These values and criteria can, for instance, be captured by studying aims and means of the patent (Plotkin, 2009) which serves as the technological basis for the editorial management system from our investigation. If the manuscript has been peer-reviewed, authors should include a note explaining any changes made to the manuscript compared to the original Nature Microbiology submission, along with a separate point-by-point response to the reviewer reports. In the last 15years, novel digital infrastructures of different forms and shapes have been established, aiming at supporting communication, dissemination and evaluation of scientific research (Van Noorden, 2014; Taubert, 2016; Blmel, 2021). Sorted by: 2 Usually they decide in less than a week after the initial submission. The graphic below shows how a typical manuscript goes through the Editorial Manager system, along with some of the terms used to describe the manuscript's status. We devote our program to one of the most scathing and insightful indictments of the modern-day corporate media, particularly their subservience to power centers and how they eagerly spread disinformation campaigns in service to that power. 1124. The Emergence of a Field: a Network Analysis of Research on Peer Review, 4.8 Academic Social Networks and Bibliometrics, Gedanken zum Refereesystem in konomischen wissenschaftlichen Zeitschriften, Von der Theorie zur Wirtschaftspolitik - ein sterreichischer Weg, Peer Review for Journals as it Stands Today-Part 1, Peer Review for Journals as it Stands Today-Part 2, The Ethnographer and the Algorithm: beyond the Black Box. The use of editorial management systems as digital infrastructures for the management of collaboration hence requires processual knowledge about the peer review process. If the editors of Nature Microbiology decline publication of a manuscript, before or after peer review, the authors can easily transfer their manuscript to a different journal within the Nature Portfolio family by following the link provided in the editors decision email. Bethesda, MD 20894, Web Policies In total, 278,098 events were filed in the database. Reconstructing the processes applying social network analysis, we found that the individual steps in the process have no strict order, other than could be expected with regard to the software patent. The editor decides about opening and closing the external review (expressed by Manuscript Consultation Session Started (N = 5,816) and Manuscript Consultation Ended (N = 2,010)). We do so by making use of the internal representation of manuscript life cycles from submission to decision for 14,000 manuscripts submitted to a biomedical publisher. The editor and the editorial team decide whether or not to send the manuscript out to review; the corresponding author is contacted with the decision. Also, there are no actions recorded without two person-IDs involved, which means, that automated actions, if recorded, must be included with person-IDs. unfortunately, the editor dont respond about reject and accept. Nature is a British weekly scientific journal founded and based in London, England.As a multidisciplinary publication, Nature features peer-reviewed research from a variety of academic disciplines, mainly in science and technology. Icons made by various authors from www.flaticon.com, Experiential Live Edit: How to improve Biomed manuscripts. We preliminarily conclude that the partial perspective through the eyes of the digital infrastructure provides valuable insights into the peer review process, which are difficult to obtain otherwise. Events triggered by (columns) and affective to (rows) the different roles assigned. . At the same time, they emphasize a power perspective with regard to different degrees of involvement for actors, their role and participant status. To obtain Across all Wolters Kluwer journals, the average time that a manuscript moves through the submission process from submission to first decision takes about 30 days, and to a final . Thus, we bypass the (to us) opaque system, but can nevertheless infer insights about the practices and implementations of the peer review process in question. We found multiple observations for each manuscript with a stage name, a time stamp and two pseudonymized person-identity numbers (hereinafter, person-IDs), in the system originally identifying individual users assigned to it the person who triggered an event and the person affected by an event (judging by the xml-tags assigned to the information). var d=new Date(); yr=d.getFullYear();document.write(yr); Wickham H., Averick M., Bryan J., Chang W., McGowan L., Franois R., et al. Thus, it is rendered invisible as distinguishable component. The editors consider reviewer feedback and their own evaluation of the manuscript in order to reach a decision. - Based on Nature's website it looks like the editor sends a letter regardless of the decision so your editor is probably just writing the decision and it could be anything from accept without revision (hopefully) all the way to reject without reconsideration. Scholarly journals invest considerable effort in maintaining peer culture by establishing close links to authors, reviewers, and (guest) editors (Weller, 2001). .. . The patent as well as the digital infrastructure