Reference managers comparative

COPE peer review ethical guidelines

As mentioned in the February Alert, COPE drafted a paper with recommendations for ethical guidelines for peer reviewing. These have now been updated and ratified, and can be found on the COPE website, free for any journal to use.

The COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers is available as a PDF.

Looking for authors of Clinical Practice Guidelines

Clinical practice guidelines are recommendations on the appropriate treatment and care of people with specific diseases and conditions. Clinical practice guidelines are based on the best available evidence. Guidelines help healthcare professionals in their work, but they do not replace their knowledge and skills.

Now iMedPub is looking for clinicians wishing to write a monograph on any clinical topic. It must be of practical interest. You can find here the instructions for authors.

Monographs will be published both as an scientific article to be published both as an article in the journal Open Journal of Medicine and as an eBook to be distributed online at Amazon.

Publication is free of charges!

Publish your book in Open Access with iMedPub

We would like to invite you to consider publishing a new book us in Open Access model. In this model, the book is available online to all interested readers, who do not have to pay for accessing its contents. Open access brings a wider audience and broader readership. It can also help promote printed copies of the work.

Here are a few reasons why you should consider iMedPub as your publisher:
- fair and comprehensive peer-review of submitted proposals and manuscripts
- English language copy-editing by native English speaking specialists in the field (we accept also manuscripts in Spanish)
- professional composition of the manuscript in PDF format
- hosting the book on MetaPress platform, with many functionalities, e.g. active links in references
- printed copies sold to libraries and individuals, by iMedPub and distributors (e.g. Amazon)
- royalties for the author from print copies
- indexing by Google and similar services.
- e-book delivery to libraries and full-text repositories (e.g. Google Book Search)
- Creative Commons copyright license

As a rule, open access books are published in so-called author-pays model, which means that the author (or rather his or her affiliate institution or another sponsor) of the book manuscript accepted for publication pays a Book Processing Charge, which covers the production and marketing costs. This year we have a special promotion, charging 1€/page plus 2€/figure only.

If you prefer the traditional way of publishing, where the book content is available only to libraries and individuals who have paid for it, we are of course also available for it.

If you wish to submit a new book proposal, please e-mail us at info@imedpub.com

EASE Guidelines

The EASE Guidelines for Authors and Translators of Scientific Articles to be Published in English (translated into many languages, see below) provide simple, clear advice aimed at making international scientific communication more efficient. We encourage authors and translators to observe these guidelines and apply the relevant suggestions to their manuscripts before submission. Adherence should mean that the manuscript has a greater chance of acceptance. Moreover, the editorial process will tend to be faster, so authors, translators, reviewers and editors will save time.

EASE Guidelines - English (June 2012)

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Why serve as a peer reviewer?

As your career advances, you are likely to be asked to serve as a peer reviewer. You won't earn any money for this, and you'll no doubt be busy with your own work. However, there are some good reasons for saying yes:

• You will be contributing to the scientific process by providing an objective assessment of the methods used by other researchers.
• Serving as a peer reviewer looks good on your CV as it shows that your expertise is recognized by other scientists.
• You will get to read some of the latest science in your field well before it is in the public domain.
• The critical thinking skills needed during peer review will help you in your own research and writing.
• Peer reviewing is an opportunity to “give back” to the scientific community – your fellow researchers will have taken the time to review and help improve your manuscript, so this is your turn to do the same for them.

Join the board of iMedPub Journals

Dear collegue,

iMedPub publishes a series of biomedical journals that employ a fast track peer review process. Manuscripts that are submitted to the journal will be sent to a number of Editorial Board Members, who will have around two weeks to provide either a recommendation for the publication of the manuscript, along with a written commentary detailing any changes that the authors can make to improve their manuscript before final publication, or a written critique of why the manuscript should not be published.

After the two-week period has elapsed, if the majority of the editorial evaluations recommend the manuscript be rejected, the manuscript will be rejected. If all the editorial evaluations that are received recommend that the manuscript be accepted for publication, the manuscript will be accepted. Otherwise, the editorial evaluations will be anonymously communicated to all of the Editors who participated in the peer review process. Each Editor will be given an additional week to review the feedback of the other Editors and to either confirm or revise their earlier editorial recommendations. If the majority of the editorial evaluations that are received by the end of this second round of review recommend the manuscript be accepted for publication, the manuscript will be accepted. Otherwise, the manuscript will be rejected. More information on the journal's editorial model can be found here.

The journals we publish follow an hybrid model, which allows authors to choose between publishing open access or under subscription. Open access model allows disseminating scholarly articles by removing the access barriers imposed by the subscription model, in order to make the full-text of all published articles freely available for any interested reader. In this model the publication costs of an article are covered in the form of Article Processing Charges (300€), which are publication fees paid from the research budget of accepted authors. In this model authors retain the copyright of their work, and we make every possible effort to ensure that the full-text of every published article is both visible and accessible to all potential readers.

Manuscripts that are submitted by the members of the Editorial Board of iMedPub journals will automatically receive a 50% reduction in their Article Processing Charges.

Please do visit the web pages above and let us know if you have any questions or comments to info@imedpub.com. We hope you will accept to join the Editorial board of our journals and I will be looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Best regards,
Carlos Vázquez
CEO iMedPub

Open letter: invitation to host Research Topics as guest editor

Dear researcher,

I came across your research profile, and thought you would be an excellent guest editor for a Research Topic in our journals. 

