Centrality is a relative measure, putting different nodes into an ordered relation. Journal decisions 6. We focus our analysis on editorial peer review, that is, processes related to editorial selection, management and decision making. If the manuscript has been peer-reviewed, authors should include a note explaining any changes made to the manuscript compared to the original Nature Microbiology submission, along with a separate point-by-point response to the reviewer reports. Further, it indicates respect for the authors as sentient beings possibly frustrated about a negative decision. Recht Manage. Yet, little is known about how these infrastructures support, stabilize, transform or change existing editorial practices. ~. We have also gained specific insights into how editors take their role in the peer review process seriously: despite automation of some administrative steps, decision-making as well as decision-communication remains in the human domain. This is partly caused by several automated steps present in the process, which can take only one second to happen. Following an ethnographic approach to infrastructures, we reconstruct sequences of the stages passed by the manuscript, taking into account how long it takes for manuscripts to pass from one stage to another. With regard to roles and activities of the editor, there is support as well as control by the infrastructure. 2 wormified 4 yr. ago A month sounds optimistic to me :-) 2 [deleted] 4 yr. ago [removed] riricide 4 yr. ago ]]> ISSN 2058-5276 (online). Recent research into platforms (Blmel, 2021) has argued that novel digital infrastructures are considered as agents of change for scholarly practices by incorporating several functions relevant for decision making and quality control. We stopped disintegration at the iteration before the four different decision events Manuscript Rejected, Manuscript Revise and Re-Review, Manuscript Revise only and Manuscript Accepted fell apart from each other into different components. The reviewer comments were very helpful to improve the quality of our work, and also the editor was helpful and responsive. Does "Under Review" mean that the paper has passed the editorial check? To obtain Our original resources for authors and journals will help you become an expert in academic publishing. Answer: It is clear from the status descriptions that your revised manuscript was sent for peer review again. All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Since then the success of peer review in science was unprecedented and can be seen in the various ways peer review has been integrated for the evaluation of scholarly output, with varying expectations as to what it is to accomplish. Because of combinatorial explosion, large networks can be expected to be less dense than smaller ones. However, on occasion editors might consult with expert researchers when deciding whether to review a paper. The patented process is implemented as software, which is then adapted locally to the journals and publishers needs, taking stock of the diversity of scholarly publishing. In the data used for our investigation, we see traces of actions and participant roles in different processes. If the editor decides to send the manuscript to peer reviewers, they will contact researchers with relevant expertise. While the data explored do not allow for mining reviewers recommendations, and the data in this article say little about how editors deal with data about reviewers or authors, it does document well the various steps taken by the editors to reach to both authors and reviewers, to communicate and prepare selections and decisions. We found that the labelling of the events indicates that at least all elements of the minimal model of peer review processes are represented, that is, postulation, consultation, administration and decision. . Nine events were attributed to the administrative activities of the peer review process, according to Schendzielorz and Reinhart (2020) comprising processes, where postulations are received, their treatments are initiated or being coordinated. As acquiring complete inventory data from not fully open peer review is very difficult, we used the hereby presented study to exploit more of the potential of the data. For some time, the manuscript items are actively maintained when they undergo consultation eventually, when they are decided about, and when the editorial decision is communicated to the authors and/or the manuscript is sent to production. More specifically, we hence thirdly 3), also aim at exploring as to whether one can find traces of automated decision making, something which could more radically alter editorial peer review and scholarly publishing. These values and criteria can, for instance, be captured by studying aims and means of the patent (Plotkin, 2009) which serves as the technological basis for the editorial management system from our investigation. [CDATA[// >Manuscript received)->Editor assigned->Manuscript under consideration->Editor Decision StartedDecision sent to author->Waiting for revision, ->Revision receivedManuscript #A1Manuscript under submission->Manuscript received->Editor assigned->Manuscript under consideration->Editor Decision Started, . We were allowed to analyse the data but not to share or publish the dataset. GUID:EFC9DCE3-3C9C-46E8-B28A-8E8EFE53517D, editorial management systems, peer review, process generated data, digital transformation of scholarly publishing, digital infrastructure. How does the infrastructure support, strengthen or restrain the editors agency for administrating the process? These events document the time passing before a relevant step in the consultation or postulation, inasmuch as they control if editors, authors and referees perform their tasks timely. Some of these activities, formerly external to the normal administrative editorial work, may now be automated by the infrastructure, leading to novel control technologies which may also put the editorial role under stronger pressure. We oversee this process to ensure that your manuscript contains. Exploring a digital infrastructure without actually having access to it is challenging. The most central node is Preliminary Manuscript Data Submitted which has 27,910 ingoing and outgoing edges, whereas the least central node is Initial QC failed (where QC stands for quality control) which has only 147 edges. The journal covers topics including: -Lasers, LEDs and other light sources -Imaging, detectors and sensors -Optoelectronic devices and components -Novel materials and engineered structures -Physics of light propagation, interaction and behaviour -Quantum optics and cryptography -Ultrafast photonics -Biophotonics -Optical data storage How to write an email to the editor inquiring about the current status of my paper? In contrast, in our data, the editors play a major role, performing lots of tasks affecting actors with other roles assigned and there is no automated decision making at play, when it comes to the final publishing approval decision. Editorial decision making at Nature Genetics. If that assumption is right, administrative activities might indeed more closely be intertwined with what Schendzielorz and Reinhart (2020) have called observational activities (p.19), enlarging editors control on the process, but also putting more pressure on this role. Yet, in our data set, we also found events that reach beyond administrative activities, because they document pace, effectiveness, or quality of the process or the item (the manuscript), thus enabling quality control and supervision of the whole process, which we label observational elements. Also, with Friedman and Nissenbaum (1996), we argue, that the infrastructure itself is shaped by assumptions from its developers about how the world is like and should be. Though many agree that scholarly publishing and peer review are social processes (Reinhart, 2010), investigations about the processes of scholarly publishing and peer review are rare, given that persons engaged in these processes actively resist investigation (Hirschauer, 2010, 73). In light of their advice, I am delighted to say that we can in principle offer to publish it in Nature, provided that you revise the paper to address a number of further editorial points. One of the reasons for the rising significance of editorial practices is the increase of self-control of scholarly journals emerging from the digital transformation of the process induced by the editorial management system. 117. While they draw in their examples from grant peer review, they explicitly claim their depiction to enable comparative analyses of different peer review processes along the elements of a minimal process: postulation, consultation, decision and administration. We then continue by presenting major outcomes of the study, followed by a discussion about the editorial processes mediated by editorial management systems, and the role of automated decision making. The rejected manuscripts and those to be resubmitted get a special treatment by the editors: the communication about the frustrating decision is thoroughly crafted showing in the network as two vertices about Drafting Decision Letter, notably resulting in longer durations for decisions to be sent to authors. [CDATA[> Peer review at scholarly journals, however, does also have a function in protecting scientific autonomy by safeguarding quality. the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Finding reviewers who agree to deal with the . Picking the right philosophy of life is a vital decision, write Massimo Pigliucci, Skye Cleary and Daniel A. Kaufman - whether your a Stoic, an Existentialist of an Aristotelian. For most of the analyses, a simplified network was used: loops were removed and multiple edges between the same two vertices were reduced to one. //-->