Perhaps for the first time, I have to say I agree with Ken.
As an experienced editor - of special issues and books - my view on
reviewing is that I will only send a paper for review as quality control.
As Ken says, the merits of a paper should be decided by an editor before it
is reviewed.
Importantly, I think all publications should have a clear editorial policy.
I have had papers rejected because the reviews said they were not
quantitative, others because other reviewers said they lacked theory - all
in the same journal that once accepted a completely theoretical paper! It
is unfair for authors to wait for papers to be reviewed and reviewers to be
the meat-puppets of the editors.
For me as an editor - it is peer review and not peer acceptance. I as
editor decide whether I accept a paper - no one else. I have editorial
board members who scope papers to see that they are not fake or obviously
unsuitable, which is something other editors need to do rather than pass
the buck to reviewers.
The major problem is that there is a need in academia to have high
rejection rates, and so editors are happy to have a paper reviewed knowing
it will be rejected. If there is enough space in a publication and papers
are interesting to the readership, then why reject publications for the
sake of doing so?
To put it bluntly - I am in the publishing industry and not the reviewing
industry!
Jonathan Bishop
BSc(Hons), MSc, MScEcon, LLM
FRSS, FRAI, FRSA, FCLIP, FBCS CITP
Author of over 75 research publications.
Editor of Examining the Concepts, Issues and Implications of Internet
Trolling, Transforming Politics and Policy in the Digital Age, and
Gamification for Human Factors Integration: Social, Educational and
Psychological Issues
Envoyé par mon ordinateur
On 5 June 2015 at 21:05, Ken Friedman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Dear Fil,
>
> A couple quick thoughts on publishing and the tenure system. (This thread
> is no longer related to hoaxes in science, so I have amended the header to
> reflect this.)
>
> Don pointed to some of the problems of the publishing system. There are
> better ways to make journals work, but these require editors to examine
> articles carefully prior to peer review. A significant number of flawed
> articles get through both because reviewers are over-worked and because
> editors send material to review that should not be sent on. If editors
> ensured that articles conformed to journal standards prior to review, this
> would reduce pressure on reviewers. Editors might also pay attention to
> serious reviews — it has been my experience that a serious, developmental
> review takes about six hours, and I have seen on several occasions that
> editors simply accept articles despite significant flaws. This is a
> separate problem to authors who don’t care about the issues in a review,
> but simply pass articles along to the next journal without improvements —
> or modify the title and do nothing else.
>
> Part of this has to do with publication metrics. It involves the wish (or
> need) for authors to publish something, perhaps anything, in an effort to
> represent that they are doing research. This is quite different to the
> desire to make a contribution to the knowledge of the field.
>
> This also involves the appetite of journals for content. Once a journal
> exists, it must fill pages. There is some flexibility, but there is
> generally a minimum page count. While I can say that I have seen some silly
> work creep into print, I acknowledge that there are legitimate differences
> of opinion on what is worth publishing in the way of scholarship and
> research. Even so, the standards in the design field often fall below the
> standards in other fields.
>
> This is exacerbated by accepting bad conference papers. One of the key
> reasons for so many bad conference papers is that conferences must often
> have a specific number of presenters to break even. As a result, conference
> organisers often accept bad papers — including papers that all reviewers
> have stated lie outside the range of acceptable research.
>
> An increasing number of conference organisers use a trick based on a
> supposedly rigorous point system. Reviewers are asked to assign points for
> different criteria on a scale of 1 to 100 or some similar system. When the
> conference plan begins, organisers state that they will only accept papers
> above 70 of 100 points. Then, when all the reviewing is done, they
> calculate how the number of accepted papers will affect the budget. On
> several occasions, I have seen organisers drop the number of required
> points dramatically to reach the financial break-even point. If it takes
> dropping the score on accepted papers to 35 of 100 points to break even,
> that is the decision.
>
> This has nothing to do with predatory publishing or fake conferences —
> these problems and tricks appear in journals and conferences that are, for
> the most part, legitimate.
>
> Other issues also come into play. Journal publishing firms must build up
> their package of journals to make an offering in the library market. And
> there are still more reasons for publishing journals with sometimes
> troubling content. I know one journal publishing firm that added a few
> questionable journals to its offering simply to create a bigger package of
> journals as part of the preparation for a corporate sale. More journals
> meant a higher sale price.
>
> There are ways around this. They require serious thought and occasional
> tough choices. The question is what we want for the field.
>
> And this involves a wide range of additional questions in a field where
> people do not always wish to address the kinds of question on research and
> philosophy of science that older fields wrestled with and acted on long ago.
>
> Or so I believe.
>
> Ken
>
> Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The
> Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Elsevier in
> Cooperation with Tongji University Press | Launching in 2015
>
> Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and
> Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| University
> Distinguished Professor | Centre for Design Innovation | Swinburne
> University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia
>
> —
>
> Fil Salustri wrote:
>
> —snip—
>
> I, for one, would love to participate in a group that brings forward
> rational, well-thought-out proposals for change to the whole publication
> system.
>
> —snip—
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
> Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
> Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
