Can Authors Editor’s Help Expedite Peer Review of the Manuscripts They Edit?

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Can Authors Editor’s Help Expedite Peer Review of the Manuscripts They Edit? Presented by: Donald Samulack, PhD President, U.S. Operations Cactus Communications / Editage

description

In October 2013, Donald Samulack, President, U.S. operations at Editage, attended the SciELO 15 Years Conference held to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the SciELO Network. The primary focus of the conference was on open access publishing and the challenges currently faced by journals. The panel of speakers at the conference included Donald Samulack. Donald presented an interesting session titled Can an Author’s Editor Help Expedite Peer Review of the Manuscript They Edit? as part of the panel on “Experiences, Solutions, Products, and Services of Scientific Communication.” Editage was one of the sponsors of the event, which was held from October 22-25 at the Intercontinental Hotel in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The conference attracted a daily visitors as 400 academicians, including editors, publishers, researchers, and authors.

Transcript of Can Authors Editor’s Help Expedite Peer Review of the Manuscripts They Edit?

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Can Authors Editor’s Help Expedite Peer Review of the Manuscripts They Edit?

Presented by:

Donald Samulack, PhDPresident, U.S. Operations

Cactus Communications / Editage

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The World Is so Flat …It’s Starting to Curl!

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Survival of the Fittest

• Territory size shows the proportion of all scientific papers published in 2001 written by authors living there.• The number of scientific papers published by researchers in the United States was more than three times as

many as were published by the second highest-publishing population, Japan.

Source: http://sasi.group.shef.ac.uk/worldmapper/display.php?selected=205 (April 15, 2013)

Science Research

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Survival of the FittestScience Growth

• This map shows the growth in scientific research of territories between 1990 and 2001. If there was no increase in scientific publications that territory has no area on the map.

• In 1990, 80 scientific papers were published per million people living in the world, this increased to 106 per million by 2001. This increase was experienced primarily in territories with strong existing scientific research. However, the United States, with the highest total publications in 2001, experienced a smaller increase since 1990 than that in Japan, China, Germany and the Republic of Korea. Singapore had the greatest per person increase in scientific publications.

Source: http://sasi.group.shef.ac.uk/worldmapper/display.php?selected=206 (April 15, 2013)

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There Is a Tsunami ComingCurrent and projected publication trends

Source: Royal Society of London, Knowledge, Networks, and Nations, 2011

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There is a Tsunami Coming

Source: http://sciencewatch.com/grr/building-bricks (April 15, 2013)

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“Unfortunately, neither the researcher’s fascination with their work, nor their desire for a clear-cut recipe for success inpublishing is of much help in actually getting published.”

—Benson and Silver, 2013 (What Editors Want)

The Research Dilemma

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Anything you do that makes the job of the Journal Editor or the Peer Reviewer easier, makes the manuscript more

attractive!

Success = Pleasing the Gatekeepers

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• By-line bias• Institutional bias• Geographic bias• Language bias• Research integrity and ethics bias• Methodology bias

• By the time the journal editor and/or the reviewer has read the title and the abstract, bias has set in!

• Bias is unfortunately a by-product of scientific scrutiny.

Journal Editor and Reviewer Bias

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Q: How do East-Asian submissions compare with those from other non-English speaking countries?

– In terms of compliance with ethical guidelines –

Bias Surrounding Research Integrity

1.9%

44.4%

35.2%

18.5% East Asian submissions better

East Asian submissions worse

Submissions from all non-English-speaking countries similar

I don't know

A survey of 54 journal editors of English-language US and European journals

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Quirks of the English Language

You don’t have to be really smart to read this. In the English language it doesn't matter in what order the letters are in a word. The only important thing is that the first and last letters are positioned in the right place. The rest of the letters can be jumbled and you can still read it without problem. This is because the human brain does not read every letter by itself, but looks for sentence and language patterns.

You dno’t have to be raelly smrat to raed tihs. In the Elgnsih lugnagae it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers are in a wrod. The olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteers are pneiostiod in the rghit pclae. The rset of the lrtetes can be jmulebd and you can sitll raed it wiuthot porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn barin deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but lokos for sncetnene and luganage petatnrs.

