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We analysed the editorial process of the four articles authored by junior researchers published in the special issue The peer review process as an opportunity for learning. Our aims were to study the unfolding of the main critiques and suggestions made by reviewers in the different review rounds, as well as to explore how both authors and reviewers experienced and valued the review process. Data sources include all review reports and letters where the authors explained the changes made, and questionnaires completed by all the authors and some reviewers. The most commonly identified critiques in the reports were related to content selection and elaboration (coherence and relevance), the own author’s voice (critical positioning and caution) and attention to the reader (precision and consistency in terms and concepts, methodological clarity, writing style, legibility and formal adequacy). All four authors stated that being part of this process was rewarding and educational, highlighting the developme...

Scientific observations must survive the scrutiny of experts before they are disseminated to the broader community because their publication in a scientific journal provides a stamp of validity. Although critical review of a manuscript by peers prior to publication in a scientific journal is a central element in this process, virtually no formal guidance is provided to reviewers about the nature of the task. In this article, the essence of peer review is described and critical steps in the process are summarized. The role of the peer reviewer as an intermediary and arbiter in the process of scientific communication between the authors and the readers via the vehicle of the particular journal is discussed and the responsibilities of the reviewer to each of the three parties (the author/s, readers, and the Journal editor) are defined. The two formal products of this activity are separate sets of reviewer comments to the editor and the authors and these are described. Ethical aspects of the process are considered and rewards accruing to the reviewer summarized.

String of publications describes attempts — mostly unsuccessful — to use proposed CRISPR rival.

Physical activity is becoming increasingly acknowledged as an integral component of in the multidisciplinary management of cancer patients. Intensive inquiry in this area is likely to increase further over the next decade; however, cancer-specific, evidence-based risk assessment and recommendations for physical activity are not available. A systematic literature review was performed of all studies conducting an exercise training intervention and (or) any form of objective exercise test among adults diagnosed with cancer. Studies were assessed according to evaluation criteria developed by a panel of experts. A total of 118 studies involving 5529 patients were deemed eligible. Overall, the results suggest that exercise training and maximal and submaximal exercise testing are relatively safe procedures with a total nonlife-threatening adverse event rate of

The Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire (PAR-Q) and the Physical Activity Readiness Medical Evaluation (PARmed-X) are internationally known preparticipation screening tools developed on the basis of expert opinion. The primary purposes of this consensus document were to seek evidence-based support for the PAR-Q and PARmed-X forms, to identify whether further revisions of these instruments are warranted, to determine how people responding positively to questions on the PAR-Q can be safely cleared without medical referral, and to develop exercise clearance procedures appropriate for various clinical conditions across the human lifespan. Seven systematic reviews were conducted, examining physical-activity-related risks and effective risk-stratification procedures for various prevalent chronic conditions. An additional systematic review assessed the risks associated with exercise testing and training of the general population. Two gap areas were identified and evaluated systematically: the role of the qualified exercise professional and the requisite core competencies required by those working with various chronic conditions; and the risks associated with physical activity during pregnancy. The risks associated with being physically inactive are markedly higher than transient risks during and following an acute bout of exercise in both asymptomatic and symptomatic populations across the lifespan. Further refinements of the PAR-Q and the PARmed-X (including online versions of the forms) are required to address the unique limitations imposed by various chronic health conditions, and to allow the inclusion of individuals across their entire lifespan. A probing decision-tree process is proposed to assist in risk stratification and to reduce barriers to physical activity. Qualified exercise professionals will play an essential role in this revised physical activity clearance process.

This systematic review examines critically “best practices” in the training of qualified exercise professionals. Particular attention is given to the core competencies and educational requirements needed for working with clinical populations. Relevant information was obtained by a systematic search of 6 electronic databases, cross-referencing, and through the authors’ knowledge of the area. The level and grade of the available evidence was established. A total of 52 articles relating to best practices and (or) core competencies in clinical exercise physiology met our eligibility criteria. Overall, current literature supports the need for qualified exercise professionals to possess advanced certification and education in the exercise sciences, particularly when dealing with “at-risk” populations. Current literature also substantiates the safety and effectiveness of exercise physiologist supervised stress testing and training in clinical populations.

