Asian Council of Science Editors
http://theacse.com/
Majid Moridani, PharmD, PhD
Director, Professor
Clinical Chemistry and Clinical Toxicology
Medical College of Wisconsin
Wisconsin, USA
majid.moridani@yahoo.com
Asian Council of Science Editors
• To support and represent
the interests of scholarly
and scientific publishing
community in Asia in:
– Scientific
– Technical
– Medical
– Scholarly disciplines.
ACSE
•
Share Knowledge and Experience - Provide a forum for the exchange of
information and experiences related to OA/Not OA delivery of scientific content.
•
Develop Uniform Standards and Guidelines – Develop and promote a
uniform definition and standards in the scholarly publishing, best practices for
maintaining and disseminating scholarly communications, and ethical standards.
•
Advance Publishing Models - Support the development of business and
publishing models that support journal and book publishing.
•
Promote Ethics In Publishing – Promote journals, publishing the scholarly
contents with transparent editorial workflow and ethical manners.
•
Advocate for Scholarly Publishing– Promote the scholarly publishers who
follow the Good Practices in scholarly publishing.
•
Provide Training – Provide the training to the personnel involved in the scholarly
publishing community to prepare them for the future challenges by offering short
courses and meetings on the issues of current concerns to enhance the capability and
visibility of the scholarly publishers.
•
Promote Innovation in Publications - Contribute to the development and
dissemination of innovative approaches to scientific communications and of related
activities.
• Board of Directors
– Half of the board from influential editors in the
West,
– the other half from influential editors in the Asia
or Regional Focus Group Chairs
– A tremendous opportunity to shape the scientific
publishing in Asia
Board of Directors:
• Regional Focus Group
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Arab Focus Group
Farsi Focus Group
Turkish Focus Group
Central Asia Focus Group
Chinese Focus Group
Indian Focus Group
Pakistan Focus Group
Malaysia Focus Group
Bangladesh Focus Group
Korean Focus Group
Etc
Committees
– Annual Programming Committee - ACSE
– Guidelines Committee
• Member of focus group have representative
• The final guidelines go to the board of directors for approval
– Regional Workshop Committee – review and approve the proposals by
focus group
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Focus group propose and ACSE review and approves
The review process four times a year
The proposal should arrive 6-12 months in advance
The regional meeting can use ACSE logo to promote the meeting
A report needs to be generated and published
The details can be worked out by the committee
– Establish a new Journal
Group Discussion
• Group Discussion
• Day 2: Friday, August 15, 2014
1. Regional Focus Group – formation – 1 hour
2. Committees – 1 hour
– Annual Programming Committee ACSE
– Guidelines Committee
– Regional Workshop Committee – review and approve
the proposal by focus group
3. Journal – formation of a new journal for this
society – a quarterly journal
Authors, Reviewers, Editors,
Publishers, and Subscribers: Roles
and Responsibilities
Majid Moridani, PharmD, PhD
Director, Professor
Clinical Chemistry and Clinical Toxicology
Medical College of Wisconsin
Wisconsin, USA
Scientific language
• English as scientific language
• Local language as scientific language
• Arabic, Farsi, Turkish, Hindi, English,
Pashto, Urdu
• An independent citation system for open
access for local language
• Negotiate with PubMed to include
journals published in foreign language
• We have open access journals, Google,
PubMed and various search engines, and I can
find and identify many great resources for
learning, teaching, and research just with a
few strokes on a keyboard at my desk at work
and home or even in bed using my iPad.
• Imagine a world without internet, Facebook,
YouTube, Google, Skype, Viber, and PubMed.
• We will all perish as a modern scientific
society. If it weren’t for the dedicated
scientists, and their willingness to share and
teach through publications we would be still
living in the dark ages of the past.
Stakeholders
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Authors
Editors
Reviewers
Publishers
Subscribers
1. Authors: roles and responsibilities
• Authors should plan and execute their research and
experiments to the highest standard possible
• They should ask their colleagues to provide critics to
their hypothesis, experiments, methods, results,
discussions and conclusions
• Team work is essential.
• They should pay close attention to statistics
• Follow the standards, rules, and regulations when
using animals and humans in their research
• Be truthful in their work.
• All authors have equal responsibilities in the
preparation of the manuscript
1. Authors: roles and responsibilities
• The work needs to be original, accurate and free of
plagiarism.
