Publication rights and sharing your work

We often get enquiries from authors who have posted a pre-publication draft of their work in an institutional repository, or some other on-line repository of work-in-progress, such as SSRN or REPEC. These services invite authors to place working papers and drafts on-line in order to attract comment and discussion so that they may develop their work before journal submission. For the avoidance of doubt, we would like to emphasize that our publishers, Taylor & Francis, are happy with the idea of publishing a paper that has been in the public domain as a working draft.

Authors are permitted to deposit their paper pre-publication on a personal or institutional website as part of T&F’s Green Open Access Policy. They can post the Author Original Manuscript (AOM) and/or Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM). Both versions are of the paper before it has undergone any copy editing or typesetting. T&F then request that Authors link from the draft to the “Final Version of Record”, when it has been published. They should credit the published article and provide a link to it. Full details of the publication policy are kept up-to-date here.

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Complete and unambiguous complementarity

In commenting on a paper, I raised a question about the mobilization of the literature in relation to a particular point an author was making. The point made by the author was, she said, an illustration of a phenomenon mentioned in the literature by four different authors. She cited all four at the end of the sentence. I added a note to the paper on the specific question of whether their were any tensions between these four works that she might have helped to resolve; or whether there were tensions between her work and theirs as a whole. In other words, I realized that the phrasing indicated complete and unambiguous complementarity between her work and theirs. And it struck me that this was a general issue in many papers I read. Authors frequently structure their citations to the literature as if there were complete and unambiguous complementarity, even when there is not. I think that, as an academic community, we would do well to be more nuanced in the way that we mobilize the literature in support of what we say. Perhaps we need to articulate the tensions in order to emphasize the precise aspects of complementarity between our work and previous research.

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How to format papers for journal submission (and for dissertations)

Increasingly, authors have often asked how to format their papers for submission to the journal, Construction Management and Economics.

In submitting a paper to a journal such as this, it may be helpful to note that your submission is, effectively, a draft paper. Therefore, our expectation is that the paper will be presented with the following formatting features:

• Use a simple font, such as Times New Roman 12 pt.
• Use double-spaced line spacing.
• Set 2.5 cm margins all round.
• Do not add page numbers
• Do not add headers or footers of any kind.
• Do not use multi-column layout.
• Distinguish headings from sub-headings clearly. Although published papers do not use heading numbers, you may use them in the draft to make clear the different levels of heading.
• Figures and Tables should be all moved to the back or uploaded as separate files (several per file, or one at a time, whichever you find easier). This is not a uniform requirement, so you need to look carefully at whether a specific journal applies this requirement just to Figures, to Figures and Tables, or not at all.
• If it would help you to have a template, there is one for downloading here: CM&E Paper Template.

It may come as a surprise to many that this is exactly the same format, in general terms, as most requirements for the submission of dissertations and theses, at least in the UK. Has anyone noticed that dissertations are submitted as if they were draft papers ready for taking to a journal?

You may also find the following posts in this forum useful:

• How to submit a paper to CM&E in Manuscript Central
• How to avoid desk-rejection
• How to write informative abstracts

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Reed Elsevier to acquire Mendeley, the academic collaboration tool

I hope that this turns out to be good news! I find that Mendeley is a very useful tool.

Mendeley acquired by Reed Elsevier

Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE): Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers

Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE): Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers

The Committee on Publication Ethics has launched a really useful guide to ethical conduct in peer review.  I find these generic guidelines very useful.  What do you think?  Does this make sense in our corner of the academic world?

Invitations from unknown sources to join referee panels and editorial boards

It is with increasing frequency that scam organizations are attempting to set up open access journals with the aim of making money from charging authors for publication. Many of these are springing up around the world and their progenitors are sending messages to email lists trying to elicit academics to submit their papers, join the referee panel and also join the editorial board. One recent one was also asking for random people to become editor and/or editor-in-chief of a non-existent journal. Why anyone would respond to a complete stranger who had no connection with the field is beyond me. Hopefully, no one is naive enough to respond to these random calls for strangers to take part in non-existent journals. But, who knows? Maybe the urge to add things to an academic CV might prompt inexperienced and untrained people to become editors and referees, handling papers written by strangers for publication by an unknown organization for an undisclosed page fee!

Some of these open calls for strangers make a great play that there is some kudos in having an ISSN number, as if that were some kind of badge of quality or acceptance, when it is merely a registration number. All sorts of spurious claims accompany such calls, presumably hoping to confuse and impress folks who know nothing about publishing. We need to check carefully whether such random claims of authoritativeness have any real meaning. Another increasingly common practice is invitations to submit papers to special issues where the Guest Editor is not an authority on the topic of the special issue. Imagine the situation – a call for papers is sent from a guest editor who has never written on the topic to email lists indiscriminately inviting anyone to submit papers. The papers get refereed by people who have never written on the topic, based on random criteria, and the inexperienced guest editor accepts whatever the referees’ majority verdict is. The author pays for publication and paper is made available freely, with the guise of an authoritative international refereed journal! I hope that this is an unlikely scenario. How can we guard against it?