We study how scholar collaboration varies across disciplines in science, social science, arts and humanities and the effects of author collaboration on impact and quality of co-authored papers. Impact is measured with the aid of citations collected by papers, while quality is determined by the judgements expressed by peer reviewers. To this end, we take advantage of the dataset provided by the first-ever national research assessment exercise of Italian universities, which involved 20 disciplinary areas, 102 research structures, 18,500 research products, and 6661 peer reviewers. Collaboration intensity neatly varies across disciplines: it is inescapable is most sciences and negligible in most humanities. We measured a general positive association between cardinality of the author set of a paper and citation count as well as peer quality of the contribution. The correlation is stronger when the affiliations of authors are heterogeneous. There exist, however, notable and interesting counter-examples.

OBJECTIVES: To identify the most cited articles in general surgery published by Brazilian authors. INTRODUCTION: There are several ways for the international community to recognize the quality of a scientific article. Although controversial, the most widely used and reliable methodology to identify the importance of an article is citation analysis. METHODS: A search using the Institute for Scientific Information citation database (Science Citation Index Expanded) was performed to identify highly cited Brazilian papers published in twenty-six highly cited general surgery journals, selected based on their elevated impact factors, from 1970 to 2009. Further analysis was done on the 65 most-cited papers. RESULTS: We identified 1,713 Brazilian articles, from which nine papers emerged as classics (more than 100 citations received). For the Brazilian contributions, a total increase of about 21-fold was evident between 1970 and 2009. Although several topics were covered, articles covering trauma, oncology and organ transplantation were the most cited. The majority of classic studies were done with international cooperation. CONCLUSIONS: This study identified the most influential Brazilian articles published in internationally renowned general surgery journals.

BACKGROUND: Sponsors that seek to commercialize new drugs apply to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) which independently analyzes the raw data and reports the results on its website.OBJECTIVES: This study sought to determine if there are differences between the FDA assessments and journal reports on biologic agents developed for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis.METHODS: Available data on FDA-approved drugs were extracted from the website, and a systematic literature search was conducted to identify matching studies in peer-reviewed medical journals. Outcome measures were the American College of Rheumatology response criteria ACR20 (efficacy) and withdrawal due to adverse events (safety). As effect size odds ratios were estimated for each active trial arm vs. control arm (i.e. for both sources: FDA and journal report), followed by calculation of the ratios of the FDA and journal report odds ratios. A ratio of odds ratios not equal to 1 was categorized as a discrepancy.RESULTS: FDA reports were available for 8 of 9 FDA-approved biologic agents for rheumatoid arthritis; all identified trials (34) except one were published in peer-reviewed journals. Overall, discrepancies were noted for 20 of the 33 evaluated trials. Differences in the apparent benefit reporting were found in 39% (24/61) pairwise comparisons and in 11 cases these were statistically significant; the FDA report showed greater benefit than the journal publication in 15 comparisons and lesser benefit in 9. Differences in the reported harms were found in 51% (28/55) pairwise comparisons and were statistically significant in 5. The "signal" in FDA reports showed a less harmful effect than the journal publication in 17 comparisons whereas a more harmful effect in 11. The differences were attributed to differences in analytic approach, patient inclusion, rounding effect, and counting discrepancies. However, no differences were categorized as critical.CONCLUSION: There was no empirical evidence to suggest biased estimates between the two sources. Increased and detailed transparency in publications would improve the understanding and credibility of published results. Further, the FDA report was found to be a useful source when data are missing in the published report (i.e. reporting bias).

Due to diverse reasons, energy production will move from centralized facilities to distributed networks of community-scale or smaller, independent producers. If such on-site energy producers are guided by sound engineering principles and safe practices, there is nothing to fear about Distributed Generation (DG) of power, energy or fuel. However, moving the production facilities closer to residences—whenever such facilities are operated with substandard equipment by poorly trained people- could be quite dangerous. The worst case is an improvised facility operated by non-professional staff that uses toxic chemicals. Home-based biodiesel production fits this model. Thus this paper documents the biodiesel production process. The chemicals of concern are described. A “what if” exercise follows to understand the various risk exposures. A Preliminary Hazard List is developed. Finally, the risks of each potential challenge are quantified and assessed to determine severity and policy implications. Recomme...

