Abraham Lincoln once said, ‘I’m a slow walker, but I never look back’. The system of peer review in academic journals –which scholars have relied on for over 350 years to maintain the highest research standards – functions much the same way. It is slow, sometimes grindingly slow, but it works and is always moving …
Peer Review: Turnaround Times and Smiling Authors Read More »
So here we are, ten years later. People say, ‘time flies when you’re having fun,’ which is true, but it also speeds by when you’re working hard and growing a business. I remember sitting on the sofa in the living room of my little terraced house with Pat one evening and deciding to turn our …
Updated: Oct 29, 2021 Are they Marmite? We’ve all experienced the various web-based systems available to manage submissions for scholarly journals. No matter what our role is in working with a submission system, we will undoubtedly have a story to tell about our experience. Journal submission systems: they divide opinions like Marmite! Should we hate …
Journal Submission Systems: The love-hate relationship Read More »
** UPDATED 11.12.2020 ** Plan S 2021: A shock or a radical solution for scientific publishing? What is Plan S? ‘S’ for Shock In September 2018, cOAlition S was created by a group of national research funding organisations, in partnership with the European Commission and the European Research Council*. From this collaboration, Plan S was …
Plan S 2021: Shock or radical solution for scientific publishing? Read More »
Updated: Oct 29, 2021 What does it mean? Double-blind peer review is a process used by scholarly journals where the reviewer’s identity is hidden from the authors and vice versa. Journals typically require removing any author details in the manuscript, including self-citations, acknowledgements and any associated properties attached to the manuscript file. In 2012, the …
Double-Blind Peer Review: Pros, cons and everything in-between Read More »
Once upon a time One day, in 1983, Pat Anderson gave birth to a chubby bundle of joy. Years later, and after a whirlwind of numerous trials and tribulations, that little bundle is now bossing Pat Anderson around, trying to take over the world, and jumping – with enthusiasm – all the hurdles life throws …
It’s in our DNA – The Beginning and End of an Era Read More »
Vaccines and variants The last quarter of 2020 brought positive news of COVID-19 vaccines.[1] It also brought the new variant, SARS-CoV-2. Although the positive and negative landed almost simultaneously, researchers believe that the current vaccines will still provide protection – especially as they can be adjusted if needed. Although infection rates in the UK are …
Updated: May 6, 2021 Peer review has been a critical part of academic publishing for almost 300 years – assessing the quality and validity of a manuscript before publication. Fellow experts in the same field scrutinise research, findings, and ideas to maintain the integrity of science. But what happens when a pandemic, like COVID-19, arrives …
COVID’s impact on peer reviews: working together Read More »
Updated: May 6, 2021 Trust is an obvious ingredient in peer review, isn’t it? We might think this is a rhetorical question, but often, it’s not. Working in the world of academia, we can too easily forget how a whole country – an entire world – trust in scientific research. The general population may not …
Eat three cucumbers a day to lose weight: The Importance of Trust Read More »
