Posted by Steve Holmes2 at 00:01 on 2012 Aug 02
And here’s my response to Richard Miles.I must start by thanking Richard for (presumably) believing that this subject was of sufficient merit to warrant being discussed in Council. Clearly, I myself believe the same thing, so I am grateful to him for taking this initiative to get it included on an upcoming Agenda.Given that the matter may thus be about to be debated "at a higher level", I think it important for me to clarify the issues as I see them, to remove any lingering worries that I’m just having a moan because my paper wasn’t accepted. As I said earlier, I have two areas of concern, the first of which divides into a number of sub-topics:-1) Is the Association happy that standards of best practice are being universally and uniformly applied to the papers selection and peer-review process, regardless of the author, the subject matter and the referee(s)? In particular:-1a) Are the standards the JBAA is applying fully and clearly defined? (for example, should full referee reports be returned to authors or not? should referees be asked to comment on "reader interest"? should the names of referees be divulged?)1b) Are referees fully aware of the standards to which they should be working, and what is expected of them in a report?1c) Are all the standards to which the JBAA is working, or expects its authors and referees to work, fully and clearly documented in an easily accessible form?1d) Is sufficient information available to ensure that authors are fully aware of what to expect during the review process and at its conclusion? (for example, what outputs they may expect and whether they have any rights of enquiry).2) Is the Association happy that the types of submissions currently published as JBAA Papers all fully justify the title of "peer-reviewed scientific journal paper", thus placing them in a similar standing to other such papers published by prestigious scientific bodies.On this second topic, I have now completed my treatise analysing recent JBAA papers. While by no means a comprehensive dissertation on the subject of scientific papers and peer-review, it should at least help explain my thinking on the present matter. It can be read via the following links (Sorry – I had to split the document into 3, as the Forum software said it was too big to upload in one piece!):- [file name=JBAA_papers1.doc size=30720]/images_old/fbfiles/files/JBAA_papers1.doc[/file] [file name=JBAA_papers2.doc size=150016]/images_old/fbfiles/files/JBAA_papers2.doc[/file] [file name=JBAA_papers3.doc size=26624]/images_old/fbfiles/files/JBAA_papers3.doc[/file]Steve Holmes