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. The multiplicity of edges expresses how often its ends occur in direct sequence in the whole dataset, that means, for all first version manuscripts together. Different to what may be expected by critical observers of digital platforms (Gillespie, 2015), editorial management systems do not always result in imposing pre-packaged models on scholarly publishing. The focus of the patent is on how to facilitate the peer review process in a digital infrastructure. Motivation: Altogether, this was a positive experience. Given that our data set is situated and that digital practices are related and aligned by the infrastructure, we follow the infrastructures and aim at studying how they structure and reflect the practices of its users. In the second section of the results, we aim at tracing the order of the events in the editorial management system. Because of combinatorial explosion, large networks can be expected to be less dense than smaller ones. By exploring process generated data from a publishers editorial management system, we investigate the ways by which the digital infrastructure is used and how it represents the different realms of the process of peer review. on 21 Oct, 2016. . Bethesda, MD 20894, Web Policies For the investigation of actions with regard to the different roles in the process, the whole dataset was used. The patent shows a limited perspective on the peer review process, rendering the system itself invisible as a component (see Figure 7). With editor (Decision Letter Being PreparedReviewers invited) Decision Letter Being Prepared Reviewer (s) invited Under review decline The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. When the process is finished, the manuscript lies dormant in the database. The editor is reading your manuscript and figuring out whether or not she wants to send it for peer review. 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). Invite the authors to revise and resubmit their manuscript to address specific concerns. Stage 1: Initial quality check This stage includes checks on authorship, competing interests, ethics approval and plagiarism. Answer: From the different status descriptions, it seems that the manuscript has not been sent for peer review. Usually, the times vary from two to six months, but there is no fixed rule. 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). In the subsection above, we have shown for first submitted versions that the drafting of decision letters happens mostly for negative decisions. Innovating Editorial Practices: Academic Publishers at Work, Peer Review: The Current Landscape and Future Trends, Selection Criteria in Professorial Recruiting as Indicators of Institutional Similarity? Given the administrative responsibilities of the editors, it is plausible that some of these events refer to quality or process control related activities such as setting up automated mailings without a call for action. Sometimes they are more busy. It also files who is affected by an event (Table 2). Journal Editor's Perspectives on the Roles and Tasks for Peer Reviewers in Biomedical Journals: A Qualitative Study, Between Politics and Science: Assuring the Integrity and Productivity of Research, Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective, Peer Commentary on Peer Review: A Case Study in Scientific Quality Control, Peer Review Verfahren auf dem Prfstand/Peer Review ResearchReviewed. 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. Apparently, appeal plays a minor role with Waiting for Appeal (N = 355), Appeal Received (N = 358) and Appeal Request Accepted (N = 355), but with overall low numbers. The main aims of our study are hence the following: By investigating process generated data from a publishers editorial management system, we aim to explore the ways by which the digital infrastructure is used and how it represents the process of peer review. (Bloomberg) -- U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson committed tens of billions of pounds for a controversial new high speed rail line linking London with cities to the north, despite soaring costs and mounting anger from his own Conservative Party colleagues.The High Speed 2 (HS2) development will become Europe's largest infrastructure project but it has suffered delays and criticism of its . The editor-in-chief is primarily responsible for initial receipt of the manuscript and assignment to an associate editor. The reviewers comments and recommendations are supposedly stored in the database at other places, but their content is not present in the manuscript histories they only appear as Review Received. We are able to compare the elements and events described in the patent (Plotkin, 2009) with its adaptation at the publisher in question, where the elements of the process could only be identified by taking event labels, performing actors and sequence of steps together. Hence, a lower density in the observed network than in the patent would be more plausible for a streamlined process. 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). There is much consensus about peer review for manuscripts being a major instrument for quality control despite differences what that means in practice (Campanario, 1998a; Campanario, 1998b). This led to a network of 623 edges with a density of d = 0.12. 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. Please share with the community how many days the entire process took by the editor's office. Nature. 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 patent as well as the digital infrastructure aim at supporting the editor in their work. However, in contrast to the patent for the editorial process, where steps have a clear order, the infrastructure seems to allow for an open process: in principle, almost any event could follow any other, which leaves the responsibility for the process in the domain of the actors. editor decision started under consideration. This is supported by the process sequence empirically showing regularities but being very open in principle. Such critics also fueled debates about new forms of open peer review, as technological or organizational innovations are imagined to ultimately alter editorial practices at scholarly journals (Ross-Hellauer et al., 2017). Thus, it is rendered invisible as distinguishable component. To the best of our knowledge, our analysis is one of the very few quantitative analyses of these processes. The description of the variables was mainly derived from the field names, their values and the xml-structure in the raw data and is given in Table 1. In the next section, we introduce the theoretical framework and main perspectives. That is why it would be difficult to make claims about changes between a pre-digital and a digital scholarly journal world: we simply do not know enough about organizational practices of peer review as such, though research about peer review has grown recently (Batagelj et al., 2017). What do these status changes mean? typoresubmitstagedecision sent to author&, proofproofnaturepublish, ScienceNatureScienceScience, Editor assigned (Peer-review) (discovery) (invention)novelunexpected)The criteria for a paper to be sent for peer-review are that the results seem novel, arresting (illuminating, unexpected or surprising), and that the work described has both immediate and far-reaching implicationsnaturescienceBoard of Reviewing EditorsscienceBoard of Reviewing EditorsBoard of Reviewing EditorsnaturescienceBoard of Reviewing Editorsscienceconnection, 22, Peer-review, Peer-review, 2. While the potential exploitation of these process generated data may support the administration, it at the same time may also put more pressure on the editor, simply because these data can be shared and discussed with potential stakeholders of the publisher. 201451 XXXXX@nature.com Final decision for XXXXX. 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. The editor is probably going through the reviews to arrive at a decision. The phase of data collection was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) within project 01PQ16003. Many journals now rely on editorial management systems, which are supposed to support the administration and decision making of editors, while aiming at making the process of communication faster and more transparent to both reviewers and authors. Whether digital infrastructures such as editorial management systems are transforming the peer review process with regard to these two tasks is hard to tell, given the difficulties of exploring the process. An official website of the United States government. When we plot the network with Kamada-Kawai layout, the high network density causes the network to appear as a circle (see Figure 4, left) with no visually detectable pattern between source and target. If it isn't, we encourage you to ask. The network was then investigated iteratively, each descriptive step pointing to a new direction to follow and the insights gained were grouped together and will be discussed against each other in the end. The first possibility is the short decision path from Manuscript Consultation Started directly to Editor Decision Complete. All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. The study has several implications on the study of publishing practices and processes addressed in the article collection about Change and Innovation in Manuscript Peer Review it is part of. In this specific case, however, the practices related to the technology support the principle of an editor centred system in the peer review process. The remaining network has only 96 edges and a density of d = 0.02, and a core-periphery structure becomes visible (see Figure 4, right). It has core editorial offices across the United States, continental Europe, and Asia under the international scientific publishing company Springer Nature. Similarly, disputes on factual issues need not be resolved unless they would have altered the final decision to publish or not. 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