E135 How to Publish Papers with Wendy Carroll
Listen to this podcast on SoundCloud
Chad Ball 00:12
Welcome to the Cold Steel podcast hosted by Ameer Farooq and myself, Chad Ball. We consider it an absolute privilege to bring you guests from around the world who are truly experts in their craft. Our mission is to offer you a combination of not only masterclasses on clinical surgery topics, but also insights into achieving personal growth, productivity, and fulfillment as both a surgeon and, perhaps more importantly, as a human.
Ameer Farooq 00:43
This week, we got to peek behind the curtains of academic publishing with Wendy Carroll. Wendy is the managing editor of the Canadian Medical Association Journal Group, and has been editor for many years for various journals within the group. Wendy had some amazing insights into the whole process of what goes on with the submission process, as well as the overall landscapes for journals in 2022. Perhaps our favorite part of the conversation with Wendy was her tips about what makes for good writing. Thanks for listening to our conversation with Wendy Carroll.
Chad Ball 01:14
I was wondering, for some of the listeners who may not have seen your name on the Canadian Journal of Surgery website and know all the incredible work you do, could you tell us initially where you grew up and what your pathway was to your role today?
Wendy Carroll 01:29
Sure. So thank you for having me. It's nice to chat with you both this morning. Um, so I grew up in Montreal. And I wanted to study journalism in university, which is what brought me to Ottawa. So that is the path that I took. Although, I was just commenting before we got started that I'm quite an introvert, and so even though I was really strong in writing and editorial, the interviewing that goes hand in hand with journalism was a little bit out of my personality. So I kind of prefer to be behind the scenes, which is how I sort of carved my way into publishing. So I started working with the CMAJ Group 15 years ago this month, and I started on as a copy editor on CMAJ, and did a year of really intensive training, working on that journal exclusively. And the following year, I took over as the managing editor of the specialty journals that the CMAJ Group published. So that's CJS, as well as one other specialty journal called the Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience. And I did, I was in that role for about a decade. And four years ago, I took over as managing editor of the entire group. So the journals that I am responsible for are CMAJ; CMAJ Open as well, although one of the editors who reports to me has, you know, run with that journal, and she's doing a great job at it; and I have CJS, JPN and JAMC, which is the French version of CMAJ. So that is the story of how I came to be where I am. In my role, all of the copy editors who work in the department, as well as the editorial coordinators report to me. So we're the team that tackles content once it's accepted, and takes it through to the finish line to publication.
Chad Ball 03:41
You know, just to go back a step, I was wondering if you could break down sort of the structure and the mechanics of some of these terms for our listeners, who, who may not see behind sort of the journal curtain in the sense of, tell us what a copy editor is, tell us what a managing editor like you really does across all these journals, and the nuts and bolts of it, and sort of how that behind the curtain world is structured?
Wendy Carroll 04:07
Sure. So the role of the copy editor is really, it's language focused, right? So our authors are the content experts. But where my team comes in, is, we're doing our best to help the authors frame their work in the clearest possible way, so that we can help you, you know, put the focus of your message where it should be, and help ideas get expressed the best way. So things that a copy editor will do, you know, in addition to cleaning up some messy grammar or punctuation or things like that, we also want to look at content through a style lens. And that means focusing on things like the use of inclusive language. So one thing that a copy editor will do in a paper is make sure that we use what we call person-first language. So we won't refer to a person as a case or a subject or as their condition, we really want to put the focus on the person. So that is something that a copy editor will do. And they also have to look through the lens of copyright laws. So for example, if an author wants to reproduce a table or a figure that's been published elsewhere, we need to make sure that they've obtained the right permissions to be able to do that. So the role of the copy editor is really, it's polish. And for some authors that requires more substantive work than others. Some content comes to us quite polished to begin with, and others need a little bit more work. So that's where the copy editor role comes in. As far as the managing editor, I sort of think of myself as the person in the middle of the spider web that is a publishing group. So I have to manage the people who report to me and I have to manage the people who are above me and I report to. So in other words, I'm trying to keep the people who owe me content on track. And then I try to keep the people who are working on the content on track. And my role is to basically review and approve every single page we publish. So once a paper has been through copy editing, and has gone to an author, and authors are satisfied with their article, we finalize it, finalize the design, and then everything comes to me for a final check. And when I approve it, it goes to the Online team and the publishing team to get it across that finish line into what's the finished product that people can access through our website, or through PubMed or any other aggregator.