Intestinal mucosal immunity plays an important role in mucosal and systemic immune responses. We investigated the influences of orally administered bovine lactoferrin (LF) on cytokine production by intestinal intraepithelial lymphocytes (IEL) and mesenteric lymph-node (MLN) cells, especially T cells. Bovine LF or bovine serum albumin (control) was administered to mice once daily for 3 d. After 24 h from the last administration, IEL of the jejunum and ileum and MLN cells were isolated. These cells were cultured with and without the anti-T-cell-receptor antibody, and then the culture supernatants were assayed for cytokines with ELISA. Oral LF did not affect the ratio of T-cell subpopulations in IEL and MLN; however, LF enhanced both interferon (IFN)-γ and interleukin (IL)-10 production by unstimulated IEL and by IEL stimulated with the αβ T-cell receptor but not with the γδ T-cell receptor. LF also enhanced both IFN-γ and IL-10 production by stimulated and unstimulated MLN cells. The production level of IFN-γ by MLN cells was correlated with that of IL-10. These results suggest that oral LF enhances the production of both Th1-type and Th2/Tr-type cytokines in the small intestine of healthy animals.

Journal publication of material presented at medical conferences is vital in propagating research to the global community. The peer review process provides a rigorous assessment and critique of scientific methodology and helps ensure research remains relevant. Therefore, journal publication rates of material presented at meetings is a significant marker of the research quality of the meetings and their participants (1). Impact factors (IF) of journals are determined by dividing the number of citations articles receive by the number of citable articles over a period of time and is considered a marker of the scientific quality of a journal (2). The IF of the journal in which an article is published is therefore a partial marker of the scientific quality of that study.

Reviewing a surgical manuscript is not an easy task, and there is no formal training available for young referees in the early stage of their careers. Accepting a peer review assignment represents a personal honor for the invited referee and a fundamental ethical responsibility towards the scientific community. Designated reviewers must be accomplished and knowledgeable in the area of the respective topic of investigation. More importantly, they must be aware and cognizant about the cardinal ethical responsibility and stewardship for ensuring the preservation of scientific knowledge of unbiased and unquestionable accuracy in the published literature. Accepting a review assignment should never be taken lightly or considered a simple task, regardless of the reviewer's level of seniority and expertise. Indeed, there are multiple challenges, difficulties, and 'hidden dangers' that jeopardize the completion of a high-quality review, particularly in the hands of less experienced or novice reviewers. The present article was designed to provide a brief, concise, and practical guide on how to review manuscripts for the 'junior referee' in the field of surgery.

MedEdPublish has been launched as a repository of ideas and an e-library for papers relating to education in the health professions that have not previously been published. In line with the move to open access publication, the e-library provides an easy-to-search, open access resource that addresses both a mismatch between papers meriting publication and the space available in established journals, and problems with the traditional approach to peer reviewing by an editorial board and two or three selected reviewers. It is argued that with advances in technology, the time is right to look at a fresh approach to quality control that involves the wider education community.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and document a proposed position on the performance of independent peer reviews on selected design and analysis components of the Title 1 [Preliminary] and Title 2 [Final] design phases of the Multi-Function Waste Tank Facility [MWTF] project. An independent, third-party peer review is defined as a documented critical review of documents, data, designs, design inputs, tests, calculations, or related materials. The peer review should be conducted by persons independent of those who performed the work, but who are technically qualified to perform the original work. The peer review is used to assess the validity of assumptions and functional requirements, to assess the appropriateness and logic of selected methodologies and design inputs, and to verify calculations, analyses and computer software. The peer review can be conducted at the end of the design activity, at specific stages of the design process, or continuously and concurrently with the design activity. This latter method is often referred to as ``Continuous Peer Review.``

The best papers provide evidence that can be used to make changes that improve the health and lives of people around the world.

