Reader-friendly publishing, the role of special issues, and your possible role as guest editor
The 'publish or perish' culture that forces
academic researchers to publish as many aricles as possible, is one of the negative outomes of a development, not only in univerity but all over our society, where managers
ather than experts dictate the rules. Managers who cannot overview science, nowadays often are the ones who decide about the distribution of research funds over faculties, departments
and persons. As they can, as a rule, not judge he scientific value of the articles published by ndividuals, they developed systems of points hat are largely based on the number
of pubications of an individual (or a department or a faculty) and the reputation of the journals in which the articles were published - irrespecive of whether the journal deserves its good or
bad reputation.
As mentioned above, this approach forces
academics to publish as many articles as possible, and journals are the preferred medium (mainly because managers cannot judge the
value of each individual book or chapters within a book). An unfortunate consequence is that many academics nowadays consider journals as a publication medium for their articles,
rather than as a source of information. One should realize, however, that the main function
of journals - and therefore of journal editors - is to transfer knowledge. Journals should focus on their readers, not on their authors: a readerfriendly publishing policy should be taken as
a starting point for decisions what to publish and what not, but also when an accepted article is published.
Balanced issues
For readers, a new issue of a journal comes
usually as a surprise as regards the contents: only few journals publish a list with forthcoming papers. The main reason is that a
readerfriendly editorial philosophy is that the majority of the readers should find something of interest in each issue, and that, consequently,
accepted manuscript are not always published strictly according to the date of acceptance;
sometimes an interesting paper that is needed for a good balance gets priority, and sometimes
the publication of an accepted manuscript is postponed, just because too many manuscripts
about specific subjects might undermine the balance of an issue.
It may seem not always justified to delay the
publication of good manuscripts for such a reason, and, fortunately, Geologos has been in the
position to avoid this as a rule. It appears, however, that the journal is informed sometimes
that a number of fairly related manuscripts is to be expected "sometime in the near future".
Most journals are confronted every now and then with such promises, and in such a case
editors can decide to adapt the scheduled order of publications, just to avoid unbalance.
Promises are not always kept, however, and that is why many journals plan the publication
of special issues.
Special issues
A special issue is 'special' because it focuses
on a specific topic. This topic can be a specific subject of research (Middle Devonian conodonts), it can relate to a geographical unit (Geology of the Tatra Mountains), it can be related to a special occasion
(Issue in honour of Professor X) or it can reflect the main items presented during, for instance, a conference. In some cases the journal editors handle the manuscripts
for such special issues following the routine procedure, in other cases experts in the subject of the special issue may be asked to handle the
manuscripts as guest editors.
It appears that Geologos has reached a stage
in which the occasional publication of special issues needs consideration: several suggestions
have been made in the recent past. Not all suggestions will result in a special issue, and the
time lag between a first proposal and the actual publication of a special issue may be more than
a year, sometimes even several years. On the other hand, some special issues can be realized
quickly, for instance if a large project comes to an end in the form of a number of closely
related manuscripts, if material from a conference or one of the sessions of a conference is
sufficiently interesting, or if researchers from several universities, working on related topics,
realize that their work will be much better read if published in a special issue, than if distributed over a wide variety of journals.
Invitation to our readers
Geologos adheres to reader-friendly publication. Therefore we invite all readers, both in Poland and abroad, to contact us if they have ideas for a special issue. Obviously, there
should - at a specific moment - be enough material of sufficiently high quality to fill an issue.
If you are not sure about this, do nevertheless not hesitate to contact us: we might be aware of more research that is done in the same field and that might be included. Do not hesitate either to consult us about a possible role as guest
editor: We will happily guide you through the process of handling a special issue, so that you - as an author and as a reader - can make your role in the transfer of information complete by
becoming an editor as well.
The Editors |
