Hi everybody welcome to the NOAA Central
Library this is our 900th brown bag. So we're
very excited to have Dr. Jesse Smith
here from Science magazine
to talk about Science and publishing in
Science and with that I'm gonna let him
take it away.
Great. Thank you Katie. Let me turn on this little device
So the title the talk is Science and publishing in
Science as you can see. I'm Jesse Smith
I'm a senior editor at Science. I've been
there for a while senior editor just
means we've been there long enough not
to be associated editors I've been much
longer than that so I think I might have
a good perspective about the magazine
and about publishing it. So I don't want
to talk about Science without talking
about AAAS which is the parent
organization of Science, AAAS used to
be called American Association for
Advancement of Science and it still is
but we like to call it triple-a s to
de-emphasize the American component.
We've tried very hard over the last
decades to make it a much more
international organization. We've done
pretty well contributions to science
magazine for instance here about 40
percent non-US now so we've been making
great inroads and becoming more
international triple-a s itself was
founded in 1848 its purpose was to
promote development of science and
engineering
at the national level and to represent
the interests of all its disciplines
well that hasn't changed much in the
intervening time we're still scientific
community is much larger and much more
active and much more connected now than
it was in 1848 there weren't so many
scientists and the community wasn't so
big and and they needed an organization
to draw them all together and that's
what Triple A s was and still is we've
become the world's largest jet
Science Society triple-a s has around
120,000 members now from 91 countries
triple-a s serves 10 million people
through primary memberships and
affiliations with scientific societies
so where we're really trying to be as
big and as vocal as influential as we
can be with all of our education
advocacy and diplomatic or diplomacy
initiatives today our mission is the
same we're trying to advance science
engineering innovation for everybody
triple-a s has a shorter pithy or slogan
we're advancing science and serving
society and we take that mission really
seriously and not and that mission of
triple-a s is also integral to the
mission of science itself these are all
the wonderful things you can do you can
see how we promote science and
defendants integrity and everything else
triple-a s is is a very a very varied
organization we do lots of different
things and I'd like to just mention a
couple of these things
is it anybody hear of a fellow triple-a
s fellow I'm always interested if you
see were two police fellows man what
lined up so triple-a spends a lot of
time with engaged in science and science
policy some of the some of the
initiatives that I wanted to highlight
where the policy fellows which are just
asked that we have a Science and
Technology Policy fellows scientists who
want to become more engaged in in
government and governance and public
engagement we send fellows to different
agencies in the US government
I mean there
fellows or NASA fellow to all sorts of
fellows we send fellows or sponsor
fellows in Congress to we have a lot of
congressional allies and we're very
pleased to be able to help contribute to
the integration of good science in is
something that's always important we do
a lot of public engagement with science
and technology one of the things we've
just begun is the leshner Leadership
Institute for public engagement the
science which deals mostly with with
climate change and its effects and how
we adapt as well as mitigate we spend a
lot of time and resources on on helping
with career development for young
scientists so if you're ever interested
in seeing what else is out there
science has lots of good career
development career pages that you can
access education again it's central to
triple-a submission it's specifically
there's project 2061 which is an
initiative to understand and advance
education in science at primary and
secondary school levels a lot of public
engagement to science magazine that
stealth itself was begun in 1880 and
used seed money from Thomas Edison this
is the first science magazine cover I
always like this historical perspective
you can see that the cover is filled
with with advertisements so you know
there was always a big commercial
economic connection between science and
and the rest of the world we started off
with advertising
I guess that's continued to this day the
first issue of science had these
articles United States Naval Observatory
Washington DC by Edward s Holden he was
a and a straw
the national observatory he later became
a president of the University of
California I guess a bit of summer work
so it was a much more modest effort one
began than it is now
these are the instructions to authors
from 1880 and we required very little
authors oops excuse me we required that
articles should be written legibly on
only one side of the paper and articles
receive will be returned when found
unsuitable for the journal so that's and
what was unsuitable well it was papers
that we're not original communications
possessing merit so it was all very
vague and I think it was a lot easier to
publish the Science Center is now now we
have very we are very detailed
instructions for authors of science not
so easy as writing the one side of a
page and and making sure your article
has merit if I'm jumping ahead a little
bit here if you're interested in in
