Tag Archives: Steven Inchcoombe

Peer Review Week 2017: Transparency in Review, and other innovations

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By Steven Inchcoombe, Chief Publishing Officer, Springer Nature

Installation of a water filter in Haiti © Filter of Hope

Installation of a water filter in Haiti © Filter of Hope

At Springer Nature every week is Peer Review Week.

Each week our dedicated in-house editorial staff spend thousands of hours co-ordinating the process of peer review, to ensure and improve the quality of the scientific literature we publish and in doing so, advance discovery. We support our Editors in Chief, Editorial Board Members, Section Editors, peer reviewers and authors by providing guidance and systems to enable them to improve manuscripts. Furthermore, we’re trialling innovative new practices through small-scale pilots, while also exploring grander ideas such as the potential role of Artificial Intelligence.

But as it’s so integral to what we do and the service we provide for our authors, its not something we  shout about every week. Therefore, Peer Review Week 2017, an annual celebration of the essential role that peer review plays in maintaining scientific quality, provides the perfect opportunity for us to update the academic community on what we’re doing, and to celebrate the work of the peer reviewers who generously give their time to examine manuscripts, offering help and advice.

Transparency in Review

 The theme of this years’ Peer Review Week is Transparency in Review.  BMC, part of Springer Nature, was one of the pioneers of open peer review and earlier this year, issued a report based on the discussions at the SpotOn conference in London that examined how peer review might be improved for future generations. The report is well worth reading – it offers key recommendations to the academic community that include finding and inventing new ways of identifying, verifying and inviting peer reviewers; investing in reviewer training programs, and recognizing reviewers.

This year, BMC has also been experimenting with more new initiatives to improve transparency in peer review. If successful, these pilot projects could become standard offerings across Springer Nature.

Registered Reports is a good example. This is a new publication format in which the research question and the quality of methodology are peer reviewed before the data is collected and analysed and has been endorsed by Chris Chambers, Chair of the Centre for Open Science Registered Reports Committee, said: “This is a tremendous step forward for transparency and reproducibility in medical research. BMC Medicine will be the first major medical journal to offer Registered Reports, and the first to adopt a model specially tailored for clinical trials. The impact of this advance is potentially game-changing, eliminating hidden outcome switching and publication bias against negative results.”

I’m also pleased to announce that Genome Biology is following in the footsteps of other journals including Nature Communications to offer an option for transparent peer review.

Other developments

 Time and time again, researchers tell us that they don’t receive enough training in how to conduct thorough and constructive peer review. Which is why this week, we’ve announced that we are launching a new free online course called Focus on Peer Review.

‘Focus on Peer Review’, on the Nature Masterclasses platform, features video interviews with Nature Research journal editors, experienced peer reviewers, and published authors. The course contains key and relevant insight into the complexities of peer review, going beyond the usual ‘how-to’ training available elsewhere. The course is made up of 4 modules, which you can either work through in a single sitting or use it as a ‘dip in and out’ reference resource. Total course duration, including reflection time, is around 3 hours.

On completion of the course, participants will have the opportunity to download a Nature Masterclasses course completion certificate. If you’re interested, simply register on the Nature Masterclasses website.

Update from last year

Finally, I’d like to give a happy update from one initiative that we launched last year. In 2016 we announced that a Springer journal, Environmental Earth Sciences, would enable people in developing countries to gain access to safe drinking water. For every review completed for a paper in the journal in 2017, Springer Nature donated one household water filter – on behalf of the peer reviewers of this journal – to the non-profit humanitarian organization Filter of Hope.

I’m delighted to say that since the inception of our partnership with Filter of Hope, over 600 filters have been distributed to the countries of Liberia, Nicaragua, Haiti, Honduras, Russia, Cuba and India. The water filters remove the bacteria, protozoa and micro-organisms from contaminated water sources making it completely safe to drink. This is a wonderful example of peer review making a real-world difference.

