science的编辑抢稿 - 未名空间MITBBS历史存档

b*y2012-07-23 07:07

9 楼

My guess + knowledge:
in CNS, most papers will be rejected within the first few days. Those
decisions are solely based on the sense of the editors who are handling the
papers. The remaining ones will be discussed on weekly editorial meetings.
Some will again be rejected directly and some will be sent out for review.
The real controversial ones will be sent to experts on editorial boards for
opinions.
Similar processes happen to decisions of acceptance or not as well.

【在 s******9 的大作中提到】

: 具体解释一下 make the call for desk rejection, discussion during editorial
: meeting, or out for review？

s*92012-07-23 07:07

10 楼

The peer review process at Science
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmselect/cmsc
1.Peer-reviewed scientific publications represent the primary useful archive
of scientific progress. Scientific publications have served other main
functions as well: They are a primary means of evaluating scientists and
institutions, and they have become a main pathway for informing the general
public about science, through coverage in the media and press releases (new
results are news). Peer-reviewed publications are also now relied upon in
official and legal affairs: In the U.S., the Supreme Court codified the use
of peer-reviewed publications in the courtroom, and several acts of Congress
have codified their use in government regulations. Many advisory groups
rely on, and/or are mandated to use, the peer-reviewed literature. Thus
scientific publishers recognize that one of their major responsibilities is
ensuring and enhancing the integrity of journal publications for these
diverse uses.
2.Science magazine’s remit is to publish research papers with high
conceptual novelty and broad interest, in all disciplines of science, both
physical and biological. Science is a weekly publication, and the number of
research papers we publish is small – typically about 18 in each issue. We
place strict limits on the length of papers, and aim to publish expediently.
Science is currently the world’s widest-circulation general science
journal, with a global subscriber base of 130,000 with many more readers
accessing the journal online via institutional site licenses. Hence, the
number of submissions of research papers from scientists is high, and we can
accept few of them for publication: fewer than 10% of submissions are
published. Science’s editorial workflow and review process are designed to
facilitate high-quality choice.
3.The responsibility for managing the peer review process and for making
decisions on rejection/revision/acceptance of submissions for publication
rests with the staff editors. Staff editors at Science are PhD-qualified
scientists with postdoctoral research experience (and in some cases
subsequent experience as professional editors at other journals). Editors
are appointed to Science primarily on the basis of the strength of their
research record, and their task is to represent a particular discipline (
chemistry, astronomy, immunology, ecology etc) and handle the submissions in
that discipline. Editors work in teams of 4 or 5, and Science’s working
practice is that all such decisions are made in consultation with at least
one other staff colleague via a common electronic database containing all
manuscript records. There is some overlap in expertise between editors,
which ensures that no decision need be made in isolation, but also leads to
consistency in decision-making. The editorial staff is managed by the
Executive Editor, reporting to the Editor-in-Chief who is a senior research
scientist appointed by the AAAS Board.
4.Science has a 2-stage review process for submitted manuscripts. The first
stage is primarily a filter, designed to identify the 25% potentially most
innovative and original submissions, which, if correct, would qualify for
publication in Science. This initial process takes an average of 7 days,
which allows authors of solid papers that we deem inappropriate for Science
to remain competitive at other journals. This stage is carried out through
consultation with the Science’s Board of 150 Reviewing Editors. Submissions
may be sent to one or more Board members, depending on the discipline or
disciplines represented. A typical evaluation from a Board member consists
of a paragraph of explanation, a score on a rating of 1-10, a rating of the
Board member’s judgement of his/her own confidence in the score, and (if
the submission is being recommended for in-depth peer review) suggestions
for appropriate referees. The evaluation is designed to assess the potential
scientific importance of each submission rather than to assess its
technical qualities in any detail. The staff editor then decides, on the
basis of this advice received, whether to proceed to in-depth peer review (
see below) or to reject the paper. In keeping with the purpose of this first
stage of selection, there is no precisely-defined threshold score required
for this editorial decision, which occurs after an average of 7 days. When
authors are notified of the decision to reject or review at the end of this
first stage, the identity and views of the Board member(s) involved remain
confidential.
5.Why does Science not send more (or all) submissions for in-depth review?
The number of manuscripts submitted exceeds the number published by more
than a factor of 10. Hence, reviewing a larger proportion would be a
hindrance to all parties: authors would suffer delays in finding an
alternative journal in which to publish; referees would be spending time
reviewing submissions that have a high likelihood of being rejected; the
attention of editorial staff would be diverted from those submissions with
the highest promise.
6.The Board of Reviewing Editors consists of c. 170 individuals from 20