public in science and submitting
something it's worth your while spend
some time going over all of the things
that we asked of authors so this talk
has to be a little bit nonlinear because
publishing this complex and I'm gonna
have to jump back and forth to topics
and so on but there are three types of
peer-reviewed research manuscripts these
are all these are all things that
involved with a print publication okay
science for most of its history was
available only in print we'll talk I'll
talk a little bit more about the
electronic revolution and publishing in
a bit but research articles reports and
reviews are the three types of
manuscripts that we me except
from authors its original research we
have a lot of general policies that are
important I just want to emphasize a
couple it's important to know about the
authorship requirements who's
responsible for what in it in a paper
conflicts of interest prior publication
and presentation and meetings we don't
allow those prior publication we do
allow pre sentation
meetings you should know about our
policies about unpublished data related
papers data deposition data and
materials availability and after
publication an embargo policy so those
if you're going to sit if you're going
to submit something to us please spend
some time going over the instructions to
authors also a more practical level
about formatting and preparation of
figures it will save us all work in the
end if if you're conversing with those
requirements so science today what is
science today that the magazine itself
is some ism is published weekly we
published 51 issues a year the only week
we don't publish is between New Year's
and Christmas when your editorial
independent we decide and only we decide
what we publish we're nonprofit as part
of triple-a s which is a nonprofit
organization so we like to think of
ourselves not as being driven by
financial considerations
we're business we still have to we still
need revenue to publish but we try to
make that secondary concern after after
the publication of the scientifical
itself
the journal has three main parts has
first of all a news section which comes
sequentially first then in the journal
the science news department is editorial
independent is independent of the
editorial department then as those of us
who handle original research we like to
coordinate with them of course but we
don't tell them what to write and they
don't give us any advice about what we
should be looking for or we're
publishing so we're completely
independent and they're great science
news people are just very very
interesting you need for yourself the
second part of the of the journal is the
commentary section which includes policy
for our perspectives perspectives are
short pieces written by scientists that
are that offer insight or a perspective
on results that have been published in
science or in other journals so they're
about topics we particularly want to
highlight or papers we particularly want
to highlight and that we want to explain
in a way a little bit more accessible to
laymen rather than specialist and a lot
of our papers we say we're in general
scientific journal but sometimes it
really seems to tell you the truth that
were collection of highly specialized
research rather than general research
available and interesting definitely so
perspectives are are meant to bridge
that gap between the specialist and the
more general reader and the last of the
sections which are of course I think is
the most important section is that is
that the editorial of the research
section group research articles and
reports and reviews which are submitted
to us and we solicit our published one
our staff consists of about 20 research
editors about 20 full-time editors
sometimes we have more sometimes we have
fewer sometimes part-time sometimes
full-load but there are about 20 of us
all together covering all disciplines
and all sub disciplines that at least as
many as we can we can possibly cover
there are about 200
employees and science itself including
the art people and all the production
people out of a total of about 500
employees at triple-a s science it
really is the the economic engine of
trouble is we're we're what generates
mostly revenue I'll probably talk a
little bit about that later too
one particularly notable thing about
science I think is our Board of
reviewing editors that's abbreviated
board whoops
Board of reviewing editors they are we
have about 200 of them they're
scientists and throughout all
disciplines that we publish in and from
universities from laboratories etc who
are our first line of evaluation of
submissions so we use more mostly to
help guide us choose which submissions
we are going to send out to review but
they have other functions too and I will
get back to that later on
you probably know a lot of people read
science to pay attention to it these are
just some numbers just to con that that
qualitative recognition in 2017 we had a
hundred about a hundred and thirty
thousand print circulation seven and a
half million unique visitors online per
month we try to represent ourselves as
widely and as and as well as we can on
social media this is a little bit dated
2016 but Twitter we had six hundred
thirty eight thousand followers from
Facebook to to have more than two and a
half million fans our people do people
know about Alta metrics here help
metrics is and more not is a
non-traditional way of measuring the
reach and impact of things that are
published so we do very well there about
more than 80% in 2015 more than 90 50 %
