Editorial pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc
How To Make a Journal Better Norbert J. Pienta* Department of Chemistry, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602-2556, United States ABSTRACT: The process of change by which a publication can improve is discussed. KEYWORDS: General Public
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Rapid publication entails more effort by staff and Associate Editors, as well as by the reviewers who are asked to provide meaningful, detailed assessments but with a short turnaround time. Finding appropriate reviewers and asking these volunteers to contribute their time and expertise may be the biggest challenge to running the Journal. Avoiding “reviewer fatigue” is a topic that is often discussed among editors. Everyone is busy, and for academics the “conflict of time” is a challenge that has been discussed by former Stanford President Donald Kennedy in his book Academic Duty.4 Preventing submissions from requiring extensive revisions is a challenge; at the Journal, we are devoting more time and effort to this. Manuscripts are reviewed by staff editors, Associate Editors, and the Editor-inChief before they go to external review to ensure that they meet the criteria of being novel, interesting, and useful; that they include discussions about a topic from the perspective of the teaching and learning of chemistry; and that they meet the qualifications for form and format, carefully detailed in the author guidelines.5 If you are not a reviewer, please sign up via the ACS Paragon Plus portal;6 alternatively, encourage your younger colleagues to use reviewing as a means to find out about cutting-edge research and practice, and to improve their own writing. Given these considerations, is the peer-reviewed model arcane? Should it be replaced by newer models? Perhaps a model in which anyone can provide a review for a paper that appears in a moderated archive would be possible.7 The topic of open access is one that creates more and more interest, especially for potential Journal authors. As always, authors need to carefully consider JCE’s prior publication policy.8 The cycle of improvement must reach every aspect of the Journal. At the end of 2019, your Editor will pack up his things, sign out of Paragon Plus, and make way for the ninth editor of JCE.9 That is really a long way off, but the process of selecting a replacement starts with a call for nominations that should appear in the summer of 2017. Please consider who you would nominate, or talk to appropriate candidates to make them aware of the potential opportunity. More details about the process will appear as an announcement in a subsequent issue of the Journal. How does one make a Journal better? It should be clear that everyone has to contribute. Even the Editor should write better editorials. On another note related to the introductory paragraph about searching the Web, do not worry, because in
bit of nostalgia between your Editor and a group of local cronies led to a Sunday “feed” featuring food of our formative years in Buffalo and western New York. Prior to the event, the question was whether we could reproduce those food items, like beef on ‘weck, and pierogi, that had that special culinary significance that resides in some part of our brains. As someone who has recently come to rely on technology and the “Google search” to supplement details to his memory, finding a bunch of recipes and related information seemed simple: “Google” it. But are there limits to this technique, and if so, what are they? Can we bring this modern source of information to questions of interest to an academic journal? Readers may find it informative or amusing to search the Internet using the phrase that appears as the title. But unlike some (or maybe many) students enrolled in my introductory chemistry courses who seem to prefer search algorithms, your Editor can and should ponder and answer these questions based on experience and with conversations with other stakeholders. Some of my observations are offered here. Creative contributions to the Journal of Chemical Education (JCE) would appear to be a limiting commodity, but our authors never cease to amaze me with keeping the endeavor moving forward; to further this goal, we have reached out to members of the international chemical education community, and some of these efforts have been described.1−3 A better Journal means that you, the authors, need to keep up your efforts and to keep the contributions at the cutting edge. Do not forget that new colleagues may need to be mentored about the value of the Journal and getting the next generations to extend that value. Our partnership with the ACS Publications Division brings the Journal the tools that support the conversion of those submissions to the print and Web versions through the review and production steps. What may be invisible to authors, readers, and reviewers is that these tools are constantly evolving and improving. Our ACS partners also provide expertise and resources for marketing and sales, a necessary component of the business side of publication and of our ability to maintain the operation. Through these efforts, access to JCE has been expanding throughout the world. Furthermore, because we are made aware of publication metrics such as time from submission to publication and even the oft-maligned impact factor, your editorial team has made significant inroads relative to these benchmarks. There is always room for improvement, and that remains part of the strategic goals of the Journal. © 2017 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.
Published: January 10, 2017 1
DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.6b00967 J. Chem. Educ. 2017, 94, 1−2
Journal of Chemical Education
Editorial
a few months you can search for the contents of this editorial on the Web. And by the way, the pierogi were made using an old family recipe, not something off the Internet, and were quite good as judged by the selected panel of tasting experts, a completely different collection of reviewers.
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AUTHOR INFORMATION
Corresponding Author
*E-mail:
[email protected]. ORCID
Norbert J. Pienta: 0000-0002-1197-6151 Notes
Views expressed in this editorial are those of the author and not necessarily the views of the ACS. Norbert J. Pienta is Professor and Director of General Chemistry at the University of Georgia, where he teaches and conducts research and scholarship about the teaching and learning of chemistry, devising methods, instruments, and analytics to characterize student learning and increase student success. He currently also serves as the Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Chemical Education.
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REFERENCES
(1) Pienta, N. J. Innocents Abroad: A Journal’s Outreach to India. J. Chem. Educ. 2013, 90 (1), 1−2. (2) Pienta, N. J. Innocents Abroad, Part II: A Glimpse at Chemical Education in India. J. Chem. Educ. 2015, 92 (3), 399−400. (3) Pienta, N. J. Innocents Abroad, Redux: Latin America. J. Chem. Educ. 2016, 93 (11), 1821−1822. (4) Kennedy, D. Academic Duty; Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 1997. (5) To read the JCE Author Guidelines, see: http://pubs.acs.org/ paragonplus/submission/jceda8/jceda8_authguide.pdf (accessed Dec 2016). (6) To access ACS Paragon Plus, see: https://acs.manuscriptcentral. com/acs. For additional Information for Reviewers, see http://pubs. acs.org/page/jceda8/submission/reviewers.html (accessed Dec 2016). (7) The American Chemical Society home page for ChemRxiv. http://www.chemrxiv.org/ (accessed Dec 2016). (8) The Journal Policy on Prior Publication. http://pubs.acs.org/ page/jceda8/submission/prior.html (accessed Dec 2016). (9) Journal Staff. Journal History: Guiding the Journal of Chemical Education. J. Chem. Educ. 1998, 75 (11), 1373−1380.
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DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.6b00967 J. Chem. Educ. 2017, 94, 1−2