aim at supporting the editor in their work. That means, the first round is crucial to the manuscripts fate and, moreover, the preceding rounds might predetermine the shape of the process in the later rounds. Empirically, we use digital traces from an editorial management system in order to gain insights into how the digitalized peer review process looks like. We then continue by presenting major outcomes of the study, followed by a discussion about the editorial processes mediated by editorial management systems, and the role of automated decision making. In the minimal process of peer review according to Schendzielorz and Reinhart (2020), we would find the four processual elements being mutually connected with each other. The process elements postulation (P), consultation (C), decision (D) and administration (A), adapted after Schendzielorz and Reinhart (2020), are mutually connected with each other, but seen by the infrastructure from the standpoint of administration. At the same time, however, editorial management systems as digital infrastructures transform that process by defining sequences, ends, values and evaluation criteria, which are inscribed already in the production process of such devices (see Krger et al., 2021). Nature Methods | Peer-Review Duration, Review Speed, Revision Process Histograms of sums of durations between successive events in the process: The distribution is skew to the left; the log-scaled distribution is better leveled (Remark: 14 durations of length 0 are left out in the logarithmized plot). While the data explored do not allow for mining reviewers recommendations, and the data in this article say little about how editors deal with data about reviewers or authors, it does document well the various steps taken by the editors to reach to both authors and reviewers, to communicate and prepare selections and decisions. Find submission status of your article / manuscript - Nature Support Editage Insights offers a wealth of free academic research and publishing resources and is a one-stop guide for authors and others involved in scholarly publishing. We did not use a clustering algorithm, because those usually are based on cohesion or distance metrics: they regard those parts of graphs as different components, which are only weakly linked or distant from each other, whereas nodes belong to the same cluster component if they are strongly linked or close to each other. Editorial contacts can be found by clicking on the "Help & support" button under. Again actors assigned editorial roles stand out, because their actions significantly affect actors with other roles assigned. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [a] is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. Decoding the decision letter - Cell . Our results may inform future studies and allow for making more detailed observations of the editorial process. This characteristic of the peer review process we must consider specific for this publisher, according to our data, and not a general feature, as the editorial management software could also be used otherwise. Although, the latter sounds like a decision event, it is mainly recorded as triggered by the reviewers and is clearly located in the network before the decision. We have also gained specific insights into how editors take their role in the peer review process seriously: despite automation of some administrative steps, decision-making as well as decision-communication remains in the human domain. In the majority of cases, at least two reports will be received which are broadly in agreement, making it possible to assess reviewer comments easily and reach a straightforward decision. Receive industry news, advice from editors & gallerists, exclusive deadlines, entry to the best images occasions and more on a weekly basis. Why many editors of Nature have very poor research records?! Though many agree that scholarly publishing and peer review are social processes (Reinhart, 2010), investigations about the processes of scholarly publishing and peer review are rare, given that persons engaged in these processes actively resist investigation (Hirschauer, 2010, 73). Today, peer review is not only practiced to judge the quality and appropriateness of scholarly manuscripts for specific journals, but also to evaluate grant proposals (Reinhart, 2010), persons (such as in calling committees) (Kleimann and Hckstdt, 2021) or even research organizations (Rbbecke and Simon, 1999). No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Usually, the times vary from two to six months, but there is no fixed rule. As Horbach and Halffman (2020, p.4) have argued, such infrastructural systems of classification and standards constitute invisible mediators of action establishing templates () by which performances are compared and which define what one enactment is a performance of (ibid). This is exactly the reason why the digital infrastructure allows for the investigation of its users in so many different ways. FOIA Recent research into platforms (Blmel, 2021) has argued that novel digital infrastructures are considered as agents of change for scholarly practices by incorporating several functions relevant for decision making and quality control. The patented process is implemented as