There could be 1000s of journal in the field of biology, which a very broad subject. But certainly there could be limited number of journals for specific subjects e.g. crystallography, microbiology, liver disease, metabolism, diabetes and obesity, cardiology and so on. Even if there are limited number of journals for a particular subject, every journal has different formats, different impact factors, different recognition, different publishers, different editors....
Lets say I have a manuscript specific for cardiology field and I submit it to journal "X". It goes under review and after 1-2 months editor says its rejected. I reformat it, submit it to journal "Y" of the same field, again same thing happens and I go for the next journal. In all this exercise, I waste my 5-6 months and my paper remains still under "REVIEW" in some journal "Z". To avoid this waste of time, if like subject journals come together and form a consortia. Author submit his article to a consortia rather than submitting to one journal. Panel of editors go through the manuscript and decide which journal of the consortia this article suits and then process the article accordingly with author's consent.
Does it sound logical?
A consortia would have the problem that journals would then forever have a "fixed" position. If good papers go to Journal A, average Journal B and poor to Journal C, how can Journal B or C try and improve to overtake Journal A.
It would be quite demotivating for people to be involved in a journal which is destined to have no hope for improvement.
I think we have the common interest. It should be.Nowadays, there are some publishing groups start to apply this techniques, but still limited. It is called "Article Transfer Service. I hope it become widespread soon.
I concur, each of us must have wasted/invested time and effort in this........this is a great way although it may also make way for some bias in choice of papers selected.
any comments?
In traditional way, you submit consequently to different journals each time it is rejected. You hope that the next try will be successful. But if there is a consortium which consider your submission just once and it is rejected (quite possible if it was rejected by X, Y and Z), what to do then? Submit it to the bin?
Consortia will not accept or reject the journal at first instance, it will judge your article and ask you to submit to a particular journal of that consortia where it will for peer-review and then you will get the comments, acceptance or rejection. And after that if they really think is to be rejected then your article is worth a bin isnt it?
Will the number and expertise level of reviewers in the consortium be different from that in the traditional way? Will it still be blind? You know, when your paper is rejected by a particular journal, the reason is not always evident.
Sorry guys but this discussion will end up nowhere.. you won't change the rules of paper acceptance.. sorry to say this but when your manuscript has not been accepted 3 or 4 times already you need to change it or your research is just a crap one. I can't believe that a well conducted study is rejected in 2 or 3 journals. Have you tried to send it to the lower IF journal?
I would like to rise the question about the rights to the paper during the acceptance process. One day my friend send a very nice manuscript for publishing and his work was rejected. However, after 2 month his study was published in different journal but he was not an author anymore! His idea for the study was stolen by an editor or a member of editorial boar. What to do in such situations? Any ideas, hints?
A consortia would have the problem that journals would then forever have a "fixed" position. If good papers go to Journal A, average Journal B and poor to Journal C, how can Journal B or C try and improve to overtake Journal A.
It would be quite demotivating for people to be involved in a journal which is destined to have no hope for improvement.
@Maciej
I deeply regret about your situation, this seems to be the ugliest version of plagiarism - like money deposited in bank are stolen by an insider bank employee! I also had a case of plagiarism, when my "collaborator" just published all the data we produced by the group of 5 under his single name, never apologized and ignored our pretensions.
In your case, you have everything to prove your right and are able to get a very weak satisfaction of Erratum (see http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2012/03/12/how-does-it-feel-to-have-your-scientific-paper-plagiarized-and-what-can-you-do-about-it/) but no proof for the future for any of us!!!
or find that guy and ...... (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsXKAtpLm4I)
I do like the idea but I don't see it working I would like to limit the time spend on reviewing papers. One limitation on specialism wide consortia is that most journals are published by different companies. Publishing houses are still companies that try to make money, although a larger or smaller part of the board comes from the specialist interest societies, for which it can be a source of exposure and income. How do you expect these companies to confer to an industry grading without a chance to get higher in the ranking (and advertising money). Some publisher do referal within theire suite of paper s actually and that is recomendable. I have had a manuscript send back from a big multidiscplinairy science journal saying that it was a good paper but not for the broad audience they cater for, with the advise to send it to a specialist journal. We did dend everything, with reviews and editor letter to the specialist journal in my field and got a co-operative editor who accepted it right-out. So there are some helpful editorial boards out there.
BTW it is one consortium, more consortia
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