Simon Linacre Editorial

Cabells signs transparency declaration

Ever since Cabells started in the 1970s, it has sought to shine a light on journals and highlight information needed by academic scholars. Simon Linacre shares today’s news that Cabells has signed a transparency declaration aimed at opening-up peer review and editorial policies.

Cabells is delighted to announce that today it has become just the second institution to sign the Declaration on Transparent Editorial Policies for Academic Journals. As well as becoming a signatory, Cabells will be working with other supporters to work on improving the transparency for all aspects of editorial policy.

The Declaration was formed last year by the participants of the meeting “IT Tools in Academic Publishing: between Expectations and Challenges”, held at Leiden University in The Netherlands on 5-6 July. The aim was to promote greater openness in peer review and editorial procedures, and those individuals signing up were from publishers such as Elsevier, IOP and Brill, institutions such as Tilburg and Paris Descartes Universities, and industry operators PubPeer and Origin Editorial.

Key aims

At the heart of the Declaration there are four clear publication phases where Cabells believes greater transparency will benefit authors and editors, as well as the scholarly publishing environment as a whole. These are:

  1. Submission: Journals and publishers explain editorial governance, including the precise composition of the editorial board, the scope of the journal, the applicable ethics policies, and the use of journal metrics, including rejection rates
  2. Review: Journals and publishers should explain the criteria for article selection (e.g. the relevance of novelty and/or anticipated impact and methodological rigor) and the timing of review in the publication process (e.g. whether registered reports and/or post-publication review are used). They should be clear about the extent to which authors’ and reviewers’ identities will be known (blinding), and to whom review reports will be communicated. They should also specify how reviewers will be selected, instructed, or possibly trained, and explain how digital tools such as similarity scanners and scanners for digital image manipulation will be used and whether any reporting guidelines are applied
  3. Publication: Journals and publishers should make information about the review process of published articles available on the article-level, by detailing the roles in the review process (e.g. specify how many reviewers were involved and what other people contributed to the final decision), what criteria for acceptance and what digital tools were used
  4. Post-publication: Journals and publishers should explain the criteria and procedures for corrections, expressions of concern, retractions, or other rectifications or changes to published material.

(Source: www.ru.nl/transparencydeclaration)

Going forward, Cabells will be using these tenets as guidance on the decisions it makes for journals it assesses for both its Whitelist and Blacklist products. The Declaration states that making editorial policies more transparent will require a concerted effort by publishers and editors, but this effort will be rewarded by trust in the research community. Cabells believes this is the sincere aim of every responsible publisher and editor, and as such is proud to sign the Declaration as part of its ongoing support for scholarly communications.

Simon Linacre Editorial, Open Access, Plan S

Cabells Launches New Blog

Cabells today launches this new blog site, The Source, which brings the original posts and news coverage from our popular bi-weekly newsletter to a wider audience. Simon Linacre introduces the new site along with some wider thoughts on scholarly communications.

Earlier this week I attended the annual Research 2 Reader Conference, which has earned somewhat of a reputation in recent years for, as one delegate put it, “emitting more light than heat.” R2R, as it has become known, aims to use the judicious mix of publishers, librarians and scholarly communication bodies that attend to try and move many of the conversations forward that often become bogged down in the rhetoric and corporate-speak that blight so many other events.

True to their mission, the organizers did well to focus minds on the two big discussion points of the day in Plan S and Sci-Hub. Inviting Science Europe’s Marc Schlitz, one of the key people involved in progressing Plan S, to give the opening keynote ensured plenty of coverage on the first day through the usual social media channels. Later, two willing volunteers tried to pull apart the moral conundrum that is Sci-Hub and its use by debating mano-a-mano whether it did more harm than good for scholarly communications. (Good won by a nose on the votes.)

Communicating what?

