Dear Tassos,
Thankyou for sharing your own experiences as an Editor with Proteins,
and with PNAS, which I really appreciate, and in particular for your
suggestion of an anonymous Editor approach.This is interesting to me
not least as one of the three Appeals I rejected, to which I referred
below, led to what can only be described as 'hate email'. Indeed I
will carry forward your suggestion to the IUCr Journals Commission via
the Managing Editor (Peter Strickland), who I copy into this reply.
[On a point of terminology within IUCr Journals we refer to the
Editors and Co-Editors, who are scientific editors, and overall there
is a Managing Editor based at IUCr HQ, which is Peter.]
Yours sincerely,
John
cc
On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 12:16 PM, Anastassis Perrakis <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Dear John,
> I did not have the IUCr journals specifically in mind while making these
> remarks.
> Quite the contrary, I think due to you and other colleagues and friends,
> they are
> run competently and to the benefit of the community and of science at large.
> If I may though offer an opinion about the peer review system in IUCr
> journals,
> I personally find the concept that the authors know the identity of the
> managing
> editor, wrong. I am sure that in the majority of cases its not a problem,
> but often a managing editor can hesitate to communicate a negative referee
> report
> to e.g. an old colleague or good friend, whose manuscript she/he is
> handling,
> even when one of the referees is negative.
> I much prefer the system of e.g. Proteins (where I act as a managing
> editor),
> where authors never learn the identity of the managing editor far more
> comfortable
> (there is a few people that I would rather prefer if they don't know for
> sure that I rejected their paper),
> and the current system of PNAS were you learn the identity of the
> editor only if your paper is accepted and after is published, far superior
> (you make friends but not enemies ...)
> I would not mind to had seen IUCr journals adopting a similar system, I
> think it would improve even further
> their good reputation.
> A.
>
> On Nov 19, 2010, at 12:32, John R Helliwell wrote:
>
> I don't wish to vear away from Victor's thrust with starting this
> thread and I would happily sign the petition you suggest.
>
> But I feel I should respond to the assertions about 'problems of peer
> review' at least with respect to Journals of my experience.
> Some 'Editor handling of submissions' statistics should help quantify
> such matters. These are a matter of public record re my IUCr Journals
> submission handling statistics ie therefore not confidential and which
> basically are:-
> approx 1000 article submissions;
> my rejection rate 20%;
> appeals against my rejections 0.5%;
> As Editor in Chief of Acta Cryst between 1996 to 2005 I received three
> appeals (out of approx tens of thousands of submissions through all
> Coeditors); I rejected these three. [My judgements were confidential
> re the details.]
>
> I can add that for the 2000 referees' reports or so for my article
> handling of submissions, that colleagues have kindly supplied to my
> Editor requests, problems involve:-
> about 1% where the report is 'publish as is' AND without any
> commendation given; these are in effect not terribly useful reports to
> me as an Editor. Another problem, which is growing, is the number of
> declines to my invites to referee (around 10%). Even worse are the no
> replies at all from invited referees as time is lost to the authors
> who rightly expect as prompt as possible handling.
>
> Re your points I offer replies as follows:-
> "Let me outline what I think are problems of peer review:
>
> 1. 'review by last author name'. Very often the last author is well
> known, or a friend, and the reviewers' critical judgement takes a
> temporary leave of abesnse.
> JRH reply:- Such reports would be easy to spot and are not a problem
> in my experience and so resort to double blind review is not necessary
> in my experience.
>
> 2. 'preferred reviewers'. a double edged sword .. think about it.
> JRH reply; these are not so commonly offered suggestions by authors in
> fact and where they are one can follow or decide against (see point
> 1).
>
>
> 3. too much power of decision on editors (professional or academic)
> being able to reject papers without peer-review in many journals.
> JRH reply;This approach, 'insufficent general interest' is for the
> magazines we know and yet still love.
>
> 4. Bad refereeing - sometimes I wonder if people read the paper.
> JRH reply;Such reports are very few and obvious. The other categories
> above are more common (ie 'publish as is' category).
>
> 5. Lack of referee expertise: you get papers these days with: a
> structure, some biochemistry, some SAXS, some biophysics, and a cell
> based assay. Two or three people being
> able to pick up all the mistakes is very unlikely.
> JRH reply; Papers can be challenging re content and your example here
> is a good one. Other chalenging cases are where they include a lot of
> maths. That said peer review does its best but can occasionally fail;
> this level of failure can be measured by the number of criticism
> articles or formal retractions. These are also very few, but it is
> true, not zero.
