Editorials |
Necessary steps for a modern scientific journal
Peter Allebeck** Correspondence: Peter Allebeck, e-mail: peter.allebeck{at}phs.ki.se
With the turn of the year 2006, we have taken another step in the series of reforms of this journal that Johan Mackenbach outlined in his editorial ‘New wine in new bottles’ about a year ago.1 The editorial office has moved to Stockholm from Karlstad at the same time as we have gone over to electronic handling of manuscripts.
We owe a great thanks to Per-Gunnar Svensson, who founded the journal in 1991 and was its first editor in chief, as well as Staffan Jansson and Anita Kallin, editor and managing editor of the journal since a number of years. With support from the County Council, the Karlstad University, and the Swedish Council for Social Research, the Karlstad team has been responsible for the day-to-day running of the journal's manuscript handling during all these years. They can now proudly hand over this task, which from January 2006 is carried out by myself and the new managing editor Karin Guldbrandsson. This shift coincides nicely with the shift from paper to electronic handling of manuscripts.
Many of us are very fond of working with printed text on paper; you pick up manuscripts in readable form in a physical mail box, you can read and easily make notes in it wherever you are: on a train, in a bus, or in the bathtub. When submitting to a journal, you put some piles of paper in a classical envelope for safe delivery to whatever editorial office somewhere in the world. Sadly or not, there is no place any longer for nostalgic paper work in the daily running of a professional journal. Speed, flexibility and costs are arguments strong enough to favour electronic handling of manuscripts to classical procedures.
With a tight schedule, we have worked with the publisher to adapt the Manuscript Central system to the particular needs of this journal. One overriding principle has been to make it user friendly and easy to handle for authors and reviewers. We are aware that the shift to electronic system always implies initial problems and moments of irritation. But we will do our best to make the manuscript handling as smooth as possible and we are grateful for comments and suggestions from authors and reviewers to improve the system.
An often discussed issue in the handling of scientific manuscripts is to what extent the peer review is ‘open’. While most journals today keep the authors disclosed to reviewers, one of the reasons being that research has shown that masking authors does not work,2 few journals disclose reviewers to the authors. This asymmetrical relation is usually defended by the finding that reviewers are more difficult to recruit if their identity is disclosed to authors.3 Other arguments are that reviewers would tend to become less critical and more reluctant to propose rejection. While acknowledging such possible effects, Rennie,4 Godlee5 and others have given compelling arguments for having the peer review system totally open. Furthermore, research has not been able to show such adverse effects on the quality of the reviews.3,5
The ambition for this journal is thus to work towards an open procedure for peer review. We realize though that we must take a pragmatic approach that does not make our reviewers reluctant to take on this important task. The first step we propose is to encourage our reviewers to sign the review form that will be available to the authors.
While working further on the procedure for peer review, as well as other aspects on editorial policy, we now hope to have set up a well functioning system to handle incoming manuscripts. We hope authors and reviewers will excuse any inconvenience that may be encountered initially.
These technical improvements of the journal are necessary but not sufficient measures to increase the visibility and the impact of the journal in the international public health community. With a bimonthly publication and a large circulation through the European Public Health Association (EUPHA), we look forward to being able to publish even more high quality papers from within as well as outside Europe.
References
1 Mackenbach JP. New wine in new bottles. Eur J Public Health 2005;15:1
2 Justice AC, Cho MK, Winker MA, Berlin JA, Rennie D. Does masking author identity improve peer review quality? JAMA 1998;280:240–2.
3 van Rooyen S, Godlee F, Evans S, Black N, Smith R. Effect of open peer review on quality of reviews and on reviewers' recommendations: a randomised trial. BMJ 1999;318:23–7.
4 Rennie D. Freedom and responsibility in medical publication. JAMA 1998;280:300–2.
5 Godlee F. Making reviewers visible. Openness, accountability, and credit. JAMA 2002;287:27862–5.
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