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Common Reviewer’s Criticisms

Importance of the Topic• Rehash of established facts• Insignificant research question• Irrelevant or unimportant topic• Low reader interest• Little clinical relevance• Not generalizable

Study Design• Poor experimental design• Vague/inadequate method description• Methods lack sufficient rigor• Failure to account for confounders• No control or improper control• No hypothesis• Biased protocol• Small sample size• Inappropriate statistical methods,

or statistics not applied properly

Adapted from: Byrne DW. Publishing your medical research paper. What they don’t teach in medicalschool. Baltimore: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; 1998.

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Common Reviewer’s Criticisms

Overall Presentation ofStudy and Findings• Poor organization• Too long and verbose• Failure to communicate clearly• Poor grammar, syntax, or spelling• Excessively self-promotional• Poorly written abstract

Interpretation of the Findings• Erroneous or unsupported conclusions• Conclusions disproportionate to results• Study design does not support inferences

made• Inadequate link of findings to practice• Uncritical acceptance of statistical results• Failure to consider alternative

explanations• Unexplained inconsistencies• Inflation of the importance of the findings• Interpretation not concordant with the

data• Inadequate discussion

Adapted from: Byrne DW. Publishing your medical research paper. What they don’t teach in medicalschool. Baltimore: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; 1998.

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• The pending impact of the publication tsunami, administrative challenges of manuscript triage, growing burden of peer review, and inefficiencies in journal production processes necessitate studies on how to make the process more efficient.

• While we can’t “fix” the tsunami – and we are probably only experiencing the first swell – we can look up-stream to build efficiencies in pre-submission and pre-peer review processes.

Looking for Solutions

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• What is the role of professional editing services (author’s editors) in helping non-native English-speaking (NNES) authors get their work published?

• Is there a place for manuscript screening services?

• Is there a rationale for commercialization of peer review?

• Where should efforts be placed?

Looking for Solutions

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• First, we looked for weaknesses in how journals structure their “Instructions for Authors” in an attempt to identify how journals should communicate these instructions more effectively.— Best Poster at the Council for Science Editors meeting in Montreal, Canada in

May, 2013 (a copy of the poster can be found at our booth)

• More recently, we asked whether there were any specific errors peer reviewers most frequently point out in manuscripts of non-native English-speaking (NNES) authors that an author’s editor could/should fix before manuscript submission; the premise being that if these could be fixed before submission, then the burden on the peer reviewer would be lessened, and the process expedited.

Research by Editage

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Study Design

Study design and execution by Shazia Khanam and Clarinda Cerejo at Editage; accepted for publication in Learned Publishing (ALPSP).Awarded “Best Poster” at the ISMTE/EASE conference in Brussels, Belgium in September, 2013.

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Study Results (Slide 1 of 3)

Study design and execution by Shazia Khanam and Clarinda Cerejo at Editage; accepted for publication in Learned Publishing (ALPSP).Awarded “Best Poster” at the ISMTE/EASE conference in Brussels, Belgium in September, 2013.

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Study Results (Slide 2 of 3)

Study design and execution by Shazia Khanam and Clarinda Cerejo at Editage; accepted for publication in Learned Publishing (ALPSP).Awarded “Best Poster” at the ISMTE/EASE conference in Brussels, Belgium in September, 2013.

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Study Results (Slide 3 of 3)

Study design and execution by Shazia Khanam and Clarinda Cerejo at Editage; accepted for publication in Learned Publishing (ALPSP).Awarded “Best Poster” at the ISMTE/EASE conference in Brussels, Belgium in September, 2013.

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• An author’s editor, in addition to checking the grammar, writing quality, and style of manuscripts they edit, should point out instances of incomplete and unclear reporting, especially in the Methods and Results sections. This is crucial for the study to be able to be replicated by other research groups.

• Special attention should also be paid to ensure that figures and tables are consistent with (but not redundant to) the information presented in the text.

Study Conclusions (1 of 2)

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• Further, an author’s editor should provide the author tips to improve the overall structural organization of the Results and Discussions sections.

• A qualified author’s editor helping an author address these aspects before submission will allow the peer reviewer to focus on the validity of the science and novelty of the study.

• Thus, an author’s editor can indirectly help expedite the peer review process.

Study Conclusions (2 of 2)