>
> Yours sincerely,
> John
>
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 10:47 AM, Anastassis Perrakis <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
> On Nov 18, 2010, at 11:18, James Stroud wrote:
>
> The future of publishing will be
>
> (1) Publish your own work
>
> (2) Peer review by the entire community
>
> Although I have been remarkably bad at predicting the future, I still like
>
> attempting to do so ...!
>
> This will not happen ...! ;-)
>
> To be honest, I am not even sure its a great idea ...
>
> Let me outline what I think are problems of peer review:
>
> 1. 'review by last author name'. Very often the last author is well
>
> known, or a friend, and the reviewers' critical judgement takes a temporary
>
> leave of abesnse.
>
> 2. 'preferred reviewers'. a double edged sword .. think about it.
>
> 3. too much power of decision on editors (professional or academic) being
>
> able to reject papers without peer-review in many journals.
>
> 4. Bad refereeing - sometimes I wonder if people read the paper.
>
> 5. Lack of referee expertise: you get papers these days with: a structure,
>
> some biochemistry, some SAXS, some biophysics, and a cell based assay. Two
>
> or three people being
>
> able to pick up all the mistakes is very unlikely.
>
> Having outlines these, I can see ways that all can be amplified if you just
>
> publish all your work, and anybody can comment on it:
>
> Pairing to the above problems, you just amplify them:
>
> 1. Even more tempting to earn brownie points online!
>
> 2. you can ask your friends or I can ask your enemies to review
>
> 3. the other way around: far too many things out... how to filter ?
>
> 4. Lack of 'obligation', or even fear to make yourself look like a fool to
>
> the editors, will make commenting even more sloppy
>
> 5. People that think they are experts dwell on meaningless technicalities.
>
> Peer review is like democracy, its the worst publication system we can have,
>
> except the ones that have been tried or suggested ...
>
> A.
>
> (3) Citation = Link
>
> #3 makes it work.
>
> Give it 25 years. The journals won't be in the position to lobby lawmakers
>
> to prevent this trend if we make sure the journals die so slowly that they
>
> don't realize it.
>
> James
>
>
> On Nov 18, 2010, at 1:14 AM, John R Helliwell wrote:
>
> Dear Jacob,
>
> Your posting reminds me of a Research Information Network Conference I
>
> went to in 2006 in London.
>
> Your views coincide with a presenter there, Peter Mika.
>
> His talk can be found at:-
>
> http://www.rin.ac.uk/news/events/data-webs-new-visions-research-data-web
>
> In his talk he referred to:- openacademia.org
>
> Peter Mika and I were on the Closing Panel; he advocated that
>
> refereeing is an imposition on a researcher's
>
> individual freedom and thus he/she should 'publish' their work on
>
> their own website. By contrast, I argued in favour of
>
> Journals and peer review, both with respect to my articles and my
>
> experiences as an Editor of more than one Journal.
>
> I would be happy to continue corresponding on this not least as
>
> publication should be a varied spectrum of options.
>
> Also I feel obliged to say that one cannot apply simply, by rote,
>
> 'Learned Society publisher is good', 'commercial publisher is bad';
>
> there are exceptions in both camps. [in effect this was the tone of my
>
> last posting.]
>
> Greetings,
>
> John
>
> On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 8:13 PM, Jacob Keller
>
> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> I guess the practice of being "on your best behavior" is good in terms
>
> of getting the research trimmed into shape, but there is a huge
>
> temptation to fudge things to get published, and to hide unpleasant
>
> artifacts, as can be seen by the many recent (and not so recent)
>
> scandals. Maybe as a lab website things would be more open. Also,
>
> having a comments section always seemed like an excellent idea to me,
>
> even for journals as they are, but would be really easy to implement
>
> in a website. I would love to read comments from others in the field
>
> about the papers I read, as sometimes people can help to point out
>
> gaping holes where one might not see them otherwise. It would be like
>
> "journal club" for the whole scientific community.
>
> Jacob
>
> On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 2:08 PM, Jrh <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Dear Jacob
>
> Re journals out of the window:-
>
> Well, like democracy, journals may not be ideal but I believe other
>
> alternatives such as free for all personal website publishing, are worse.
>
> So, journals that are community driven offer an optimal approach, critically
>
> based on specialist peer review. That is why our community effort IUCr
>
> Journals I believe are so important. Open access, where we can sustain it
>
> financially, also can convey access to the widest readership ie that the
>
> high impact magazines currently, mainly, command.