Ameer Farooq 07:14
And one minor note is I guess, then, you know, if, if I'm reviewing a paper, and I'm sure we'll delve into this even more, but just on this point, when someone's reviewing a paper, I guess, we really shouldn't focus on the grammar or the, you know, necessarily like the phrasing or, or what words are used, because one of, an editor who's much better at that is going to go through the paper and try to help that. Or do you think that it's still important to, if I'm a reviewer, to comment on those types of things?
Wendy Carroll 07:51
I would think that a reviewer should be focusing more on the content itself, because as I said, the copy editors -- think of us as the language and the communication experts; we're not the content experts. So what the reviewer should be focusing on is that the content is as methodologically sound as it should be. And that, to you as the content expert, is it as clear as it should be? Because if you have questions, then we will definitely have questions. So I would say definitely a reviewer doesn't need to focus on things like grammar and sentence structure. We've got that end of things. What we want the peer reviewers to be focusing on is the integrity of the content.
Ameer Farooq 08:40
Gotcha. So, you know, I'm an author, I submit my paper, it's accepted for publication, what are the steps, then going forward? Like what actually happens to the paper between the time I press submit and the time it gets published?
Wendy Carroll 08:57
That's a great question. So I won't comment on peer review, because I think a lot of your listeners have probably had the experience of having been peer reviewers. So, once the peer review is complete, and then either Dr. Ball or Dr. Harvey press that accept button, that's when my team takes over. So there's a group of editorial coordinators who report to me and they are the ones who take the manuscript from the submission system -- so, in our case, it's ScholarOne's Manuscript Central -- and they basically prepare the file so that it's ready for a copy editor to take over and work their magic. That seems like it should be simple, but it's actually really not. There are a lot of steps that the coordinators have to do to be able to have a paper that's ready for a copy editor. And sometimes those things can cause a little bit of a delay, if the files aren't as complete as they should be. So basically, they have to go into the submission system and grab all the different pieces of the content, and they have to make sure that everything's there. So for example, if a paper has figures, but the figures come in and they're not editable, or they're not high-res enough, then those coordinators will have to work with the authors to chase down formats that we can work with. In addition, they'll have to make sure that pieces like appendices, if there was an appendix mentioned in an article, was the appendix submitted? They have to collect that as well. Most importantly, they're in charge of collecting the publishing forms, the most important one being the license to publish. The way copyright law works in Canada, anyone who is an author on a paper is one of its copyright holders. And if we do not have a signed form from every author on a paper, we can't legally proceed with publishing that paper, so a huge part of the job of a coordinator is to make sure that all the pieces are in, and that we can work from them.
Chad Ball 11:16
Yeah, clearly. I mean, there's all this behind the scenes stuff that's going on that authors don't necessarily see. Maybe I will actually ask Dr. Ball to comment a little bit on the peer review process. Again, I think many people have had the experience perhaps of submitting papers, but maybe not necessarily so much on what the actual process of peer review is, and perhaps even, Dr. Ball, if you could comment a little bit about what your role is, as the co-editor in chief and how does that play into the papers that perhaps have split votes, per se, or, you know, where do you fit in as the co-editor in chief for what gets published and what doesn't? Well, thanks, Ameer. Maybe the first thing I would say is I feel washes of guilt coming over me listening to Wendy talk about trying to chase down appropriate and high-fidelity imaging and, and co-author publication forms. You know, on the author side, right, you write this paper, and you're so proud of it, and you work through the peer review process and it gets published, and then you're like, what are these details that don't seem to matter to me a bunch, but, you know, as Wendy points out, nothing can go forward until all of that's in and they are critical. So it's, as an author, it's really incumbent upon us all to make sure those things get submitted appropriately and timely. You know, the peer review process is interesting. Most articles, I would start by saying, and Wendy jump in at any point here, because you know that better than I do, but usually there's there's two reviews. And then beyond that, once those reviews come back they arrive at an associate editor level, which is a third person who, as Wendy's pointed out, is a content expert, usually within a surgical subspecialty, for example, for us, so if it is a surgical oncology paper, that associate editor will have a surgical oncology background and connections. So, it goes out for review, it comes back, and, usually between those three opinions, the thumbs up or thumbs down sort of comes out of it. If the two reviewers are split, oftentimes it will go out for a third review, which can be helpful, then at the end of the day, the associate editor will make their call as to whether they think it should be published and accepted or not. And that comes back to the editor in charge. And I think sort of, conceptually, we would fit between Wendy and the associate editors and have a little bit more sense of where the journal wants to go, and maybe what the readership is, those sorts of softer elements, and then make the final call there. But you know, I would say overall, we almost always generally agree with the associate editor opinion. Would that be fair, Wendy? I think that's probably the case.
