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How to Improve Academic Publishing for Early Career Researchers: Our Letter to the Editor

how-to-improve-academic-publishing-for-early-career-researchers-our-letter-to-the-editor

Jessie Baldwin, Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellow, UCL

February 20, 2020

Dear Journal Editors,

Unpleasant peer review comments, paper rejections, and unreasonable copy-editing demands can be particularly stressful for ECRs and discourage us from submitting to (or reviewing for) the journal in the future. Therefore, we suggest taking steps to ensure that your journal provides a constructive and respectful publishing experience. This could include adopting a code of conduct for peer reviewers (such as this one at Science or the Ethical Guidelines for peer reviewers from the Committee on Publication Ethics) with consequences for violations, providing a reason for desk rejection

As Early Career Researchers (ECRs), we face challenges in academic publishing: from struggling to get negative results published, to repeated paper rejections, and finding the time to review papers. These challenges are amplified by the pressure we are under due to the ‘publish or perish’ culture.

We appreciate that running a journal is also challenging: reliable peer reviewers are hard to find, there is pressure to keep up to date with the rapidly evolving open research movement, and many of you also juggle other academic responsibilities.

Early Career Researchers Group Discussion participants at the Wiley Editor Symposium, London, 2019:
Dr. Angus McNelly, Queen Mary University of London
Dr. Chris Hill, University of Cambridge
Dr. Enrico Salvati, University of Oxford
Dr. Jessie Baldwin, UCL
Dr. Machteld Kamminga, University of Oxford
Dr. Rebecca Dumbell, MRC Harwell Institute
Dr. Sarah Nevitt, University of Liverpool
Mr. Tassilo Henike, University of Potsdam, Germany
Dr. Timothy Craig, University of Leeds

But we think that the academic publishing system can be improved to help everyone. In October 2019, a group of ECRs met with Wiley journal editors to share our ideas about how to improve academic publishing for both ECRs and editors. Below is a set of recommendations that we proposed (see Table 1 for a summary).

Embrace open research

For ECRs, the open research movement offers a refreshing opportunity to have our work valued based on its methodological quality and research importance, rather than the results. Although many open research initiatives exist (see Munafo et al., 2018), we highlight a few for your consideration. To prevent publication bias, you could offer Registered Reports, a type of article in which the methods and proposed analyses are reviewed prior to research being conducted (see Chambers 2019). For experimental work, a section on ‘what didn’t work’ would also help to ensure that negative findings are published. To improve methodological transparency, you could remove word counts for the Method section, introduce requirements to share code, materials, and data, and advocate use of reporting checklists (e.g., the Transparency Checklist). Reviewers should be encouraged to carefully assess the reproducibility of studies, and incentives should be offered to make sure this extra time commitment is recognised (see below for more on this). Finally, to recognise best practice and signal openness to the reader, you could adopt Open Science ‘badges’ for pre-registration, open data and materials. Implementing such open research initiatives will help you as editors by increasing the quality of research published in the journal, and in turn, boosting journal credibility.

 

Provide incentives for peer review

ECRs, like senior academics, have little incentive to review papers. In fact, peer reviewing actively disadvantages academics by taking time away from conducting our own research (work for which we are recognised and rewarded – unlike peer review!). Therefore, we suggest offering incentives to encourage academics to peer review for your journal. For example, you could offer reviewer recognition prizes, and invitations to join the editorial board after a researcher has reviewed a certain number of articles (and perhaps consider setting up a separate ECR editorial board). If an ECR has written an insightful review on a paper of great interest, you could invite them to write a commentary, rather than inviting a senior academic. Furthermore, you could publish peer reviews alongside articles (with the option for the reviewer to be named) to recognise the work of reviewers and increase transparency. Such incentives will ultimately benefit you as editors by increasing the number of researchers willing to peer review for your journal.

Provide training for peer review

The lack of formal training in peer review can discourage ECRs from reviewing papers and may also lead to poor quality reviews. To address this, we suggest offering peer review training and support for ECRs. Such training could take a range of forms, from detailed step-by-step guidance (such as Wiley’s guidance for reviewers and the interactive ‘Better Peer Review’ tool), to sharing online peer review training courses with a qualification (such as that offered by Publons or Nature), mentoring schemes in which senior academics provide feedback on ECRs’ draft reviews (as offered by the Journal of Neuroscience and BMC Trials, and the Associate Editor mentoring scheme run by the Journal of Applied Ecology), or the option for new peer reviewers to request editorial feedback on their review. These initiatives will ensure that ECRs are confident and well equipped to peer review for your journal.

Make the publication process more efficient

A long and drawn-out publication process can be frustrating for ECRs, given the acute pressure we are under to show a track record of publications. For you as editors, an inefficient publication process is also disadvantageous because it can discourage researchers from submitting to your journal. To make the process more efficient, you could adopt the following measures: remove formatting requirements upon first submission to your journal (a method currently being adopted by more than 40 Wiley journals); send regular (e.g. monthly) automated updates to authors on article progress and alert them if further information is needed (e.g., reviewer suggestions) to prevent delays; and explicitly guide authors on which revisions to prioritise if reviewers request lengthy or conflicting revisions.

Make the publication process more constructive

Unpleasant peer review comments, paper rejections, and unreasonable copy-editing demands can be particularly stressful for ECRs and discourage us from submitting to (or reviewing for) the journal in the future. Therefore, we suggest taking steps to ensure that your journal provides a constructive and respectful publishing experience. This could include adopting a code of conduct for peer reviewers (such as this one at Science or the Ethical Guidelines for peer reviewers from the Committee on Publication Ethics) with consequences for violations, providing a reason for desk rejection (even if broad, so that authors can address the issue for future submissions), and giving authors sufficient time (e.g. at least a week) to review clearly highlighted copy edits. By promoting ‘academic kindness’, your journal will be more likely to attract future high-quality research submissions and willing reviewers.

In Conclusion

These recommendations – from ECRs to editors – are practical steps towards making academic publishing more open, efficient, and constructive. Many of these recommendations have already been implemented by various journals and are well-suited to wider adoption across disciplines. Equally, this is not an exhaustive list and other potential solutions exist, described elsewhere (e.g. on scoop protection, see Yong, 2018; on naming reviewers, see Dhand, 2019). Importantly though, these recommendations will help not only ECRs, but also editors, by ensuring that journals benefit from high-quality research submissions and a reliable network of peer reviewers. Given the current challenges in academic publishing faced by both editors and ECRs, changes that bring efficiency and increase research quality must be worth considering.

Jessie Baldwin, on behalf of the Early Career Researcher panellists

Table 1. Suggestions for initiatives that Editors could adopt on their journals. ​

InitiativeProposal
Open research practicesRegistered Reports
Section on ‘what didn’t work’ for experiments
No limit to word counts for Method
Sharing code, materials and data
Reporting checklist
Open Research Badges
Incentives for peer reviewReviewer recognition awards
Invitation to join an ECR editorial board
Invitation to write commentary article
Publish peer review alongside article
Training for peer reviewPeer review training courses
Mentoring schemes
Editorial feedback for new reviewers
More efficient publication processFree format submission
Regular automated updates on article
Editorial guidance on priority revisions
More constructive publication processPeer review code of conduct
Provide reason for desk rejection
Sufficient time for researchers to review final copy edits

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