High Impact made by famous ones
universal research
Sunday, 07 October 2007 16:24 UTC
I was wondering how much weightage does editors of high impact journals give to papers containing names of established scientists compared to those that don’t have them in the initial screening before sending to peer review. After seeing some of the recent papers with same/similar data and conclusion ending up in journals with considerable differences in impact factor I get this feeling. So does famous and established scientists can coax the editors of big journals to send their papers for peer review compared from those of less famous ones?
-
Replies
Jump to resultsResults
-
The short answer is ‘no’.
The long answer is as follows. I’d have to say that papers from more experienced authors are subject to even greater scrutiny than those from people whose names aren’t familiar. After all, famous names are expected to cleave to very high standards indeed. It’s not that we let inexperienced authors get away with standards that are any lower, but we would certainly not discriminate against authors on the basis of familiarity. In fact, nothing pleases me more than seeing first-rate research coming from people I’ve never heard of. Of course, people who are relatively new to the field will not be so much in the habit of sending papers to front-rank journals, and so may not be well-acquainted with the many and very fiddly procedural aspects of sending in a manuscript and dealing with peer review and so on. But one cannot blame people for that – that would be like chastising small children for not being older than they are.
In my experience, which is handling papers on comparative biology (evolutionary biology, palaeontology and related areas), people are very friendly and accommodating. Senior people are as likely as not to make allowances for junior colleagues. But such altruism may (or may not) be the case in research areas that are more competitive.
-
I am asked this question all the time when I give talks on how to publish your paper in Nature or wherever you want. I agree with Henry, of course, and would add that I have always found this phenomenon a great example of “Correlation does not imply causation.”
“Famous and established scientists” often achieved that status because they are good at designing experiments, writing papers, and targeting their papers to the appropriate journal. But non-“famous” scientists can be just as good at all those things.
Some of the best papers we get are from young scientists, just like first novels. These are often the “wow I can’t believe no one ever thought of this” papers. And some of the best papers we get are from established scientists who can put five postdocs onto a problem and get it solved within two weeks.
One other thing: non-“famous” scientists may be intimidated and not send their paper to the top-level journal, even when it might be appropriate. That would be a shame.
-
It gives a good feeling reading that not much weightage is given to person/s stature when deciding for peer review and during the process of peer review.
Is it possible to make the process of initial selection of papers for peer review to peer review anonymous from the side of authors? What I mean is whether we can create a system where in editors and reviewers also wont know who the authors are until the paper is finally accepted. I believe this method like anonymous review will eradicate any favoritism making the system more transparent and a level playing field for all depending strictly based on content of the paper.
What editors and reviewers think about this? -
The question of peer-reviewer and editor blinding during peer review is discussed in several articles in our peer-review debate, so that is the best place to look for the answer to your question.
One issue is that it is always pretty easy for an editor or reviewer to know who the authors are even when their names are removed, as most authors refer to their earlier work in their introduction, discussion and reference lists. Peer-reviewers will also know who the authors are because they will have heard about the general work and ideas of the authors via conferences and other standard interactions between scientists. Most people in a field know broadly the work of other scientists in that field. -
I have finished my PhD just last year and during my PhD, when I used to see “similar” papers coming in top-quality journals from top-notch scientists (may be top 10% in their fields), I used to think that probably it is because of their established names. There is no way that these very similar papers from the same authors should have appeared in these journals (for instance one in Journal of American Chemical Society, another in Nature Materials, and third one in Angewande Chemie). There are several such instances, which atleast ‘indicates’ biasedness (or carelessness or favourism) in decision making process.
Isn’t it true that if the editors get a manuscript from a highly reputed scientist, they get an impression that since this paper is from so-and-so, it is expected to be of good quality?.. let’s send it for review atleast and let’s see what reviewers decide…. (OR do they do so because they dont want to upset their colleagues, who are editors of some other journal.. isn’t a phenomenon of “returning favourism” going on in the scientific publishing? [because corresponding authors might not be able to figure out the referees, but they would definitely know the editors, who rejected their manuscript from being sent to review]…
I don’t blame all the editors, but some probably do that… May be, if some of the editors are reading this blog, they might share their honest opinion… If it is just my misconception, I would like to get it cleared at this early stage of my career…
But, whatever the case is, I feel that even if scientific publishing scenario might be returning favours to “top-scientists”, it doesn’t go against early career researchers… and as Henry stated above, editors are always pleased to see elegant work from young researchers, who have probably submitted their first independent manuscript (without big names on it) to big journals.. i have experienced it myself and i no more care about favourism issues …. that is the part of the system and i accepts it….!!!