Wendy Carroll 14:14
Yeah, I think so. Um, in terms of the content that's submitted and accepted, CJS has a pretty high accept rate because the philosophy of the editors in chief who've been the custodians of the journal while I've been on it has really been that this is the place that we want Canadian surgeons to go to publish their research. So I think you're right, Chad, and that most of the time the associate editors will make a call as the content experts, and you and Dr. Harvey usually agree with them. I think that one of the challenges in terms of peer review sometimes can be finding people who have time or finding people who are truly content experts in a particular area to find the, to review the papers. So that's one thing that you could highlight as something a bit challenging about the peer review process. Because we can't, we can't publish medical research without peer review. But these reviewers are all volunteers and their time is tapped, they've got a lot of requests coming in from different publications, so it can sometimes be a little bit overwhelming to get those reviews in.
Chad Ball 15:34
You know, I'm so glad you said that. That's sort of where I was going to go next. I completely agree. And I would, I would publicly as a on behalf of Ed and myself, thank all of the reviewers that, you know, get that email asking, of us asking them to do a review on a paper for doing that, because these are unpaid, off the edge of your desk, done late at night or early in the morning, at the expense of family and personal time. One of the challenges, as you know, as well, as we do in Canada, as compared to the US, where I'm also on a number of editorial boards, and especially that editorships is just the number of people as you point out in Canada, obviously, at 10% of the US, in the US, it's quite easy to find enthusiastic, opinionated, good reviewing surgeons, and, you know, part of that is the way that surgeons in the US are remunerated, you make more money as you climb the sort of academic ladder. And part of that is contributing to peer review, as a process, not only just publishing at the other side of it, so there's a lot of very hungry people who are willing to do that work, really, at every level. In Canada, as you point out, it is harder. And so we're really at the mercy of goodwill of our colleagues across the country. And, you know, maybe at risk, it's always disappointing to me when you send out or an associate editor sends out a review request, and it's rejected consistently from a given author who, you know, does publish manuscripts in the peer-reviewed literature and, you know, philosophically and ethically should be contributing to that landscape. But that's really the scenario that you have to deal with. And try and push our way through, for sure.
Wendy Carroll 17:27
I guess the message that I would send to people who might feel as though they can't manage a review or don't have time, I mean, when you're clicking that yes or no button on an invitation email from the system, like, it may seem like an automated email, but there are humans behind it. And we have empathy. So if it's a question of, listen, I'm overwhelmed, because I'm on service this week. But if I could just have an extension, I could do this for you. You know, all you have to do is ask, right? We can make adjustments. So the invitation emails go out with standard timeframes, but, you know, if somebody's prepared to commit to something, but they just can't turn it around in those two weeks, you know, we're open to requests, and people should feel free to contact the journal office and ask for whatever they need in that respect.
Chad Ball 18:20
That's such a great point. You know, we, you and I and Ameer, we've sort of danced around a little bit of this question, but I was wondering if there's anything particular that comes to mind? And that's very simply, for potential or prospective authors out there who are either going to submit or are writing a paper now, do you have a list of absolute don'ts and absolute do's as they go through that process?