to up titled alpha metrics we have a lot
of the top 100 papers usually so so
we're more than just more than just
about regular citation figures but also
broader public impact we are a general
science journal so we publish in lots of
different areas our our our journal
publishes about 60% biological sciences
and 40% physical sciences and that that
breakdown is has existed for decades
earth sciences make them about 7% of our
of the topics that we published by
percentage other big ones of course
physics chemistry biochemistry physics
material sciences are becoming more and
more highly represented in our pages
cell and development biology so so we we
try to publish in all areas I mean
there's some big areas and there's some
small areas but we try to get as many
different ones there as we can again to
brought most broadly represented the
scientific community in the United
States now science is more than just
more than just science magazine like
many publications of nature especially
who have how many baby journals this
nature have now they have something like
40 spin-off journals I think is it that
many 2040 it's it's a lot we've started
doing that to science of course is our
flagship journal but we have a number of
other specialty journals science
signaling right of
an in-house project to present signaling
and that is biological metabolic
signaling pathways for rhythm for the
biological community we now have science
robotics translational medicine science
advances science in immunology so we're
expanding in probably in the future we
will expand in more specialty journals I
don't know what they will be yet future
we'll see I guess I think let's talk
about science advances a little bit too
and then more generally about about
electronic publication so backtracking a
bit open access publication now
everybody's probably aware of the
movement toward open access to
controversies regarding open access
publication versus not open ax is not
always freely available scientific
publication open access began up it's
not a new idea
it's it's gotten a lot of press lately
but it it's not new at all
ideologically goes back to the 1940s the
National Academies I think was was the
first one to go completely open access
the National Academies press started
their open access policy in 1994 and
they're now more than a lot more than
700 open access journals now so it's
it's a movement that's really gained a
lot of momentum and grown legs open
access extends more to further than just
open access journals there's did people
know about sigh hub signup is an online
repository I mean it's huge
50 million scientific academic papers
for free and they've taking them from
open access journals and and traditional
journals and again in order to make
scientific with
information available to the widest
possible audience so in the context of
open access one thing that science has
done in recognition of the of the
importance of the movement and the
necessity of allowing that that
alternative for for authors was we
started science advanced science
advances like our other spin-off
journals had was conceived with a number
of purposes in mind science advances in
particular is not just to accept
overflow and this is nothing I'll get
back through a lot of a lot of our
business and a lot about our decisions
our result purely of the huge number of
submissions that we get we receive far
far more submissions than we can ever
publish and we have to make decisions
all the time about what the what to take
and what to reject which is a really
hard thing because we get lots of really
good papers generally speaking of all
the submissions we get there's 10% at
the top that we know we want to pursue
we want to send out to review that we
think has a good chance to be eventually
accepted 10% at the bottom are things
that we certainly don't want we a lot of
them you called not swords isn't we have
this special letter we send it people
who send papers like that like like
explaining how the eight goddesses will
all be Adam eating them tell us
everything about the unknown universe
that we don't know the liquid drop model
of the Sun there's a called not sort
because we send the letter because these
are not the sort of papers we publish
thank you for but the 80% of papers in
the middle are generally really good
work and there isn't a lot to
distinguish between them in terms of
what quality of time
so because we get so much stuff that we
so many submissions that we really like
that we just can't fit into science one
of the one of the reasons we started
expanding our our stable of journalists
was to accommodate some of those other
papers science can't take science
advances in particular though also had
was conceived with the purpose of
supporting the open access community so
science advances is an open access
journal and if universities require
researchers to publish and open access
journals at least they'll have an
alternative science within them was in
the collection of journals at science
magazine triple-a is Polish open access
has also had a big impact on the
policies decides we're not an open
access to you know we have a large
editorial staff we we rely on revenue
from a number of different sources when
it was only a an imprint publication
science relied on basically two revenue
sources that was membership science
magazine this is the is the thing you
get for becoming a triple-a estimate
okay that's that's the big draw for the
general public I think of triple-a s
membership is a subscription to science
however is Princeton print publication
has become less important relative to
