Now almost all big publishing houses have started Open or Gold access schemes where we, the scientific authors, need to pay thousands of USD or EUROs or GBPs as article processing charges (APC). So, the authors are the consumers of the journals or publishing houses paying for their impact factors.
The publishing houses have employed non-technical or non-subject specific editorial support staff for checking articles' physical issues, not contents.
We all are facing a delay-dealing process by these staff before the actual scientific review start.
I/we can share some of my/our experiences:
Case-1. One journal has returned our article after five days of submission. We had uploaded two figures. Figure-1 was PRISMA and figure-2 was results derived from the study. Under the online submission declaration section, it asked to upload PRISMA (we marked as figure 1 with legend PRISMA). We did that. Under the figure category, we uploaded figure 2. We could not upload figure 1 again as it was already uploaded under the declaration section, which was mandatory to upload. We had a legend in manuscript figure 1 with PRISMA. We have also mentioned in the letter stating the problem.
The cause of return was figure 1 missing. The person who read it could not even distinguish by figure legends.
Case 2. One journal has returned our article before sending it to the editor/ reviewers. The reason was that by mistake, we wrote 'conclusion' instead of 'conclusions'.
Case 3. One journal from has returned our article after almost four weeks. The cause? Why did we add ethical issues under the method section and again under the declaration section? However, it asked to add ethical permission under the declaration. We have detailed descriptions of ethical issues under the method section.
Cases can go on and on.
In all cases, these minor technical issues could be easily fixed after the reviewer's comments during the revision of the manuscript.
The scientists plan for research projects, apply for funding, including APC charges, conduct research, write articles, and submit to journals for publication and publishing by paying the APC. As the consumer, I am losing time for this silly problem that we can quickly fix during the revision of the manuscript. We shall we be always at the receiving end? Why do the publishing houses exploit us even through these silly issues and delay-dealing process?
Dear Koustuv Dalal
Predatory publishers take advantage of the Open Access business model to charge writers publishing fees while falsifying or ignoring peer-review and editorial services. Because of a few bad apples, writers and readers are skeptical about Open Access publications, believing they are not peer-reviewed and are of poor quality.
Best Regards
Dr. Fatemeh Khozaei
Just go through the process and do what is asked so that you get published. There's no point complaining. You won't regret the time or money spent later on when you have the satisfaction of publication. I would avoid Open Access if you can because of the lack of copy-write :)
I think you did not get my point Andrew. I am not regretting as I have more than >200 works. I am trying to discuss so the big publishing houses (not predatory journals) can reorient their delay-dealing policies by using these silly issues.
Our government is highly encouraging researchers for open access publishing. So we are doing that.
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