Wendy Carroll 18:50
For sure. It's funny, the biggest do on the list would be to consult the instructions for authors that are on our website. There's a lot of details in there that could be helpful. I mean, I think a lot of people don't necessarily, you know, go to read the instructions because they can be overwhelming — the pages and pages, an infinite scroll of information — but there's, there's some good details in there that can help people sift through the preparation process. Some issues that we encounter, for example, that might cause a delay or a lot more running around, that could have been avoided, sometimes papers are submitted in PDF format. We can't work with PDFs. So if a paper is submitted in PDF, for example, through the submission software, a coordinator will have to unsubmit and then go and request an MS Word version. So even just version, what software to use to send in material, seems like something so simple, but that's something that can cause delays and in there, so prospective authors should definitely be working in MS Word for their submissions. Again, we already mentioned editable figures. And for material that has been published elsewhere, for example, that can come up in meta-analyses and systematic reviews where we're collating information from previous, previously published sources. So for material that goes in that type of paper, if anything has been published from another source, the appropriate permissions have to be obtained. So it's much easier for that kind of thing to be gathered before that accept button is hit. Because if it reaches the copy editing stage, or God forbid, if it gets past the copy editing stage, and it comes all the way to me, and when I'm supposed to just review and say, yep, we're good to go, and I notice something and think to myself, hmm, do we have permission to use this? So that's, that's not a delay, you want to encounter at that late stage in the game. So it's really important for authors to be diligent about making sure they have permission to use information that's been previously published. And certainly, we don't expect surgeons or authors in any discipline to be copyright experts. So if an author who's in the submission planning stages has any questions about, hey, I'm not sure if I can use this or not, shoot us an email. We can walk you through the process, we can let you know what the requirements are, what you need to ask for when reaching out to a copyright holder for permission. So there are ways that the people in the journal office can help make sure that you're on track with that submission. So those are the main things. So don't take things that have been published elsewhere without permission, and do consult the instructions for authors.
Ameer Farooq 22:14
This comes up a lot, you know, on Twitter, people complain about this all the time. Is there a way that we could standardize submissions amongst journals, like sort of across the board? Because I think it's very hard and frustrating for authors to try to figure out the various formats and submission specifications across all these different journals. Has there ever been a discussion, you know, between journals, like even if you just think about the CMAJ Group about actually standardizing some of these submission requirements?
Wendy Carroll 22:52
That's a great question. And I can say, for the CMAJ Group, the team of coordinators who report to me are all about that standardization and trying to make the process similar, if not exactly the same across the journals that we publish. And that's, that's been a bit more of a recent endeavor. We used to be a little bit more separate in terms of the teams that worked on the journals. So where we are now is that everybody who is on staff is trained, at least as backup, or to full-on work on any of the journals that we publish. But to answer your question about conversations among journals, that comment comes up a lot. It's something that people who work on the peer review side of publishing are really cognizant of, because we know the submissions are so different from one publication to the next. You know, I'm a member of the Council of Science Editors and have the opportunity to go to their annual conference sometimes — obviously, not the last couple of years because of COVID — but that's definitely been a comment that's been raised at those continuing education sessions, something very much at the forefront of minds of people in publishing; we're just not necessarily sure how to do it, how to make it work. Because not only do different publishing groups have their own processes, but different publishing groups use different manuscript submission systems, and they're not all the same. So the short answer is, we feel your pain, and we know, we know it's a sore spot, and we know that we need to try to make things a little bit more standardized to make things easier for our authors. But I think we don't have the answers yet.
Ameer Farooq 24:53
Yeah, it's not necessarily an easy problem to fix, which you know, on Twitter, the only thing people can do is complain. But it's a lot, it's a lot easier to complain than to actually come up with solutions. I did want to circle back to peer review, and I'd love, Dr. Ball, for you also to weigh in on this, you mentioned how hard it is to actually get peer reviewers to, particularly in Canada, to come on board and do reviews in an non-remunerated fashion, and in some ways, not recognized, right, because the reviewers are, the names of the reviewers are not published. I'm curious, Wendy, your thoughts on other systems for peer review, so such as actually having the names of the reviewers published along with the manuscript, or I've even seen some journals, where they actually publish the reviewers' comments as well. You know, like, have you thought of a different systems for actually doing the peer review system? And what kind of, what are the pros and cons of, of doing peer review in different ways? And maybe I'd ask, Wendy, for you to start, and then I'd love Dr. Ball to comment as well, too.
Wendy Carroll 26:10
So that's a great question, and I can tell you that we haven't considered changing CJS's system from double-blind at this point. But one of our journals, CMAJ Open, does have open peer review. And as long as we have the reviewers' permission to post their comments, reviewer comments are actually published online, as a data supplement to a paper once it's published. So it's definitely something we can do, and that we'd be open to. The decision of whether to do that would involve discussion with the editors in chief who are the custodians of the journal. But if that's something that CJS would be interested in pursuing, then we can certainly have a conversation about it.