electronic publication membership felt
for many years and as people started
looking at papers online and our revenue
base shifted now instead of membership
dues and print advertising and gifts
being the three main revenue streams for
first triple-a s now site lies
just like the one Noah has like when
most universities have big government
agencies have so that's the online
electronic site access fees that have
largely replaced much of our revenue
stream we still have membership dues
we still have advertising in print but
but now the bulk of our revenue comes
from from the site licenses for online
access so we have chosen because of the
large overhead involved with having so
many editors and proofreaders and the
big art department to continue with the
not an open access but our business
people won't allow us to do that of
course so we're not an open access
journal ourselves but we do as much as
we can convince the business people make
research available to a wider community
and without restrictions more in line
with open access the spirit of open
links so research papers are free twelve
months after publication supplemental
materials are free bakers that we
publish that have important public
health or safety implications which we
try to publish free from the and and
openly from day one so things like a
bowl Ebola and Zika outbreaks we've made
papers that we've published in those
areas free available to anyone we also
do some things in as a service to
authors to help them distribute their
work we allow authors to post papers
we've accepted on their own website at
the time of publication not before
publication
but as soon as the it's published
authors are able to do that we give
authors a link which they can put on
their websites to direct users to to our
site to download and look at the paper
off this retain copyright oh this is
this is something I elected science
partners with Honora and Agora and ORN
chorus and clocks those are all
organizations that are that were made
that were developed to allow
underprivileged communities undeveloped
countries to have access to scientific
literacy honestly a lot of places in the
world just don't have the financial
resources to you gain access to non open
access scientific work and we would like
to do as much as we can to to help those
people who are disadvantaged those ways
in gaining access to to what we publish
at least science also allows posting on
preprint servers like archive in bio
archive that's that's a pretty field
specific thing though I don't know many
of you publish and put things on
preprint servers physicists do a lot
similar the biological communities do
so within within the confines of what
we're allowed to do we like to make
things it's available and accessible as
possible too
I'll talk a little bit more about about
impacts of electronic publication - and
in a bit but if I forget well I'll try
not to forget so people so publishing in
science so what criteria do we use to
select papers for publication well we in
a nutshell we want we want to publish
the most interesting and important
papers so so some of the things some of
the criteria that that we look for in a
paper our novelty papers that that
aren't new research and in books don't
have new results new concepts have a
really poor chance in in our pages if
it's been done before it probably should
go somewhere else if it's if it's just
confirming a previous result or
supporting a previously result it's much
more difficult to convince us that it's
a paper appropriate for publication and
science rather than a more specialized
Journal
so besides novelty we're looking for
broad scope and interest we want to make
a difference in is why the community
with as many people as we can so papers
that are just simply too narrow
topically also face a difficult time in
acceptance by science the third broad
attribute we want to see in a paper is
significant advance so if it's just an
incremental advance in understanding
it's likely to be out completed by other
papers that we have that present more
fundamental advances the fourth quality
the we asked for in papers is just the
high quality research we want to see
great measurements well supported
discussions minimal speculation and just
all-in-all well done research so I
wanted to talk about impact factors a
second because again when there's a lot
of discussion about what impact factors
are and how they might relate to our
selection of papers to impact factors if
you don't know what an impact factor is
it's it's the impact factor of a journal
is computed by taking the total number
of publications in that journal over a
year and divided dividing it by the
total number of citations to the
published articles in that journal over
that year and it's done for the previous
two years of publication so 2018 impact
factors are are computed based on
publications that appeared in 2017 and
2016 every Journal wants to have the
highest impact factor that they can a
lot of decisions about tenure are made
based on the impact factor of journals
in which the scientists public published
impact factor has gotten I think been
given a lot more importance than it then
it deserves but it's a rough guide to
how successful of journalism presenting
work and presenting good work so just so
you can have numbers to associate with
in fact factors in science science and
nature of course are the two most widely
read general science journals nature and
science now as of 2000 the less the last
the last published
use for impact package well are about 41
or 42 science advances as an impact