software, which is then adapted locally to the journals and publishers needs, taking stock of the diversity of scholarly publishing. Depending on the journal, the assignment may be done by technical staff, the journal's chief editor, or automatic by submission category or author suggestion. With regard to roles and activities of the editor, there is support as well as control by the infrastructure. Hence, the infrastructure must offer its users a high degree of freedom regarding what they do next. We use the perspective of the infrastructure by studying the recorded events it has created as a result of actions by different actors. How long does an editor decision take? - Studybuff Editors are often perceived as the gate keepers of science (Crane, 1967), distributing credit and reputation by deciding about papers to be published against field and journal specific values and criteria (Jubb, 2015, p.14). The editor-in-chief is primarily responsible for initial receipt of the manuscript and assignment to an associate editor. Also, it shows that there must exist parallel sub-processes (e.g., communication with different reviewers), which must, by construction, have been projected onto one timeline in the history dataset we were provided with. If that assumption is right, administrative activities might indeed more closely be intertwined with what Schendzielorz and Reinhart (2020) have called observational activities (p.19), enlarging editors control on the process, but also putting more pressure on this role. In the context of the editorial decision about publication, the inventors suggest: Alternatively, the decision to publish may be automated based upon a ranking of the review decisions received from the reviewers. (Plotkin, 2009, p.5). A decision to send the paper for review can take longer, but usually within a month (in which case the editors send apologies). How can we live a good life? Your revised manuscript should be submitted using the link provided in the decision email, and not as a new manuscript. , Bewertung in und durch digitale Infrastrukturen, Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts, Digital Sociology: The Reinvention of Social Research, A Gesto On-Line Dos Manuscritos Na Profissionalizao Dos Peridicos. dmsder moderne staatZeitschrift fr Public Pol. . While these technical adaptations reflect the processual or organizational demands, they may also create novel arenas for monitoring and control neither foreseen by the developers nor by organizational professionals of peer review work. Nature. This procedure is followed by most journals. . Also, with Friedman and Nissenbaum (1996), we argue, that the infrastructure itself is shaped by assumptions from its developers about how the world is like and should be. Usually, the associate editor makes the publication decision (I'm sure the editor in chief can overrule this decision, but it usually doesn't happen). Decoding your manuscript's status in Editorial Manager In the patent, it says: A users role includes one or more of the following relationships between the manuscript and the associated person: author, editor, associate editor, reviewer, or staff member. (Plotkin, 2009 p.5). It also files who is affected by an event (Table 2). More research would be needed in order to more closely reconstruct these events. This document provides an outline of the editorial process involved in publishing a scientific paper (Article) in Nature, and describes how manuscripts are handled by editors between submission. Moreover, acceleration, control and efficiency have been main arguments for establishing editorial management systems in the first place (Jubb, 2015; Mendona, 2017), putting pressure on publishers and editors of journals to implement streamlined procedures. The only aspect, for which we could not clearly reject the potential automated decision making was the Initial Quality Controlsupposedly a check for a correctly completed submission form. (For one manuscript, no first version was present in the inventory hence, the difference between 14,392 and 14,391 manuscripts). Can I ask the editor to publish a withdrawn manuscript after acceptance? What does the status 'Decision started' mean? 2002 The idea to apply peer culture to science in order to protect the community of knowledge makers emerged in the Royal Society in late 17th century (Shapin 1994). Decline publication, typically on grounds of either there being insufficient support for the conclusions or a reassessment of the level of interest or advance in light of the reviewers' comments. .png Also, in contrast to what Taubert (2012) describes, we can assume, that the digital infrastructure in our case is not only imposed on the editors but is understood by them as a tool, which works otherwise, they could adjust the system configuration or even collectively demand to abolish it. Katharina is a communications expert, science communicator, non-fictional book author and now Communications Director at the foundation "Gesunde Erde - Gesunde Menschen".