Case Number 02-20
Case in Detail | Anonymised
Growing in an age of modern technology and digitization, the publishing industry has attained much height and standards. I have recently joined a society journal of Asia as a Managing Editor; this journal is publishing quality research papers from the last 10 years. I have surprised to see and realized that a number of high-quality articles which adds a major contribution to the literature are still off the technological record because of being published in a less known society journal. Obviously this is because of not being indexed in major indexing databases.
To set the standard of this society journal, following the demands of the indexing agencies and ethical authoritative organizations, I have started working by editing and revising the Journal’s Policies. During this procedure I faced the following obstacles:
- The demand of being unique in the write-up of Journal’s policies and not to use the already well-defined policies
- Paraphrase an already well defined Journal’s policy
- Writing the policies for the Journal’s website when the experts have developed the flow charts only for some policies
- Plagiarism concern in Journal’s Policy
- Non Availability of Open Access Journal Policies Template
- A large number of organizations with individual opinions and objections and very few points in common for policies
Question(s) for the ACSE Adviders:
We all know that managing a journal is not a full-time job for everyone. The procedure of publishing, its requirements, and the policies are all well known to our community now, but still, I couldn’t get appealing and well documented Polices that can be used for the Journal with full confidence. Considering my Journal’s terms of publishing, how can I judge the suitable clause of the policy for my journal?
Survey Question from ACSE to follow up the case:
- What sort of difficulties you face while finalizing the Journal’s Policies?
- Do you think a well-documented template will serve the community journals? Especially the Asian regions?
- Which segment is the most confusing for you to choose your Journal’s Type?
- Any suggestions or better ideas to help in this regard?
COMMENTS
I copied the questions here and my comments are between lines:
Survey Question from ACSE to follow up the case:
What sort of difficulties you face while finalizing the Journal’s Policies?
It is difficult to make the policy unique because most of the high-quality journal have almost the same policies but they were written in a different way.
Do you think a well-documented template will serve the community journals? Especially the Asian regions?
Always, well-documented template helps the community as it make it easy to allow for the researcher to follow the template.
Which segment is the most confusing for you to choose your Journal’s Type?
The unclear policy, ethics or guidelines.
Any suggestions or better ideas to help in this regard?
I suggest to select a policy of the highest journal then as an expert in English to rephrase it and check the plagiarism after than and continue editing until it is free of similarity. It is difficult but works well.
Before thinking about how to overcome the obstacles indicated in the case study, I believe that we must establish with much precession the scope of our Journals, the topics that each Journal treats always looking towards a wide audience. It is advisable to have a journal that works in several areas; journals with a limited scientific area often have difficulty in meeting the number of volumes needed per year, given the competition and the high number of existing journals.
Not thinking about geographical areas is the best policy for success that a journal can have, prepare an effective for a fairer evaluation of the revised manuscripts, contact the best reviewers. Abandon favouritism in publications.
Based on the design of the journal, it is possible to achieve journals with high impact rates and international recognition.
The points look simple and transparent.
The idea to be unique in the write-up of Journal’s policy and not to use the already well-defined policies, to me is not necessary. The important point to note is the attempt of the journal policy to capture all issues related to article publication in journals. I do not expect any competing issue to arise if there is a good Paraphrase of already well-defined Journal policies. Whatever is your thinking with respect to uniqueness, the visibility you create in terms of proper indexing and the review process are important to create uniqueness. Pursuant to this, the journal should strive to associate with the relevant committee on publication ethics. In order to gain authors’ confidence and prevent redundant or concurrent publication, the policy should account for what happens next, after submission or revision. Submission using Manuscript Central submission system that allows tracking of submission is a good practice. A rich journal policy should include but not limited to the following titles.
• Disclaimer
• Publisher policies
• Company privacy policy
• Confidentiality
• Objectivity and fair play
• Financial and competing interests
• Author contributions
• Redundant or concurrent publication
• Scoop protection
• Preprint policies
• Transfers to and from journal
• Citation policies
• Data deposition
• Resource sharing
• Experimental subjects
• Image manipulation
• Data retention
• Originality and plagiarism
• Corrections and retractions
Starting a new and good journal is quite difficult task. These days in Asia (Pakistan) a journal having impact factor is considered good journal. In my opinion getting impact factor for a journal in first time is most difficult job.There are a lot of journals running from the last 20-30 years but still not able to get IF. On the other hand, there are some other journals, because of good policies they are able to get IF in five years. Good journals having good and dedicated team members too. Open access also increases a chance of IF quickly.