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The screening process of journal articles, done to determine the suitability for publication, is presently done manually. The chief editor or an assistant will read and check the submitted articles against some standard criteria of the journal. With the increase in the number of submissions, this task becomes a burden, which in turn causes delays in giving initial feedback to the authors. The objective of this paper is to describe the design and implementation of an automated document analyser that can be used by editors for initial screening of journal articles. This analyser was developed so that it can be used within a Microsoft Word environment via VBA macros. The current version of the software can determine the length of the title, information about author(s), the length of the abstract, number of keywords, the number of words in the content, the presence or absence of an acknowledgement, and whether a specific journal is cited in the article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the status of the book review as a form of scholarly publication in the humanities, looking at the role and characteristics of humanities book reviews and at who writes them and why. It examines evidence for the influence and impact of book reviews in the humanities and makes suggestions for the future of the scholarly book review in an online information environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academics can design their research programs, mastermind field exercises in exotic locations, arrange their teaching schedules, and organize conferences, but may stumble when faced with the task of writing up their data and ideas for publication. In truth, academic authorship is just another exercise that needs to be planned. Here is a simple plan that might work for you. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this research was to study the peer-review process for articles in Iran's accredited scientific journals. The study considered the types of refereeing currently practised, the decision-making methods and criteria for acceptance of articles, the major decision makers, and the current norms in the peer-review process. The method used was a survey, and the data-collecting tool was a questionnaire. The statistical population of this research included 245 scientific journals. The results of the study show that, currently, the predominant type of refereeing for articles submitted to these journals is 'double blind' and the prevailing method of informing authors about the results of manuscript evaluation is 'commenting on the manuscript after refereeing it and after consideration in an editorial board meeting.' The findings also indicate that two criteria-'Originality and creativity of the research' and 'Being within the journal's scope'-play the most important role in article acceptance. Of the five main parties cooperating in the peer-review process for these journals, the editorial board plays the most fundamental role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Let academics in developing countries shine in the international publishing community. A suggestion that they should target their own local journals would mean that their best research would reach only a limited audience, that they would probably be poorly regarded by promotion committees, that they would be unfavourably appraised by international grant-awarding agencies, and, in all probability, that publication would follow only after an inordinately long wait. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study described in this report grew from recommendations for an investigation into journal economics by the National Humanities Alliance Task Force on Open Access and Scholarly Communications. Since experiments are underway to understand and enable a range of options for a shift to an open access (OA) business model for publishing some scientific, technical, and medical (STM) journals, the question arises, Do these same options exist for a similar shift within humanities and social science (HSS) journals? Findings are reported from detailed analyses of the publishing economics, including all revenues and all costs, of eight flagship US journals across a number of different HSS disciplines. Using actual business information from their association publishers for each of the years 2005, 2006, and 2007, these findings clarify that for this sample of journals, an OA business model based only on revenue from the research article author or producer would not be sufficient to sustain these journals. The research articles published in these journals were longer than typical STM journal articles, and the percentage of non-article content (e.g., book reviews and other scholarly content) was greater. Information-gathering tools and methodologies that enable like-for-like comparison of journal revenues and costs were developed and are described in the report. As an initial in-depth business review of a sample of HSS journals, the report further clarifies some of the key differences between STM and HSS journals, articulates recent journal performance, makes tentative conclusions based on this sample, and proposes further questions that need to be answered to support a shift to OA business models that are sustainable across HSS journal publishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the modern culture of online submission and review systems, are peer reviewers being exploited and undervalued? What was once a simple process of accepting to review a paper, receiving it in the mail, and, eventually, returning it to the editor now requires passwords, usernames, printing off a hard copy, electronic reminders, and, tediously, entering all review comments electronically. Why not just say no? The hard work of the review process should be judging the paper, not fighting the program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid development of scholarly publishing and the internationalization of academic journals in China, peer review has begun to gain ground as well. After briefly summarizing the recent academic debate on the validity of peer review and the function of peer experts, the authors look into the major problems with the existing peer-review practices of academic journals in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the faults of scholarship. It is suggested that "knowledge" from scholars such as anthropologists or historians, is too readily accepted. Reasons for their easy acceptance includes lack of the opportunity to test the evidence or arguments. The politics of scholarship and research are discussed, as well as the politics of disputes. It is suggested that disputation on a subject is not a sign of scholarly chaos. The author speaks against the playing down of differences of opinion. The effects of lack of dispute on consumers are discussed. The part of journal editors on the exchange of opinion is also discussed.

The article discusses fraudulent activities in scholarly publishing. Scholarly publishers go to great lengths to instruct each new generation of Doctor of Philosophy graduates in the ethics of how to go about breaking into print. Consider the case of the young scholar--not a rookie, to be sure, but new enough to the academic life to be still in the process of establishing his career--who approached a prominent university press with an idea for a new edition of a long-out-of-print volume of considerable merit. He proposed to write an introduction and whatever else might be required, in return, not for money, but simply for a bit of credit on the title page. A few weeks later, the young scholar received the news: The publisher did not want an introduction, but perhaps the young man would be willing to provide a couple of pages of biographical material about the dead guy who had written the book?

The article examines the situation of the scholarly journal, the Journal of Markets & Morality (JMM) as it is faced with the challenges of old and new media. JMM is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed academic journal produced by the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, an educational and literary organization. It began in 1998 as a print-only journal and, in 2002, added free full-text electronic versions of all current and previous content. Thus, subscribers and non-subscribers alike could enjoy full electronic access to all content, but only subscribers would receive a print version of the journal. The various pressures and interests of JMM had resulted in a patchwork system of delivery, through which all content was freely available in electronic format on the World Wide Web but the print form of the journal was available only for a subscription fee. This strange situation attests to the truth of Andrew Odlyzko's observation that the scholarly publishing business is full of inertia and perverse economic incentives.

The article explores the criteria that can be identified to support the continuation of subscriptions to expensive journals on the library budget. Grossly overpriced journals are common in many fields, yet they are also usually successful in attaining a wide circulation (mainly to libraries), which seems illogical. There is little doubt that librarians usually know their constituencies [of faculty and students] and collect the most in-demand items first. It is the demand for these journals by the constituencies that really promotes their success (or otherwise). My experience in my own field, paleontology, is that many journals provide a similar product, but that publishing-house journals explore particular facets of the speciality, making them essential reading to a (commonly large) subset of the potential audience. Two factors particularly act to maintain the status quo, one intrinsic--the high profile such journals have among researchers--and the other extrinsic--the resistance of the constituencies to change. Expensive publishing-house journals are unattractive to any library, but particularly so to institutions in the Third World.