10-20 Writing and Publishing Scientific Articles
As far as simply hoping Dr. Jones will publish first, making his information available for inclusion in John’s review, several serious issues arise: Dr. Jones’ paper may not be published by the journal he first sent it to. There might be many delays between John’s return of the paper to the journal and its publication, so John’s review is quite likely to be published before Dr. Jones’ paper. The final article may have important differences from the version John reviews because other peer reviewers and the journal editor may ask for important revisions. If any of these things happened, at the least Dr. Jones would know that John had violated the confidentiality principles of peer review. Issues in the Case of One for Two Mary’s dilemma is familiar to any author who becomes identified as an expert in a certain area. Journal and book editors want reviews, and they want the acknowledged experts to write the reviews. So the expert gets request after request to write them. At first, Mary is flattered and feels obligated to prepare good reviews, taking care to present original ideas in each. But soon she grows tired of writing about the same subject over and over and begins to find ways to simplify the task. Even at that point, she accepts invitations, especially when they come from close colleagues. But as the deadlines approach, Mary realizes that she cannot fulfill all her commitments. There are solutions other than violating the copyright and ethical restrictions on duplicate publication. Mary could write 1 good review, choose the book in which she wishes to publish the original, and then, with permission of the publishers of both books, submit the same article to the editor of the second book. The article’s prior publication would be acknowledged prominently in a footnote to the title page, and written permission to “reprint” the original would be given by the first publisher to Mary and the second publisher. The second editor might be unhappy with Mary, and might in fact, at this late date, choose to drop Mary’s contribution altogether. Had Mary discussed this dilemma much earlier, editor 2 would have been disappointed but at the same time would have had the opportunity to seek another author for the chapter. Another solution, too rarely taken, is to limit the number of invitations accepted. Had Mary said yes to only 1 of the 2 editors, she would not face the dilemma she faces today. Issues in Giving a Friend a Boost Conflicts of interest may arise in the review process. Journals routinely exclude colleagues at the same institution as the author from reviewing a manuscript, but here the conflict involves a former student now at another institution. In this case, Wilma should be aware of the potential bias involved in reviewing Jill’s paper. Wilma may feel certain, however, that she can give an unbiased review. Her review might in fact be even more critical than some other potential reviewer’s. However, were others to know that she reviewed the manuscript, they would most likely think that was inappropriate. Wilma at least should contact the journal to describe her potential conflict. Likely, the journal would have asked her to return the paper without reviewing it.
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