Chad Ball 27:09
That's an interesting question Ameer. In the US, where I publish a lot and review a lot, it's, I think, a bit of a stronger, or I should say, more topical conversation, more current conversation. I would tell you that my sense is about a third of reviewers in the surgical space in the US will put their names as a reviewer on everything. I do that. I say, at the bottom, I always put a lot in after I review a manuscript, you're free to use my name and let them know who it is. Some people, though, have a very different view of that, and are nervous about that for a number of reasons. I'm sure you, you and our authors, or sorry, our listeners could probably come up with, particularly in a time, in an era where, you know, social media pressures can be so great and targeted. So I don't know where that's going to go. And I don't know if it'll become open, you know, fully non-blinded, eventually, across the space. My gut says it will over the years, I don't know. You know, the, the other part is that, from the editor in chief point of view, you do, you know, Wendy and her team, not only at CJS and across the Canadian journals, but really at every journal, when you get the review back from reviewer one, you get the review back from reviewer two, and you as an author, see what they want you to see. But there's always a separate place where that reviewer will write comments, as you know Ameer, to the associate editor and the editor in chief. So sometimes you get these scenarios where the review that's going back to the authors may seem relatively benign, like it may be quite polite, especially in Canada. And it may be like, here's eight things that you know, we're asking about, but in the blinded or private notes to editor in chief, associate editor, Wendy, and so on, it's like this paper can't be published because there's this major flaw with it. And it's a much more frank part of it. So sometimes you get authors saying, hey, why was my paper rejected? One author sort of, sorry, one reviewer, maybe liked it, one reviewer really didn't like it, and the reviewer in the middle, it's sort of lukewarm. But that reviewer in the middle has written a paragraph that's sort of saying there's no way and so that does create some conflict, and at the editor in chief level, we have to try and navigate that respectfully and carefully but there is more going on even beyond the review language in terms of opinion assessment of these manuscripts.
Wendy Carroll 29:57
Sure, that's an interesting point and I would imagine that there are circumstances or situations that might make a reviewer really uncomfortable with having their comments being public. I mean, just coming from the perspective of someone who's edited content, when you're working with a brand-new author, you have no experience of working with this person before, sometimes it's hard to know how heavy handed, for lack of a better term, to be. Because you don't necessarily know how that feedback is going to be received. And it's certainly not your intent to appear like a bully or anything like that. But I can imagine that many people would feel uncomfortable having their reviews public.
Chad Ball 30:48
Yeah, it's, and it's interesting too, you know, the 2 other things that come to mind. One is there's major cultural differences across general surgical subspecialties. And I'm not throwing anyone under the bus. I think most of us that published in these spaces, this is common knowledge. But if you look at, for example, trauma-surgery-focused journals, and reviewers, they're infinitely more harsh than, for example, HPB, liver, sort of culture. And it's not to say the content and the quality of the review is better or worse. But the language and the maybe aggression is very different. I always find that, you know, quite interesting. The other thing, and I don't know, Wendy, if you would see this across all the journals, you purview, but, and in my sense is that over the years more recently, in particular, when a manuscript is rejected, there's a much higher frequency of a letter of sort of complaint, of saying, why was this rejected? That should be accepted, it should be published, like, just more sort of anger, I would say, and I think it predated COVID, as well. So I don't think it's just an exhaustion, sort of COVID-related issue. And it is interesting, because, you know, I don't know, I have travelled around the world giving Grand Rounds on publishing, and there's sort of a slide that I talked about with that, you know, having published a fair bit, that's not a focus of energy that I've ever sort of triggered. I always say, well, you know, I take the feedback, the rejection, I put it on the side of my desk, I let it sit there for a week, and I don't look at it. And then I start to look at it and go through it and say what of these reviewer responses, can I really objectively use and make the paper better, and then I move on to the next journal. And there's not a lot of emotion behind it, that with the benefit of having done that a lot of times, but I do find it at the editor in chief level more challenging by the year and by the month, with really upset authors on it on occasion. And increasingly frequently, you know?
