Writing scientific papers,with special reference to <Emphasis Type="Italic">Evolutionary Ecology</Emphasis>

The advancement of science, as well as scientific careers, depends upon good and clear scientific writing. Science is the most democratic of human endeavours because, in principle, anyone can replicate a scientific discovery. In order for this to continue, writing must be clear enough to be understood well enough to allow replication, either in principle or in fact. In this paper I will present data on the publication process in Evolutionary Ecology, use it to illustrate some of the problems in scientific papers, make some general remarks about writing scientific papers, summarise two new paper categories in the journal which will fill gaps that appear to be expanding in the literature, and summarise new journal policies to help mitigate existing problems. Most of the suggestions about writing would apply to any scientific journal.     

Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine – achievements and perspectives

Last summer we officially launched the Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine, published by BioMedCentral, with the aim of establishing a serious, peer-reviewed, open-access online journal that focuses on the multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary fields of ethnobiology and ethnomedicine, drawing on approaches and methods from both the social and biological sciences. The strong start vindicates the widely held belief that the journal responds to a real need within the research community. The success of the journal has been most gratifying. The steady influx of submissions of high scientific standards illustrates the strong demand for a dynamic, proactive, and open-minded scientific journal in these research areas. Our aim has been to dedicate JEE to the "scientific communities" worldwide, particularly those in the developing countries.     

Comparison of Journal Self-Citation Rates between Some Chinese and Non-Chinese International Journals

Background

The past 3 decades have witnessed a boost in science development in China; in parallel, more and more Chinese scientific journals are indexed by the Journal Citation Reports issued by Thomson Reuters (SCI). Evaluation of the performance of these Chinese SCI journals is necessary and helpful to improve their quality. This study aimed to evaluate these journals by calculating various journal self-citation rates, which are important parameters influencing a journal impact factor.

Methodology/Principal Findings

We defined three journal self-citation rates, and studied these rates for 99 Chinese scientific journals, almost exhausting all Chinese SCI journals currently available. Likewise, we selected 99 non-Chinese international (abbreviated as ‘world’) journals, with each being in the same JCR subject category and having similar impact factors as their Chinese counterparts. Generally, Chinese journals tended to be higher in all the three self-citation rates than world journal counterparts. Particularly, a few Chinese scientific journals had much higher self-citation rates.

Conclusions/Significance

Our results show that generally Chinese scientific journals have higher self-citation rates than those of world journals. Consequently, Chinese scientific journals tend to have lower visibility and are more isolated in the relevant fields. Considering the fact that sciences are rapidly developing in China and so are Chinese scientific journals, we expect that the differences of journal self-citation rates between Chinese and world scientific journals will gradually disappear in the future. Some suggestions to solve the problems are presented.     

I Publish in I Edit? - Do Editorial Board Members of Urologic Journals Preferentially Publish Their Own Scientific Work?

Scientists who are members of an editorial board have been accused of preferentially publishing their scientific work in the journal where they serve as editor. Reputation and academic standing do depend on an uninterrupted flow of published scientific work and the question does arise as to whether publication mainly occurs in the self-edited journal. This investigation was designed to determine whether editorial board members of five urological journals were more likely to publish their research reports in their own rather than in other journals. A retrospective analysis was conducted for all original reports published from 2001–2010 by 65 editorial board members nominated to the boards of five impact leading urologic journals in 2006. Publications before editorial board membership, 2001–2005, and publications within the period of time as an editorial board member, 2006–2010, were identified. The impact factors of the journals were also recorded over the time period 2001–2010 to see whether a change in impact factor correlated with publication locality. In the five journals as a whole, scientific work was not preferentially published in the journal in which the scientists served as editor. However, significant heterogeneity among the journals was evident. One journal showed a significant increase in the amount of published papers in the ‘own’ journal after assumption of editorship, three journals showed no change and one journal showed a highly significant decrease in publishing in the ‘own’ journal after assumption of editorship.     

向本刊2019年度审稿专家致谢

2019年度,共有368位专家为《中国生物化学与分子生物学报》审稿,他们的辛勤劳动保证了学报的学术质量,他们提出的中肯意见帮助作者提高了科研水平和论文写作质量。在此,编辑部谨向所有的审稿专家致以最诚挚的感谢！以下为审稿专家姓名,其中审稿3篇以上的专家被评为优秀审稿专家。     

向本刊2019年度审稿专家致谢

2019年度,共有368位专家为《中国生物化学与分子生物学报》审稿,他们的辛勤劳动保证了学报的学术质量,他们提出的中肯意见帮助作者提高了科研水平和论文写作质量。在此,编辑部谨向所有的审稿专家致以最诚挚的感谢！以下为审稿专家姓名,其中审稿3篇以上的专家被评为优秀审稿专家。     

Impact beyond the impact factor

The journal impact factor is an annually calculated number for each scientific journal, based on the average number of times its articles published in the two preceding years have been cited. It was originally devised as a tool for librarians and publishers to provide information about the citation performance of a journal as a whole, but over the last few decades it has increasingly been used to assess the quality of specific articles and the research performance of individual investigators, institutions, and countries. In addition to this clear abuse of the journal impact factor, several conceptual and technical issues limit its usability as a measure of journal reputation, especially when journals are compared across different fields. An author’s decision regarding the suitability of a scholarly journal for publication should, therefore, be based on the impact that this journal makes in the field of research, rather than on the journal impact factor.     

