review process

[Brian Simboli <brs4@lehigh.edu>]

(cross-posted)

Has anyone discussed the following--should it not become standard practice
for a journal to require, of an author submitting work, that they identify
what strategy they used for searching for simlilar literature in the major
bibliographic databases? (A colleague and I were talking about doing this
for a paper.) That way the reviewer can recap the searches, plus do any
additional work of their own, in order to see whether: (a.) the author has
stolen material, or (b.) the author was perhaps unintentionally aware that
someone else divulged the idea. Perhaps it can also become a standard to
publish in the article the relevant bibliographic dbase searches that were
used to ascertain that the article's subject had not been dealt with
before. That way the publisher can defend themselves by noting that due
diligence was in fact already done. Of course librarians would have to get
in the loop in many cases to design solid searches, which would help
increase recognition of how important they are (or can be) to the research
process and to the publishing of its results. Why not routinely make them
part of peer review, at least in those disciplines where the number of
publications increases exponentially with each passing decade. 

Brian Simboli 
Lehigh University 
(610) 758-5003 
Fax (610) 758-6524 
E-mail:  brs4@lehigh.edu