Wendy Carroll 33:03
Yeah, I, I suspect you're right. And, I mean, this is not the case for CJS, in particular, but we do have other journals, whose accept rate is very low. Just in terms of we could never publish as many papers as are submitted to that particular journal. So sometimes papers get rejected, not because they're not good enough. But, you know, maybe we just published six papers on, you know, hip replacement, in a row, and the paper that you submitted isn't really adding anything different to the conversation. So it's not necessarily that it's rejected because it's not good enough. It's maybe rejected because the topic is saturated in this particular publication. And it may be worth your while to take the feedback and then look elsewhere. I mean, the spirit of rejection is not malicious in any way.
Chad Ball 34:11
Yeah, yeah. It's hard to take, for sure, I think initially, the feeling of rejection, but if, if you look at it, take a step back, in terms of the whole process, it's part of the voyage. You know, the other thing is, as you know better than me, is that the rejection-methodology link has become stronger and stronger and stronger over the last 20 years. And what I mean by that is, you know, it's quite hard now to publish single-centre retrospective studies, asking a very nice clinical question by a group of authors. You know, it's sort of, we're in the era, I think, of, at the very minimum, in many cases, multicenter retrospective research, and ideally methodologically stronger than that. So it's not uncommon to do a great single-centre study at your centre that has a really important quality-improvement piece to it, but may not really apply to other centres and hasn't included other centres, and so that applicability piece to, you know, a greater target audience may not be there. And a lot of those papers, you know, have to go through a lot of different journal submissions and come down the ladder, unfortunately, and you go back a decade ago, those were all being accepted at the top subspecialty journal, across many fields, and so that the actual content and methodology, requirements, but bar or threshold has changed significantly too.
Ameer Farooq 35:52
Wendy, I mean, you've been an editor for a long time. And I know, this is like asking, trying to ask someone to summarize EB White's, you know, Elements of Style, but what are some of the things that like, you look at manuscripts and you think, oh, God, how did someone write this? Or what are some of your tips for writing good, high-quality, scientific manuscripts? Are there any, like things that you've noticed over the years, some principles that just seem to stand out as, these are what makes good manuscript writing?
Wendy Carroll 36:32
Actually, it's funny, your question made me think of a workshop I took a long time ago that was offered by Editors Canada. And the editor who developed the workshop retired quite a while ago and doesn't deliver it anymore, but I think it's been adapted, but it was called Eight-step Editing. And there were basically eight tips of things to look for on each pass of a manuscript that you're working on. And those tips apply to writing as well, because they're such easy things to do, to make writing stronger. So, you know, without giving away, without giving away the content of a workshop that doesn't belong to me, a couple of things that I learned and still apply when I go through manuscripts and try to polish them up: using active verbs really helps. So there's a tendency, I find, especially in scientific writing, where people want to use the passive voice rather than the active voice. And they use a lot of the verb "to be." So the actual action of a sentence is often hidden. And just changing that structure around makes your writing pop really, really well. And so, I know that, you know, there's some purists who like to focus on passive voice, because that was traditional in the scientific publishing, but we're trying to move away from that, because it makes writing so much stronger, and so much easier to read. So that's one thing that I would offer as a tip for better writing. And I would also say that one of the style things that we have to, that we are looking for these days, is what I mentioned before about inclusivity. So we really want to make sure that we're using inclusive language, and that we're putting the person first in everything that we're publishing. And inclusive language can be a challenge, because it's always evolving. So we might make a style decision and say, this is the acceptable term for this group of people or for this situation, and then we use that expression for a year or two, and then we learn that that expression was not the greatest idea after all. So language evolves, and it's a learning process. So we try to take feedback from different groups. So if concern is expressed, that we did something wrong, we listen. And we try to make those changes. So it's important for any writer to be aware of that kind of sentiment among the populations we're writing about.
Ameer Farooq 40:04
Those are some fantastic writing tips and style tips. What, Wendy, when you're reviewing a manuscript, how, number 1, do you check for things like plagiarism? And [number] 2, if you detect plagiarism, what do you do about it? And I'm curious, as well is if CJS uses any of these software to actually try to detect plagiarism.
