A SHORT GUIDE TO ETHICAL EDITING FOR NEW EDITORS http://publicationethics.org/files/short%20guide%20to%20ethical%20editing%20for%20new%20editors.pdf
COPE Guidelines http://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines In regard to editor responsibilities, when I handle a paper, I feel it is my responsibility to screen out comments that are inappropriate, or ignore clearly biased reviews. Further, as an editor, the peer reviews are recommendations and the journal need not be bound to the comments the reviewers provided. Truthfully, after handling peer review for hundreds of papers, most peer reviews seem to be pretty professional undertakings. However, I have seen my fair share of comments that were clearly personal biases based not on the substance of the article. As the editor, if they were trite comments, I frankly deleted them. Insults and incendiary comments have no place in a peer review. IF the reviewer was clearly biased, I tossed the review and got a new one. THere have been a handful of papers (and I am talking maybe 5-6 in my 10 years of editing in which 2-3 reviewers all agreed on something that was just plain wrong. I attribute this to random chance. In each of these cases, the author was instructed to confront the comment and defend in their article their approach in light of the comment, which was frankly VERY EASY to do. I have also noticed that often, reviewers will make statements like, "how is this possible?" or "this makes no sense" where a second person will find it very difficult to infer what the problem is. In such cases, the comment could be directed at writing (cumbersome prose that is difficult to interpret) or criticism of the underlying deductions or theories. In most cases, however, the response by the author really needed to involve clarification of what they mean. There is a very delicate balance between conciseness and lack of details. As an editor, I feel it is important to clarify for the author/s how the journal would like the author/s to handle the peer review comments. I recall one (shall remain nameless) friend of mine who once advised me that the editor needs to use common sense with reviews. This individual told me of a paper that was submitted to <big name top tier journal> and when the reviews came back, the editor handed my friend the reviews and told him basically, "Reviewer #2 can be largely ignored, but I'm giving you the review because you might want to confront some of the comments in the manuscrpt." I would have simply deleted the garbage and sumarized the review based on what was needed. It is equally important to make sure the author sees the compliments too. It is good for a reviewer to approach articles with a list of what is good about it, what is bad about it, and what is borderline. The same thing with editors. Before I was an editor, I used to think that editors should follow the recommendations of the reviewers 100% of the time. My views changed after doing it. The comments from reviewers can be quite amazing. The editors control what is published, not the peer reviewers. WHy? Because it is his-her reptuation on the line if a paper gets published that was just plain bad. An editor should be choosing peer reviewers for a reason. For example, if I recieve a paper on spatial modeling of cricket frog pathologies in the United States (a completely made up example), I want to know if the spatial modeling and pathologies have been approached properly. Having done my doctoral work on cricket frogs, and published a lot of papers on them, so it might not be necessary to use a cricket frog biologist. I would snag a GIS scientist and an amphibian pathologist to review it, and if necessary a cricket frog bioologist as the third reviewer. Such an approach really reduces the probability of biases and conflicts within a small field/group. GIS and pathology are pretty big areas, whereas, there are not really that large of a group of cricket frog experts on the planet! :) The number of reviews can be inadequate simply because obtaining reviewers can be so difficult. Some editors might feel your manuscript would not benefit from a review by someone who simply has no background in anyway related to the paper. Others will. Imagine a scenario (actually happened in a generalized impact rating > 4 journal!) where you submit a paper on developing microsatellites to Journal X, the editor sends it to two random reviewers the reviews who perform legit well-thought-out reviews but one's career pre-dates the use of microsattelites, and the other is a physicist. One good review is worth a hundred reviews-for-the-sake-of-reviews. With a lot of people refusing to review paper, it can sometimes be a task just to get one solid reviewer. Remember, reviewers are more a kind of SOP for QA/QC than they are police. They don't really guard much, but they do reduce the chances of a mess up in the process. On Sat, May 2, 2015 at 12:07 PM, Robert Stevenson <[email protected]> wrote: > Dear All > > Occasionally editors do a poor job of managing the review process for a > paper submitted to a scientific journal - the number of reviews is > inadequate, the reviews themselves seem to be based on biased opinion > rather than objective criticism, etc. > > This can make it difficult for the paper to get a fair evaluation and/or > it can be a misunderstanding by the author of the explicit or cultural > scope of the journal > > A quick google search did not turn up any general guide lines or code of > conduct for editors. Can anyone point me to documents that describes the > implicit trust, roles and responsibilities in the author-editor-reviewer > exchanges. > > Thanks? > > > Rob Stevenson > > UMass Boston > -- Malcolm L. McCallum, PHD, REP Environmental Studies Program Green Mountain College Poultney, Vermont Link to online CV and portfolio : https://www.visualcv.com/malcolm-mc-callum?access=18A9RYkDGxO “Nothing is more priceless and worthy of preservation than the rich array of animal life with which our country has been blessed. It is a many-faceted treasure, of value to scholars, scientists, and nature lovers alike, and it forms a vital part of the heritage we all share as Americans.” -President Richard Nixon upon signing the Endangered Species Act of 1973 into law. "Peer pressure is designed to contain anyone with a sense of drive" - Allan Nation 1880's: "There's lots of good fish in the sea" W.S. Gilbert 1990's: Many fish stocks depleted due to overfishing, habitat loss, and pollution. 2000: Marine reserves, ecosystem restoration, and pollution reduction MAY help restore populations. 2022: Soylent Green is People! 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