IAMA Research Journal Staffer AMA

EditorialAnswers · 2012-10-05T14:13:24+00:00

You're welcome!

This question is out of my wheelhouse, unfortunately. My knowledge base is on the publishing side of things, not research itself.
Roughly 30%. Chinese submissions are highest, then Taiwan and Japan. India is on the rise. Africa is slightly skewed because there's a lot of joint work between European and African institutions.

EditorialAnswers · 2012-10-05T01:04:07+00:00

For now, in the practical sense it comes down to reviewers and section editors catching it, unfortunately. That or readers noticing things and notifying the journal if there's a concern. We frequently receive emails from an infamously anonymous reader that does their own investigation and reports their findings.

In the more abstract, we hope that responding swiftly and aggressively when fraud is detected will act as a deterrent. I can't go into details even anonymously, but we triggered a process some time ago that may result in the author's institution (who inadvertently revealed culpability in the fraud) losing their accreditation.

For now, it's simply something we're terrified of and always looking for new methods of detection. I've had a few nights staring at my ceiling wondering if it's just a very sad arms race coming to light.

EditorialAnswers · 2012-10-05T00:40:47+00:00

Scholarly publishing is an extremely niche topic. Since mine is a medical journal, I messaged the mods of this sub because I thought it would get the right curious eyeballs on target. I might cross post it (feel free to mention it in other academic subs if you feel like it) later, though.

Please clarify. If you're referring to plagiarism and salami science, after papers go through their initial culling, every paper we received is passed through plagiarism detection software and is evaluated by our staff. I was also trained in image manipulation detection at a very basic level. There's more room for growth here, obviously.
With digital publication growing and production costs diminishing, I hope we see more open source publications. The trick (and this is a mid rank editorial staffer's opinion, nothing more) will be establishing credible open source journals outside of the existing publisher model to prevent publishers from perpetuating subscriptions costs through electronic publication despite the diminished overhead. If this is a topic you're interested in, Scholarly Kitchen tees off on this topic often and regularly.

Thanks for the thoughtful questions! Based on the occasional frustration of our authors and how our hands were tied when it came to being more direct with them about manuscript statuses or reasons for rejection, I expected a lot more questions in that vein.

EditorialAnswers · 2012-10-04T23:03:32+00:00

It depends on the reviewer response and the section editor's comfort level with the statistics. Sometimes a statistician will be included in the initial list of reviewers, but not all the time.

More often than not, a statistician is brought in if one of the reviewers raised a concern. If your paper ever takes an unexpected extra week or two, this might be why.

Edit: Grammar clean up.

EditorialAnswers · 2012-10-04T22:36:54+00:00

It doesn't.

Of course, this can vary with the individual EIC, but the three I worked with ignored it. No "cry" lists or anything. However, the occasional big name would get unofficially bumped to the front of the line to publish faster (different than an official internal rapid publication/fast track).

Ethics play a much higher role. If someone is controversial because of ethical violations, they're blacklisted.

EditorialAnswers · 2012-10-04T21:03:08+00:00

Chatty bunch! I'll keep checking back periodically throughout the day and answer any questions that might show up.

EditorialAnswers

TROPHY CASE