How to determine authorship order quantitatively

Feuding coauthors on your paper? Petty arguments about who did more work? Colleagues whining because you didn’t include them in the author list of your latest Nature paper? I recently discovered the following paper, which reminded me of several articles that produce a quantitative approach to determining author order. Authorship of scientific articles within an […]

Peer review is like a box of chocolates.

In talking with Gary Lackmann recently about my philosophy of peer review, the issue came up about how much you can push authors to submit to your will as Editor. I thought about what G. K. Batchelor said in his article in Journal of Fluid Mechanics “Preoccupations of a journal editor” that you don’t have […]

Most scientific paper retractions due to misconduct

Raw Story reports that “When a biomedical study is retracted, most of the time it is because of misconduct rather than error, a report published Monday said. Two-thirds of all retractions around the world stem from acts like fraud, suspected fraud or plagiarism, it added.” The relevant paper is the Fang et al. (2012). Fang, […]

How to Prepare a Really Lousy Submission: Water Resources Research Editorial Team

Sent to me from colleagues at the University of Utah. [PDF]

Rejected for publication: What now?

So, your manuscript was rejected? Before you start firebombing the editor’s place of work and writing screeds on your blog, consider the following. Put yourself in the reviewer’s shoes. It may be hard to do so, but it is often the best way to understand what the reviewer is trying to communicate. If the reviewer […]

Teller on Communicating Science

No, not Edward Teller, but Teller of the magic act Penn and Teller. The Smithsonian magazine’s March 2012 issue has an article written by Teller, available online. In the article, Teller explains seven principles for how magicians convince the audience of the trick. After reading them, I think many could be equally applied to convincing […]

The Boycott of Elsevier

As pointed out by Chris Fairless in the comments on a recent blog post of mine, a movement has started to boycott Elsevier because of their aggressive business practices that hurt libraries and restrict information. The petition is called http://thecostofknowledge.com/ and started with a blog post here. You can take a stand by signing up […]

The politicization of the scientific publishing process

On one topic, Congress seemed to be moving in the right direction. Over the past few years, emphasis was placed on making the research that taxpayers funded open access—in other words, free for all to view. According to a recent article by Wired, a bill called the Research Works Act introduced by Reps Carolyn Maloney […]

A letter from the frustrated author of a journal paper

Paul Roebber sent me this hilarious letter written by a frustrated author to the Editor. Enjoy! Glass, R. L., 2000: A letter from the frustrated author of a journal paper. The Journal of Systems and Software, 54, 1. [PDF] Image from http://lightsallaround.wordpress.com/author/jackieleasommers/

The decreasing number of studies with negative results

When I lived in Oklahoma, Chuck Doswell used to lament to me that it was difficult to publish null cases in meteorology (for example, when something was forecast to happen, but didn’t). Later, when talking to Roseanne McNamee at the University of Manchester, she lamented the same. There are even several journals for negative results: […]

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