Do we need other forms of review systems for Scholarly Journals?

["Hamaker, Chuck" <cahamake@email.uncc.edu>]

Phil has demonstrated convincingly that we need robust review systems to
ensure we receive original publication from research journals. More than
Emerald's practices are a potential concern.

He has shown the academic market needs guarantees of content decisions
beyond peer review. Apparently these articles were all peer reviewed. What
do we need beyond peer review?

Publishers have different roles with the journals they publish. Those that
process content from societies and publishers may differ from those who
own the content and journal titles. Since authors turn over copyright,
what the publisher does with it in subsequent use is up to the publisher.
There could well be different review schemes, and different sets of
obligations and behaviors depending on ownership.

I have the sense that a hands-off policy from publishers, in principle, is
close to inviolate in terms of editorial and content control and
represents the core of how scholarly publishing in the journals' world
works. But Phil's work demonstrates assumptions can be wrong.

Journal publishers owe it to the market and to their authors to guarantee
to the scholarly and research and library community there is no
intentional duplication of content in scholarly journals without full
disclosure.

The journal publisher must be the guarantor of original content. Failure
to do so should have very serious consequences.

For the much of the scholarly journal publishing enterprise, article
duplication reports from CrossRef, as an example, could be used routinely
to do a preliminary audit of the industry or provide a basic self-check.
It could help assure the community that publishers do not engage in such
practices. CrossRef recently noted an article duplication detection
service for publishers in one of its newsletters but it probably hasn't
been used for this exact purpose--an audit of actual publishing practices
rather than duplicate metadata submission.

Do some publishers practice load balancing--where content submitted to one
journal is passed to editors of a different journal who are running short
on submissions? The incentive to keep publishing schedules especially
since we all prepay subscriptions could be very strong. I don't know that
this happens, but then how would we know unless publisher's state their
policies clearly and provide auditable tracks?

Any publisher whether self owned or societie/association publications must
ensure "incidental" or individual author duplication doesn't happen.

Safeguards from authors submitting duplicate content-whether of the exact
article type or "repurposing" of previously published content could be
identified regularly with anti-plagiarism systems like "TurnItIn.Com."
Given the fulsome databases publishers have created, using such
duplicate/plagiarism languages/phrases detecting software with proprietary
content or even an industry wide content database, could provide
guarantees of non-duplication from very similar content submitted with
different titles. If some publishers are doing this, they should make the
existence of such systems public.  IF such duplication is found (and it is
certainly possible that it will be discovered if it exists given the
widespread availability of e-content) I think the scholarly journal
enterprise will have even more serious problems of credibility.

Regarding Emerald, I think Phil's investigation demonstrates we need
evidence that its current editorial practices and policies guarantee the
originality of content in its journals. This will take more than a
statement of policy. Phil's discoveries may be only a partial disclosure.

Full disclosure seems like a necessity. Emerald may need a full audit of
its content and perhaps verification external to the company. And its
editorial processes and policies need to be explained in some detail to
restore market confidence.

Phil's investigation has discovered the simplest form of duplication.
There are other forms of potentially serious problems in the current
system that could benefit from other forms of review.

Chuck Hamaker
Associate University Librarian Collections and Technical Services
Atkins Library
University of North Carolina Charlotte
Charlotte, NC 28223
phone 704 687-2825