All of this is grist to the mill and a regular part of the daily trudge through unsolicited and junk email. However, it seems to have encouraged editors and publishers with more recognisable names and titles to trawl email lists for random members of editorial boards and everyone or anyone is invited to take part in a journal on any topic they choose. Worse, we are now seeing evidence of fake referee reports, where an author has registered with a journal as a referee, under a different name, with a generic account, such as yahoo or gmail, and then nominated his fake account as a referee for his own paper, so that he can provide a glowing referee report! This aptly demonstrates the dangers associated with blanket invitations to join in the activities of a journal.

My conclusion from these new practices is that authors and editors have to be vigilant in ensuring that they are only dealing with people they know or recognize. For example, there is no substitute for going to international conferences and engaging actively with the international research community. Otherwise, great care is needed in figuring out whether people are who they say they are, checking bona fides and following up on the details of previously unknown people to make sure that they come from bona fide institutions.

The consequence for Construction Management and Economics is that we will not accept submissions from strangers with non-institutional email accounts and we shall not invite referees to review papers unless we know who they are. We certainly will never put out an indiscriminate request on an email list in an attempt to recruit editorial board members. While we are acutely aware of the need to avoid cronyism and exclusivity, we need to steer a careful course between isolationist policies and indiscriminate involvement.

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How long do referees need to review a journal paper?

When I was an editor, I often encountered referees who did not usually review papers in my field. I was told that our aspiration of asking referees to complete their tasks in two weeks was unusual. Apparently, in most social science and management journals the time suggested for reviewing a paper is anything between four weeks and three months! This made our two-week deadline look rather odd. Of course, I was aware of other disciplines where the time suggested was 1-7 days, depending on the journal, so clearly there are some very diverse practices. Given that it takes a matter of hours to review a paper, I guess that what typically happens is that a paper for review waits on someone’s desk until they finally get around to carrying out non-urgent tasks. Perhaps I am wrong, and perhaps some people really are spending several weeks composing a review of a paper. What do you think? When you are an author, are your expectations and aspirations different to when you are a referee? What is the shortest time and the longest time that you would expect to wait for the decision on your paper, and what are your experiences, especially in different fields?

(All comments are moderated, so may not appear immediately.)

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Secondary referencing (and the problem with aphorisms)

Secondary referencing is considered to be poor academic practice. It is important to find the original papers and cite them, or explain in a footnote why the original papers are no longer available or accessible. Merely mentioning that someone else has cited something that you wish to rely on is unreliable. The authors of the secondary source may have changed the original author’s meaning or taken it out of context. They may also have been using the original source to make a different point to yours. This is why it is important to find the original source rather than rely on another author’s interpretation.

Just one example highlights the dangers of secondary referencing. Here is a widely-used quote, often called the Common Law of Business:

It is unwise to pay too much but it is worse to pay too little. When you pay too much you lose a little money, that’s all. When you pay too little you some- times lose everything because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the things it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot-it can’t be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder it’s as well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.” Known as the Common Law of Business Balance, this quotation has been widely attributed to Ruskin but has never been sourced to any of his works.

This is widely attributed to John Ruskin, usually with a year somewhere in the late 19th Century. Many people cite this a secondary reference, as in Ruskin, cited in xxxx, etc. This is because it is difficult to track down anywhere that John Ruskin wrote it. There is simply no evidence that John Ruskin wrote it. The appeal of this aphorism is clear. But it lacks any underpinning, whether philosophical or analytical. By adding Ruskin’s name to it, it gathers weight and currency. But it is nothing more than an aspirational statement about how people, generally, wish the world would be. As such, it is not an established “law”.

Aphorisms are popular, but often they are not what they appear to be. Always look for the original source, so that you can be sure of what the supposed original author actually did in order to justify the claim you are atributing to them.

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Major revisions or minor revisions? That is the question…

There is an increasing tension around the question of the distinction between major and minor revision decisions on papers.

When I started as an academic, there seemed to be a fairly consistent view among those with experience, that a major revision required more research (not necessarily empirical work), whereas a minor revision required only editing. Over the years, I have come to realize that minor is a bit of a misnomer, since it could require extensive work to the paper. I have had frequent differences of opinion to resolve between authors and referees, often because of their differing perceptions of what was meant by these two categories of major and minor. For example, one correspondent suggested that the distinction is based on likely turnaround time; if the required work is achievable in a matter of weeks, it’s minor, otherwise it’s major.

What are your views on this question?

(All comments are moderated, so may not appear immediately.)

STAR – Special Terms for Authors & Researchers

Researchers in developing countries often face difficulties in accessing commercially published journals. In recognition of the importance of providing access to research students who are undertaking their literature review, Taylor & Francis have set up an initiative to help overcome some of the problems. While it does not provide a complete solution for everyone, this is a significant gesture.

STAR provides online access for individual researchers from emerging regions to support writing and publication. It is currently available to researchers in Africa, in South Asia, and many parts of South East Asia. It uses an innovative voucher system – once the voucher has been downloaded it can be activated when needed, fitting in with the researcher’s requirements to take advantage of FREE access for up to a month. To acquire your voucher please look at the website, here:

http://journalauthors.tandf.co.uk/benefits/freeaccess.asp

Good luck with your research and writing!

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