Happy New Year!
I love the promise of a new year: seemingly everyone takes off the last week or so of December, so they can slough off the previous year and start refreshed come January 2nd (or later). It’s a time for planning out your new year and making resolutions.
Here is one of my resolutions: This year I want to set aside time each week to reflect on the work I’m doing. Journals and publications receive submissions, publish articles and issues, and keep moving forward at a pace that can make reflection tough: you’re always on to something new, even before the previous task has been finished. I’ve found I need to actively remind myself to take the time to step away and examine if we can make improvements and adjust accordingly. I hope to do more of that this year.
So, the January Question of the Month is “what are your professional resolutions for 2019?” Responses should be emailed to scienceeditor@councilscienceeditors.org, and when we receive enough helpful responses, we’ll compile them into a future Science Editor article or newsletter.
If you haven’t already, please check out the Winter 2018 issue of Science Editor, which published in December. CSE members should expect to receive their print copy in a few weeks.
Jonathan Schultz
Editor-in-Chief, Science Editor
Recent Early Online Article
Our newest Editor’s Perspective article comes from Brooke LaFlamme, Chief Editor of Communications Biology. Brooke provides an interesting perspective, both as someone who has just started a new journal and as a professional science editor. I especially appreciate her pithy response to the idea that professional editors are “failed scientists”: “One does not stop being a scientist immediately upon leaving academia. ‘Scientist’ is not a job description; it’s a way of approaching the world.”
Hot Articles from Recent Issues (For CSE Members only)
As a CSE member benefit, once Science Editor articles are moved to an issue, they are available only to CSE Members for one year.
This month, I encourage CSE Members to read My Words of Your Words? Detecting and Investigating Plagiarism by Nancy Gough from the recent Winter 2018 issue. Nancy, a former professional associate editor at Science’s STKE (now Science Signaling), gives her insight into detecting and addressing plagiarism. It’s clear that some authors are unaware of the standards regarding plagiarism—particularly self-plagiarism—which makes sense considering the standards can shift over time and between disciplines and countries. As she notes, similarity detection software works well, but many instances require the keen eye and nuanced mind of an experienced editor. Full disclosure: I self-plagiarized most of this paragraph from my Viewpoint in that issue, which can be found here.
As a reminder, it’s time to renew your CSE Membership for 2019! CSE Members can login to the Members Only Area with your new member login credentials to renew their membership and continue to access all of Science Editor.
Not a CSE member? Additional membership info along with instructions for becoming a member of the Council of Science Editors can be found here.
From the Archives
Since the start of a new year is both time for reflection and for looking to the future, it’s a good time to revisit former Science Editor EIC Tracey DePellegrin’s article from last January, Science Editor Since the 70s: When Looking Back Helps Us Look Forward.
Resource of the Month
Being an editor and working at a scientific publication requires being ever knowledgeable of a rapidly changing scientific and publishing landscape, so each month I highlight a resource that will hopefully make this at least a little bit easier.
This month I’d like to highlight a blot post shared on Twitter by Stephen Heard, an associate editor for The American Naturalist and FACETS: How (as an editor) I choose lists of reviewers.
He freely admits his process may not work for everyone, but it’s interesting to see his process described in detail and a reminder of the amount of work it can take to find a decent group of reviewers for a manuscript.
A Tweet for the Road
All I’ve done today is make a folder on my desktop called “Compliments People Gave Me in 2019”
And now…we wait.
— Shaena Montanari (@DrShaena) January 1, 2019
Here’s wishing everyone a wonderful 2019!
Feedback and suggestions are always welcome at scienceeditor@councilscienceeditors.org.
We are also always looking for new submissions or article suggestions you may have; for more details, see our Information for Authors.