The original charter of this group included the following list of topics.
POSSIBLE TOPICS
How does an Editor select a reviewer?
How many reviewers for a paper? One, two, three..?
Should papers be transmitted by courier or regular post?
Anonymous reviewing?
Which journals are likely to be receptive of "way out" ideas?
Which journals are prone to defend the conventional wisdom?
Does the annual Impact Rating influence an Editor's choice of manuscripts
Is submitting a paper to Nature/Science a waste of time when so few
papers can be published?
Salami publishing?
Honorary authorship (Fabrikant and all that)?
Should a technician be a coauthor or be mentioned in acknowledgements?
What is a reasonable time for a reviewer to retain a paper?
Electronic publishing?
How should the paper media cite items in the electronic media?
Do editors of the paper media feel threatened by the electronic
revolution? Should they?
Peer review.
Publish or perish?
Order of authors' names on a paper?
Should reviewers be paid?
Does any journal in the biomedical sciences pay authors?
Science writing and literary style?
When should a finding be described as "novel"?
Since many readers do not have English as a first language, should papers
in English take this into account?
Should all scientific writing be in English?
Double publishing,...of papers?...of abstracts? Equal sins?
Priority and credit.
Fraud and plagiarism.
Page charges.
Confidentiality of reviewing.
Do editors deliberately slow manuscript handling to give authors more
time to reconsider?
Better to submit to a non-profit journal (e.g. Biochem.J., BioEssays)?
Do Editors retain unique formats (e.g. citation by author rather than by
number) to make it more difficult for authors to revise manuscripts for
submission elsewhere?
What are the "rights" of an author?
Sincerely, Don Forsdyke
Department of Biochemistry,
Queen's University, Kingston,
Canada K7L3N6 forsdyke at qucdn.queensu.ca
