.
People should also publish those things that didnt work so others can save themself the time to try it out themselfs and fail again!
Especially in tests involled animals this is crucial, you dont want to "waste" the lives of animals for tests allready done and failed.. Sadly just a minority does this.
I find it weird there is no journal created specially for "failed research" !
-pito-
pito on Sat Dec 8 19:46:36 2012 said:
science noob on Sat Dec 8 01:35:15 2012 said:
Just out of curiousity, has anyone published in a Nature-like journal? Was wondering how rigourous or extensive the publication process is like (from submission, review, revision and acceptance).
Do you get 'invited' to publish in something like Nature or you assume high novelty in your work and give high IF journal a shot?
Also, in reply to Ameya: published scientific content is already very readily available to the general public isn't it? e.g. open source journals, scientific blogs, video-based journals (JOVE). But I can't see how anyone would put say, an unpublished novel work in open space - or at least patent it before you place it online?
It is pretty rigourous... But a big part of the selection allready starts at the beginning: because its so rigourous a lot of people just dont bother to send in their paper anyway. People only send in papers if they know its something special (or have a lot of money).
(not all papers in nature are so spectacular or good)
It costs a lot to publish in nature, so not all labs can afford this.
And you dont really get invited.
about your second question: more and more work is indeed free avaible, but its still not enough! In the future it will become more and more the norm.
(a new idea is the payment you can make to journals to make your paper freely avaible (but this costs a lot, not all labs want to pay for this while the same time they do want to publish in nature for example).
And yes, people will patent it first or just not publish it at all.. (not all things are patented and thus published.. some rather decide to keep the idea (dont share it), use it and not patent it).
And about the open space: researchers should do this more often and especially the wrong things! The problem is that people only publish or bring out things that went ok or are good.
People should also publish those things that didnt work so others can save themself the time to try it out themselfs and fail again!
Especially in tests involled animals this is crucial, you dont want to "waste" the lives of animals for tests allready done and failed.. Sadly just a minority does this.
I find it weird there is no journal created specially for "failed research" !
Well, there are journals just for negative/'failed' results: e.g. Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine link: http://www.jnrbm.com/
-science noob-