Optional workshops

Four optional workshops were held during the Conference.

Application of advanced information technology to scholarly journal publishing 

Facilitator: Sun Huh, Korean Council of Science Editors

Recently, there have been rapid advances in information technologies in journal editing and publishing, e.g. PubMed Central XML or Journal Article Tag Suite XML, Pubreader, CrossRef XML for digital object identifier (DOI), CrossMark XML, FundRef XML, Open Researcher & Contributor ID (ORCID), QR code, and PubReader. Standards for scholarly journals in the field of information technology have been led by CrossRef or the United States National Center for Biological Information (NCBI). Editors and publishers of scholarly journals should use  suitable technologies for dissemination of their journal content on the web.

In this workshop, editors, manuscript editors, managing editors, or journal web engineers will learn how to apply these technologies, enabling them to improve the visibility of their journal efficiently with least cost.

 

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Introduction to statistics for editors: understanding and reporting descriptive and bivariate analyses

Facilitator: Darko Hren, PhD, Split, Croatia

Most research, especially in biomedical, behavioral and social sciences, involves statistical analysis of data. Manuscript editors rarely have appropriate training in statistics and data presentation and often have trouble figuring out what the results of statistical analyses mean. Most people who try to learn statistics from a book give up after the introduction or, at best, after the first couple of chapters – learning statistics from books is both difficult and boring.

The aim of this workshop is to offer participants a more digestible opportunity to develop their understanding of basic statistical concepts.

Darko Hren, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at  the University of Split Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. He currently teaches Social psychology,  Educational psychology and Basics of scientific methodology and communication. He was a statistical editor for the Croatian Medical Journal from 2002 until 2010.

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How to be a successful journal editor

Facilitator: Pippa Smart

This short interactive workshop will help editors to evaluate their journal against developments taking place in publishing, and will investigate strategies for success. The programme will look at issues surrounding authors and peer review, investigating different systems and processes and determining which system is most appropriate for each delegate. We will also consider publication ethics, how to deal with problems and how to anticipate and avoid them (and how to manage them post-publication). Finally the workshop will look at how to raise the visibility of a journal and how to encourage submission and readership.

Pippa Smart is a publishing consultant with over 25 years’ experience of working within the STM publishing industry. With extensive experience of journals publishing, she now advises editors and publishers in the development of their journal (and book) publishing programmes. She runs courses for both publishers and editors around the world and has also created several distance-learning courses. Workshops are run between 1 and 4 days and cover most aspects of publishing – from authorship and editorial issues, through production and design, to sales and distribution, promotion, legal aspects and online publishing. Her two key areas are editorial strategies and intellectual property rights. Her medical editors short course, run annually in Oxford, is attended by editors from around the world. In addition to training, her other main activity include writing a monthly newsletter for publishers on behalf of the Association of Learned Professional and Society Publishers (ALPSP).

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An introduction to editing non-native English (3 hours)

Facilitator: Joy Burrough-Boenisch, The Netherlands

Many scientific journals advise authors who are non-native speakers of English to have their writing checked “by a native speaker” before submission. However, although helpful, native-speaker knowledge is not enough. To edit non-native scientific English effectively, you need to know what to look out for and how to deal with particular problems. In this workshop we will therefore briefly consider the characteristics of non-native English before exploring some useful techniques for editing this English. There will be hands-on exercises and opportunity to discuss approaches to this specialised form of editing.

This workshop will provide a sound basis for novices to language editing and will enable editors with more experience to consolidate their skills and attitude. Being a native speaker of English is not a requirement for this workshop. Being bilingual and having knowledge of languages and cultures other than English is an advantage. The more linguistically and culturally diverse the backgrounds of the participants, the more valuable this workshop will be!

Originally a geographer, Joy Burrough-Boenisch learnt to edit in Sabah (Malaysia) and Australia. She has worked as an in-house and freelance copyeditor. As a freelancer based in the Netherlands, she edits and translates for scientists, teaches scientific English and trains language professionals. She is a founder and honorary member of SENSE (Society of English-Native-Speaking Editors in the Netherlands). Her PhD thesis is on Dutch scientific English. Her many publications on editing non-native English include chaptersin the EASE Science Editors’ Handbook and in Supporting Research Writing: Roles and challenges in multilingual setting (ed. Valerie Matarese). She has given workshops for language professionals in the Netherlands, Spain, Italy and UK, and for the European Commission.