The book review: European Association of Science Editors Science Editors' Handbook (2nd edition)

Wahid Mozammel Haq; Cheol-Heui Yun

doi:10.6087/kcse.2014.1.122

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Book Review The book review: European Association of Science Editors Science Editors' Handbook (2nd edition): Wahid Mozammel Haq, Cheol-Heui Yun; Science Editing 2014;1(2):122-123.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.6087/kcse.2014.1.122
Published online: August 18, 2014

Department of Food and Animal Biotechnology, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea

Correspondence to Cheol-Heui Yun E-mail: cyun@snu.ac.kr

• Received: May 16, 2014 • Accepted: July 14, 2014

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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The European Association of Science Editors (EASE) has recently published the 2nd edition of the EASE Science Editors’ Handbook (the Handbook hereafter) which is undoubtedly an invaluable resource for anyone working in the field of editing and publishing scientific journal. Indeed a number of the world renowned academics and professionals were invited and have shared their knowledge and experiences on cutting age editorial and publishing practices.

The Handbook focuses all aspects of standard editorial practices in details—in its 56 chapters, arranged in six sections: editing, nomenclature and terminology, policies and processes, peer review, ethics, and publishing and promoting. Not only new but also experienced editors and publishers surely find it compelling in its content. Beside the basic norm of editing strategy including how to deal with texts of non-native English speakers, one will find invaluable insight of the Handbook on how to develop and how to establish a new journal with important considerations regarding editorial policies and strategies, editorial boards, legal and ethical issues and promotion.

The section, ‘peer review system’ deals with a much debated issues on current review process describing major advantages and disadvantages of the various systems. Recent innovation in peer review models are introduced in which it is based on pure scientific merit irrespective of perceived novelty, interest, or importance (pioneered by PLoS One and BioMed Central [BMC]), more transparent approaches in peer review processes with different levels of openness (BMC series of medical journal), ‘cross-peer review’ that encourages an interaction between peer review participants (European Molecular Biology [EMBO] and eLife), and alternative peer review system. Concern with the ‘wastage’ of review effort in traditional peer review system, where manuscripts often go from journal to journal, being reviewed afresh at each, before being accepted for the publication, is also addressed. A number of new initiatives on ‘alternative peer review’ models including post publication review system are introduced.

Ethical issues from basic to more critical points on quality control measures and practices are discussed in depth on how to handle and cope up with conflicts of interest, commercial concerns that affect editorial decisions, importance of adopting and implementing rigorous policies on research and statistical reporting to uphold journal’s reputation and business viability.

The last section of the Handbook devoted on different optimization practice of journal publication including the importance of using CrossRef and reference linking, citation metrics and multidisciplinary bibliographic databases. The Handbook allotted a few chapters dealing exclusively with promotional issues, in particular, how to promote journal, maximize research visibility, impact, and citation, and how to effectively use social and traditional media in order to promote awareness.

The Handbook is well written and easily understandable. Surely, the Handbook achieves its aim thoroughly and very well in its content which will definitely encourage good editorial and publishing practices to keep up with trends in the rapidly changing environment of scientific publishing world.

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No potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported.

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The book review: European Association of Science Editors Science Editors' Handbook (2nd edition)