Category Archives: science publishing

Data archiving guide

Posted on 24 Jun, 2011 by Tim Vines

I put together a short guide that goes through the different data types commonly used in Molecular Ecology and suggests the type of file that ought to be archived to fulfil our Joint Data Archiving Policy. It’s available here. Comments … Continue reading →

Posted in methods, science publishing | Leave a comment

The Lost Art of the Response to Reviewers

Posted on 11 Feb, 2011 by Tim Vines

OK- this is slightly tongue in cheek, but all this stems from things I’ve seen coming in to MEC. We all do our best to make sure that we evaluate papers from an objective standpoint, but sometimes the response to … Continue reading →

Posted in science publishing | 8 Comments

Data archiving and the JDAP

Posted on 5 Jan, 2011 by Tim Vines

The new year is here, and one of the biggest changes it will bring is the implementation of the Joint Data Archiving Policy by a number of ecology and evolution journals. These include Molecular Ecology (and ME Resources), Evolution, American … Continue reading →

Posted in science publishing | 1 Comment

Funny referee quotes

Posted on 19 Dec, 2010 by Dilara Ally

In the spirit of Tim’s last post about rapid publication and review, I found a link to a journal, Environmental Microbiology, that publishes some of their favourite referee comments. Below is a smattering of some of the more humorous ones. … Continue reading →

Posted in peer review | 11 Comments

Rapid Publication

Posted on 8 Dec, 2010 by Tim Vines

Another day, another journal launch that promises “rapid review and publication of high-quality foundational research”. It strikes me that most journals in ecology/evolution now have an average time from submission to first decision of 30-50 days, which is so much … Continue reading →

Posted in peer review | 2 Comments

Comment articles

Posted on 23 Nov, 2010 by Tim Vines

It’s never happened as yet, but I was wondering what my response would be if someone wanted to write a Comment article about a Mol Ecol paper, but wanted to remain anonymous. The logistics would be quite easy, but the … Continue reading →

Posted in community, peer review | 2 Comments

Is peer review broken?

Posted on 29 Sep, 2010 by Tim Vines

There’s been quite a bit of recent criticism of the peer review process, notably in The Scientist and by Michael Hochberg in his editorial ‘The tragedy of the reviewer commons‘ in Ecology Letters. As someone who sees thousands of decisions … Continue reading →

Posted in peer review | Tagged | 2 Comments