Guest Editor's Introduction : Bakhtin's Dialogic Pedagogy

This issue of Soviet Psychology opens with an extensive round-table discussion of the shortcomings of institutionalized psychology in light of the ongoing changes in Soviet society associated with Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness). The participants varied widely in their professional expertise, thus providing an unusually broad view of Soviet psychologists' public views about the problems facing their science.     

Under-Representation of Women on Dental Journal Editorial Boards

Introduction

Each journal’s editorial and advisory board plays a critical role in resolving gender bias in the peer-review and publication process. Thus, this study aimed to quantify women’s participation in editorial and advisory boards of major dental journals. Gender data on editorial and advisory boards were extracted from major dental journals, which were then categorized by journal specialty focus. The gender of the editor-in-chief and associate editor-in-chief was noted to assess the effect of journal leadership on women’s participation in journal boards. For comparison purposes, data were also obtained regarding the percentage of women faculty for each dental specialty.

Results

Overall, in the major 69 dental journals, 14.8% of editorial board members were women. An one-way ANOVA analysis revealed statistically significant gender differences between journal specialty categories (p = 0.003) with some dental specialties’ journals demonstrating a relatively high participation of women as editorial board members. There was a significant positive correlation for various dental specialties between women’s representation in editorial and advisory boards and women in similar dental academic specialties (p = 0.02, r² = 0.55). Furthermore, there was a positive correlation between the presence of women in journal editorial leadership and the percentage of women serving as advisory board members (p = 0.03). Our results confirmed that the under-representation of women on dental journal editorial boards was significantly different between dental science specialties. When there were more women in journal editorial leadership positions, there was a higher participation of women as editorial and advisory board members. Journals should increase the numbers of women on editorial boards in order to secure diversity, improve publication quality and recognize women’s contribution to dental science.     

关注学科前沿，促进学术交流——站在新起点的2009年Science China: Life Sciences

《中国科学》杂志英文版生命科学辑Science China: Life Sciences在2009年进行了全面的改革,贯彻“关注学科前沿,促进学术交流”的编辑出版方针,刊发了5个前沿学科专题,包括基因组学研究,非编码RNA与RNA组学,高致病性禽流感病毒,表观遗传学,干细胞——从分子病理到临床应用,发表了近200篇学术论文,使刊物从形式到内容都展现了一个新的水平．以此为标志,刊物正站在一个前进的新起点,以全新的态势开始其发展的新里程．就此对已发表的一些重要学术论文作一简要回顾和评述．     

Problems in the Psychology of Development (Reading O. Mandel'shtam)

In August of this year, our regular author V.P. Zinchenko celebrated his sixtieth birthday. The editorial board asked him to give an interview about his view of the contemporary science of psychology. Vladimir Petrovich preferred a series of articles on the eternal problems of developmental psychology. We publish the first of these articles, written in the genre of an essay on scientific themes, in this journal issue. But the editorial board did not abandon its request, and hopes that his interview on the science of psychology will be published in the journal. The editorial board congratulates V.P. Zinchenko on his birthday and wishes him success in his scientific work.     

GPB at 10

The arrival of 2013 marked the 10th anniversary of Genomics, Proteomics & Bioinformatics - GPB. According to our outline [1], we have been improving GPB with visible benchmarks and events. First, the numbers of submissions and published articles have both reached the highest in the history of GPB. Second, a special issue on microRNAs was successfully edited by our board members Tongbin Li and William Cho     

Bioethics and Its Gatekeepers: Does Institutional Racism Exist in Leading Bioethics Journals?

Who are the gatekeepers in bioethics? Does editorial bias or institutional racism exist in leading bioethics journals? We analyzed the composition of the editorial boards of 14 leading bioethics journals by country. Categorizing these countries according to their Human Development Index (HDI), we discovered that approximately 95 percent of editorial board members are based in (very) high-HDI countries, less than 4 percent are from medium-HDI countries, and fewer than 1.5 percent are from low-HDI countries. Eight out of 14 leading bioethics journals have no editorial board members from a medium- or low-HDI country. Eleven bioethics journals have no board members from low-HDI countries. This severe underrepresentation of bioethics scholars from developing countries on editorial boards suggests that bioethics may be affected by institutional racism, raising significant questions about the ethics of bioethics in a global context.     

A conversation with Mariana Wolfner,newly inducted member of the National Academy of Sciences

Molecular Reproduction and Development is delighted to announce that editorial board member Mariana F. Wolfner has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Here, Dr Wolfner is interviewed by two of her former postdocs. She discusses her path to studying reproduction and her career as a researcher and mentor.     

In Honor of the President of the Congress: A. N. Leont'Yev-Lenin Prize Laureate

The editorial staff of the journal Voprosy psikhologii and the Soviet psychological community heartily congratulate Aleksey Nikolayevich Leont'yev on receiving the highest scientific award — the Lenin Prize — for his book Problemy razvitiya psikhiki [Problems of mental development].     

