Improving the efficiency of manuscript selection

Science relies strongly on the publication of articles in scientific journals and it is clear that decisions concer¬ning which papers merit publishing should be based on a process of manuscript selection that is as objective, repeatable, reliable and transparent as possible. Manuscript selection, however, has many practical downfalls. There is considerable controversy concerning issues such as whether or not the process should be blind both for authors and reviewers in order to prevent biased selection in relation to country of origin (Budden et al., 2008), sex (Young et al. 2008) or research topic (Michaels, 2008). Another critical point is the imbalance between supply and demand of manuscripts as this likely leads to biased selection (Young et al., 2008). Also important is the issue that following rejection, the editor and reviewers of the new journal selected for would-be publication by the authors start the process from scratch, as if the opus had not already passed through a thorough process of peer review. Such rules of play seem to promote the role of sheer luck in the process of manuscript selection. Authors of a rejected paper have the growing hope of "greater luck" the next time regarding reviewer assignment as they believe in the quality of their work. For the correct advancement of science I consider there should be a common global database available to editors, where each manuscript which has been subjected to an SCI journal is recorded. It should include a copy of the editor’s and reviewers’ comments, and also the authors’ replies. Hochberg et al. (2009) recently expressed their concern regarding the fact that authors usually think that manuscript submittal is a stochastic process, whereas in fact reviewers usually focus on the same set of criticisms. To solve this problem they suggest a) having colleagues reviewing a manuscript before submission, and b) requiring authors to state in a cover letter that reviewer comments from the previous submittal were taken into account. Option b is suggested as an alternative to obliging authors to declare whether or not their submission was previously rejected by another journal, because they think this could prejudice the evaluation of the new submission. However, I believe that the system I propose here would prevent prejudiced evaluations because authors would have the opportunity to upload the response to reviewer’s comments so that second-round reviewers would have the chance to see both the problems previously de¬tected in the manuscript and the defence offered by authors. Although not a perfect system its benefits would probably outweigh the caveats. Such a system would improve the quality of the final paper and facilitate the work load for second–round reviewers and editors. Indeed, some journals already seem to be implementing a solution which is fairly similar to our proposal, asking authors of rejected papers for permission to forward reviewer reports to the new journal chosen by the authors to submit the revised work (see Hochberg et al., 2009). Proposals to reward or punish reviewers depending on their rapidity to elaborate their reports (Hauser & Fehr, 2007) does not foster accumulated quality improvement. Science quality would undoubtedly gain from making previous information concerning a manuscript’s review available to new reviewers, as in a Bayesian framework of inference (Martin et al., 2005) because starting a new each time, as if previous information did not exist, is simply not an efficient way to proceed in science

Hemosporidian blood parasites in seabirds—a comparative genetic study of species from Antarctic to tropical habitats

Whereas some bird species are heavily affected by blood parasites in the wild, others reportedly are not. Seabirds, in particular, are often free from blood parasites, even in the presence of potential vectors. By means of polymerase chain reaction, we amplified a DNA fragment from the cytochrome b gene to detect parasites of the genera Plasmodium, Leucocytozoon, and Haemoproteus in 14 seabird species, ranging from Antarctica to the tropical Indian Ocean. We did not detect parasites in 11 of these species, including one Antarctic, four subantarctic, two temperate, and four tropical species. On the other hand, two subantarctic species, thin-billed prions Pachyptila belcheri and dolphin gulls Larus scoresbii, were found infected. One of 28 thin-billed prions had a Plasmodium infection whose DNA sequence was identical to lineage P22 of Plasmodium relictum, and one of 20 dolphin gulls was infected with a Haemoproteus lineage which appears phylogenetically clustered with parasites species isolated from passeriform birds such as Haemoproteus lanii, Haemoproteus magnus, Haemoproteus fringillae, Haemoproteus sylvae, Haemoproteus payevskyi, and Haemoproteus belopolskyi. In addition, we found a high parasite prevalence in a single tropical species, the Christmas Island frigatebird Fregata andrewsi, where 56% of sampled adults were infected with Haemoproteus. The latter formed a monophyletic group that includes a Haemoproteus line from Eastern Asian black-tailed gulls Larus crassirostris. Our results are in agreement with those showing that (a) seabirds are poor in hemosporidians and (b) latitude could be a determining factor to predict the presence of hemosporidians in birds. However, further studies should explore the relative importance of extrinsic and intrinsic factors on parasite prevalence, in particular using phylogenetically controlled comparative analyses, systematic sampling and screening of vectors, and within-species comparisons

Is growing tourist activity affecting the distribution or number of breeding pairs in a small colony of the Eleonora’s Falcon?

Human disturbance is a common threat for species of conservation concern such as the Eleonora’s Falcon. This paper shows that the rise in tourist presence from 1992 to 2000 has not affected the overall number of breeding pairs or their productivity in a small archipelago of the western Mediterranean (Columbretes Islands). However, the increasing tourist activity has coincided with a shift in the degree of occupancy on two islands within the archipelago, favouring that with a lower human presence close to colonies. Several conservation actions are reported and suggested, aimed at both testing and preventing the role of human presence as a factor influencing long-term colony persistence and growth

Response of ants and spiders to prescribed fire in oak woodlands of California

Conservation managers of oak woodlands have been reintroducing fire both as an ecological process per se and to assist in restoring native plant communities. To increase our understanding of the impacts of reintroduced fire on ground-dwelling invertebrates we examined the response of ants and spiders to a late season (autumn) prescribed fire conducted in a blue oak (Quercus douglasii) woodland ecosystem in northern California. Twelve 100 m × 100 m plots were established, six plots received a burn treatment and the remaining six plots were unburned controls. Ants and spiders were sampled using pitfall traps left open continuously and collected approximately every 32 days. Sampling was conducted over a year, consisting of four pre-burn and nine post-burn collections. Abundance was analyzed using a repeated measures ANOVA, which showed seed-harvester ants decreased significantly in the two months following the fire. Total spider abundance also showed a significant decrease in two months, although this did not occur immediately after the burn. One spider hunting guild, the ‘diurnal ambush’ group (Thomisidae) remained suppressed for up to nine months. Correspondence analysis measures of ant species abundance with environmental and vegetation variables (percent rock, bare ground, plant species richness and height of herbaceous vegetation) were higher than expected by chance, which assists in explaining some of the responses. Findings from this study revealed that the reintroduction of autumn burns has modest and short-term effect on the invertebrates sampled, suggesting that late season fires are compatible with other conservation goals for oak woodland ecosystems