Wendy Carroll 40:31
So I don't believe that CJS runs all manuscripts through software. We do have a software that we will run; I believe, we're running things as spot checks at the moment. I don't know if everything gets run through; I would have to check with the person who's tasked with doing that. But as an editor, you can kind of keep an eye out for red flags. So for example, if you're working your way through a manuscript, and it's kind of rough going, but then you get to a section that is, you know, surprisingly written really, really clearly, and then it gets back to rough going text, you may, your spidey senses may start to tingle. And then you can kind of copy some of that passage and throw it into Google and see, see what you find. So we do look for some red flags of, you know, an obvious style change or an obvious language skill change, when we're going through a paper to look out for that kind of thing.
Chad Ball 41:42
The letter of the law, honestly, is that if you say, for example, let's just pick, pick a potential domain that, say happened this calendar year. So if you submit two papers built from the same data set, that has to be just purely disclosed, ideally, in your methodology and your cover letter, you should say this is a dataset from this other publication. And we've now sort of re-jigged it or added to it or done whatever to it. And so here's a new angle on it, and a new important question. That's the above-board thing to do. And that's what EICs will look for. Having said that, sometimes, not only that escapes the circumstance, but two papers just sort of almost exactly the same to two different journals over two different periods of time, and that does, that does happen. So in theory, you're, you know, you reject it, you say, it looks a lot similar to this, you should reference it, change it. And sometimes the feedback from the authors is sort of nothing. And sometimes they return with aggression, and try and defend why it's different. The truth is, at the end of the day, if it's truly plagiaristic, you're supposed to report that to their respective university and departments. We usually choose not to do that, at least in Canada, in the US for sure. It's going to happen 100 times out of 100. They're not quite as conciliatory. But you know, there is potentially a really big fallout from academic fraud and publishing fraud. Yeah, I mean, if people contact the journal office saying, hey, listen, I saw you publish this, but that's actually plagiarized. We published this here, you know, a whole investigation kind of ensues. So not only academically, but at the journal office, we have to go back through the queue and figure out when was paper A submitted versus paper B, and when was it accepted? And we have to do all this investigation to figure out how this came to be. And there are certainly steps that we would have to take if if plagiarism were found to be the case. So certainly, no journal editor is going to, you know, stick with publishing something that was taken from elsewhere. And we'd have to look into a retraction process and all sorts of things.
Ameer Farooq 44:10
Yeah, it almost seems like stupidity, I think, in 2022, to try to plagiarize things, although I'm sure people try. But it just, it's so easy to cross-reference things and check things that have been published in other places that really, it's just, it's not going to be easy for you to plagiarize things. What do you, what's your, both your sense, and Wendy, I'm particularly interested in having, you know, you having seen the evolution of things from sort of behind the scenes as well, how do you think predatory journals have changed the way that publishing works and or, or do you think it hasn't made a difference? So where do predatory journals fit into the landscape, and has it affected the editorial process at all?
Wendy Carroll 45:04
Oh, that's a great question. It's a little difficult to answer too. Um, I feel like that kind of would come into play a little bit before content actually reaches my team. But in terms of predatory journals, if you're thinking of the type of publication that it's basically pay for publication, like you, you know, give us some money, we're going to get your paper out to the world and these promises are put out there. I think part of that, that affects my team, is that it kind of sets unreasonable expectations in terms of turnaround. So it can be difficult to have to go back and explain to an author, especially if they've paid a publication fee, who questions, you know, my paper was accepted two weeks ago, and I haven't heard anything from you. It's like, okay, well, we're a full-service publishing department, and there are many steps that have to happen before we can get a paper to completion. Whereas some of these predatory publications, when they actually put material out, there has not been the level of work that we offer put on it. And they make promises that a legit publishing shop can't really offer, especially in a smaller market. So I would say that might have had an effect in terms of expectations of what the people working on a journal are able to accomplish in a particular amount of time. In terms of effects on authors, I'd maybe defer to Chad because he has the author experience and what those types of promises and expectations and the effect that they can have on authors.
Chad Ball 47:20
Yeah, no, I think that's a good summary. It's no different on the authorship side. Predatory journals is, I think probably everybody listening knows, are an increasing scourge or problem. Their financial structure is very different. They are for profit is as Wendy mentioned. So they're just interested in really the submission and publishing fees to generate income. And almost across the board, there's very little, if any, relevant, or quality peer review. The other thing that they were very good at initially was putting are trying to put well-known folks, clinicians in particular, onto editorial boards to again, kind of give it the visage that it was a true journal, but really, they're not. And I don't know, you know, how many emails everybody gets, you know, community and academic practice, but certainly predatory journals, solicitations come into my email box multiple times a day. There's a beautiful CJS manuscript that looked at that published by Duncan Nickerson, one of the plastic surgeons in Canada. That was very interesting. But it's a big problem for sure.
