EASE

Tag: journal guidelines

  • Most popular ESE articles in October

    We haven’t made one of these updates for a few months, so we are long overdue recognising the top five most read articles of October, from our journal European Science Editing, just in time before the next issue of ESE is published.

    This month three of the five most popular papers are original articles and two essays. Two papers are from our most recent issue from August, and the others are from earlier years. Always great to see our readers finding interesting papers from our archives.

    By coincidence, we have two papers that analyse datasets spanning ten years between 208-2017, one on the uses of ResearchGate, and the second on gender, age and academic productivity in the social sciences in Vietnam.

    We also have a review of journal guidelines for title, abstracts and keywords; an article addressing misconduct in biomedical images, and publishing challenges faced by authors with English as a second language.

    European Science Editing (ESE) is our official, quarterly, peer reviewed journal. Issues are made freely available 6 months after print publication. ESE publishes articles covering all aspects of scientific editing and publishing. It includes research articles, meeting reports, essays and viewpoints, book and website reviews, as well as highlighting events, resources and publications of interest to members

    Ten years of research on ResearchGate: a scoping review using Google Scholar (2008–2017) Issue: 45(3) August 2019. Original articles
    Juan José Prieto-Gutiérrez
    http://europeanscienceediting.eu/articles/ten-years-of-research-on-researchgate-a-scoping-review-using-google-scholar-2008-2017/

    Objective: To analyse quantitatively the articles published during 2008–2017 about the academic social networking site ResearchGate.
    Methods: A scoping bibliometric review of documents retrieved using Google Scholar was conducted, limited to publications that contained the word ‘ResearchGate’ in their title and were published from 2008 to 2017.
    Results: The search yielded 159 documents, once a preliminary list of 386 documents retrieved from Google Scholar was filtered, which eliminated about 60% of the results that were bibliographic citations and not documents. Papers in journals were the most numerous type of documents (n = 73; 46%), followed by conference papers (n = 31; 19.5%). Contributing eight publications, two Spanish scholars (Delgado López-Cózar and OrduñaMalea, who were co-authors in each case) were the most prolific authors writing on this topic during the ten-year period. The keywords most used in the documents were ‘ResearchGate’ and ‘Altmetrics’. The publications were cited frequently since 2014 (more than 90% of the total cites fell in that period), and those with more than one author were the most cited ones. The authors of the documents were mainly librarians and information science professionals, who wrote primarily as co-authors with colleagues from their own institutions, mostly published in English.
    Conclusions: Interest in ResearchGate has grown since 2015, as evident from the number of articles published and the citations they received.

    Journals’ guidelines about title, abstract and keywords: an overview of Information Science and Communication Science areasIssue: 44(4) November 2018. Original articles
    Mariângela Spotti Lopes Fujita, María-del-Carmen Agustín-Lacruz, and Ana Lúcia Terra
    http://europeanscienceediting.eu/articles/journals-guidelines-about-title-abstract-and-keywords-an-overview-of-information-science-and-communication-science-areas/

    Objective: The purpose of this exploratory study was to observe and analyse guidelines for authors on writing their papers’ title, abstract and keywords.
    Methods: The sample consisted of 64 journals indexed in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR): 32 (50%) Library & Information Science (LIS) journals and 32 (50%) Communication Science (CS) journals. A spreadsheet was used for data collection, containing 36 items grouped into four categories: identification data, guidelines for the title, the abstract, and the keywords of the scientific article. Then, in each category, the LIS journals were compared with CS journals, to verify how specific aspects of knowledge organisation and representation are reflected in editorial policies.
    Results: Majority of CS journals (27, 84%) and less than a quarter of LIS journals (7, 22%) referred to a style guide on their website. Specific guidelines for the title were presented in 17 (53%) LIS journals and in 23 (72%) of CS journals, mainly concerning the word number. Twenty three (72%) LIS journals and 31 (97%) CS journals included guidelines for writing abstracts, focusing on word number and the structure of abstracts. Instructions for keywords were presented in 21 (66%) LIS journals and 28 (88%) CS journals, defining the number of keywords and the use of controlled vocabulary.
    Conclusion: There is a tendency to standardise general indications and criteria about titles, abstracts and keywords. Guidelines on writing abstracts, titles and keywords have smaller presence in editorial policies of LIS journals, than of CS journals.