 

At Springer Nature we are constantly striving to advance discovery though the acceleration of scientific research and development, investing in technology to ensure ongoing quality and a better user experience, and by positively contributing to the scientific ecosystem that includes researchers, editors, librarians, funders, authors, publishers and networks.  And an enhanced, improved peer review system which is transparent and gives reviewers the recognition they deserve is a fundamental part of this.  I’m delighted that in 2017 we have explored and introduced new ways to make the process more transparent, to ensure our reviewers get the recognition they deserve, as well as developed new free tools and services, in the hope of serving our customer better. I’m looking forward to updating you on the improvements we’ll have seen by Peer Review Week 2018!

Explaining scientific research: introducing audio-visual summaries

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Guest blog by Steven Inchcoombe, CEO of Nature Publishing Group, and Hazel Newton, Head of Author Services

Today we are introducing an experimental collaboration with independent research communication company Research Square to help authors explain their research to the academic community with audio-visual summaries. This six-week trial is part of Nature Publishing Group’s (NPG) ongoing drive to better understand and meet the needs of our authors and readers. To do this, we regularly refine our services and policies, and pilot new services to gather feedback.

Here we explain the rationale for this experimental collaboration, how the trial will run and what we hope to learn.

What is the problem we are trying to solve?

Quickly grasping the main points and conclusions of a scientific paper can be challenging, particularly when it lies outside one’s field of expertise.  The language is often technical and discipline-specific, and deciphering methodologies and techniques from prose can be tricky. Visual representations of the work can help with this.

Expanding the reach of new research can be important to academics, institutions and funders.   However, academics have ever greater demands on their time and consume information in a variety of formats and media.

The solution we’re exploring

Nature Publishing Group and Research Square have been considering this challenge for some time as part of our ongoing efforts to better serve the research community and harness our expertise in science communication.  We think we can help  to alleviate some of the pressure on authors to spend their time translating their results into different formats for audiences broader than their immediate colleagues and others working directly in their field.

Together we have decided to trial an experimental collaborative project to produce audio-visual summaries of selected research papers published in NPG journals, releasing the first of these summaries this week (see below for an example of a summary of a Nature Photonics paper and here for an example of a summary of a Nature Materials paper).

How it will work

For the next six weeks Research Square will produce and release 2-4 minute audio-visual summaries for selected papers from seven Nature research journals.

This is optional for authors, so NPG will gain agreement from the corresponding authors that they would like to participate in the trial. During the production of the summaries, all information about the research will be kept confidential, and the summaries will not be made public until the papers to which they relate are published.  At that point, they will be free to view for readers on various NPG and Research Square’s social media channels and wherever else the authors choose to post and share them. The service will be provided free-of-charge to those authors whose papers are involved in this trial.

As this is primarily an author service, the author approves the audio-visual summary, and they also retain the right to post and share it.  The audio-visual summaries are not peer-reviewed, subject to editorial approval or published by Nature Publishing Group. Responsibility for the content rests with the author and Research Square.

The papers for this experimental phase are picked by NPG. The Nature editors are consulted from time-to-time and check the AV summary for accuracy.

Throughout the project we’ll be collating and assessing feedback from the authors of the papers, which will help NPG determine whether to offer an optional paid-for service to authors in the future.

We’re interested from hearing from you, too. What do you think of the audio-visual summaries? Is this a service you find helpful as a reader, and would value as an author? How can we make these as useful and informative as possible?

We’ll report back on our findings at the end of the trial, as well as posting the audio-visual summaries on this blog so that if you wish to watch them and provide feedback, you can do so easily.

We don’t yet know what the research community will make of these audio-visual summaries or how they may choose to use them – that’s part of the interest in testing possible services alongside trusted partners, and asking you what you think.  But we do know that we’re committed to working with the research community to identify where we can provide support and be responsive to demand and interest.

We hope that this trial will help both researchers to better communicate their work and NPG and Research Square to better understand how we can support global research communication.

About our partnership with Research Square

Nature Publishing Group collaborates with Research Square on several projects and services to better meet the needs of authors. The two organisations share a passion for improving research communication and its power to impact society. Since 2008, NPG has provided NPG Language Editing, supported by Research Square’s American Journal Experts (AJE) brand. The two organizations are independent, collaborating on specific services and initiatives. You can find out more about Research Square here.

Research Square will run a separate and independent trial of audio-visual summaries to test messaging and pricing on their own site for any interested author in parallel to its collaboration with NPG.