Bringing it Home
When I leave a great conference like the CSE Annual Meeting held last month, I usually feel a bit overstuffed, but in a good way. A couple days of gatherings and sessions and networking and learning have left me with more than I can process on site. When I’m back home, tired but invigorated at the same time, I go through my notes and invariably there are a few I can’t quite understand (why did I jot down “funnel”?…)
Luckily for CSE Members, there is a long tradition of publishing Annual Meeting Reports in Science Editor, and this year is no different. In fact, our meeting report coordinator (and CSE President) Dana Compton was able to secure an excellent team of reporters covering practically every session and more. The reports we’ve received so far have been uniformly excellent, and we’ll be posting them Early Online throughout the next few weeks, then collecting them in the upcoming Summer and Fall issues of Science Editor.
Whether you were able to attend or not, be sure to check the site regularly to read the reports as they are posted, starting with the 2019 CSE Annual Meeting: A Recap by program co-chairs Mary Billingsley and Shari Leventhal. We’ve also included many of the photos from the meeting with this article, including one of Ollie, who is likely the first canine attendee of a CSE meeting.
While at the site, you can also read the first two session reports that have been posted. In her coverage of the session Data-Driven Best Practices in the Editorial Office, Christina Nelson reports on how the panelists “described their various approaches to data that has informed their decisions regarding best practices for two key aspects of the submission process: author guidelines and reviewer resources.” Rachel Winfield notes in her report on the session Providing the Right Resources for Reviewers, peer review is “a crucial step in the academic publishing process, however training and resources for peer reviewers are not always readily available”. The panelists shared best practices and reviewer resources their organizations have created, many of which are available online and links are provided.
I remembered why I wrote “funnel” in my notes! It refers to an Innovation Funnel, a recent initiative started at the American Chemical Society and presented in the session “Innovation in the Publishing Space.” For more info on that initiative, stay on the lookout for the meeting report that will post along with the others in the next few weeks.
Jonathan Schultz
Editor-in-Chief, Science Editor
Question of the Month
As you are thinking about the CSE Annual Meeting, consider the following Question this month: “What is your take-home from CSE 2019?” Was there a particularly salient point that a speaker made, an overall theme you took away, or maybe a resource you’ll be relying on going forward? If you have something to share, send it to scienceeditor@councilscienceeditors.org and I may feature it in an upcoming newsletter or article.
Recent Early Online Article
I sincerely hope you have not experienced this as an editor, but you most likely have: that horrible moment when you get a call or email that something has gone wrong. If you are like me, that moment is burned into your brain, even if it eventually all works out in the end. In this recently published Fire of the Week column, Protecting Patient Privacy Online, an anonymous author recounts one such moment when she was contacted by an author who had accidentally included patient information in a supplemental file that posted a few days prior. What did she do? You’ll have to read to find out.
Fire of the Week is an ongoing feature, edited by Emilie Gunn, intended as a place to share unique and/or particularly challenging situations members have encountered in the course of their work, that have the potential to teach others how to manage similar challenges when they arise. If you have one to share, a template available online at www.csescienceeditor.org (click “For Authors”) that will help you get started.
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.
Editor searches can be long, sometimes going on for the better part of a year or more, so it can be incredibly frustrating to find that a selected candidate has a potential conflict of interest just as their editorship is about to be announced. In a previous Fire of the Week article, Managing Conflicts of Interest, Emilie Gunn recounted how her organization handled this situation, the options they considered and took, and the steps they have taken to prevent it from happening again.
Not a CSE member? Additional membership info along with instructions for becoming a member of the Council of Science Editors can be found here.
Resource of the Month
Being an editor and working at scientific publication requires being ever knowledgeable of a rapidly changing scientific and publishing landscape, so each month we highlight a resource that will hopefully make this at least a little bit easier.
This month, it’s the upcoming CSE Webinar Journal Success at Home and Abroad: How Do You Measure Global Impact? on June 25, 2019 at 12:00 PM Eastern Time. With the scientific publishing landscape in a state of flux, it’s important to understand how to measure the success of your journal, especially as relying on the Impact Factor becomes increasingly problematic. This webinar will introduce participants to new ways to assess the health of their journal and will “elucidate the need for more alternatives in the world of publishing.”
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.