Peer reviews of research articles submitted to journals are an occluded genre, that is, they are not publicly available documents which are part of the research record. When submitting their first scientific papers to international journals for publication, NNSE (non-native speaker of English) novice researchers face the challenging task of framing effective replies to referees’ criticisms, a complex process requiring considerable socio-cultural sensitivity and pragma-linguistic competence. In order to lessen the impact of linguistic and cultural barriers to early publication, it is likely that an awareness of relevant features of peer reviews would be helpful. However, as gatekeeping discourse, peer reviews remain largely under-researched principally due to their hidden status and issues of confidentiality. This study presents the description and analysis of referees’ comments contained in a corpus of 40 peer reviews of short scientific papers known as Letters. In the task of revising their manuscripts for publication, novice researchers need to interpret appropriately the motivation behind referees’ comments, for example, whether they are more directed towards revision of the technical subject matter ( ideational ), the effectiveness of the writer's interaction with the reader in the text ( interpersonal ), or an aspect of the text itself, for example, its format or length ( textual ). The results of this study highlight the strongly interpersonal orientation of referees’ concerns, with two-thirds of all comments in the corpus focusing on interactional deficiencies of NNSE researchers’ manuscripts.

The papers presented in this special issue are those that were successful in being shortlisted through the peer review process following an open call for submission of all papers delivered at the I...

Objective To report the evidence for and challenges to the validity of Sheffield Peer Review Assessment Tool (SPRAT) with paediatric Specialist Registrars (SpRs) across the UK as part of Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health workplace based assessment programme. Design Quality assurance analysis, including generalisability, of a multisource feedback questionnaire study. Setting All UK Deaneries between August 2005 and May 2006. Participants 577 year 2 and 4 Paediatric SpRs. Interventions Trainees were evaluated using SPRAT sent to clinical colleagues of their choosing. Data were analysed reporting totals, means and SD, and year groups were compared using independent t tests. A factor analysis was undertaken. Reliability was estimated using generalisability theory. Trainee and assessor demographic details were explored to try to explain variability in scores. Main outcome measures 4770 SPRAT assessments were provided about 577 paediatric SpRs. The mean scores between years were significantly different (Year 2 mean=5.08, SD=0.34, Year 4 mean=5.18, SD=0.34). A factor analysis returned a two-factor solution, clinical care and psychosocial skills. The 95% CI showed that trainees scoring ≥4.3 with nine assessors can be seen as achieving satisfactory performance with statistical confidence. Consultants marked trainees significantly lower (t=−4.52) whereas Senior House Officers and Foundation doctors scored their SpRs significantly higher (SHO t=2.06, Foundation t=2.77). Conclusions There is increasing evidence that multisource feedback (MSF) assesses two generic traits, clinical care and psychosocial skills. The validity of MSF is threatened by systematic bias, namely leniency bias and the seniority of assessors. Unregulated self-selection of assessors needs to end.

his paper describes a three-month surveillance project performed to determine the incidence of meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus carriage on admission to community hospitals in North Cumbria. The survey also attempted to identify the rate of acquisition of MRSA in the community hospitals during the study period. Study design and limitations are described. Results reveal that almost 9% of admissions had previously undetected MRSA carriage. Discharge screening demonstrated that 2.8% of patients admitted during the study period probably acquired MRSA during their admission. The utility of this information is discussed, and possibilities for future work explored.

Aim The objectives of this study were to: determine the presentation to publication conversion rate (PPCR) in peer-reviewed indexed journals of free papers and posters presented at 12–14th September 2001 British Orthopaedic Association (BOA) annual meeting and to compare the publication rate with the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) meeting in 2001. Methodology We looked at all presentations including both podium and poster presentations at British Orthopaedic Association meeting held in 2001 and assessed for subsequent publication as full-text article with a fixed PubMed search protocol. Once the abstract was identified as being published, we noted the name of the journal, citation, and time to presentation. The level of evidence was assigned for each abstract along the guidelines published by the centre for evidence-based medicine, Oxford, UK. This conversion rate was compared with the presentation to publication rate for the AAOS meeting in 2001. Results A total of 179 abstracts were presented at the 2001 BOA meeting. 65 of these were published as full-text articles in 30 different journals. The overall publication rate was 36.3%. The publication rate of the papers presented at AAOS annual meeting 2001 was 49% (367/756). The mean time from presentation to publication was 18.6 months (±9.4 months). Three fourths of them were published after 2 years of presentations (63% for AAOS). Majority of studies were either level III or IV. 14 full-text articles were published in Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery British (JBJS Br) and 8 in the Injury Journal. Conclusions This is the first study reporting the publication rate of presentations for BOA meeting and comparing it with the publication rate of AAOS meeting in 2001. The publication rate of BOA presentations is much lower than the AAOS meeting. We believe the publication rate is an important tool in judging the quality of research work and the reputation of a scientific meeting with higher conversion rates suggesting better quality. Thus, more stringent selection criteria need to be introduced so that the selected abstracts can withstand peer-view for publication as full-text articles.

