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CHAPTER 3

Publishing in Scientific Journals

In this chapter, we discuss three main topics: Editorship and peer review;
open access (OA); and scientific misconduct such as fraud, plagiarism, the
issue of retractions and the integrity of the publication record. This chap-
ter deals with publishing in scientific journals; other forms of publishing
were discussed in Chapter 2, Scientific Research and Communication
Subsection 2.3.1.

3.1 EDITORSHIP AND PEER REVIEW
3.1.1 Peer Review
The term peer is used here in the sense of a scientific colleague. Peer
review is the act, performed by a peer, of reading a scientific work or
proposal and writing critical comments or a review on it. In this context,
peers are also referred to as reviewers or referees. According to Csiszar
(2016), peer review as we know it today originated in 1831 from a pro-
posal of Cambridge professor William Whewell to the London Royal
Society to publish reports on all submissions sent for publication in the
Philosophical Transactions. Yet, after 2 years these reports became private
and anonymous. The idea that reviewing had to be done to ensure the
integrity of science came much later. According to Csiszar (2016) this
happened near the turn of the 20th century. In this way, the editor and
referees became voluntary gatekeepers with respect to the integrity of
science. However, until late in the 20th century, submitted manuscripts
were often only reviewed by the main editor and members of an
editorial board. The journal Nature, for instance, only began external
refereeing in 1973.
In this section, we focus on peer review of articles submitted for
publication in scientific journals, conference proceedings, or book
chapters. Of course, complete books are (or can be) peer reviewed as well
(Verleysen & Engels, 2013) and peer reviews play a decisive role in
research evaluations e.g., for hiring or tenure decisions, and in

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