In case you are not alreadyfamiliar with iMedPub, ours is an international academic publishing house based in Spain and committed to an open access publishing philosophy. It is important for us to be able to bring together our peers around a hot topic. Normally, we do this by organizing small workshops or by holding sessions at major conferences. We therefore conceived Research Topics as a means of giving researchers the opportunity to bring their own community together and bring focus to their topic upon their own initiative. iMedPub developed a specialized IT platform for you to launch and manage your Research Topic, and allows you to handle every aspect of your editorial role as easily as possible. You can manage all your communications related to a Research Topic from this platform in a simple, straightforward manner, with the full support of iMedPub's editorial staff.

Articles published as part of your Research Topic will also be compiled into a popular e-book format forwidespread dissemination. As it is the researcher’s agenda and initiative driving the Research Topic, articles are not invited, but carefully selected fromabstract proposals as in a conference and rigorously peer-reviewed. In short, Research Topics are a fantastic opportunity for you to bring your research area to critical mass, intensify collaborations, and promote the research area to funders.

Article contributions to Research Topics enjoy substantially reduced publishing fees, which sustain our open access policy and philosophy - including the retention of authors’copyright to their own work.

If you are interested in this opportunity, please let me know and I can sendyou some more information about the hosting process. I will also help you prepare a brief Research Topic proposal (see details needed below) for the chief editor to approve. iMedPub Research Topics are often co-hosted by several leading scientists, so you will be able to organize the Research Topic with a group of collaborators.

I very much look forward to your response.

Best regards,

Carlos Vázquez

iMedPub

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Topic host editors: You can host a Research Topic on your own, of course, but it isprobably more fun to co-host it with several colleagues - even up to 5 co-hostsare fine. Co-hosts can help recruit more participants, and you can divide theediting tasks on submitted manuscripts between you.

The topic title: Acompelling title that defines the scope of your Research Topic, but will drawthe interest of readers and potential contributors from a broad range of researchersin your field and beyond.

A description: This is like an abstract and should come to around 500 words. It should outline the full scope of your Research Topic and excite everyone who is participating.Make sure it is comprehensive so that you cover all related areas of research -theories, opinion, methods, areas of impact, historical, etc.

A manuscript submission deadline: We’ve found that 4-8 months is often the mos tsuccessful time frame from the call for participation to the deadline.

A list of candidate contributors (with emails): As a prospective topic host, you should compile a list of researchers that could cover as many aspects of your Research Topicas you can think of. Try to make the list broad and deep so that your Research Topic is encyclopedic and profound. I can also provide you with some suggestions should you send me a set of keywords that I will use to search several scientific publishing databases and archives.

Selecting a specialty journal: iMedPub has several journals, and each journal has more than adozen sections. One of them is likely more suitable than others to host yourtopic, but the choice of host section is best left to you, as you’re the expertin your field.

Register on ourwebsite: To access iMedPub's editorial platform (which allows you tosubmit, edit, and review papers, and collaborate with your colleagues in auser-friendly environment), and to become a research topic host, please register

Peer Review and the role of a Journal Editor

Pre-screening manuscripts First, editors must become more active in pre-screening manuscripts before they are sent out for review. As a reviewer, I regularly receive manuscripts that are severely deficient in English grammar and construction, along with the stated or implicit assumption that it is also my responsibility to re-write these manuscripts in addition to evaluating the scientific content. This expectation places an unfair burden on reviewers and editors, who are usually serving on a volunteer basis. Related issues include being sent manuscripts that are obviously lacking in scientific quality for that journal, out of scope, or in a completely different format from what is specified. Receiving these types of manuscripts increases frustration on the part of reviewers, and editors can and should simply return those manuscripts to the authors and let them address the deficiencies. The authors are ultimately responsible for the qualityof the manuscript.

Try to find actively publishing reviewers Second, editors should focus on obtaining reviews from scientists who are actively publishing in their journal. Every month I receive several automatic ‘invitation to review' e-mails from journals where I have not published in the past nor am I likely to do so in the future, including various new on-line journals. Many scientists will decline those invitations unless there is overwhelming interest in the topic of the paper. Also, I receive numerous requests for reviews from journals where I have published only sporadically as a submitting or lead author, and often not at all for the past several years. Regular contributors have a more vested interest in the journal, but at the same time, editors must not continually ask the same people to review because 'they cannot find anyone else'. Efforts must be made to broaden the review base and increase participation in the review process.

A personal approach Third, assuming reviews are being solicited from regular contributors to a journal, editors should first make personal contact with reviewers instead of just generating an “invitation to review” e-mail. However, if the reviewer declines a review because of their current workload, the editor should go to someone else, rather than asking the reviewer for a suggested alternate. In my experience, many scientists will not do a review if they know a colleague has declined because he or she was “too busy”, because they are busy as well. I do not suggest colleagues when I decline a review unless that person is more appropriate because of their expertise, and I generally let them know that I have or will recommend them as a reviewer. Within many biological disciplines, the number of professional scientists is declining, pressure to obtain outside funding is increasing, and research scientists are being required to perform administrative functions as well. The steps discussed above are just a few ways editors can facilitate the peer review process to ease the burden on journal reviewers.