This letter analyses paper acceptance time in respiratory journals and discusses novel ways to disseminate research http://ow.ly/b9uX306esnA

There are conflicting data about the ability of peer review percentile rankings to predict grant productivity, as measured through publications and citations. To understand the nature of these apparent conflicting findings, we analyzed bibliometric outcomes of 6873 de novo cardiovascular R01 grants funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) between 1980 and 2011. Our outcomes focus on top-10% articles, meaning articles that were cited more often than 90% of other articles on the same topic, of the same type (eg, article, editorial), and published in the same year. The 6873 grants yielded 62 468 articles, of which 13 507 (or 22%) were top-10% articles. There was a modest association between better grant percentile ranking and number of top-10% articles. However, discrimination was poor (area under receiver operating characteristic curve [ROC], 0.52; 95% confidence interval, 0.51–0.53). Furthermore, better percentile ranking was also associated with higher annual and total inflation-adjusted grant budgets. There was no association between grant percentile ranking and grant outcome as assessed by number of top-10% articles per $million spent. Hence, the seemingly conflicting findings on peer review percentile ranking of grants and subsequent productivity largely reflect differing questions and outcomes. Taken together, these findings raise questions about how best National Institutes of Health (NIH) should use peer review assessments to make complex funding decisions.

espite being considered by many as a minor disease, influenza remains a leading cause of respiratory infection, attributing to many deaths in the UK each year. This article offers an overview of influenza and its prevention, focusing on the use of influenza vaccination in healthcare workers as a public health measure. It highlights potential benefits beyond the protection of individuals against influenza, and considers the impact of health behaviour on improving vaccination uptake in healthcare workers.

Peer review is a core component of the scientific method. Pre-publication peer review for a medical journal serves two purposes. First, the review process assists the editorial team in selecting which papers should be published, based on several factors such as originality, scientific validity, match with the journal's scope and readers’ interest. Second, peer review improves the quality of the final published papers, particularly in terms of presentation of the study design, data analysis and research results. Some aspects of the review process are similar across scientific journals, while others are specific to the focus of each journal.1–4 This article presents suggestions for reviewers for Heart , an international journal that publishes clinical and translational cardiovascular research. Most of us have experienced the peer-review process both as an author and as a reviewer. Authors of previous publications are the peer reviewers for submitted manuscripts; your peer reviewers in the future will be the authors of papers you review today. We should be courteous to each other and respectful of scientific work. Part of that respect is an impartial and fair review. Write your review in a style as if you have your name declared, as many journals now request.3 Authors appreciate a short review cycle; currently, the rate-limiting step in the review cycle is the time that reviewers take to respond and submit their reviews. Reading a paper and writing the review typically only takes 2–3 hours; if you have time and the paper is within your area of expertise, accept right away and download the file to read as soon as possible. Submit your review on time, or even early. If you are unable to review, decline immediately so the editors can invite an alternate reviewer. My approach to reviewing a paper is to first read the abstract. …

As many readers are no doubt aware, securing rigorous and professional peer reviews for scholarly submissions to journals such as Critical Asian Studies is becoming increasingly challenging, in par...