countries, appointed by the staff editors to represent the spread of
subdisciplines across the sciences. They are mostly mid-career active
research scientists with a strong record in their respective fields. On
appointment, which is usually for 3-5 years, each Board member agrees to
evaluate up to 6 Science submissions per week. The Board’s role is purely
advisory. Members are not expected to do in depth review or decide the fate
of submissions, but may occasionally be consulted by staff editors at later
stages of peer review (see below) and on appeals (see below). Science’s
view is that the involvement of the Board at the first stage of review is an
important element in the effort to maintain editorial consistency, and it
substantially improves the research community’s confidence in the fairness
of the initial cut.
7.The second stage of review, for the 25% of submissions not rejected at the
first stage, is in-depth review by peers. Referees are selected by the
staff editor based mainly on the editor’s own knowledge of researchers in
the field(s) of the submission, plus suggestions from the Board. At the time
of submission, authors are asked to submit their own nominations for
referees, and staff editors will occasionally follow these nominations where
they coincide with the Board’s and/or their own suggestions. We also
encourage authors to tell us if they believe that certain individuals have
conflicts of interest and should not be consulted as reviewers. The number
of referees varies depending on the scope of the submission. The minimum is
two, but three or more are frequently used, especially where a submission is
multidisciplinary and/or combines a number of components/techniques
requiring input from individuals with special expertise. Science’s editors
always seek referees’ agreement to review a manuscript before it is sent to
them; the referees are asked to return their reviews within 2 ??? weeks.
8.The role of referees at the in-depth stage of review is typical of that
followed at most scientific journals. Referees are asked to assess the
technical merits and integrity of the submission, and to recommend
improvements and revisions that should be made before the submission can be
considered acceptable. In our view, the role of a properly-operating peer
review system is to maximise the quality of the published account of any
piece of research, within it own limits, regardless of where it is
ultimately published. Thus, we expect referees to make detailed
recommendations regardless of whether they consider the submission
ultimately suitable for our journal. Even if the submission is rejected by
Science on the basis of in-depth peer review, the referees’ comments will
generally be helpful to authors in revising the manuscript for submission to
a different journal. As a result of the peer review process, many
submissions are improved, and improved substantially. Errors are caught (
though not always), uncertainties are clarified; standards are met, and even
hypotheses can be changed or strengthened. Not all good ideas get delayed
through rejection; many become better and stronger.
9.Peer review, as a system for maintaining the integrity of scientific
research and improving the quality of published research, inevitably relies
on trust in the integrity and reliability of the scientists and editors
tasked with carrying it out. It is not a 100% safeguard against clever fraud
, but in the great majority of cases it can be relied upon to fulfil its
goal of minimizing the propagation of errors. Nonetheless, not every error
is caught, and Science and other journals will publish corrections and
clarifications when necessary: in the past decade, about 8% of papers have
been corrected; in most cases, these corrections affect matters of detail
but not the major conclusions of the work. Severe cases that require
complete retraction of a paper are much rarer: over the past decade 0.4% of
Science papers have been retracted.
10. In addition to their written report on the submission that will be
provided to the authors, referees are asked to rate the manuscript as either
Excellent & Exciting, Above Average, Too Specialized, or Mediocre/Poor, as
well as to recommend whether the submission should be published without
delay, published after minor revision, re-reviewed or rejected. The referees
are also given the opportunity to provide confidential comments to the
editor.
11.The length of the in-depth review process is generally longer and more
variable than that of the initial screening described above. The average
time for a round of review for a Science submission is currently about three
weeks, but may vary depending on the complexity or urgency of the material
under review.
12.In-depth review does not always lead to a straightforward decision for
the staff editor. Referees may differ as to the technical quality or
potential significance of a submission. Experience shows that the editor is
often best advised to follow the more critical opinion in such cases,
whether in deciding to reject the submission or in asking for revision.
However, our editors are urged to use their own judgement in this regard. In
some cases, editors will send a revised submission back to referees (or
sometimes new referees) for further checking, especially if the revision
contains new material (data, experiments) that was not present in the first
version of the submission. At this stage, referees will usually be shown the
reports of the other referee(s) and will be asked to assess how the author
has responded to all the recommendations. A third round of re-review is rare
later than the second round of review.
13.Science’s policy is to maintain the anonymity of referees in all
communication with authors; their reports are unsigned. Although we
recognise that the identity of some can be evident from the text of their