Paléohistologie et paléobiochimie des vertébrés dans les Annales de Paléontologie

With the exception of one paper published in 1929, works in vertebrate paleohistology start to be published in the journal in 1968 and are published ever since. Similarly, the first paper in vertebrate paleobiochemistry is published in the journal in 1987 and the field is regularly covered ever since. The relatively late publication of paleohistological researches in the journal is all the more surprizing because there are evidences now that several laboratories at the Paris Museum heavily invested in paleohistology already in the 1870–1890th and gathered extensive collections of thin sections, but very few publications followed. The scientific and contextual causes of the late development of the paleohistological publications in the journal are briefly analyzed. It appears that its history is a fairly faithful reflection of several changing scientific and historical constraints which framed not only french paleontology (and notably the “Paris school”) but french biology as well during the XXth century.     

向本刊2018年度审稿专家致谢

2018年度,共有386位专家为《中国生物化学与分子生物学报》审稿,他们的辛勤劳动保证了学报的学术质量,他们提出的中肯意见帮助了作者提高科研水平和论文写作质量。在此,编辑部谨向所有的审稿专家致以最诚挚的感谢！以下为审稿专家姓名,其中审稿3篇以上的专家被评为优秀审稿专家。 (专家名单详见pdf文件） 《中国生物化学与分子生物学报》编辑部 2019 年1月     

向本刊2017年度审稿专家致谢

The editorial office of Journal of Chinese Biochemistry and Molecular Biology wishes to give our sincere gratitude to the following reviewers who have provided their valuable reports and detailed comments for our journal during 2017. Your contributions are vital for the ever improving scientific quality of the journal and essential for the development of the journal. Editorial Board of Chinese Journal of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology January,2018     

向本刊2016年度审稿专家致谢

一年一度春来到,金鸡报晓春来早！感谢各位审稿专家2016年的陪伴,是你们在百忙之中的辛苦工作,才有了学报一期期保质保量的出版。《中国生物化学与分子生物学报》送走了2016年12期,迎来了2017年的第1期。2016年我们有许多新的尝试,微信公众号的发布、最新录用栏目的启用、还有特约综述的推出,学报点滴的进步都离不开各位专家的帮助,这是期刊向前的步伐,这是属于你我的荣光！2016年度共有238名审稿专家为我刊审稿,其中审稿3篇以上的被评为优秀审稿专家。祝各位专家新春快乐！ 名单详见pdf。 《中国生物化学与分子生物学报》编辑部 2017年1月     

序言：打造精品学术期刊 服务科研创新

正《生物化学与生物物理进展》(以下简称《进展》)创刊于1974年,作为记录科学成果的载体和促进科学交流的平台,它经历了中国科学研究从艰难起步到蓬勃发展的重要时期,是我国科学事业发展的见证者,也是其中重要的参与者.经过40年的艰苦努力,《进展》得到了很大的发展:已初步被国际学术界认知,被SCI、CA、俄罗斯文摘等国际检索系统收录;2009年起全部论文注册DOI,每年均收到海外学者的直接投稿;同时,《进展》被国内生物     

A profile of Fritiof S. Sjöstrand--the founding editor

The Journal of Ultrastructure Research was founded in 1957 by Fritiof S. Sj?strand, who served as Editor-in-Chief until 1990, when the journal changed the name to the Journal of Structural Biology. This profile summarizes the developments that led to the start of the journal and aspects of Fritiof Sj?strand's scientific and personal carrier.     

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.     

中文科技期刊英文摘要的常见错误与规范化一以生物医学论文英文摘要为例

科技期刊的荚文摘要质量直接决定能否被国际权威检索系统收录以及期刊的学术影响力。然而在查阅本年度中文科技核心期刊上发表的生物医学论文英文摘要的过程中,发现了6类典型错误。通过引用近两年来发表在国外英文科技期刊上的生物医学论文摘要为例,从文体特征和典型表达方式两方面说明中文科技期刊英文摘要的规范化问题。     

SCIENCE IN CHINA (SCIENTIA SINICA)

Science in China is a comprehensive academic journal of natural sciences sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The primary purpose is to provide regular, rapid and authoritative reviews of current important developments in scientific research in China for scientific workers in China and other countries. The contents are selected by an extensive editorial committee     