• Keeping accurate records of the methods and results
and subsequently make an effort in publishing them
• Should follow ethical codes in all stages of discovery
and communication
• Should select a journal for their publication.
• They should carefully read the instruction sections for
authors, and follow them through
• Pay attention to typographical errors.
• If English is not their first language, they should ask
someone to proofread the content and references for
accuracy before submitting it to the journal
• Teach the next generation how to write
2. Editors: roles and responsibilities
• Editors share many responsibilities with authors in many
aspects as mentioned in previous slide.
• In addition, they need to:
• Be independent from bias and free from the influences of
publisher
• Promote free thinking
• Encourage controversial subjects
• Critically evaluate the data and article
• Recruit the best scientists and medical practitioners and
professionals to submit articles to their journal
• Select carefully reviewers
• Deal effectively with plagiarisms
• Reject articles with low quality
2. Editors: roles and responsibilities
• Provide editorial guidance to readers on articles
published in the current issue of the journal
• Provide editorial guidance for authors on future topics
of importance
• Organize special issues 1-2 years in advance
• Be fair and impartial
• Interact with publishers to enhance the standards and
quality of publishing materials in the journal
• Assist in indexing the journals on PubMed and other
data bases
• Should have ultimate responsibility to reject and accept
an article for publication
• Formulate a checklist for reviewers to evaluate, accept
and reject the article
3.Reviewers: roles and responsibilities
• Reviewers share some of the responsibilities
with Editors. However, a few roles and
responsibilities are of more importance:
• They should review critically the article under
consideration
• Check the content for novelty, accuracy,
organization, and plagiarism
• Check the statistics, animal care and human
research section
• Review if the statistics are satisfactory and used
appropriately in the publication
• Offer ways to improve the paper
3.Reviewers: roles and responsibilities
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Check for duplications of publications
Write at least a page why they accept or reject a paper
No article should be accepted at first submission.
There is always room for improvement.
This does not necessary mean asking for additional
information or experiments.
• Occasionally, it may require removal of redundant materials.
• The goal should be to improve the article.
• Sometimes that can be achieved by rejection only.
4. Publishers: roles and responsibilities
• Publishers share many responsibilities similar to editors.
• However, they will need to provide:
• Freedom to editors to have the final say in accepting or
rejecting an article for publications in the journal.
• Publishers may have many motives:
– financial and non-financial.
• The financial ones are obvious.
• Publishing is a business and needs to survive.
• The costs need to be low and profit needs to be made.
This is a necessity.
• Many publishers have higher purpose besides making a
living.
• Publishers have an important role. They are instrumental
in dissemination of the knowledge created by scientists.
4. Publishers: roles and responsibilities
• Publishers should:
• Recruit visionary editors and provide them with support to
perform their work
• Allow editors to be independent
• Assist and act quickly to make the publications available as
soon as possible
• Make it possible that the articles to be indexed on PubMed or
similar data base
4. Publishers: roles and responsibilities
• Keep the cost of publishing low as well as making a profit.
• For authors should be important that their publishers make a
profit and stay in business.
• It is not desirable that the journal disappears after a few
issues or years. Therefore, making a profit is not only a
necessity but also is a responsibility.
4. Publishers: roles and responsibilities
• Publishers should promote the journals in
scientific community, a shared responsibility
with editors
• Should have succession plan for editors
• Should set up workshop for authors, reviewers,
editors, and for in-coming editors
• Enhance the standard of publishing and quality
of work published in the journal
• Support the editors by providing tools and
administrative supports they need to evaluate
the acceptability of article for its publication
5. Subscribers: roles and
responsibilities
• Subscribers are the consumers. This could include libraries
or the readers of a journal or article.
• With open access journals, readers do not pay any longer
to purchase the article.
• Subscribers ultimately decide the importance of the work
– by either reading them or
– citing them in their own future work.
• They have responsibilities by writing letters to editors to
criticize the quality of the work with specifics.
• English have several interesting proverbs. One of them is:
“You are what you read”.
• Hence, one of the major responsibilities of the reader is
that if the quality of the work is questionable, they should
not spend their times and resources to acquire and read
them or cite them.
Asian Council of Science Editors
http://theacse.com/
Majid Moridani, PharmD, PhD
Director, Professor
Clinical Chemistry and Clinical Toxicology
Medical College of Wisconsin
Wisconsin, USA
majid.moridani@yahoo.com