What struck me during the event was that, as with other major debates such as Brexit or climate change, the communication is done most effectively in the ‘bubble’ in which the debating parties exist, with little or no apparent engagement from the people that the matters at hand actually impact? For both Plan S and Sci-Hub, the views and narrative from the perspectives of academics, authors, early career scholars, and editors are drowned out by the ‘professionals’ in scholarly communication.

And so, beginning today, we are going to try and change things.

Welcome to the first blog published directed to our new, dedicated blog page designed to represent the different views and voices of those in the trenches of scholarly communications. Many of you will have received our newsletter The Source every two weeks, and this will continue to share curated news from multiple sources around the world about academic publishing and higher education. However, to develop engagement with our readers and highlight their interests and concerns, we have established this blog and hope to add real color to the debates around such issues as Plan S.

New era

In addition to regular blog posts from myself, colleagues and invited guests, we will also be including:

  • highlights of related research Cabells has undertaken or supported
  • details of ongoing news and activities through our dedicated Twitter account
  • access to a rapidly growing set of free resources aimed at improving best practice in research, publishing and scholarly communications in general.

Since its founding over 40 years ago, Cabells services have grown to include both the Journal Whitelist and Journal Blacklist, manuscript preparation tools, and a suite of powerful metrics designed to help its users find the right journals, no matter the stage of their career. Our new blog has been put together with your needs front and center, and we invite you to get onto the comment section and let us know what you are thinking!

P.S. If you would rather comment directly, please feel free to email me at simon.linacre@cabells.com and hopefully we can start to create some interesting new posts.

For more information about Cabells, visit https://www2.cabells.com/.

Simon Linacre Editorial, Getting published

Bridging the Validation Gap

The pressure on academics is not just to publish, but to publish high research and to do so in the right journals. In order to help researchers with what can be a monumental struggle, Cabells is launching an enhanced service offer with leading editing services provider Editage to offer scholars the chance to up their game.

What is the greatest obstacle for authors in their desire to publish their research? This is a common question with a multitude of answers, much of them depending on the personal circumstances of the individual, but there are some things that everyone must overcome in order to fulfill their potential in the field of academia. Quality research is the starting point, ensuring that it makes an original contribution to the current body of knowledge. But what about finding the right journal, and ensuring the article itself is word perfect?

These constitute what I would call the ‘validation gap’ that exists for all authors. In the publication process for each article, there are points where the author should check that the intended journal they would like to submit their work to is legitimate and whether it has the required quality aspects to publish their work. The Cabells Blacklist and Whitelist were designed to help authors with these questions, and today Cabells is stepping up its partnership with Editage to relaunch its Author Services support page.

New beginning
Far too little support is given to researchers about publishing in universities, which is why I and others involved in scholarly communication have always been content to share some of our knowledge with them on campus or through webinars. Universities or governments set benchmarks for researchers to publish in certain journals without equipping them with the skills and knowledge to help them do that. This is incredibly unfair on researchers, and understandably some struggle. They need much greater support in writing their articles, especially if they do not have English as a first language, and understanding how the publication process works.

Universities can offer great support to researchers from Ph.D. supervision and research ethics up to teaching and public engagement. However, when it comes to publication of articles there is this chasm that needs to be crossed to develop academic careers and help is too often found wanting. This is a crucial part of the journey for early career scholars and even more experienced scholars, and along with Editage, Cabells is aiming to bridge that gap.

Give it a try
So, if you or any of your colleagues are about to take the trip over this yawning divide, why not give our new service a go. Just go to the website at https://cabells.editage.com/ and let Editage do the rest. And once you are happy with your article, check that the intended journals on your shortlist are legitimate by using the Blacklist, and have the necessary quality benchmarks by using the Whitelist. And then, once the validation gap has been successfully negotiated, you can click ‘send’ with peace of mind.

NB: For help on using the Whitelist and Blacklist in your journal search, you can use Cabells’ BrightTALK channel, which aims to answer many of the individual user queries we receive in one place. Good luck!