The Assessment of Science: The Relative Merits of Post-Publication Review,the Impact Factor,and the Number of Citations

The assessment of scientific publications is an integral part of the scientific process. Here we investigate three methods of assessing the merit of a scientific paper: subjective post-publication peer review, the number of citations gained by a paper, and the impact factor of the journal in which the article was published. We investigate these methods using two datasets in which subjective post-publication assessments of scientific publications have been made by experts. We find that there are moderate, but statistically significant, correlations between assessor scores, when two assessors have rated the same paper, and between assessor score and the number of citations a paper accrues. However, we show that assessor score depends strongly on the journal in which the paper is published, and that assessors tend to over-rate papers published in journals with high impact factors. If we control for this bias, we find that the correlation between assessor scores and between assessor score and the number of citations is weak, suggesting that scientists have little ability to judge either the intrinsic merit of a paper or its likely impact. We also show that the number of citations a paper receives is an extremely error-prone measure of scientific merit. Finally, we argue that the impact factor is likely to be a poor measure of merit, since it depends on subjective assessment. We conclude that the three measures of scientific merit considered here are poor; in particular subjective assessments are an error-prone, biased, and expensive method by which to assess merit. We argue that the impact factor may be the most satisfactory of the methods we have considered, since it is a form of pre-publication review. However, we emphasise that it is likely to be a very error-prone measure of merit that is qualitative, not quantitative.

Author summary

Subjective assessments of the merit and likely impact of scientific publications are routinely made by scientists during their own research, and as part of promotion, appointment, and government committees. Using two large datasets in which scientists have made qualitative assessments of scientific merit, we show that scientists are poor at judging scientific merit and the likely impact of a paper, and that their judgment is strongly influenced by the journal in which the paper is published. We also demonstrate that the number of citations a paper accumulates is a poor measure of merit and we argue that although it is likely to be poor, the impact factor, of the journal in which a paper is published, may be the best measure of scientific merit currently available.     

New journal: Algorithms for Molecular Biology

This editorial announces Algorithms for Molecular Biology, a new online open access journal published by BioMed Central. By launching the first open access journal on algorithmic bioinformatics, we provide a forum for fast publication of high-quality research articles in this rapidly evolving field. Our journal will publish thoroughly peer-reviewed papers without length limitations covering all aspects of algorithmic data analysis in computatioal biology. Publications in Algorithms for Molecular Biology are easy to find, highly visible and tracked by organisations such as PubMed. An established online submission system makes a fast reviewing procedure possible and enables us to publish accepted papers without delay. All articles published in our journal are permanently archived by PubMed Central and other scientific archives. We are looking forward to receiving your contributions.     

Toward a standards-compliant genomic and metagenomic publication record

Increasingly, we are aware as a community of the growing need to manage the avalanche of genomic and metagenomic data, in addition to related data types like ribosomal RNA and barcode sequences, in a way that tightly integrates contextual data with traditional literature in a machine-readable way. It is for this reason that the Genomic Standards Consortium (GSC) formed in 2005. Here we suggest that we move beyond the development of standards and tackle standards compliance and improved data capture at the level of the scientific publication. We are supported in this goal by the fact that the scientific community is in the midst of a publishing revolution. This revolution is marked by a growing shift away from a traditional dichotomy between "journal articles" and "database entries" and an increasing adoption of hybrid models of collecting and disseminating scientific information. With respect to genomes and metagenomes and related data types, we feel the scientific community would be best served by the immediate launch of a central repository of short, highly structured "Genome Notes" that must be standards compliant. This could be done in the context of an existing journal, but we also suggest the more radical solution of launching a new journal. Such a journal could be designed to cater to a wide range of standards-related content types that are not currently centralized in the published literature. It could also support the demand for centralizing aspects of the "gray literature" (documents developed by institutions or communities) such as the call by the GSC for a central repository of Standard Operating Procedures describing the genomic annotation pipelines of the major sequencing centers. We argue that such an "eJournal," published under the Open Access paradigm by the GSC, could be an attractive publishing forum for a broader range of standardization initiatives within, and beyond, the GSC and thereby fill an unoccupied yet increasingly important niche within the current research landscape.     

Position on the publication of S. Ehrhardt (1990): Setukesen. A population group between Estonians and Russians in southeast Estonia. Homo 40, 159-175. Reflections on responsibility in anthropological works]

The uncommented publication of data on Setukesen people (SE Estonia), which were collected in 1942, by the scientific journal Homo (40, 159-175, 1990) is remarkably unreceptive to discussions within the scientific community at large. Therefore some basic considerations on scientific ethics in anthropology are outlined. Unfortunately Homo has refused to publish this statement which was written on appointment of the advisory board of the German Society of Anthropology and Human Genetics.