Dear list,
Please find a link to a paper reviewing the current publication process
and making some critics.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2427.2010.02484.x/abstract
I give you the abstract just below :
Regards,
Nicolas
OPINION: Negative changes in the scientific publication process in
ecology: potential causes and consequences
Summary
1. Increasingly viewed to have societal impact and value, science is
affected by complex changes such as globalisation and the increasing
dominance of commercial interest. As a result, technical advancements,
financial concerns, institutional prestige and journal proliferation have
created challenges for ecological and other scientific journals and
affected the perception of both researchers and the public about the
science that they publish.
2. Journals are now used for more than dissemination of scientific
research. Institutions use journal rankings for a variety of purposes and
often require a pre-established number of articles in hiring and budgetary
decisions. Consequently, journal impact factors have achieved greater
importance, and the splitting of articles into smaller parcels of
information (‘salami-slicing’) to increase numbers of publications has
become more frequent.
3. Journals may prescribe upper limits to article length, even though the
average length of articles for several ecological journals examined has
increased over time. There are clear signs, however, that journals without
length limits for articles will become rarer. In contrast to ecological
journals, taxonomic journals are not following this trend.
4. Two case histories demonstrate how splitting longer ecological articles
into a series of shorter ones results in both redundancy of information
and actually increases the journal space used overall. Furthermore, with
current rejection rates of ecological journals (often ∼80%), many thin
salami-sliced articles jam the peer-review system much longer (through
resubmission after rejection) than unsliced articles previously did (e.g.
when rejection rates were ∼50%). In our experience, the increased pressure
to publish many articles in ‘high-impact’ journals also may decrease the
attractiveness of a future scientific career in ecology to young people.
5. ‘Gatekeeping’ of journal quality has shifted from editors to reviewers,
and several recent trends are apparent including: bias about appropriate
statistical methods; reviewers being more rigid overall; non-native
English writers being criticised for poor communications skills; and
favourable reviews being signed more often than unfavourable ones. In
terms of production, outsourcing of copy editing has increased the final
error rate of published material.
6. We supplemented our perceptions with those of older colleagues (∼100
experienced ecologists) that responded to an informal survey on this topic
(response rate: 81%). In the opinion of almost 90% of our respondents, the
overall review process has changed and for 20% among them the professional
quality of reviews has declined.
7. We, and many older colleagues, are convinced there have been some
negative changes in the scientific publication process. If younger
colleagues share this concern, we can collectively counter this
deteriorating situation, because we are the key to the publishing and
evaluation process.
--
Nicolas PERU, PhD
33-(0)4 72 43 28 94
06-88-15-23-10
Laboratoire d'Ecologie des Hydrosystèmes Fluviaux
Université Claude Bernard - Lyon 1
43 Bld du 11 novembre 1918
Rdc Bât Forel
69622 VILLEURBANNE cedex FRANCE
