The second part of Q3 asks about the role of stakeholders (other than researchers) in research communication, and an important group is editors.
The World Association of Medical Editors newsletter refers to a blog that looks at the integrity of editors.
See the full newsletter here: https://wame.org/global-access.php?id=102
And the blog here: http://deevybee.blogspot.com/2022/09/we-need-to-talk-about-editors.html
"We need to talk about editors...Even if an editor starts off well, they may over time start to think 'What’s in this for me?' and decide to exploit the opportunities for self-advancement offered by the position. The problem is that there seems little pressure to keep them on the straight and narrow; it's like when a police chief is corrupt. Nobody is there to hold them to account...we see clearcut instances of paper mill outputs [*see note below] that have apparently been approved by a regular journal editor...some preliminary suggestions:
1. Appointment to the post of editor should be made in open competition among academics who meet specified criteria.
2. It should be transparent who is responsible for final sign-off for each article that is published in the journal.
3. Journals where a single editor makes the bulk of editorial decisions should be discouraged...
4. There should be an editorial board consisting of reputable people from a wide range of institutional backgrounds, who share the editorial load, and meet regularly to consider how the journal is progressing and to discuss journal business.
5. Editors should be warned about the dangers of special issues and should not delegate responsibility for signing off on any papers appearing in a special issue.
6. Editors should be required to follow COPE guidelines about publishing in their own journal, and publishers should scrutinise the journal annually to check whether the recommended procedures were followed
7. Any editor who allows gibberish to be published in their journal should be relieved of their editorial position immediately."
From the blog: 'We can no longer take editorial honesty for granted, and systems need to change to weed out dodgy editors if academic publishing is to survive as a useful way of advancing science. In particular, the phenomenon of paper mills has shone a spotlight on editorial malpractice... the phenomenon of academic paper mills – defined in a recent report by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the Association of Scientific, Tehcnical and Medical Publishers (STM) as “the process by which manufactured manuscripts are submitted to a journal for a fee on behalf of researchers with the purpose of providing an easy publication for them, or to offer authorship for sale.” The report stated that “the submission of suspected fake research papers, also often associated with fake authorship, is growing and threatens to overwhelm the editorial processes of a significant number of journals.”
Best wishes, Neil
Joint Coordinator, HIFA Communicating health research https://www.hifa.org/projects/new-effective-communication-health-researc...
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HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of the HIFA global health movement (Healthcare Information For All - www.hifa.org ), a global community with more than 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting on six global forums in four languages in collaboration with WHO. HIFA brings stakeholders together to accelerate progress towards universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK based non-profit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Twitter: @hifa_org neil AT hifa.org
