The Culture of Science Editing

At the Palac Larischa, ul. Bracka 12, Kraków, Poland, 15 - 18 June 2006

Below is a description of the programme of the 9th EASE Conference, which took place in June 2006.

Details of the forthcoming conference, to be held in 2009, will be announced soon.

Plenary sessions

1  Cultural approaches to accessing and archiving scientific data
2  Cultural effects of impact factors
3  Cultural consequences of electronic publishing
4  Cultural differences in text editing and writing
5  The culture of science translation  
6  Communicating science to society

Plus submitted paper sessions and panel discussions

Post-conference workshops: 19th June 2006

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Thursday 15th June

14.00 AGM, General Assembly

15.30 - 17.00
Plenary One: Cultural approaches to accessing and archiving scientific data
Chairman: Roderick Hunt

a) Lost data or good archives. Cliff Morgan, Vice-President, Planning & Development, Director, John Wiley & Sons Ltd., UK

Thanks to the growth of electronic storage media, scientific data can be preserved in much greater volume than hitherto. But has this trend brought an improvement in, or even an equalling of, the long-term security of such data? Will the data now stored only in electronic form become irretrievably lost as the technology improves further, e.g. who can now read a 5.25-inch floppy disk? How can editors and librarians work together to ensure the permanence of data formats and media, thus keeping scientific information available to future generations?

b) Inaccessible science literature in Eastern Europe. Volodymyr Lysenko, Information School, University of Washington, Seattle, USA, and Drukarstvo journal, Ukraine

Most of the past political barriers to the free international exchange of science literature have now been removed. But the question still remains as to whether the great wealth of science research results are now truly available to all researchers. Are the archives of highly-specialised, small journals from Eastern Europe now available to researchers in the West, and vice versa? What should editors and librarians be doing to complete the internationalisation of European science?

17.30 Reception: at the Collegium Maius, five minutes walk from the Palac Larischa

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Friday 16th June

09.00 - 10.30
Plenary Two: Cultural consequences of impact factors
Chairman: Edward Towpik

a) Selective Indexes. James Testa, Institute for Scientific Information

For over 40 years the Institute for Scientific Information, and now Thomson Scientific, has developed and maintained several multidisciplinary citation indexes in the Web of Science. Scholarly journals form the core collections of the three major components of the Web of Science, which is comprehensive but not all-inclusive. For this reason, Thomson dedicates significant resources to the selection of the most important and influential scholarly journals for inclusion. I will describe the Journal Selection Process used to achieve this goal, particularly with regard to citation analysis and the role of the Impact Factor.

b) Open Indexing: An innovative approach to indexation and delivery of bibliographic data. Mark R. Graczynski, Index Copernicus

Over 60 per cent of scientific information is published in small scholarly journals, which are important vehicles for the dissemination of new science. Many of these are published independently by universities or research institutions, where a lack of resources, and editing and publishing experience, may disadvantage them with the major international indexing services, e.g. Medline or ISI. There is the perception that decisions by these organisations are arbitrary, and may condemn some journals to obscurity. Open Indexing, complementary to the Open Access concept, is an innovative approach to the evaluation and indexing of science information.

11.00 - 12.30 Submitted papers. Two parallel sessions chaired by Joan Marsh and Faith McLellan

14.00 - 15.30 Plenary Three: Cultural consequences of electronic publishing Chairman: Sir Iain Chalmers

a) The Culture of Sharing - Open Access to Scientific Literature. Lars Björnshauge, University Librarian, Lund University Libraries, Lund, Sweden

Collaboration is an essential element of research in which progress depends on the sharing of knowledge and results. E-publishing technology has fundamentally changed our capabilities to disseminate information, offering vast possibilities for openness and sharing. On the other hand, it offers equally vast possibilities for control of intellectual property via sophisticated methods called Technical Protection Measures and Digital Rights Management. I will address the conditions for ownership of the collective scientific memory, as well as the problem of defining an optimal balance between authors´ rights and content owners´ rights. I will give examples of publisher/journal copyright policies and of the two main roads to Open Access - the "golden" road and the "green" road .

b) Open peer-review in the electronic age. Erik Sandewall, Professor of Computer Science, Linköping University, Sweden

Traditionally, journal papers have been reviewed anonymously: the authors do not know who is commenting on their manuscript, although it can sometimes be deduced - accurately or otherwise. Some journals have experimented with open peer review, where the comments are signed. How does this affect the review process? Do people choose their words more carefully if they know they will be identified? Does this vary with discipline? Important questions for journal editors and all involved in scientific research.