reports, Science’s view is that anonymity gives us access to the widest
possible pool of referees, for example those who may be at an early stage of
their careers relative to the author of a submission. However, referees are
not blinded to the identity of the authors, in common with practice at the
majority of other journals.
14.We recognise the potential for conflicts of interests in the review
process. Hence, we allow authors to request that their manuscript not be
sent to particular individuals who might be competitors or where there is
other reason to suspect the potential for bias or unfair review. Editors are
also expected to be alert to potential abuse of this facility on the part
of authors, through their knowledge of the research groups involved. We also
ask our referees to return or destroy the manuscript without review if they
find a conflict of interest or other reason preventing them from reviewing
a manuscript in a timely and fair fashion.
15.In common with other journals, Science does not offer any payment for
peer review (though the Board of Reviewing Editors receive an honorarium of
a subscription to the journal). Payment would be inimical to the process,
yet it is also the case that scientists do not routinely receive the
recognition that might be expected for the work that they put into reviewing
journal submissions. For example, institutions could recognise peer
reviewing activities when assessing a scientist’s job application or
promotional prospects.
16.A small percentage of rejection decisions are appealed by authors. For a
submission to be reconsidered after a rejection at the first stage, editors
need to be convinced that the author has brought some pertinent new
information to the table that the editors were not aware of at the time of
the rejection. (Disagreement over the degree of novelty or general interest
is not enough). For a submission to be reconsidered after a rejection
following in-depth review, the editors need to be convinced that the major
mistakes were made in the peer-review process, and that the rejection was
based on these mistakes. A small proportion of submissions are reconsidered
on appeal, and of these even fewer are eventually accepted for publication
following further review.
17.In our experience, the quality of reports from referees is high in most
cases, in that they provide pertinent feedback on the key elements of a
manuscript and on the importance of the research reported. Nonetheless, we
find some reports to be less than ideal in length, detail and focus. Brief
reports consisting of a single short paragraph are very rarely adequate for
conveying the basis of a decision (whether negative or positive) to an
author, yet such reports are sometimes received, and quite often from senior
and established scientists. The opposite – reports of excessive length and
detail – can also be an occasional problem. And it is not unknown for
referees to use inappropriately emotive or forceful language (generally we
only edit this out when it is particularly or egregiously offensive).
18.A common complaint is that referees ask for unnecessary extra details and
further experiment before a submission is accepted for publication. All
research is part of a wider work-in-progress, and progress is facilitated by
publishing rather than withholding. Publication is part of the ongoing
scientific process, not the end of the road. Hence, while such requests for
further work are often legitimate, referees and editors need to be able to
recognise when a piece of work is complete within its own goals and frame of
reference. We want our editors to consult with each other in making the
final decision on this important, quite frequently encountered, issue.
19. Anecdotal evidence suggests that there is wide variation in the training
that early-career scientists (graduate students, postdoctoral associates)
receive in peer review. Most such training is largely ad hoc and informal,
dependent on the input of the supervisor or other senior colleagues.
Institution-wide principles for practice and training in peer review are not
yet the norm. We would recommend that journal editors and academies work
together to produce guiding principles for the peer review process that can
be adopted and used for instruction at the institutional level.
20. The chief challenge in the peer review process is the time available for
referees. For an editor, the process of finding referees can be time-
consuming – not only identifying the appropriate individuals but also
sometimes contacting a large number of individuals before finding enough
referees willing and able to assess a submission. For referees, assessing a
journal submission in the right amount of detail and at the right level
involves more than simply reading and commenting on the manuscript and
preparing a report. It can involve recalculating results presented in the
work, checking citations (including relevant literature not cited), and
otherwise checking experiments and analyses reported in the work in order to
verify the conclusions. Effective peer review will generally take anywhere
from several hours to several days of full-time work. Hence, an editor’s
first or second choice may well decline to review if other commitments are
too pressing.
21.Editors may become understandably biased in favour of using tried-and-
tested referees who are known to be reliable and efficient and understanding
of the particular requirements of the editor’s journal. This is not in
itself a threat to the integrity of the peer review process, but it can
become a limit to the size of the potential pool of referees as well as
placing a disproportionate burden on a relatively small number of
individuals.
22.Multiple rounds of review can constitute a further problem for the peer
