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The effectiveness of journals as arbiters of scientific impact

Academic publishers purport to be arbiters of knowledge, aiming to publish studies that advance the frontiers of their research domain. Yet the effectiveness of journal editors at identifying novel and important research is generally unknown, in part because of the confidential nature of the editori...

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Autores principales: Paine, C. E. Timothy, Fox, Charles W.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6202707/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30386557
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.4467
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author Paine, C. E. Timothy
Fox, Charles W.
author_facet Paine, C. E. Timothy
Fox, Charles W.
author_sort Paine, C. E. Timothy
collection PubMed
description Academic publishers purport to be arbiters of knowledge, aiming to publish studies that advance the frontiers of their research domain. Yet the effectiveness of journal editors at identifying novel and important research is generally unknown, in part because of the confidential nature of the editorial and peer review process. Using questionnaires, we evaluated the degree to which journals are effective arbiters of scientific impact on the domain of Ecology, quantified by three key criteria. First, journals discriminated against low‐impact manuscripts: The probability of rejection increased as the number of citations gained by the published paper decreased. Second, journals were more likely to publish high‐impact manuscripts (those that obtained citations in 90th percentile for their journal) than run‐of‐the‐mill manuscripts; editors were only 23% and 41% as likely to reject an eventual high‐impact paper (pre‐ versus postreview rejection) compared to a run‐of‐the‐mill paper. Third, editors did occasionally reject papers that went on to be highly cited. Error rates were low, however: Only 3.8% of rejected papers gained more citations than the median article in the journal that rejected them, and only 9.2% of rejected manuscripts went on to be high‐impact papers in the (generally lower impact factor) publishing journal. The effectiveness of scientific arbitration increased with journal prominence, although some highly prominent journals were no more effective than much less prominent ones. We conclude that the academic publishing system, founded on peer review, appropriately recognizes the significance of research contained in manuscripts, as measured by the number of citations that manuscripts obtain after publication, even though some errors are made. We therefore recommend that authors reduce publication delays by choosing journals appropriate to the significance of their research.
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spelling pubmed-62027072018-11-01 The effectiveness of journals as arbiters of scientific impact Paine, C. E. Timothy Fox, Charles W. Ecol Evol Academic Practice in Ecology and Evolution Academic publishers purport to be arbiters of knowledge, aiming to publish studies that advance the frontiers of their research domain. Yet the effectiveness of journal editors at identifying novel and important research is generally unknown, in part because of the confidential nature of the editorial and peer review process. Using questionnaires, we evaluated the degree to which journals are effective arbiters of scientific impact on the domain of Ecology, quantified by three key criteria. First, journals discriminated against low‐impact manuscripts: The probability of rejection increased as the number of citations gained by the published paper decreased. Second, journals were more likely to publish high‐impact manuscripts (those that obtained citations in 90th percentile for their journal) than run‐of‐the‐mill manuscripts; editors were only 23% and 41% as likely to reject an eventual high‐impact paper (pre‐ versus postreview rejection) compared to a run‐of‐the‐mill paper. Third, editors did occasionally reject papers that went on to be highly cited. Error rates were low, however: Only 3.8% of rejected papers gained more citations than the median article in the journal that rejected them, and only 9.2% of rejected manuscripts went on to be high‐impact papers in the (generally lower impact factor) publishing journal. The effectiveness of scientific arbitration increased with journal prominence, although some highly prominent journals were no more effective than much less prominent ones. We conclude that the academic publishing system, founded on peer review, appropriately recognizes the significance of research contained in manuscripts, as measured by the number of citations that manuscripts obtain after publication, even though some errors are made. We therefore recommend that authors reduce publication delays by choosing journals appropriate to the significance of their research. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2018-09-12 /pmc/articles/PMC6202707/ /pubmed/30386557 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.4467 Text en © 2018 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Academic Practice in Ecology and Evolution
Paine, C. E. Timothy
Fox, Charles W.
The effectiveness of journals as arbiters of scientific impact
title The effectiveness of journals as arbiters of scientific impact
title_full The effectiveness of journals as arbiters of scientific impact
title_fullStr The effectiveness of journals as arbiters of scientific impact
title_full_unstemmed The effectiveness of journals as arbiters of scientific impact
title_short The effectiveness of journals as arbiters of scientific impact
title_sort effectiveness of journals as arbiters of scientific impact
topic Academic Practice in Ecology and Evolution
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6202707/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30386557
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.4467
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