A self-study of editorial board diversity at Biological Invasions

Biological Invasions - The editorial board of this journal, Biological Invasions, aims to publish research that informs understanding of the patterns and processes of invasions and discussion of...     

Prion special issue related to the III International Symposium on “The New Prion Biology

The year 2009 has been a crucial year for Prion, as our journal entered this year being listed in PubMedl Medline, Scopus and ISI databases. Our inclusion in these databases signifies recognition of Prion as a full fledged member of the community of the respected biomedical journals. This comes as a result of dedication and hard work of our publishers, editorial board members, authors and reviewers, who altogether made the very existence and timely functioning of Prion possible. Our thanks go to all of you, as well as to all our readers, whose needs and interests necessitate our existence, and to whom we sincerely hope to continue being useful and faithful.     

Race,ethnicity and social science

The contours and complexities of race and racism continue to confound the social sciences. This problem originates in the historical complicity of the social science disciplines with the establishment and maintenance of the systems of racial predation, injustice and indeed genocide upon which the modern world was built. All the social sciences originate in raciology and race management, a fact that is rarely acknowledged. A critical reappraisal of ‘mainstream’ social science’s theoretical and methodological approach to race is therefore overdue. The Ethnic and Racial Studies Review is the right venue for this rethinking. Andreas Wimmer’s distinguished oeuvre provides an appropriate ‘case’ of the tendency that this editorial essay seeks to revise. Concentrating on Wimmer’s 2013 Ethnic Boundary Making, whose publication was the subject of a highly laudatory 2014 issue of ERS Review, this essay criticizes the book as an instance of the problematic social science approaches mentioned.     

Partnering with Life Science Alliance

Molecular Systems Biology is partnering with the new open‐access journal Life Science Alliance, an initiative by three major not‐for‐profit science organizations. An informed transfer process was established with our partner to provide authors with clear editorial commitments and reduce the overall burden on reviewers.     

Carbohydrate-deficient glycoprotein syndromes become congenital disorders of glycosylation: An updated nomenclature for CDG

During the last few years, progress in identifying the molecular defects of the carbohydrate-deficient glycoprotein syndromes has been very rapid. Up to this date, six different gene defects have been elucidated. The plethora of defects that will eventually be identified makes it indispensable to use a simple and straightforward nomenclature for this group of diseases.A group of specialists in this field met for a round-table discussion at the First International Workshop on CDGS in Leuven, Belgium, November 12–13, 1999, and came up with the following recommendations.1. CDG stands for Congenital Disorders of Glycosylation.2. The disorders are divided into groups, based on the biochemical pathway affected: group I refers to defects in the initial steps of N-linked protein glycosylation. These deficiencies affect the assembly of dolichylpyrophosphate linked oligosaccharide and/or its transfer to asparagine residues on the nascent polypeptides; group II refers to defects in the processing of protein-bound glycans or the addition or other glycans to the protein. This grouping no longer refers directly to the isoelectric focusing pattern of serum transferrins or other serum glycoproteins.3. CDG types are assigned to one of the groups and will be numbered consecutively as they are identified: Ia, Ib,...[emsp4 ], IIa, IIb,...[emsp4 ], etc. The currently distinguished types are: CDG-Ia (PMM2[emsp4 ]), CDG-Ib (MPI[emsp4 ]), CDG-Ic (ALG6[emsp4 ]), CDG-Id (ALG3[emsp4 ]), CDG-Ie (DPM1), CDG-IIa (MGAT2[emsp4 ]).4. No new designations will be made unless the genetic defect is established. Untyped cases are considered x cases (CDG-x) until the genetic defect is known.Leuven, Belgium, November 12–13, 1999 (see attached list of Participants)     

Potential Conflicts of Interest of Editorial Board Members from Five Leading Spine Journals

Conflicts of interest arising from ties between pharmaceutical industry and physicians are common and may bias research. The extent to which these ties exist among editorial board members of medical journals is not known. This study aims to determine the prevalence and financial magnitude of potential conflicts of interest among editorial board members of five leading spine journals. The editorial boards of: The Spine Journal; Spine; European Spine Journal; Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine; and Journal of Spinal Disorders & Techniques were extracted on January 2013 from the journals’ websites. Disclosure statements were retrieved from the 2013 disclosure index of the North American Spine Society; the program of the 20th International Meeting on Advanced Spine Techniques; the program of the 48th Annual Meeting of the Scoliosis Research Society; the program of the AOSpine global spine congress; the presentations of the 2013 Annual Eurospine meeting; and the disclosure index of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. Names of the editorial board members were compared with the individuals who completed a disclosure for one of these indexes. Disclosures were extracted when full names matched. Two hundred and ten (29%) of the 716 identified editorial board members reported a potential conflict of interest and 154 (22%) reported nothing to disclose. The remaining 352 (49%) editorial board members had no disclosure statement listed for one of the indexes. Eighty-nine (42%) of the 210 editorial board members with a potential conflict of interest reported a financial relationship of more than $10,000 during the prior year. This finding confirms that potential conflicts of interest exist in editorial boards which might influence the peer review process and can result in bias. Academia and medical journals in particular should be aware of this and strive to improve transparency of the review process. We emphasize recommendations that contribute to achieving this goal.     