factor of about eleven and a half now we
try not to make impact factor as a
driving force in our selection of papers
going back to the mission of triple-a s
we really do want to represent the best
science in you know in a wide range of
fields some fields just aren't big
enough to generate big impact factors
they're very small communities to work
on very important problems and and
publishing a in a more limited numbers
that just cannot generate lots of
citations for their papers but they're
still important work so we try not to we
try not to penalize smaller communities
at the expense and big communities if we
were only interested in the impact
factors we would only publish biomedical
research cancer research I mean that I
think the most highly cited journal the
one with the biggest impact factor is
it's a clinical cancer Journal that has
a an impact factor of something like 120
or 240 something ridiculously I never
science has chosen not to overemphasize
impact factors I mean of course we're
happy that we have a high impact factor
but it's not a it's not a primary
criterion in our selection of papers
we're not just chasing impacts were
impact factors we're trying to find
thinkers that make real scientific
impact which actually was a very very
hard thing to do
okay so if if you're interested in
submitting a paper of science you can
find information about how to submit to
science at at the science magazine
website which is basically science
Mangalore we have a large information
for authors section again we have to
give you a better idea about what
different types of submissions
the editorial requirements for different
types of submissions reports in the
shortest of of our research categories
they contain about 2,500 total words
which works out to be in case you're
it's maybe easier to think about work
main text because these 2,500 words
count figure captions and references and
everything else it's about 2,000 words
of main text with four figures and
tables the longer format is a research
article which contains about 4,500 words
total which is about 3,000 words of main
text as much as many as six figures and
tables those categories are are
something that evolves within the
context of print publication they were
the sizes that it seemed to fit for a
long time into into the journal itself
into the printed journal now that's
changed a lot and I want to spend a
little bit of time about talking talking
about how that's changed with electronic
publication third category of paper is
is well there's a review which are
reviews of of a specific area
emphasizing work done in the last three
or four or five years
they're usually solicited though rather
than rather than submitted independently
now science the the activity not the
magazine has become incredibly more
information intensive than it was 20 or
30 or 40 years ago science I mean
science magazine we didn't even have
color covers until the 1970s I think
okay and it was a print magazine
exclusively until the 1990s our first
electronic issue was in the mid 1990s
well with the advent of electronic
publication our whole idea about what an
article coder
we change maybe most importantly that
the volume of material presented in a
paper no longer was restricted by the
physical limitations of in print
publication we still have only a certain
number of pages a year in the journal
for print publication but electronically
you know the it's the vistas are much
broader for what can be considered or
what can be accommodated as an article
so along with the capability to present
more information the the incredible
intensification and and an explosion in
the amount of data that go into papers
that the conceptual complexity of work
now is they're all much greater than
they used to be so we've tried to
accommodate those those changes in the
research and publication landscape with
a number of different things one is an
online research article online research
articles just like reports and research
articles that are for original research
but because they're presented online
only they can be much longer they can be
up to 8,000 words they can include which
includes methods integrated within the
paper additional figures you can put all
sorts of multimedia things in you can
put movies you can put simulations much
larger range of of content can be
accommodated online research artists and
that lets us circumvent the print
limitations and the lot of shorter
articles to appear in print rather than
just online if you submit to science
some flexibility is allowed in the
initial submission but that goes only so
far we don't want you know if you send
in a paper that's 20 pages long as that
a4 pages long it probably isn't that
we're going to get that app to review
because that's just too much of a burden
on referee
to deal with so much more information
that can be contained in a paper another
thing we've done to accommodate
electronic the the freedom of electronic
publication is to add supplementary
materials that's something that added
that we added in the 1990s supplementary
materials are posted online so they
don't bear in print
they contain materials methods
additional supporting text they don't
they're not meant to include text it is
of primary importance that really should
appear in the main article it's not just
overflow for the main article it's four
things to support the work that appears
in the main text in the main manager
it can include it will of course include
supplementary references use it for
backup data for data in general movies
large data sets etc another thing we've
done in response to the trend to
