Optional Workshops

Thursday 7th June: 09.00 – 17.00

Statistics for editors
Chris Palmer, University of Cambridge, UK

This workshop focuses on what editors and others involved in producing scientific publications need to know about statistics with a view to ensuring methodologically highest-quality journal articles. Borrowing from Chris’ lengthy experience in teaching (mostly non-mathematically-inclined medical doctors/students/researchers) and reviewing (mostly medical journals, both general and specialist) and adopting the standard Introduction/Methods/Results/Discussion format, this non-technical course tackles the essentials of statistical thinking within each of these aforementioned sections.

Common statistical pitfalls are covered, along with an overview of what different types of study design can really show, e.g. why is a randomised controlled trial better than an observational study? What verbs are appropriate among demonstrate/prove/suggest/etc. for the Discussion? Why are some flaws detected by statistical reviewers “fatal” whereas others are fixable? Why do statisticians insist on 95% confidence intervals rather than p-values alone? What are those ubiquitous bits of nomenclature really anyway?

This course will have you seeing statistics not as number-crunching (nor the entire research enterprise as a chase to get a p-value below the magical 0.05 threshold!) but instead holistically, as indispensable matters of design and analysis, as well as presentation and interpretation. Those attending will probably leave wishing they had heard and understood all this a lot sooner in their scientific editing careers!

Dr Chris Palmer is currently self-employed as a consultant, trainer, and reviewer for clinical statistics. He was the Director of the Centre for Applied Medical Statistics at the University of Cambridge (1991-2014). Previously, he was a Maths undergraduate at Oxford, obtained his PhD at University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, with dissertation on an ethical clinical trials model, and was a post-doc at Harvard University’s Biostatistics Department. During his career Chris has consulted and collaborated on a wide variety of clinical research projects including cancer and cardiovascular clinical trials. He has extensive UK and international lecturing and teaching experience with audiences including medical students, doctors, consultants and biomedical journal editors. Since 1993, he is also a statistical reviewer for The Lancet and its sister journals, among others. He has published over 90 co-authored medical research or medical statistics papers and co-edited the reference book “Encyclopaedic Companion to Medical Statistics” (2nd ed, Wiley, 2011).

Thursday 7th June: 14.00 – 17.00

Plagiarism for editors
Ksenija Bazdaric, University of Rijeka Faculty of Medicine, Croatia

This workshop will give editors more insight into the phenomena of plagiarism in science. Different tools for detecting text similarity/plagiarism (iThenticate, Turnitin, WCopyfind and other), the process of decision making in the plagiarism detection (cut-off values and flowcharts), and plagiarism prevention will be presented and discussed in case-scenario with the course leader/research integrity editor with 8 years’ experience in the plagiarism detection in the Croatian Medical Journal (www.cmj.hr), an internationally recognized and peer-reviewed indexed medical journal. The workshop is aimed for all editors including Chief Editors in order to recognize the importance of publishing original content in order to raise the quality of the journal and executive editors in order to learn how to properly handle text similarities in the manuscript. Materials from the workshop will be provided.

Friday 8th June: 09:00 – 13:00

COPE workshop for editors
Vivienne Bachelet, Universidad de Santiago, Chile

This workshop will provide an introduction to publication ethics with an overview of the types of misconduct encountered by editors and publishers of scholarly journals. It will then delve deeper into peer review misconduct and issues around authorship. Real-life examples will be discussed in small groups to allow for an interactive workshop with sharing experiences and exploring questions of the participants. The workshop will be hosted by council members of the Committee on Publication Ethics. Certificates of attendance will be provided to participants.

Friday 8th June: 09:00 – 15:00

JATS XML and European journals
Sun Huh, Hallym University, Korea / Korean Council of Science Editors

Although the JATS XML became a standard of journal publishing in the web from 2012, the number of European journals published by non-profit organizations or scholarly societies that have produced JATS XML for their articles is not much. In medical field, PubMed Central (PMC) is the most important platform for non-profit scholarly journals. Out of 39 European countries, 13 countries has no PMC journal; Eight countries publishes one PMC journal each; nine countries publish less than 10 PMC journals. Only four countries, England, Switzerland, Netherlands, and Germany, where open access journal publishers are active, publish 675 PMC journals. In science and technology fields, the same phenomena can be expected. Production of JATS XML provide a variety of merits: better user-interface can be provided via Pubreader and epub 3.0; easy to convert to other XML files such as CrossRef XML, DOAJ XML; ability to deposit to PubMed Central or ScienceCentral; easy to adopt CrossMark, FundRef, ORCID, Text and data mining, cited-by function and reference hyperlink; and easier to be produced than SGML. The workshop will cover JATS XML and Crossref XML, basic step to digital standards of scholarly journal to provide the understanding of JATS XML and its benefit. By practicing JATS XML coding, it will be possible for editors to understand JATS XML and to have a confidence of producing JATS XML files for their journal articles.


Sunday 10th June: 14:00 – 17:00 + Monday 11th June: 09:00 – 17:00

How to be a successful journal editor
Pippa Smart, PSP Consulting, UK / EASE Vice President

How to publish better content and make more impact: This interactive workshop will look at how editors can improve their outreach to authors, encourage the submission of better content; improve the peer review process (both time and quality), and ensure that they are making better decisions regarding which articles to accept and reject. It will also look at what readers want and how to assess and improve the impact of the journal. Based on a successful workshop that has been run for over a decade, this is specifically aimed at Editors-in-Chief, Associate Editors, and others involved in the decisions of which articles to accept for publication. The workshop comprises a mix of discussion, presentation and examining case studies and an e-handbook is provided.