A survey of biomedical journals to detect editorial bias and nepotistic behavior

Alongside the growing concerns regarding predatory journal growth, other questionable editorial practices have gained visibility recently. Among them, we explored the usefulness of the Percentage of Papers by the Most Prolific author (PPMP) and the Gini index (level of inequality in the distribution of authorship among authors) as tools to identify journals that may show favoritism in accepting articles by specific authors. We examined whether the PPMP, complemented by the Gini index, could be useful for identifying cases of potential editorial bias, using all articles in a sample of 5,468 biomedical journals indexed in the National Library of Medicine. For articles published between 2015 and 2019, the median PPMP was 2.9%, and 5% of journal exhibited a PPMP of 10.6% or more. Among the journals with the highest PPMP or Gini index values, where a few authors were responsible for a disproportionate number of publications, a random sample was manually examined, revealing that the most prolific author was part of the editorial board in 60 cases (61%). The papers by the most prolific authors were more likely to be accepted for publication within 3 weeks of their submission. Results of analysis on a subset of articles, excluding nonresearch articles, were consistent with those of the principal analysis. In most journals, publications are distributed across a large number of authors. Our results reveal a subset of journals where a few authors, often members of the editorial board, were responsible for a disproportionate number of publications. To enhance trust in their practices, journals need to be transparent about their editorial and peer review practices.

Alongside the growing concerns regarding predatory journal growth, other questionable editorial practices have gained visibility recently. This study explores the relationship between hyper-prolific authors and a journal’s editorial team, finding a subset of journals where a few authors, often members of the editorial board, were responsible for a disproportionate number of publications.     

AIDS epidemic at age 25 and control efforts in China

Retrovirology announces new editorial board members and reprises progress over the first two years of publishing.     

Eulogy to the Quartet and The Gleaning Platform (Trend and End)

The following two poems are a tribute to honor the four prominent Igbo Scholars who have passed away, and whose works touch most directly on the area of Igbo culture and identity: Prof Don Ohadike, convener of the first Igbo Studies Association conference at Ithaca, Prof Ikenna Nzimiro, member of Dialectical Anthropology’s international editorial board, Prof Victor Uchendu, author of the classic ethnography, The Igbo of Southeastern Nigeria, and most recently, Prof Michael Mbabuike, executive board member of Dialectical Anthropology.     

Instructions for authors

Jubilee Dates

The 80-anniversary of V. V. Menshutkin (from the editorial board)     

From Causation to Correlation: The Story of Psychosomatic Medicine 1939–1979

This study focuses on the first four decades inthe history of the pioneering journal Psychosomatic Medicine. The goal of thejournal as stated by its founders was to reformmedicine by scientifically reintegrating the``mind' into medicine. However, from itsinception, the editorial members were hauntedby internal ambiguity regarding the nature ofpsychosomatic knowledge. This led to recurrentidentity crises. This study tells the story ofthe complex interplay between internal andexternal forces shaping PsychosomaticMedicine's institutional transitions andepistemological transformations. Itdemonstrates how, despite this continuousinternal confusion, the level of consistencynecessary for gaining legitimacy increasedduring the process of evaluating papers. Theincreased level of standardization coincidedwith a transition in the psychosomaticmovement's epistemological approach: from causation to correlation. The initialattempt to search for causal mechanismslinking the psyche and the soma were replacedby correlational models measuring variousmanifestations of psychological and biologicalphenomena in a way that presupposed andreduplicated the split the founders ironicallysought to supersede.     

Quality of web based information on treatment of depression: cross sectional survey

ObjectivesTo evaluate quality of web based information on treatment of depression, to identify potential indicators of content quality, and to establish if accountability criteria are indicators of quality.DesignCross sectional survey.ResultsAlthough the sites contained useful information, their overall quality was poor: the mean guideline, issues, and global scores were only 4.7 (range 0-13) out of 43, 9.8 (6-14) out of 17, and 3 (0.5-7.5) out of 10 respectively. Sites typically did not cite scientific evidence in support of their conclusions. The guideline score correlated with the two other quality of content measures, but none of the content measures correlated with the Silberg accountability score. Content quality was superior for sites owned by organisations and sites with an editorial board.ConclusionsThere is a need for better evidence based information about depression on the web, and a need to reconsider the role of accountability criteria as indicators of site quality and to develop simple valid indicators of quality. Ownership by an organisation and the involvement of a professional editorial board may be useful indicators. The study methodology may be useful for exploring these issues in other health related subjects.