electronic publication is first release
it used to be called science Express if
you've ever seen science express papers
these are papers that are published
early online we don't publish all of our
printed papers as first released but a
good number of them we do by publishing
early online the papers usually appear
two to three weeks before they appear in
print the average time from acceptance
of a paper to print publication is
currently about five to six weeks so
instead of waiting five to six weeks to
get an accepted paper and you can get a
paper in in two or three weeks it
doesn't have to be tied to a specific
issue as the french version is
let me say something about our editorial
policies then again which you can see in
on our website in the information from
author section that the picture is great
I love that picture at some sort of a
parasite intestinal parasite
it looks nice doesn't it so general
policies as I mentioned earlier we will
not consider any paper well maybe I
didn't mentions we won't consider for
publication any paper which has been
published already or under consideration
by publication uh sir
we want something to be unique only only
in our in our possession under our
control we don't want anything and and
that's partly culture to a lot of a lot
of communities or especially in
different countries don't consider prior
publication any kind of offence we won't
we won't consider a paper that has been
published before or it's been published
on the internet that can compromise its
originality we do allow as I said before
the posting of of earlier drafts of
papers on on pre prune servers however
we don't allow those free print service
to contain manuscripts that have been
submitted to science they can only be
like I say earlier versions so we do we
do require originality and exclusivity
in that sense some of the our research
standards there's a a lot of emphasis
now on making data available we our
policies require that that all the data
used in the analysis be be available to
the reader there's no such thing as as
as unsighted or or unavailable
references
Dana not published anything like that
everything that a reader needs to
understand and to reproduce the data
have to be available they can be
available in the paper in the
supplementary materials or even better
in a data repository in a permanent
freely accessible data repository there
are lots of in the world now now there
are tons of data repositories you
probably know better than I which bigger
depositories are important in your field
but there are ways to find data
repositories if you don't know the best
ones for for your work we also want to
see that transparency in in methods
encode in materials again if if
information is necessary for a reader or
another researcher to route produce or
understand the work that should be
available to now we require computer
code used for modeling and data analysis
to be deposited into public accessible
repository upon group publication that's
not always possible this gets to be the
size of models and the computing
resources needed to run big models like
climate models or other very very
complex models is prohibitive you can't
possibly expect authors to post those
code and so while generally we we do
require when possible for for code to be
included in supporting material some way
it's not always possible we realistic
about that and we we have to make those
decisions on a case-by-case basis there
are a lot of
I won't spend time here on on which data
repositories are available or which ones
you should use if you do want to find
resources about what data repositories
are available you can you can look at an
organization called cop desk they have a
web site www.kpbs.org/news/evening
edition
archives for data that you've produced
before I talk about what an editor does
I want to say something about again our
Board of Review editors 200 practicing
scientists they they're the first thing
that we ask them to do for us is to help
us decide whether a paper is is a good
candidate for being sent out for an
in-depth review so I think on the
averaging on average about 70% of the
submissions that we receive are sent to
boards to remember at least one member
of board or reviewing editors for for an
initial expert assessment another thing
that the board of review editors do is
the suggest reviewers which is is maybe
the central activity in in choosing
reviews as a central activity probably
in evaluating a manuscript you know you
have to get the best year of yours
possible our board members can also act
as mediators during later stages of
review and I'll talk about that in a
second so now we as editors have to
oversee the entire review process so
what do we do our primary
responsibilities then include finding
the best manuscripts to publish that's
our number one goal so we decide which
manuscripts should go to review we
arrange for reviewers we make the final
decisions on whether or not to accept a
paper after it's been reviewed we help
develop special issues and reviews we
science publishes about 10 or 12 special
issues the year which are collections of
review papers usually on a particular
subject editors also travel we travel
the meetings we travel of institutions
to talk to people in labs to see
research get an idea what's happening
field
I don't write much I write little things
called this week in science twist this
tiny 100 more summaries of papers that I
handled when we publish them we interact
with the news department we help with
podcasts and multimedia activities at
science but where we editors are the are