16.00-17.00 Panel discussion featuring all speakers from Plenary sessions 2 and 3. Chairman: Sir Iain Chalmers

20.00 - 22.00 Conference dinner at The Orangery, Dwor w Tomaszowice

Saturday 17th June

09.00 - 10.30
Plenary Four: Cultural differences in text editing and writing
Chairman: Elisabeth Heseltine

a) Western v. Eastern European Editing: Editors as Educators. Prof. Ana Marusic, Croatian Medical Journal, Zagreb University School of Medicine

Editing in the Eastern Europe is also teaching - about all aspects of scientific research. Writing and manuscript preparation are rarely taught in the context of scientific or medical education in post-communist countries in Southeast Europe. As editors of a medical scientific journal published in English in a non-native English speaking country, we learned that knowledge of scientific methodology and scientific reporting is a necessary precondition for a successful scientific publication. Editors and language professionals working with authors from such scientific communities should be acquainted with the basic rules of scientific reporting, including the four layers of a manuscript - the study quality, the narrative, the scientific reporting style, and finally the language per se.

b) Writing for Western and Eastern audiences. Andras Falus, Department of Genetics, Cell- and Immunobiology, Semmelweis University, Budapest, Hungary

There are cultural differences between East and West in approaches to scientific texts - both in writing and editing. I will compare the Anglo-American approach with that in Eastern Europe, using my experience in immunology and genomics. Do I approach a paper differently when writing for a Hungarian journal than when writing for a British or American one? Yes, although decreasingly so. Copy editors and publishers need to be aware of these issues, which include the order of authors and citation habits.

11.00 - 12.00 Submitted papers Chairman: Yateendra Joshi

12.00 Lunch

12.00 - 16.30 BELS examination at the Palac Larischa

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Sunday 18th June

09.00-10.30
Plenary Five: The culture of science translation
Chairman: Arjan Polderman

a) Editing science text translations: when to stop? Noah Hardy, Consultant, Paris, France

Expression contributes to the meaning that emerges from a written text. A translation must accurately reflect not only what the author meant, but also how it was expressed. Even if the editor of a text also translates it, and therefore has ready access to the original, it should be edited as though it were a new original, since it must stand alone. The content of a translation, as well as the emphasis applied to its elements, should be the same as in the original; however, the syntax and style will no doubt differ. Editing should stop when further changes weaken rather than enhance the text. I will discuss whether authors should write good text in their own language, which often has no equivalent to modern scientific and technical vocabulary, or whether it would be preferable for them to write in imperfect English, which can then be edited? This simply amounts to helping the author to say what he means.

b) Translation for open-access journals. Hooman Momen, Editor, Bulletin of the World Health Organization, Acting Co-ordinator, WHO Press, Geneva, Switzerland

Authors are encouraged to publish in English, considered to be the international language of science. Publication in English has been shown to favour citation and to increase the impact factors of journals. Readers who are not native English speakers, however, often prefer to receive information in their mother tongue as this facilitates comprehension and retention. Significant output in non-English languages may be ignored, resulting in a publication bias in systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Improvements in machine translations, coupled with online publication, should provide non-English authors with the opportunities to publish in their own language. Standardized reporting and structured abstracts aid machine translation and abstracting by indexing services. The main weapon to overcome language barriers is quality.

Plenary Six: Communicating Science to Society
Chairman: Jenny Gretton

a) Communicating science to researchers and practitioners: the role of systematic reviews. Mike Clarke, Director, UK Cochrane Centre; Professor of Clinical Epidemiology, University of Oxford

Science progresses by being cumulative, practice improves by taking account of good evidence: both need to keep up to date. In the health arena, many tens of thousands of pieces of research are undertaken each year, millions of articles are published, and tens of millions of pieces of information are available to people planning new research and making decisions about health care interventions. Keeping abreast of relevant research when deciding about a new study or using a treatment is an enormous task. For most decision makers, it is possible only through access to systematic views, which have identified, appraised, summarised and, where appropriate, combined the relevant research. I will discuss how The Cochrane Collaboration prepares and maintains systematic reviews of the effects of health care interventions, and the need for researchers to discuss new findings in the context of existing evidence.

b) Communicating science to the general public. Pawel Walewski, Polityka Magazine, Warsaw, Poland

In the last 50 years man has landed on the moon, achieved nuclear fission and discovered antibiotics. But to counter these successes, how many discoveries, announced with high expectations, have failed to deliver on their early promise? Who is to blame? Scientists-society-journalists, without doubt a triangle of mutual discrepancies in interpretation. Science journalists do not create their own stories, but relay information acquired from scientists. They cannot prescribe and they do not heal, although their reports can have profound effect - a newspaper scare story may prevent a patient from seeking treatment and therefore, indirectly, be fatal. To what extent are journalists independent? Do we have the right to raise hopes, or cause fear, in the name of enlightenment?

CONFERENCE ENDS: CLOSING REMARKS

Post-conference workshops sponsored by the Open Society Institute

These workshops were run by Dr Remedios Melero on Monday 19 June, at the Palac Larischa, Krakow, Poland.

1) Two roads to open access
Given by Neil Jacobs, Alice Keefer, John Wilinsky, Bill Hubbard (to be confirmed)
Further details
This workshop was supported by a grant from The Open Society Institute

2) Statistics for journal editors
Given by Christopher R Palmer
Further details

Programme Committee : Jenny Gretton, Roderick Hunt, Elisabeth Kessler, Hervé Maisonneuve, Joan Marsh, Georgianna Oja, Arjan Polderman and Edward Towpik.