review process. As noted above, Science will generally limit the number of
rounds of review to a maximum of two, and this is common practice at many
other journals. However, a manuscript may be reviewed several more times at
several different journals before it eventually finds a home, sometimes by
the same referee more than once. Recognising that this is a further drain on
the system, Science and other journals have considered sharing referees’
reports when a manuscript is submitted to a second or third journal
following rejection from the authors’ first choice. However, there are
several obstacles to such a system, including for example referee anonymity
and different editorial policies at different journals.
23.Multidisciplinarity is a potential pitfall for peer review, requiring
extra vigilance on the part of editors to ensure that referees are chosen to
cover all the main areas of research that are represented in a submission.
There is an increasing amount of contemporary research at the interface of
biological and physical sciences (for example, in computational biology or
climate change biology), and editors need to be able to recognise the
appropriate contributory elements in such cases. Sometimes this means that
more than 3 referees will be needed to adequately review a paper. There has
also been a perennial difficulty in reviewing the statistical components of
research, where editors and referees are not always qualified in the
statistical techniques that have been used in a research project.
24.There may be procedural differences in peer review between disciplines (
for instance, in physics research is made available to readers through
preprint servers) but the principles of peer review as a mechanism for
improving and maintaining standards in published research are very similar
across all disciplines. Where the peer review process becomes harder is in
disciplines that are small, with few experts qualified to comment on
submissions, or few without conflicts of interest of some kind.
25.The mobility of scientists, especially younger scientists, coupled with
the growth of international collaboration in science and the ease of access
to published research via the WWW, means that any national differences in
cultural or scientific traditions have become increasingly irrelevant in the
context of peer review. National biases in peer review may have been
present in the past, because journals have generally been nationally based
and hence scientists’ work would tend to be reviewed by peers in their own
country. The increasing internationalization of research, coupled with the
ease of e-communication, will have contributed to the reliability and rigour
of peer review in the past 2 decades. At Science, we have made efforts to
ensure that the overall geographical distribution of referees reflects the
global nature of the scientific enterprise.
26.Clearly the impact of information technology has been all-pervasive in
science. For peer review, the impact of IT and online resources has been
mainly on the efficiency of the process, and not on the underlying principle
of peer review (though it has also enabled the exploration of new models or
variations on the theme of peer review). E-communication has improved the
speed of communication (especially international communication) between
editors, referees and authors. It has enabled editors to research a broader
range of potential referees for individual submissions, and perhaps has
enabled referees to better research the background to the submissions they
are asked to review. Electronic submission systems have reduced authors'
concerns about the cost and time-lost when submitting to journals with the
end result of authors submitting to top journals even when the chance of
acceptance is very slim.
27.Science began featuring supporting online material in the late 1990s (we
went online in 1996). Today, most papers (>95%) in Science include an online
supplement that describes methods and additional data, and some of these
supplements are huge in terms of pages and data. This is also the case for
many other journals. While there are obvious advantages to supplying the
background data to the reader, these supplements are posing growing problems
for peer review. Review of a supplement that is many times the size of the
submitted text is a burden to reviewers and hinders requests for rapid
consideration. It also raises concerns about the quality of peer review.
These issues probably can’t be avoided, but standards for reporting and
presenting large data sets that allow common analysis tools could help
greatly. An additional challenge is providing confidential access to large
or complex datasets during review. Currently no databases allow secure
posting for the purposes of peer-review, and some authors are unwilling to
release data prior to publication. We are in some cases sending data,
including large data files, separately to reviewers, but this poses an
increasing administrative burden. Raw data for some papers in several fields
are too large to transmit, and in some cases special software may be
required.
28. Notwithstanding the pitfalls of the peer review system outlined above,
Science maintains (in common with other scientific journals) that it will
remain the primary means of validating research for publication. Recognition
of the potential pitfalls is the key to ensuring that the system works well
, and that errors and poor scientific practices are minimized.
Dr Andrew Sugden
International Managing Editor and Deputy Editor for Life Science
on behalf of and with contribution from Alan Leshner (Executive Publisher);
Bruce Alberts (Editor-in-Chief); Monica Bradford (Executive Editor); Brooks
Hanson (Deputy Editor, Physical Science), Barbara Jasny (Deputy Editor,
Commentary) (Science, 1200 New York Avenue, Washington DC 20005, USA)
25 March 2011