Ameer Farooq 48:41
And the irony, Dr. Ball, like what you said about the fact that the the bar for some publication in many journals has gone up, and yet, in some ways, the bar has never been lower to actually get content, whatever your content might be, out into the world. So it's kind of this funny position that we find ourselves. I mean, you know, on this topic, Wendy, can I ask are, how are journals funded? And I know, we've talked about this on the podcast a few times, but can you talk a little bit about how journals are funded? And do they make any money and are the editorial board and reviewers paid?
Wendy Carroll 49:24
Sure. So I can only comment on the journals that I run. So certainly, there are different circumstances for different publishing houses. In our case, we do have article processing charges for all of our journals. Even though the CMAJ Group is technically considered for-profit, the distinction my publisher would want me to make here is that we don't actually make money. So the article processing charges that we put out, really, the expectation is that the journals, we hope that they break even. So the revenue that we try to generate through article processing charges and through advertising revenue, that's basically to pay for the running of the journal and the publishing of the journal. So, you know, in our case, yes, we have the journal funded and in CJS's case, we also have sponsorship from the departments of surgery across the country. So that sponsorship helps us keep CJS's article processing charges on the lower side. They're considerably lower than what the other journals are charging. But definitely, we do not make any money off of the publication. We're just using that funding to run the publication.
Chad Ball 51:02
Yeah, to answer your question about the editorial board, it's the same thing. The associate editors are not paid at all. As we've talked about, the reviewers are not paid at all. So this is really truly a volunteer experience because of people's ethical belief that they should contribute. Well, we've certainly touched on a lot of topics today, Wendy, and we appreciate your time so, so very much. I was wondering if we could close with you with just sort of a 30,000-foot question, which is, you know, we've kind of touched on it a little bit here and there, but the peer-reviewed journal landscape has changed a lot over, I wouldn't even say 20 years, I would say extremely rapidly, maybe 5 to 8 years or so, you know, it's moved from exclusively print to mixed format to many, many journals, including CJS, really online and electronic only. What has that change been like for you, given given your role? And I'm curious if you have any sense of maybe from any angle where journals are gonna go next.
Wendy Carroll 52:19
That is a 30,000-foot question. Um, in terms of my role, I have seen several changes across the journals. When I started on CJS, it was a print product. We did have a website, but the website was access-based, I believe you had to be able to log in, it was on the CMA website, which I believe the publications, you had to be a member of CMA to be able to access them. And then we introduced more of an online format, and then Open Access was coming into play, so, you know, CJS's content has been freely available to people for a long time now. But to meet the requirements for capital O, capital A Open Access, you need to be able to provide a specific license. So that change has only been made recently, but now we are Open Access. In terms of where it's going? Gosh, that's a really huge question because there's so many things that come into play that make us have to course correct, and change the way we do things. The Open Access initiative was one of those things. Right now, a huge undertaking has been the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. So that is to ensure that all the content that we publish on our website, because now we are a digital journal, so the Web version is the version of record. And we have to ensure that anybody who wants to be able to access the content can. So we're needing to follow guidelines to make sure that someone who is, for example, visually impaired and has to use a reader to access the content that the things that we publish aren't going to, quote-unquote, fail the requirements so that a reader can actually go through them properly. And, you know, on that point, I actually had the opportunity, through one of the last Council of Science Editors conferences I attended, to see an example of how a reader was going through scientific medical content; it was really heavy and I can't imagine having to rely on that to get the information. So we really need to be making those kinds of efforts to make sure that people can access our content. So, right now the trends of where we're going are all about accessibility, equity, diversity and inclusion. So in terms of publishing models, my publisher would be much better in a position to answer that kind of 30,000-foot question. But where we're going at the moment is really towards inclusivity.
Ameer Farooq 55:36
You've been listening to Cold Steel, the official podcast of the Canadian Journal of Surgery. If you like what you've heard, please leave us a review on iTunes. We'd love to hear your thoughts, comments and feedback. Send us an email at [email protected] or tweet at us @CanJSurg. Thanks again.