How to get your work published in Englishlanguage intl journals

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How to get your work publishedin
English-language intl journals

• Hou Mingxin ???
• Commissioning Editor
• Nov. 6th, 2008, Xiamen

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• Introduction
• Why publish publish where?
• Writing submitting
• Publishing house
• Peer review

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John Wiley Sons

• 400 Best Big Companies in America - 2007, 2008
  Forbes
• One of the 20 Best Book Publishing Companies to
  Work For - 2007, Book Business magazine
• 100 Best Companies to Work For 2005, 2006
  Fortune

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1807-2008
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Wileys core businesses

• STMS Publishes journals, books, major reference
  works, databases, and laboratory manuals, in a
  variety of scientific and medical fields, offered
  in print and electronically.
• Professional / Trade Publishes professional,
  general interest non-fiction and subscription
  products. Subject areas include business,
  architecture, professional culinary, psychology,
  education, travel, health, religion, pets, etc.
• Higher Education Acquires, develops, markets,
  and sells educational materials in a variety of
  media for colleges and universities, and online
  learning.

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Wiley-Blackwell (STMS)

• In 2007, Wiley acquired Blackwell
• Over 1,400 journals, 2 in journal publishing
  segment
• 77 journals vs. 23 books
• Online platform ( www.interscience.wiley.com )

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1799-2008
Merged on July 1st with Blackwell-Synergy

• gt 30 mio. visits/month
• gt 15 mio. fulltext accesses/ month (growth
  rates 20)
• 30 mio. end users have access to fulltext
• ca. 3,2 mio. articles from journals (gt1400
  journals, 500 with archives)
• ca. 0.5 mio articles from books, references
  databases

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• Introduction
• Why publish where to publish
• Writing submitting
• Publishing house
• Peer review

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The Journal

• A specialised periodical
• containing scientific content
• written by the scholars or researchers of that
  content themselves
• edited by an academic expert in the field
• its content peer reviewed by the community
• A forum for the exchange of ideas in a subject
  area
• A point of community focus
• A brand

Info courtesy of Michael Mabe, CEO of STM
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The invention of journal publishing
Henry Oldenburg (1618-1677)

• Born in Bremen, Germany
• Resident London from 1652
• Indefatigable correspondent with major scientists
  of his day
• Appointed (joint) Secretary to the Royal Society
  in 1663
• Created (as editor and commercial publisher) the
  first scientific journal in 1665

Info courtesy of Michael Mabe, CEO of STM
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First Scientific Journal

• 6th March 1665 Philosophical Transactions
• First true scholarly journal

Info and Photo courtesy of Michael Mabe, CEO of
STM
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Why publish?

• Disseminate information, enable scientific debate
  - Science originates in dialogue
• Show first publication date
• Acceptance in a high quality journal enhances
  author reputation

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Publish or Perish
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Where to publish
Ian Rowlands and Dave Nicholas. New Journal
Publishing Models An international survey of
Senior Researchers. A CIBER Report for the
Publishers Association and International
Association of STM Publishers. 2005
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Impact Factor
Impact Factor2007
_________________________________
Number of citations in 2007 to articles published
in 2005 and 2006
Number of source items published in 2005 and 2006
Cited window
Citing window
Example
Journal of publishes 75 articles in 2005 and 83
articles in 2006. In 2007 it receives a total
of 344 citations to these articles in all the
other published journals. The journals Impact
Factor for 2007 is 344 ? (75 83) 2.18
2002
2002
2003
2003
2004
2004
2005
2005
2006
2006
2007
2007
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Going for a journal with a high Impact Factor

• Advantages
• Prestige
• Academic advancement
• Disadvantages
• High rejection rate
• Papers triaged
• Some have idiosyncratic style
• Delay due to time before final rejection

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Choosing the right journal

• Seek advice from your advisors, colleagues
• Read the Instruction for Authors and Aim and
  Scope
• Read titles/abstracts of other papers
• Dont aim too high go one level up.
• In general, publications in English attract more
  attention worldwide than those in any other
  language.
• Page charges? Usually no. But will charge
  additional pages, color pages

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Impact Factor 5.330
2.340
3.502
3.446 0.714
2.825
10.031
2.597
2.914
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Submitted Communications China 1998 2008
Number
Year
extrapolated
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Submitted Communications East Asia 1998 2008
Number
Year
extrapolated
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Rejected Communications1986 2007
73
69
68
63
Number
62
59
56
54
48
44
42
30
Year
In 2007 ca. 20 of the Communications were
rejected directly (without refeering)!
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• Introduction
• Why publish publish where?
• Writing submitting
• Publishing house
• Peer review

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Paper writing
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Submitting online

• Instruction for Author
• Cover letter?