>
> All best wishes,
>
> John
>
> Prof John R Helliwell DSc
>
>
> On 17 Nov 2010, at 18:28, Jacob Keller <[log in to unmask]>
>
> wrote:
>
> Supplementary info seems to me to be a double-edged sword--I just read
>
> a Nature article that had 45 pages of supplementary info. This means
>
> that you get a lot more for your money, but all of the methods and
>
> Why not have papers be as long as the authors want, now that almost
>
> everything is internet-based? It would make the papers much more
>
> organized overall, and would obviate the reference issue mentioned in
>
> this thread. To avoid them being too too long, reviewers could object
>
> to long-windedness etc. But, it would definitely make for a more
>
> complete "lab notebook of the scientific community," assuming that
>
> that is what we are after.
>
> Incidentally, I have been curious in the past why journals are not
>
> going out the window themselves--why not have individual labs just
>
> post their most recent data and interpretations on their own websites,
>
> with a comments section perhaps? (I know there are about a thousand
>
> cynical reasons why not...) One could even have a place for
>
> "reliability rating" or "impact rating" on each new chunk of data.
>
> Anyway, it would be much more like a real-time, public lab notebook,
>
> and would make interaction much faster, and cut out the publishing
>
> middlemen.
>
> JPK
>
> On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 11:48 AM, Phoebe Rice <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Another unfortunate aspect of this sort of editorial policy is that many of
>
> these papers contain almost no technical information at all, except for the
>
> supplement. I've started to avoid using Nature papers for class discussions
>
> becuase they leave the students so puzzled, and with a
>
> glossiness-is-all-that-matters idea of science.
>
>
> =====================================
>
> Phoebe A. Rice
>
> Dept. of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
>
> The University of Chicago
>
> phone 773 834 1723
>
> http://bmb.bsd.uchicago.edu/Faculty_and_Research/01_Faculty/01_Faculty_Alphabetically.php?faculty_id=123
>
> http://www.rsc.org/shop/books/2008/9780854042722.asp
>
>
> ---- Original message ----
>
> Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2010 17:12:26 +0000
>
> From: CCP4 bulletin board <[log in to unmask]> (on behalf of John R
>
> Helliwell <[log in to unmask]>)
>
> Subject: Re: [ccp4bb] Citations in supplementary material
>
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> Dear Victor,
>
> I strongly support the stance that is in the Acta D Editorial.
>
> Manfred Weiss worked very hard assembling those details and over quite
>
> some time; he deserves our thanks.
>
> Greetings,
>
> John
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 4:06 PM, Victor Lamzin <[log in to unmask]>
>
> wrote:
>
> Dear All,
>
> I would like to bring to your attention the recent Editorial in Acta Cryst D
>
> (http://journals.iucr.org/d/issues/2010/12/00/issconts.html), which
>
> highlights the long-standing issue of under-citation of papers published in
>
> the IUCr journals. The Editorial, having looked at the papers published in
>
> 2009 in Nature, Science, Cell and PNAS, concluded:
>
> 'almost half of all references to publications in IUCr journals end up being
>
> published in the supplementary material only... Not only does this mean that
>
> the impact factor of IUCr journals should be higher, but also that the real
>
> overall numbers of citations of methods papers are much higher than what is
>
> reported, for instance, by the Web of Science'
>
> Although this topic may seem to concern mostly methods developers, I think
>
> the whole research community will only benefit from more fair credit that we
>
> all give to our colleagues via referencing their publications. What do you
>
> think?
>
> Victor
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Professor John R Helliwell DSc
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Professor John R Helliwell DSc
>
> P please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to
>
> Anastassis (Tassos) Perrakis, Principal Investigator / Staff Member
>
> Department of Biochemistry (B8)
>
> Netherlands Cancer Institute,
>
> Dept. B8, 1066 CX Amsterdam, The Netherlands
>
> Tel: +31 20 512 1951 Fax: +31 20 512 1954 Mobile / SMS: +31 6 28 597791
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Professor John R Helliwell DSc
>
> P please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to
> Anastassis (Tassos) Perrakis, Principal Investigator / Staff Member
> Department of Biochemistry (B8)
> Netherlands Cancer Institute,
> Dept. B8, 1066 CX Amsterdam, The Netherlands
> Tel: +31 20 512 1951 Fax: +31 20 512 1954 Mobile / SMS: +31 6 28 597791
>
>
>
>
--
Professor John R Helliwell DSc
|