-
As you might imagine, editing is making a series of decisions and judgment calls, all day long. Not everyone would make the same decision. You are making your own judgment in saying “There is no way that these very similar papers from the same authors should have appeared in these journals….” Clearly the editors of those journals and ideally 2 to 4 referees did not agree with you. Everyone clearly has their own ideas about what “should appear” in each journal — and believe me, we do hear about those opinions for Nature, but that’s part of the fun of the dialogue we have with those in the field.
You are asking two different questions there. Is it true that if we get a paper from an established investigator, we might expect the work to be of a certain quality level? Yes, as Henry and I indicated, we would probably know this person and would expect this work to be of similar quality to previous submissions/publications, but of course we judge each work on its own merits. Your second question is, does that make us more likely just to send it out for review to see what referees think, just because it’s from an established investigator? As we indicated above, the answer is no; if the paper does not have a certain level of (in our case) novel biological insight or sufficient conceptual advance, then there is no point in using up everyone’s time and effort by sending it to review.
-
I’d like to follow up on one of Vipul’s points. What do you think about the same authors getting very similar papers published in different journals? As you say Chris, editors of the various journals are free to make their own decisions about what to publish. But I think one of Vipul’s points is that it’s not productive for the scientific community to have similar papers from the same authors coming out in different journals.
We can debate about just how similar ‘similar’ papers are and I don’t think we can or should get into that debate here. My question is: is there any kind of mechanism or system to check whether an author has submitted slightly different versions of the same paper to multiple journals? And how much time does an editor spend scouring the literature to make sure a paper similar to the submitted manuscript hasn’t already been published elsewhere?
-
Following up on my previous comment…is there some utility in having slightly different versions of the same paper coming out in different journals that Vipul and I aren’t appreciating here?
-
I’m not sure what you mean by “similar papers”. Of course most researchers have fairly defined programs, and the stories that develop over time within a particular group will have some continuity in terms of subject matter.
Actual duplication of studies, however, is generally recognized as unethical (and to answer Corie’s question, there’s a Commentary in this week’s Nature exactly on this subject). While no journal that I’m aware of uses such text-mining programs to search every submission for duplication, editors do try to determine whether the submitted work is novel (by searching PubMed, for example, or asking an expert for informal advice). There’s always a chance, though, that duplication may not be caught if the authors (deliberately or not) omit relevant citations to related work. If the duplication is also missed by the reviewers and the work is published, the journal is within its rights to retract the paper if the journal’s policies prohibit duplication.
Ultimately, the editors of a journal need to decide whether the data in a submission meet the editorial criteria, including that of conceptual novelty, for their own journal. That implies that similar, but not necessarily duplicate, work can be published in different journals.
-
Thanks for the responses from Chris, Corie and Angela…
In the line of follow-up discussions, as Chris mentioned “if the paper does not have a certain level of (in our case) novel biological insight or sufficient conceptual advance, then there is no point in using up everyone’s time and effort by sending it to review.”… I wish the things were same in case of all the editors… and possibly that’s why NPG journals are more reputed than many publishing groups…
When I mentioned “similar papers”, I meant it in terms of sufficient scientific novelty (similar, but not same). For instance, if an author publishes “synthesis of gold nanoparticles by a particular route” in one good journal, and then publishes “silver nanoparticles synthesis by the same route” in another good journal, it might not appear sufficiently novel to many of us (since both Au and Ag systems are known to behave similarly for decades).. But again, everybody has their own opinion…
As Angela said, it is true that second follow up work warrants publication, however that’s where the quality(/impact/reputation) of the journal comes into picture (for instance- how much minimum novetlty an NPG journal would expect?)… and I reckon, that’s where role of the editors and reviewers become even more crucial…
Considering the huge amount of manuscripts submitted for scientific publishing, I understand that the task of the Editors is not easy, and there always remains a possibility of “human-error”… But, as mentioned in the commentary posted in the current issue of Nature, usage of documents matching tools by editors and reviewers would possibly minimize this so-called “human-error” in the future…. !!!
Results
-
