注: Prof. Iain Taylor from the British Columbia University (Canada) is the associate Editor in Chief of the Journal of Mountain Science. In the past several years he has given us a lot of valuable suggestions on how to be a good editor and how to publish a quality journal. In 2013, before we applied for the "Project for Enhancing International Impact of China STM Journals", I wrote to Iain and ask for his suggestions. The follows are the letters that I wrote to him and that he replied to my questions.

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Iain,

The Journal of Mountain Science is planning to apply for “Project for Enhancing International Impact of China STM Journals”. Totally about 70 English journals will be selected and funded by the government. The fund will be used to support the internationalization of the journal operation, such as the editors’ training or exchange in  English-speaking countries, the exchange of overseas editorial members in China, most importantly, the establishment of an international editing team, and thus greatly raise the profile of the journal in international academic community.
 Here I have prepared several questions and want to seek your answers and suggestions.
 
 Q1: What’s international impact force of a journal in your mind?
 
 Q2: What kinds of ways are there to raise the international impact force of a journal?
 
 Q3: For the Journal of Mountain Science, what are the most effective ways to raise the international impact in a relatively short period such as several years?

Best regards

Dunlian

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Dunlian:

Here are some answers and thoughts in response to your questions about Impact Force….whatever that is?

Q1.  What’s international impact force of a journal in my mind?

I assume this means Impact Factor because Impact Force is an engineering term.

The term “High Impact” journal has two meanings:

a.       The Impact Factor calculation produces a high number, usually calculated to show the number of times a journal’s publications are referred to in other journals.  Although administrators keep referring to ‘high impact’, this is increasingly seen as a false measure of the real (subjective) impact, that is how much do papers in a journal give real improvement to the scientific progress.

b.  In the real world, papers have impact, not journals.  For example, in the world of JMS, the first reports of quantifying earthquake strength proposed what we call the Richter Scale.  Every student of geology knows about this paper and it is referred to in every textbook, and the news media uses the  Richter Scale to help the public to understand the damage of an earthquake. Until recently everyone used this scale, hence we can say that the paper caused a major change to describing earthquakes.  

Over time, a journal becomes influential (has a high impact) when it is widely read by the top researchers because they know that much of the work published is original, properly conducted and reported, and hence worth reading.  Researchers hope to have their best work published in such a journal.  They know that the journal has a high rejection rate, because it is properly peer-reviewed and professionally presented in its published form.  They expect independent and unbiased, but useful criticism from peer-reviewers and the editor.

Q2.  What kinds of ways are there to raise the international impact force of a journal?

      Trusted journals consider papers that are prepared in the journal’s publishing language;

submitted with strict attention to the scope of the journal;

reports of original work conducted using the best professional standards of hypothesis testing, result presentation, and are discussed and analyzed by appropriate statistics, so that their meaning is clear.

      The Editors must respond quickly but without rushing and are obliged to find scientifically independent, unbiased and active researchers, who will provide clear, independent, unbiased, and courteous advice to the Editor that can be passed on to the authors.  The paper can be revised and, if changes are undertaken, the journal will publish the work quickly and with wide circulation

      If the Journal does all of the above, then the top researchers will submit their work and (assuming proper peer review and timeliness by the journal) will recommend the journal to younger colleagues as a good outlet for their work.

 Q3 – For the Journal of Mountain Science, what are the most effective ways to raise the international impact force in a relatively short period, such as several years?

1. No manuscript should be sent for review unless it is reasonably prepared to your Instructions to Authors AND it must be written in coherent English.  They should refuse any paper that is so badly written that they cannot provide a professionally competent review. The peer-reviewers should be asked to comment on the 3 major questions..

Is the work original?

Has the work been conducted using best practices and methods

Does the paper present a coherent story of the research (context, hypothesis, methods, results and meaning).

NOTE: It is OK to ask for suggestions and improvements, but the important point is that the report from the peer-reviewer should be courteous, and ideally can be sent directly to the authors.

2. You will need to recruit an active Editorial Board (Associate Editors) with probably 2 individuals from each sub-discipline of Mountain Science – one who is Chinese in China and the other who is an internationally recognized leader in the field.  Each must be internationally respected as a good and active researcher and writer – I recommend that these individuals not be ‘slowing down prior to retirement’ but that each should be ‘mid-career’ with tenure his/her job.  Given your present circumstance, I recommend that your Associate Editors/First Decision Editors NOT be in the Chengdu  Laboratory of the CAS, although a few researchers in nearby universities  will be useful

Ideally these First Decision Editors should make the first decision on the paper.  The Associate Editor/First Decision Editor is responsible for selecting the peer-reviewers and managing their timeliness. If reviewer recommendations are supportive then the First Decision Editor can ask the authors directly to revise the paper, so that it can be considered further.  If the recommendations are negative, then the Associate Editor should recommend refusal and the Editor-in-chief should send the decision to the authors, noting that “the refusal is based upon the recommendations of two reviewers and the Associate Editor.”

I recommend that you use the CAS Chengdu professors as your Advisory Board but not as Associate Editors.  The peer-reviewers should be expert, but should not be working in the same institution as the authors.  An Associate Editor outside Chengdu could of course use a CAS Chengdu researcher as a peer-reviewer, but not if the paper’s authors are working in Chengdu.

Your main task is to have Associate Editors who are likely to choose JMS for their papers and that the international community knows that all papers are treated the same way.  It will do you no harm if your rejection rate is high.  A concerned Associate Editor will want to be seen as working for a strong and credible journal, and will want at least a few of his/her best papers to be seen in JMS.

3. Your overseas Associate Editors must trust the journal’s rigour and equal treatment of all.  Better to have a rejected paper win a big prize after publication in a rival journal than to be known, as I fear you are at the moment, as the journal of last resort for poor work.  There may even be an occasional issue of JMS with no papers from Chinese laboratories.  Your Editorial Board members and your readers should choose to read JMS papers as a first priority for their own research groups.  Scientists working on all aspects of research on high mountains and earthquake regions should be involved in production and well as contributors to JMS.

You have to develop a clear open business plan and publishing models that contain your claims and THEN make sure that you achieve or exceed those claims.  I suggest that you make aggressive moves to recruit researchers in Himalayas, SE Asian countries, Western North and South America, and mountainous Europe and western Asia to become new contributors and editorial board members.  

On the matter of training, selection of active researchers who have strong publication records in strong journals should reduce your training to “This is the way we want you to function for JMS.”

 Concerning your local training initiatives, it is ESSENTIAL that everyone who is involved in any workshop, such as the one I tried to offer when I was with you in Chengdu, MUST ATTEND ALL THE ACTIVITIES OF THE WORKSHOP AND DO THE WORK REQUIRED.  Our  previous experience in Sichuan University was successful largely because Professor Tang Ya insisted that all other activity be set aside during the time of our visit. The result was that papers were prepared, put through the internal review and eventually sent off for publication.  This was in contrast with the Kunming experience where there was little success.  I have not seen any items that came out of my visit to JMS.

The short answer to your questions is really to start by doing things the way that the top journals in Earth Sciences do.  Scientists are too busy to read journals, either on paper or on –line, that obviously have not been subject to fair, rigorous and unbiased treatment before publication.  The best way is to have papers in an accessible journal written and edited by excellent scientists.   Once you have achieved that the emergence as an important journal will happen.  The top journals are where they are because of rigour shown through many papers, but one or two sloppy pieces can reduce a credible journal to nothing very soon.

 Please let me know if there is more I can do.

 With all best wishes

Iain