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Submitting online
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Submitting online
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Notice to authors
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Notice to Authors
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Cover letter

• Why need a cover letter?
• What should be involved?
• Significance
• Why journal selected
• Suggesting/excluding referees (Wiley journal
  co-authors in the past 5 years ? referees)
• Submit to one journal ONLY ?
• Have ALL the co-authors read the last edition of
  the manuscript?
• Authorize the journal to publish your paper

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• Introduction
• Why publish publish where?
• Writing Submitting
• Publishing house
• Peer review

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Publishing Cycle
AGENT
finalized journal issues
PUBLISHER
Copyediting / proofing
LIBRARY
author
access to electronic or paper journals
submission
decision/ revision
JOURNAL
accepted peer reviewed mss
reader
editorial office
editor
Info and Photo courtesy of Michael Mabe, CEO of
STM
scholarly community
peer review process
referee
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Publishing house

• Editor-in-chief
• Managing editor
• Receiving editors
• Regional editors
• Editorial advisory board members
• Referees (reviewers)

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What do editors do?

• Monitoring of latest developments in the field
• Acquisition of articles reviews, highlights etc.
• Assessing manuscripts and selection of referees
• Assessing referee reports
• Decisions on acceptance and rejection
• Dealing with appeals

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What else do editors do?

• Language polishing and copy editing
• Optimizing the graphical material
• Enhancing the electronic content
• Increasing the visibility of content
• Testing and implementing new technology

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What does editing mean?
Check completeness, check logic, consistency
(text, illustrations, data), clearness of
presentation (the editor as first reader),
language, nomenclature, uniformity (formula,
abbreviations, names, charts, references),
correct outline, check proofs, imprimatur,
metadata for which parts?, PDF/XML?, (re)write
(graphical) abstracts, edit for the table of
contents, is the headline correct?, which
keywords?, prepare index, for various abstracting
services (e.g. ISI...), for own alerting
services, for EarlyView (DOI), for the printed
version (page numbers), linking of supporting
material (videos, internal, external), edit for
the national archiving (print, electronic),
standards, checklists, homepages, press
releases...etc. etc.
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• Introduction
• Why publish publish where?
• Writing Submitting
• Publishing house
• Peer review

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Peer review purpose

• To select high quality papers accurate, original
• Peer recognition impact

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Peer review process

• Open review/Single blind /Double blind review
• Editorial board with occasional further review
• In-house staff plus external review
• Reviewers chosen by Journal, author could also
  nominate or warn against those with conflicting
  interest
• Reviewers are asked to comment on different
  aspects of paper, depending on the journal
• Typically originality, novelty, technical
  accuracy, reproducibility, within scope of
  journal

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Peer review report

• Two reports one to author, one to editor
• Expect 2-4 sets of comments
• Typical recommendations accept, accept with
  minor modifications, accept with major revisions,
  reject but encourage re-submission, reject.

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Referee Report Submission
?
?
?
?
?
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Referees and Referee Reports
A scientist is a mimosa when he himself has made
a mistake, and like a roaring lion when he
discovers a mistake of others. Albert Einstein
This manuscript must be either drastically
reduced or fully oxidized. Anonymous Referee
This is yet another example of a nanoscience
paper with nanonovelty and nanocontent. Anonymous
Referee
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Common complaints

• The language is obscure, I do not have time to
  try and understand the science we already have
  more than enough good papers, so I will have to
  reject straight away.
• This is not original, its just like his last
  paper.
• The authors obviously did not read the journal
  before submitting its out of scope.
• Just contradicting the reviewers is not helpful
  we chose them for their expertise and expect
  their comments to be given due consideration.

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Responding to comments

• Comments are submitted in the spirit of scholarly
  communication take them in that spirit
• Be polite, avoid personal attack and defensive
  behavior
• Take comments into consideration
• Explain which changes have been carried out
• If suggestions/additional experiments were not
  incorporated explain why
• Argue with scientific evidence
• If you really do not agree with making the
  changes proposed, you need to argue with editor
• Or withdraw your paper and submit to another
  journal

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Paper accepted

• Submit final version, production data, figure
  quality, size and (file) format as instructed
• Publishers such as Wiley-Blackwell will copyedit
  your manuscript
• Grammatical errors, inconsistencies, spelling
  mistakes will be removed
• References checked double check prior to
  submission complete and accurate?
• Proofs sent to you for checking often in PDF
  format
• Change errors only, do not re-write.

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Publication

• Online version usually in advance of print e.g
  EarlyView on Interscience
• Production time will depend on frequency of
  journal, and pipeline of papers waiting to be
  published
• Finally, enjoy your feeling of success

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Manuscript Timeline (Top 50)
ACES Meeting July 18, 2008
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Questions?

• Hou Mingxin, ???, commissioning editor
• mhou_at_wiley.com
• Cynthia Chiang, ???, account manager
• cchiang_at_wiley.com

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Thank you!