the people responsible for a scientific
evaluation of submissions so the the
journal we get about 13,000 well less
than that now we is probably between
eleven and twelve thousand submissions
every year the nuts and bolts of the
review process are when a paper is
submitted to us it gets assigned to a
particular editor who has expertise in
the area of the research our first step
is is to evaluate the papers ourselves
on a picker on my desk I'll read it get
some initial idea about it
I will circulate it to other editors
with expertise that may be useful in
evaluating the paper to get their
opinions often I will send it to a board
member you know in order to get his or
her opinion about the research to decide
whether or not it's something I really
want to send out to review so within one
to two ideally its operative word there
ideally within one to two weeks we can
have enough input about a given paper if
we can decide whether or not to to send
it out for in-depth review about 25% of
the papers that are submitted are sent
out to in-depth review about 75% of the
papers that we receive are rejected
without in-depth review before in depth
review on the basis of the opinions of
my opinion my fellow editors opinions
and the opinions of whichever of our
board of reviewing editors see the
flavors
so the 25% of the paper that that are
sent out to in-depth review synaptic
peer review to two or three or four or
five scientists depend how confident we
are about our ability to assess work our
our confidence about how well the
different reviewers we've chosen can
address all the aspects of the paper we
ask referees to to return reviews within
two weeks but that's often impossible
you know scientists have a lot of
demands in the times and they can't
always get get reviews back in time
after the first round of review is
complete I and my fellow editors and
sometimes more members if we choose to
enlist them to to parse some difficult
reviews or your views that disagree a
lot we have to decide what to do at that
point after the first round of reviews
we can do two things we can reject the
paper at that point or we can accept the
paper I guess three things we can reject
the paper we can accept the paper or we
can decide we need more review so for
one it's always nice to have a paper
that can that can be accepted or
rejected after one round of review both
for our sake and for the author's City I
mean we want to get things out as
quickly as possible for authors so we
either reject it accept it or send it
back for further review
sometimes papers are shut out for two
even three even four rounds of review
it's we'd like to get things done within
a couple of grouts review but it's not
always possible so it goes around to
certain the review circle as many times
as it needs to go for us to make a
decision we can either reject it or
accept it so about
75% of the papers which is reviewed are
rejected at that point about 25% of the
papers that are reviewed are accepted
that means around currently around 8% of
the submissions the science are accepted
for publication at this point to accept
or reject a paper so a paper which is
rejected before in-depth review it's
usually because one of these reasons the
scope of the work is too narrow it's not
novel enough its topically unsuited for
us and then I guess that has to that's
related to being too narrow
if the dating data or conclusions aren't
convincing that's a common reason for
rejection too much speculation I mean if
you want your own conclusion make sure
it's solid if a paper is too descriptive
so there's not enough of conceptual
advance involved that's a good reason
for the rejection of a paper if the
advance is incremental or sometimes an
oversaturated subject area sometimes we
just get lots and lots of papers on on
us on the topic and we and we think well
it's it's not a service to to our
community to publish another paper again
that usually has relates to work no
longer having significant novelty or is
or it's too incremental in advance so
the review process you know this is
scientific cartoons often aren't very
funny but this I think is it a way
people often feel about about peer
review you're going through this
gauntlet it's it's it's a
it's not always completely objective
process we try to make it a subjective
pasta's
process as possible but peer review is
in an imperfect way to evaluate papers
we it's the best way we know it's like
democracy it's the bestest we have but
it's it's not perfect either
Wow I'm running late I'll try to speed
up a little bit here so choosing your
viewers is one of the most important
aspects of reviewing a paper well how do
we choose reviewers well editor
experience we know a lot of people in
the community and we know a lot of
people who are good for reviewing
specific work
we rely on suggestions from our board of
reviewing editors we have a very large
database of papers and and scientists
and reviews that I have done and that's
also a good resource we use from web
literature researches we also rely a lot
and they're very very useful to consider
reviewers suggested by authors you get
lots of great ideas and if you submit a
paper please think of as many good
objective reviews as you can do
including the list of suggested
reviewers we tried to make we try to
gather reviewers from a variety of
experience levels more junior more
senior scientists lots of different
backgrounds locations institutions
we're very we're trying to be very
proactive about diversity you know women
minorities they're underrepresented in
the scientific community in general and