Publishing research can be time consuming, as papers are often submitted and reviewed by multiple journals before final acceptance. We hypothesized that attaching previous peer-review reports to the next submission of the paper to a different journal (possibly with point-to-point responses and amendments) could decrease the workload for both reviewers and editors and could shorten the time from final draft to actual publication. We therefore performed an online survey to assess the views of the editors-in-chief of all 100 general medical journals from the citation impact factor report category "internal & general medicine" (ISI Web of Knowledge). Of contacted editors, 61% responded. One of 4 journals do currently receive peer-review reports on occasion. Editors recognized potential advantages but also concerns on using previous peer-review reports across 3 themes: scientific community, quality of papers, and the publication process. The use of previous peer-review reports has the potential to facilitate authors, reviewers, and editors in optimizing peer review in general medical science.

PEER REVIEW: One peer reviewer contributed to the peer review report. Reviewers’ reports totaled 27 words, excluding any confidential comments to the academic editor. FUNDING: The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. DECLARATION OF CONFLICTING INTERESTS: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Author Contributions Both the authors contributed to all aspects of the manuscript.

The process of developing a publication guide titled “How to write your first academic paper” was presented in this paper. A detailed qualitative approach was followed to extract key elements from transaction and conference papers that appeared in the IEEE Transactions of Information Theory during the past decade. The approach taken was to learn from the experts, in this case IEEE Fellows and distill it into a step-by-step guide, conforming to a set of design principles. The publication guide was implemented at the Faculty of Engineering and many positive results achieved.

A selected-papers (SP) network is a network in which researchers who read, write, and review articles subscribe to each other based on common interests. Instead of reviewing a manuscript in secret for the Editor of a journal, each reviewer simply publishes his review (typically of a paper he wishes to recommend) to his SP network subscribers. Once the SP network reviewers complete their review decisions, the authors can invite any journal editor they want to consider these reviews and initial audience size, and make a publication decision. Since all impact assessment, reviews, and revisions are complete, this decision process should be short. I show how the SP network can provide a new way of measuring impact, catalyze the emergence of new subfields, and accelerate discovery in existing fields, by providing each reader a fine-grained filter for high-impact. I present a three phase plan for building a basic SP network, and making it an effective peer review platform that can be used by journals, conferences, users of repositories such as arXiv, and users of search engines such as PubMed. I show how the SP network can greatly improve review and dissemination of research articles in areas that are not well-supported by existing journals. Finally, I illustrate how the SP network concept can work well with existing publication services such as journals, conferences, arXiv, PubMed, and online citation management sites.

In light of the growing importance of engineering design construction and procurement services in international trade, this paper analyzes obstacles faced by U.S. firms in such trade, as well as th...

In this article, a critical analysis is performed on differences in citation frequency of basic and clinical cardiovascular papers. It appears that the latter papers are cited at about 40% higher frequency. The differences between the largest number of citations of the most cited papers are even larger. It is also demonstrated that the groups of clinical and basic cardiovascular papers are also heterogeneous concerning citation frequency. It is concluded that none of the existing citation indicators appreciates these differences. At this moment these indicators should not be used for quality assessment of individual scientists and scientific niches with small numbers of scientists.

I describe and evaluate an exercise in which graduate students provide blind reviews of each other's term papers. Besides helping students with their own papers, the exercise seems to help them learn to give constructive, substantive feedback to colleagues. Student ratings of the educational value of peer review are high, but a hoped-for effect of increasing interest in publishing papers has not emerged. A study of reviews from three courses suggested that students' reviews show higher interrater reliability than do professional peer reviews of journal manuscripts. Implications of this finding are discussed in relation to some of the explanations offered in the literature for the low reliability of professional peer reviews.

One approach for grading papers in large business classes is to require students to evaluate each other's work. Both students and instructors can gain much in such peer review processes, but can students be trusted to grade each other's papers? This article describes an experiment in which term projects, a preprinted evaluation form, and generalizability theory were used to judge the reliability of student grading. The results suggest that students can be both consistent and fair in their assessments. These findings, along with mostly favorable student reactions and the fact that employee valuation is an important management skill, create a strong case for peer review when evaluating student papers.