    Gender, age, research experience, leading role and academic productivity of Vietnamese researchers in the social sciences and humanities: exploring a 2008-2017 Scopus datasetIssue: 43(3) August 2017. Original articles
    Quan-Hoang Vuong et al.
    http://europeanscienceediting.eu/articles/gender-age-research-experience-leading-role-and-academic-productivity-of-vietnamese-researchers-in-the-social-sciences-and-humanities-exploring-a-2008-2017-scopus-dataset/
    Background: Academic productivity has been studied by scholars all round the world for many years. However, in Vietnam, this topic has scarcely been addressed. This research therefore aims at better understanding the correlations between gender, age, research experience, the leading role of corresponding authors, and the total number of their publications in the specific realm of social sciences and humanities.
    Methods: The study employed a Scopus dataset with publication profiles of 410 Vietnamese researchers between 2008 and 2017.
    Results    : Men did not differ from women in academic publications (P=0.827). The proficiency of corresponding authors positively correlated with the number of published papers (rs=0.61, P0.001). Lastly, the age of lead authors strongly correlated with scientific output (rs=0.74, P0.001 for authors between 40 and 50 years of age).
    Conclusion    : While scientific output correlated with the author ages and number of articles in which they led, it was not correlated with their gender in Vietnamese social science and humanities authors

    Misconduct of images: guidance for biomedical authors and editorsIssue: 45(3) August 2019. Essays
    Qing Ye and Hanfeng Lin
    http://europeanscienceediting.eu/articles/misconduct-of-images-guidance-for-biomedical-authors-and-editors/

    Misconduct in terms of manipulation of images has become an increasingly serious issue for the scientific community, especially in biomedicine. Such misconduct takes many forms, the major categories being falsified or fabricated images, manipulated images, and plagiarized images. Different tools and techniques are briefly described to help authors and editors in detecting such misconduct, and guidance is offered on appropriate use of images under different situations. More specifically, Crossref Similarity Check, Motuin, and Droplets are proposed as the tools of choice for detecting similarity between images and their possible manipulation.

    Publishing challenges faced by authors with English as a second languageIssue: 42(2) May 2016. Essays
    Trevor Lane and Julian Tang
    http://europeanscienceediting.eu/articles/publishing-challenges-faced-by-authors-with-english-as-a-second-language/

    Edanz Group Ltd, an English editing and publication support company established in 1995, provides professional academic English services to authors for whom English is a second language. Feedback from these authors has consistently shown that they value not only language editing, but also advice on how to overcome practical barriers to publishing research in international peer-reviewed journals. In this article, we outline some of these barriers and argue that editing service providers play an increasingly important role in levelling the playing field for authors for whom English is a second language.

  • Most popular ESE articles in December

    In our monthly look at the top five most read papers from our journal European Science Editing, we have three from our current issue, published in November; Ksenija Baždarić‘s editorial on questionnaire structure, the viewpoint on medical writers Joint Position Statement, and an original article addressing journals’ guidelines about title, abstract and keywords.

    In addition to those, Andrew Woods’ study of terminology, usage and style remains a popular paper, and finally, the ‘Basket of Metrics’ article from 2015. Following publication of that paper, we spoke to author Lisa Colledge, from the research metrics team at Elsevier, about the details in it and other work Elsevier were doing at the time.  Readers interested in that paper might like to read the interview blog post here.

    Questionnaire structure – how much do editors need to know?
    Ksenija Baždarić
    44(4) November 2018. Editorial 
    http://europeanscienceediting.eu/articles/questionnaire-structure-how-much-do-editors-need-to-know/

    Conducting a survey, ie collecting data with a questionnaire, is a very popular method of research, particularly in medicine and the social sciences, with the results frequently published. The data may be collected by self report, ie the participant fills in the data alone, now often online, or by a researcher. The use of a questionnaire as a quantitative method was presented by the Statistical Society of London in the first half of the 19th century. From that time, the methodology of using questionnaires (development, measuring and validation) was mainly established by psychologists. New questionnaires, often called scales, are still being created and described in the literature.

    As an editor, author and reviewer, I have noticed that the method is widely (mis)used and the results are frequently misinterpreted. I would like to address some typical issues of which journal editors (with or without a statistical editor or reviewer) should be aware when reading a manuscript describing a (novel) questionnaire.

    The development and uptake of the Joint Position Statement on the role of professional medical writers
    44(4) November 2018. Viewpoint
    Art Gertel, Christopher Winchester, Karen Woolley, Yvonne Yarker
    http://europeanscienceediting.eu/articles/the-development-and-uptake-of-the-joint-position-statement-on-the-role-of-professional-medical-writers/

    Members of the European Association of Science Editors (EASE) and professional medical writers share a common goal – to publish research that readers trust and value. Medical writers can help EASE members as they strive to follow the EASE Golden Rules for Scholarly Journal Editors.1 Various guidelines are available regarding the role of professional medical writers,2 and adherence to these guidelines is best accomplished if the fundamental points are presented concisely and widely endorsed. This has been achieved with the release of the Joint Position Statement (JPS) on the Role of Professional Medical Writers,3 which has been endorsed by leading medical writing associations from around the world and other key stakeholders. The purpose of this article is to highlight to editors the development and uptake of the JPS, and how this guideline aligns with and supports the EASE Golden Rules.