they're even more underrepresented in in
in a in authors and reviewers pool so we
try and we would like your help to try
to increase diversity of authorship and
reviewing pools and so all of your
suggestions of women minorities as
reviewers are really appreciated some
people of course you want to avoid and
your suggestions and reviewers closed
associates people not to avoid include
people who appear in your reference
lists young professors and competitors
you'd be surprised how how useful it can
be to have competitors reviewing your
paper because
more often than not there these reviews
that we get are done in good faith and
sometimes a competitor will be able to
identify the importance of research that
that someone not as closely involved in
the field understands after reject
rejection after after review happens for
a number of reasons again incremental
work data which do not support the
conclusions well enough
insufficient novelty narrow scope and
just because things are so competitive
all of our decisions have to be relative
decisions we have lots of good papers
that we just can't fit into the journal
because they're uh they're competing
with other good papers and and so our
decision is necessarily on relative
merit rather than absolute America which
is another good reason we have we
started science advances because so many
papers we would love to take we just
simply don't have neutral so again if if
you submit and reject it
you're you joining a pool of 92% of
submitting authors it's a crazy business
model we get rid of ninety you know more
than 90% of our raw material you know
without using it so the science
information portal oh my goodness hum
I'm over time I'll have to skip the
things I'd wanted to tell you about
reviewing we like to encourage people to
review and yes reviewers and gives them
guidelines but I'm sorry did you stick
longer than I thought
and I wanted to know if there were any
quick questions
because I'm sure there are things that I
didn't say that you want to know
huh I would say only a few percent of
our papers are solicited it's actually a
very small number one thing we don't do
which maybe some people might think of
is solicitation is our policy is not to
entertain
pre-submission employers so a paper if
you have a paper you want to submit
decide for us to evaluate you read have
to submit it officially don't unless an
author I mean an editor's especially
generous won't try to give advice to an
author about a paper that's not
officially submitted sometimes we'll say
oh well topically that's appropriate for
submission but we won't do an evaluation
in any depth at all of the paper that's
not formally submitted to science so so
some classes of papers reviews are
mostly solicited some are did admit
dependently submitted but the
overwhelming majority of our research
papers are are submitted without any
encouragement or previous contact
between the audience we believe thanks
for bearing with me i'm sorry i
direction so much at the end membership
to triple-a us subscription and sciences
that changed significantly when articles
or journals became online yes yes
membership numbers did drop and we're
aggressively pursuing members because
it's because the broader activities and
importance of triple-a s so that's
something we've been struggling to
reverse and in the last year or two we
have reversed that
that decline so good question and we're
always working perception that science
is done at NOAA is blue collar and would
you kind of either way suggest how NOAA
staff can overcome that perception
well I is an editor and speaking for
other editors we don't have that
perception at all that perception may be
I don't know where that perception would
would originate or who holds it but no
we we don't have any we don't make any
white collar and blue collar
distinctions or have those perceptions
about anybody's research I mean we
worked really hard to root to consider
and to evaluate paper purely on its
content not you know its origin or
anything else it's just solely content
dependent no they're not if if you would
like a submitted paper to be considered
for publication in science advance if
it's not considered further science you
have to you have to admit that request
paper that's from a very small research
area well again we rely both or all on
our expertise as as editors on
suggestions from our board members, on
suggestions from the authors which
as I said are often very, very helpful
now we evaluate suggestion of course you
know we're we know something about most
of these fields ourselves and are able
to judge how objective suggested
reviewers may be, but
we use all of those resources that we
can again. I'm also doing literature
searches seeing who's cited in
the manuscript all of those things go
into helping us decide who to ask for
reviews. One last question, I'm just gonna
summarize this, what can NOAA
authors do to really capture
Science's attention?
Send us great research on important
things really know what doesn't need to
capture our attention know is is a very
big player you know that appears in our
on our screens all the time no one
doesn't have a problem with with this
ability at science we really see you
clearly so yeah don't don't ever feel
like we're not we're not cognizant of
you of your presence and and that we
don't appreciate your size and value and
everything else that was great I love
NOAA! Well thank you so much, I know our
audience in the room has left, but thank
you for those who have stuck around
online and thank you so much! Well thank
you for having me.