<br><br>While earning her doctorate, she taught with a focus on cultural and media studies at the LMU Munich. Surprisingly fine grained is the representation of the communication about the decision. The average number of days between the date of manuscript submission and date of receiving the editorial acceptance decision. The .gov means its official. Talbots is a leading omni-channel specialty retailer of women's clothing, shoes and accessories. One possibility is that it will be accepted as is, which is extremely rare. Consensus decision-making or consensus process (often abbreviated to consensus) are group decision-making processes in which participants develop and decide on proposals with the aim, or requirement, of acceptance by all. Review Time in Peer Review: Quantitative Analysis and Modelling of Editorial Workflows, Perspektiven der Infrastrukturforschung: care-full, relational, ko-laborativ, Schlsselwerke der Science & Technology Studies, Ggraph: An Implementation of Grammar of Graphics for Graphs and Networks, From Manuscript Evaluation to Article Valuation: The Changing Technologies of Journal Peer Review, R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing, Peer Review Practices: A Content Analysis of External Reviews in Science Funding, Zwischen Reputation und Markt: Ziele, Verfahren und Instrumente von (Selbst)Evaluationen aueruniversitrer, ffentlicher Forschungseinrichtungen. Usually when a paper is received for publication, the Editor in chief considers the paper and then transmits it to the suitable Associate Editor. In contrast for our case, we hypothesize that the important things happen, where manuscripts differ from each other this means that the passage points tend to carry less information about the process elements. Editors decide whether to send a manuscript for peer review based on the degree to which it advances our understanding of the field, the soundness of conclusions, the extent to which the evidence presented - including appropriate data and analyses - supports these conclusions, and the wide relevance of these conclusions to the journals readership. Careers, Unable to load your collection due to an error, This article was submitted to Scholarly Communication, a section of the journal Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics. For instance, 10,522 events triggered by editors affect referees. Although editorial management systems have been introduced in the dawn of the current millenium, research about process generated data from these systems within scholarly journals has to the best of our knowledge not been published so far. Motivation: Altogether, this was a positive experience. UNESCO. ]]> Some authors claim transformative changes would be at play for practices of editors handling manuscripts: Taubert (2012) for instance has stated that journal editorial management systems standardise the peer review process and constrain the degrees of freedom for editors. 2022.6.13 Editor Decision Started Decision sent to author NZip for reviewers 2022.10.10 9All Reviewers Assigned109Manuscript under consideration . The editor contacts the author with the decision. Because it was sitting in my barn / shop for over 12 years!! We aim to compare empirical process generated data with this idealized process provided with the patent, because the processual data reflect local adaptations and uses of these technologies emerging from concrete demands of authors, reviewers and editors in the configurations of a journal (Horbach and Halffman, 2019, p.2), but are at the same time also constrained by the initial definition of roles and processes set up by the developers of the technology (Krger et al., 2021). There are certainly technological and organizational models in play fundamentally altering the role models of both reviewers and editors. Additionally, actions were recorded for person-IDs not having a role assigned for the respective manuscript. Reviewers read the manuscript and submit their reports. The production process after acceptance, however, was very annoying and involved a lot of back and forth with Nature's production team, which also caused a rather long delay between acceptance and publication. Assistant Editor MDPI minor revisions5major revisions1030 To the best of our knowledge, our analysis is one of the very few quantitative analyses of these processes. In this regard, editorial management systems perform timekeeping, when they support and oversee the duration of sub-processes (Reviewer Waited too Long, Waiting for Authors Revision etc.). Peer reviewers are assigned to manuscripts, reviewers recommendations are considered and the fate of a manuscript is decided about by the editor. From an ethnographic perspective this also means that the infrastructure itself cannot evaluate reviewers opinions due to its implementation and consequentially would not even be able to compile automated decisions. The publisher provided us with processual data from their journal management system during an earlier research project with a focus on evaluation practices and sources of biases in peer review. Upon transfer, if the manuscript is assessed by the receiving journal to be a good fit and technically sound, it may be accepted without further review. Since then the success of peer review in science was unprecedented and can be seen in the various ways peer review has been integrated for the evaluation of scholarly output, with varying expectations as to what it is to accomplish. How to write an email to the editor inquiring about the current