The Good Paper Journal Club forum: topic
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Editorial feedback on study designs (pre-submission)
Neil Blair Christensen
Sunday, 01 June 2008 06:08 UTC
Hi,
We have set up a project called Journal of Diabetes Forum, using an editorial team to help researchers formulate their study designs before they submit manuscripts to journals for peer review. It’s not pre-publication and does not deal with results. It’s not about posting and ranking authors, and it’s not about rejecting or accepting them. Rather, the project is about providing no strings editorial feedback on study designs. It aims to help a growing group of new researchers get some good paper basics right and optimize their chances of surviving triage and peer review once they do submit to a journal. After feedback, researchers are free to submit to any journal they wish.
This is a somewhat philanthropic project upstream from the standard journal peer review process as a “good paper” engine (somewhat philanthropic because there are obvious branding objectives for the journal). It’s an experiment we launched just recently, and at this stage, we don’t have enough submissions to draw solid conclusions, but we think we are onto something.
What do you think of this?
Best wishes, Neil
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Replies
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To call in the statistician after the experiment is done may be no more than asking him to perform a postmortem examination: he may be able to say what the experiment died of. R.A. Fisher, Indian Statistical Congress, Sankhya, around 1938.
I think this is a great idea, and I hope it works. I guess the problem will be in persuading researchers to submit their studies. Having some studies public might help, so that researchers can see that this is active, and also what sorts of advice are being given.
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I agree it seems a good idea, I especially like the aspect of publishing the feedback online with the study. I’d be very interested to hear how it goes, as you receive “submissions”.
If the author decides not to submit the study to your journal after receiveing your feedback, is he/she allowed to submit the feedback with the manuscript, at submission to another journal?
In this scenario, do you have a charge or do you let people do this for free?
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Thanks guys!
Submission to the Journal of Diabetes Forum doesn’t condition or guarantee subsequent publication in Journal of Diabetes.
It’s free and authors can publish their findings in any journal. If they do decide to submit Journal of Diabetes, then they are provided with a fast track peer review.
The authors decide whether or not they allow us to post their submission with the feedback. Allowing us is not a condition either. We expect that only few will allow posting (so far none have allowed it), and we are probably mostly interested in just posting enough submissions for it to function as an educational tool.
I agree with Bob that it will help to get some of those live, so people can better see what this is.
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Thanks for the answers, Neil. The fast-track peer-review is a good idea for authors who go on to submit to your journal.
I do hope you get some “submissions” because from what I have read, a service providing help with presentation, description and format of study design, is a valuable one.
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