This page collects together arange of resources to support and enhance the workflows, processes and personal development of journal editors, of all levels of experience.
EASE Quick-Check Table for Submissions is a standardised, structured, template for journals to include at the start of their instructions for authors, to clearly display the essential requirements for formatting and style.
Editors tend to be busy people; we can become lost in the details and forget about the big picture. It seemed useful to draft a list of golden rules that editors can stick on their noticeboard and learn. After much discussion, the Ten Golden Rules were presented at the EASE Conference in Split, Croatia in June 2014.
The EASE Ethics Checklist for Authors (to be signed by the corresponding author) is intended for use by scientific journals during or soon after manuscript submission, to detect the possible ethical problems. The checklist is part of the EASE Guidelines for Authors and Translators of Scientific Articles, freely available in more than 25 languages. It can be supplemented with the EASE Form for Authors (pdf).
The EASE Science Editors’ Handbook includes more information on how to deal with ethical issues. The Handbook is an invaluable resource for anyone working in the field of editing either in print, or digitally.
The EASE Form for Authors’ Contributions and Conflict of Interest Disclosure (to be signed by all authors) is intended for use by scientific journals during or soon after manuscript submission and can be supplemented with the EASE Ethics Checklist for Authors (pdf).
The EASE Standard Retraction Form is a templated checklist developed in association with COPE members, to help editors and journal managers understand whether an article meets the pre-requisites for the COPE retraction guidelines, prepare a retraction notice, and provide researchers with better data to analyse retractions over time.
The EASE Statement on Inappropriate Use of Impact Factors was published in November 2007 after a consultation exercise. It records how, although the journal impact factor was developed as a means to measure the impact of scientific journals, its use has been extended to measuring the quality of scientific journals, the quality of individual articles and the productivity of individual researchers.
EASE recommends that journal impact factors are used only – and cautiously – for measuring and comparing the influence of entire journals, but not for the assessment of single papers, and certainly not for the assessment of researchers or research programmes either directly or as a surrogate.
EASE member Paul Beverley, who has over 25 years’ experience as a technical author, publisher, proofreader and editor has prepared the book “Computer tools for editors and proofreaders”. The book is available in digital format (ca. 750 pp) and contains a wide range of computer tools (macros) to enable proofreaders and editors to work faster and more effectively.
Download the book: http://www.archivepub.co.uk/book.html
Best practices for APC waivers – Research4Life
Research4Life has prepared a checklist of considerations when setting and implementing a waiver policy and provides recommendations on how best to communicate a journal’s policy to potential authors from low/middle-income countries.
Core competencies for scientific editors of biomedical journals: consensus statement
14 key core competencies for journal editors, divided into three major areas. Each competency has a list of associated elements or descriptions of more specific knowledge, skills, and characteristics that contribute to its fulfillment.
CREDiT
A high-level taxonomy, including 14 roles, that can be used to represent the roles typically played by contributors to scientific scholarly output. The roles describe each contributor’s specific contribution to the scholarly output.
How to improve the quality of your journals
Presentation by Pippa Smart, at the 8th International Scientific and Practical Conference (Moscow, April 2019), on the theme of World-class scientific publication: strategy and tactics for management and development. The presentation addresses publishing ethics, how to review journal quality, identify problems and make improvements; how to meet internationally recognised publishing standards, and develop journals for greater impact.
Editage insights
Editage Insights is another resource for editors. Not only can editors share these resources and educate their authors, editors themselves can gain a lot from interviews with industry experts. They can also follow the researcher Q&A section to understand the challenges authors face and the questions they are asking. The Wolters-Kluwer and ISMTE monthly newsletter articles are also available.
Elsevier Publishing Ethics Resource Kit (PERK)
The Elsevier Publishing Ethics Resource Kit (PERK) is an online resource to support journal editors in handling publishing ethics issues. It is a single point of access for information and guidelines on publishing ethics. PERK provides flowcharts to guide editors through processes required to deal with different forms of publishing ethics abuse.
Good Publication Practice for Communicating Company-Sponsored Medical Research: GPP3
Good Publication Practice 3 (GPP3) is a key guidance document for the publication of company-sponsored medical research, and is published online by the Annals of Internal Medicine (AIM). GPP3 has been developed to benefit all stakeholders in medical publications, and supplements other guidelines, such as the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors authorship guidelines and data reporting guidelines.
Guidelines for open peer review implementation
Guidelines and process framework from the OpenUp project to facilitate change to open peer review. An excellent resource to demystify the concepts of open review, clarify the processes required to convert workflows and editorial practices into more transparent systems, as well as providing a functional template to structure the implementation.
Proof-Reading-Service.com has published a free handbook for editors of academic and scientific articles that is a useful source of information for EASE members.
Taylor & Francis – Editor Resources
Online content hub with information and resources to support journal editors, structured around the key aspects of the editor’s role: Content development, Editorial board, Ethics, Journal visibility, Peer review, and Research metrics.
Subtleties of Scientific Style
This free ebook by Matthew Stevens was published in 2007, and remains a valuable resource for hands-on scientific editors who work with the nuts and bolts of text—from spelling, punctuation and grammar (copyediting) to meaning and logic (substantive editing). Copyeditors (subeditors) and journal editors will also find something of interest in it.
Text recycling
These COPE guidelines are intended to help journal editors deal with cases of text recycling. Text recycling, is also known as self-plagiarism and it refers to sections of the same text that appear (usually un-attributed) in more than one of an author’s own publications.
Wiley Exchanges (their ideas, research and discussion blog).