status of my paper? The editor is probably going through the reviews to arrive at a decision. Nature Photonics | Peer-Review Duration, Review Speed, Revision Process Answered by Editage Insights According to Guston (2001), there is a social contract granting autonomy and self-regulation to science only if scientific quality and productivity is ensured. My paper was published in a journal in 2021 october. Scientific Reports | Peer-Review Duration, Review Speed, Revision While they draw in their examples from grant peer review, they explicitly claim their depiction to enable comparative analyses of different peer review processes along the elements of a minimal process: postulation, consultation, decision and administration. As we were aiming at identifying core elements of the process, we disintegrate the graph into components by deleting the passage points in descending order by size to make its meaningful components fall apart from each other. The reviewers further triggered Review Received (N = 8,672), First Referee Accepted (N = 2,766) and Review Complete (N = 3,222), the latter indicating that a consultation event has actually taken place. nature~. We have shown in our contribution, that the peer review process in digital infrastructures is complex: We started from an abstract description of a minimal peer review process with four elements according to Schendzielorz and Reinhart (2020), acknowledged an ideal digitalized process with seventeen positioned components according to a patent (Plotkin, 2009) and empirically found an open process with 72 events in it. The publisher uses the system EJournalPress to manage their editorial peer review lead by full-time staff editors in a shared office space. Does the status 'Decision in process' without peer review imply What does editor decision started mean nature? The operationalization and implementation shows specific interpretations of the peer review process as an organizational activity. How long time should we wait for editor decision on a manuscript? and The two additional source and target nodes make start and end of the process visible. How do I write an inquiry to the editor about my manuscript's current status? _review January 6, 1705] - April 17, 1790) was an American polymath who was active as a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, forger and political philosopher. Some of these activities, formerly external to the normal administrative editorial work, may now be automated by the infrastructure, leading to novel control technologies which may also put the editorial role under stronger pressure. A significant number of events (11,866, to be precise) released by editors affect actors with none specified roles. We did not categorize the source and target nodes as they were introduced throughout our analysis and not created by the system in the first place. The disintegrated network consisted of eleven isolated components, of which 10 were consisting of three vertices or less and one component with 22 vertices, containing the decisions (see Supplementary Material). Hereinafter, to demarcate different perspectives, we speak of actions or activities, when we refer to what is done, and we talk about events or stages, when we refer to what is recorded in the infrastructure and found in the data traces. response letterresubmit, 3. The decision is framed by Editor Decision Started (N = 6,215, triggered often by the reviewer) and Editor Decision Complete (N = 13,973)the difference in size indicates, that the editors decision can happen directly without external consultation. Picking the right philosophy of life is a vital decision, write Massimo Pigliucci, Skye Cleary and Daniel A. Kaufman - whether your a Stoic, an Existentialist of an Aristotelian. Editorial Decision Making at Nature Genetics Talk and JavaScript. Our goal in posing these questions is to gain insights into how novel editorial management systems change or stabilize knowledge production. The edge widths show, how many manuscripts experience the respective evolutionary path. Share Improve this answer Follow answered Jul 2, 2014 at 10:14 user18118 21 1 Add a comment 0 The editor contacts potential reviewers to ask them to review the manuscript. However, on occasion editors might consult with expert researchers when deciding whether to review a paper. (2017). The editor and the editorial team discuss the reviewer reports, and decide whether the manuscript or a revised version of it could be published in the journal. The patent shows a limited perspective on the peer review process, rendering the system itself invisible as a component (see Figure 7). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. Scilit | Article - Grand Challenges to Launching an Ideal Platform for Empirically, a panoply of orders occur in the manuscript histories, which means that for most of the stages, it is not predetermined in the systems implementation what happens next in the process. Please share with the community how many days the entire process took by the editor's office. Full disclosure: Editage Insights is a product of Editage, a global provider of world-class scientific communication solutions. Confirm that you would also like to sign up for free personalized email coaching for this stage. [CDATA[// >