    3D or 3-D: a study of terminology, usage and style
    39(3) August 2013. Original article
    Andrew J. Woods
    http://europeanscienceediting.eu/articles/3d-or-3-d-a-study-of-terminology-usage-and-style/

    The terms “3D” and “3-D” are two alternative acronyms for the term “three-dimensional”. In the published literature both variants are commonly used but what is the derivation of the two forms and what are the drivers of usage? This paper surveys the published stereoscopic literature and examines publication-style policies to understand forces and trends

    Journals’ guidelines about title, abstract and keywords: an overview of Information Science and Communication Science areas
    Mariângela Spotti Lopes Fujita, María-del-Carmen Agustín-Lacruz, Ana Lúcia Terra
    44(4) November 2018. Original article
    http://europeanscienceediting.eu/articles/journals-guidelines-about-title-abstract-and-keywords-an-overview-of-information-science-and-communication-science-areas/

    Objective: The purpose of this exploratory study was to observe and analyse guidelines for authors on writing their papers’ title, abstract and keywords.

    Methods: The sample consisted of 64 journals indexed in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR): 32 (50%) Library & Information Science (LIS) journals and 32 (50%) Communication Science (CS) journals. A spreadsheet was used for data collection, containing 36 items grouped into four categories: identification data, guidelines for the title, the abstract, and the keywords of the scientific article. Then, in each category, the LIS journals were compared with CS journals, to verify how specific aspects of knowledge organisation and representation are reflected in editorial policies.
    Results: Majority of CS journals (27, 84%) and less than a quarter of LIS journals (7, 22%) referred to a style guide on their website. Specific guidelines for the title were presented in 17 (53%) LIS journals and in 23 (72%) of CS journals, mainly concerning the word number. Twenty three (72%) LIS journals and 31 (97%) CS journals included guidelines for writing abstracts, focusing on word number and the structure of abstracts. Instructions for keywords were presented in 21 (66%) LIS journals and 28 (88%) CS journals, defining the number of keywords and the use of controlled vocabulary.
    Conclusion: There is a tendency to standardise general indications and criteria about titles, abstracts and keywords. Guidelines on writing abstracts, titles and keywords have smaller presence in editorial policies of LIS journals, than of CS journals.

    A “basket of metrics”—the best support for understanding journal merit
    41(3) August 2015. Original article
    Lisa Colledge, Chris James
    http://europeanscienceediting.eu/articles/a-basket-of-metrics-the-best-support-for-understanding-journal-merit/

    Aim: To survey opinion of the assertion that useful metric-based input requires a “basket of metrics” to allow more varied and nuanced insights into merit than is possible by using one metric alone.
    Methods: A poll was conducted to survey opinions (N=204; average response rate=61%) within the international research community on using usage metrics in merit systems.
    Results: “Research is best quantified using multiple criteria” was selected by most (40%) respondents as the reason that usage metrics are valuable, and 95% of respondents indicated that they would be likely or very likely to use usage metrics in their assessments of research merit, if they had access to them. There was a similar degree of preference for simple and sophisticated usage metrics confirming that one size does not fit all, and that a one metric approach to merit is insufficient.
    Conclusion: This survey demonstrates a clear willingness and a real appetite to use a “basket of metrics” to broaden the ways in which research merit can be detected and demonstrated.

  • European Science Editing issue 44(4) released

    The latest issue of EASE journal European Science Editing has been published. Read it online now: http://europeanscienceediting.eu/issues/444/

    Our editorial goes back to the classics as it calls our attention to new questionnaires and how to interpret their structure (p74). In the original article section, Lopes Fujita, Agustin-Lacruz, and Terra present an investigation of 64 journal guidelines about titles, abstracts, and keywords in the fields of information and communication sciences (p76). In the essay section Helen Speyer discusses the value of an unpublished or “failed” trial (p80). In our viewpoint section, Gert et al. present the development and uptake of the Joint Position Statement on the role of professional medical writers, and Jean Iwaz discusses journal guidelines and complicated submission systems (p83).

    The Meeting reports section covers PubMet’s 5th conference on scholarly publishing in the context of open science (p86). Hervé Maisonneuve reviews the book Publish or Perish: Perceived Benefits versus Unintended Consequences by Imad A Moosa (p88).

    You can read an interview with the chief editor of The EMBO Journal and head of scientific publications at EMBO in My life as an editor (p89) and in This site I like we present ScienceMatters, a crowdsourcing site in science publishing (p91).

    And finally, the 2018 revision of our hugely popular EASE Guidelines for Authors and Translators is published as an online supplement in the issue.

    We wish you all the best for the holidays and hope you enjoy the read.

    Ksenija Baždarić
    Editor-in-Chief
    European Science Editing