Page 53 - Becoming Metric Wise

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Publishing in Scientific Journals

Referees should:
• Decline the invitation to review if not sufficiently knowledgeable in the
domain of the submission, if they are sure that they cannot finish the job
within a reasonable time (say 1 month), or if there is a conflict of interest.
• Realize that each received document is confidential: its contents may
not be used or diffused further.
• Try to review objectively and in a constructive way. No personal
attacks or scorn should be present in a referee report: substantiated
arguments should be used if one does not agree with contents.
• Only suggest to add references if these added references are really sub-
stantial for the reviewed manuscript. Under no circumstances can a
long list of “referee’s own” articles be suggested for addition.
• Try to come to a conclusion (not a decision, which is the task of the
editor) whether, in their opinion, the paper should be published as is,
revised before publication or rejected.
• Inform the editor at once if fraud or plagiarism is detected. Such
accusations should, however, not be made public without further
investigation.
Editors:
• One can be EIC of at most one journal; being a member of the edito-
rial board of another journal is not a problem.
• An EIC must make decisions about submissions, not about authors.
• The content of each submission is confidential and hence the EIC can
discuss submissions only with authors and reviewers, and possibly with
the editorial board (for whom this too is confidential information).
• The EIC cannot use the contents of submissions for his or her own
work, unless the author has given written consent.
• The EIC does not suggest adding references to the journal (unless
these references are essential for the submitted manuscript). If he or
she does the resulting citations are known as coercive citations
(Martin, 2013);
• If the EIC submits their own work for publication in the journal, or
submits work with which they have a special connection, then they
must relegate all editorial power to a guest-editor, normally a member
of the editorial board. An example how one’s own articles should not
be handled is given in Schiermeier (2008).
• If serious errors are found then the article must be rejected, publica-
tion stopped (if already accepted and the publication process can still
be stopped), or the editor must make sure a correction is published.