Fifty issues of the British Medical Journal (BMJ), The Lancet, The British Journal of Psychiatry and Psychological Medicine were scrutinised. Papers were designated as invited or peer reviewed and the geographical location of the first author was recorded. For UK-based authors, the latitude and longitude of the host institution was noted and was allocated to one of the UK regions. Of invited papers 805 of 1227 (66%) were by UK-based authors compared with 1442 of 2896 peer reviewed papers (50%), odds ratio 1.92 (95% CI 1.67 − 2.21) with a similar pattern prevailing in each of the four journals. Within the UK, authorships of invited versus peer reviewed papers showed a preponderance of invited authors based in southeast England, odds ratio 1.30 (95% CI 1.09 − 1.56). For individual Journals, the Lancet and the British Journal of Psychiatry showed fewer regional disparities in authorship than the BMJ and Psychological Medicine. These disparities may lead to nationalism and parochiality in the content of invited papers. Journal editors may wish to review selection practices for authorship of invited papers.

Numerous publications have documented successes achieved through partnering. Such notable results have been achieved over a wide variety of applications, including public and private ownership, single-project and multiple-project agreements, and lump-sum and cost-plus contracts. Such accomplishment across a spectrum of application suggests that partnering, if applied properly, can work in almost any environment. Recent research by the Construction Industry Institute highlights this fact that many “shades” of partnering exist, based on the degree of objectives alignment between involved parties. To illustrate this, a partnering continuum has been developed, depicting four general stages—competition, cooperation, collaboration, and coalescence. “Competition” represents the traditional owner/contractor relationship, where each party possesses separate objectives, and minimal effort is expended toward “working together.” This competitive pursuit occurs in the absence of partnering. The other three stages—coop...

Editorial delay, the time between submission and acceptance of scientific manuscripts, was investigated for a set of 4,540 papers published in 13 leading food research journals. Groups of accelerated papers were defined as those that fell in the lower quartile of the distribution of the editorial delay for the journals investigated. Delayed papers are those in the upper quartile of the distribution. Editorial stage is related to the peer review process and two variables were investigated in search of any bias in editorial review that could influence publication delay: countries of origin of the manuscript and authors’ previous publishing experience in the same journal. A ranking of countries was established based on contributions to the leading food research journals in the period 1999-2004 and four categories comprising heavy, medium, light and occasional country producers was established. Chi square tests show significant differences in country provenance of manuscripts only for one journal. The results for influence on editorial delay of cross-national research and international collaboration, conducted by means of the Fisher statistic test, were similar. A two-tailed Student’s t test shows significant differences (p < 0.05) in the distribution of experienced and novel authors across the delayed and accelerated groups of papers. Although these results are time and discipline limited, it can be concluded that authors’ publishing experience causes a faster review and acceptance of their papers and that neither country of provenance nor cross-national research influence the time involved in editorial acceptance of the papers.

Have you ever wondered why it takes so long to get comments back from reviewers at some journals? After all, how long should it take to review a paper? I suspect most of us have asked this question at one time or another. While recently contemplating this, I thought it was time to tell you a little about how we run Autophagy, and at the same time compare it to the practices at some other journals where I have, on occasion (notably before the start of Autophagy), sent my own papers.

Little is known about the success rate of epidemiologic manuscripts, or the number of rejections they may go through before being published.In late 2004 we conducted a retrospective follow-up study of the cohort of manuscripts submitted to Epidemiology in 2002. Using an e-mailed invitation, we conducted an online survey of authors identified from journal records. Authors were asked about submission attempts before and after their submission to Epidemiology.Epidemiology received 371 original articles in 2002, of which it published 101 (27%). Survey response rates were 68% among the authors of accepted manuscripts, and 58% among authors of manuscripts rejected by Epidemiology. These responses provided a total sample of 223 manuscripts for analysis. Of the cohort, 83% (n = 184) were eventually accepted for publication (by Epidemiology or others). The acceptance rate by Epidemiology was the same whether or not the manuscripts had been previously rejected by another journal. Of the 155 manuscripts rejected by Epidemiology, 116 (75%) were eventually published or accepted for publication, 11 (7%) were being prepared for resubmission at the time of follow-up (19-34 months after rejection), 5 (3%) were under review by a journal, and 23 (15%) were inactive. Among the papers we could follow from first submission, 62% of those eventually published had been rejected at least once. In general, papers rejected by one journal were subsequently sent to a journal with lower impact factor.These data suggest most epidemiology manuscripts are eventually published, although some persistence on the part of the authors may be necessary.