Reporting—the final phase of scientific research—can and should be supported. A case for integrating language professionals into the research setting

Writing for peer-reviewed research journals is difficult and requires specialized skills and knowledge—in language, logical argumentation, data presentation, publication ethics and more. The task is especially challenging for researchers who use English as an additional language. In this discussion paper, I illustrate how research writing in non-anglophone settings can usefully be supported by three types of language professional: teachers of academic writing, authors’ editors, and academic translators. Reviewing the situation in Italy, I observe that Italian researchers have limited access to the best forms of writing support, in part due to misconceptions and complex hiring rules. Finally, and based on the higher educational trends in northern Europe, I envisage a future scenario for Italy where university-wide academic writing centers will be established, language professionals with disciplinary knowledge will become part of research institutes’ staff, and researchers will have facilitated access to the services of authors’ editors and academic translators on a per-manuscript basis. As research writing support becomes integrated into the university setting, Italian researchers’ productivity will increase and the profile of Italian reporting in the international literature will be raised

Post-publication peer review in biomedical journals: overcoming obstacles and disincentives to knowledge sharing

The importance of post-publication peer review (PPPR) as a type of knowledge exchange has been emphasized by several authorities in research publishing, yet biomedical journals do not always facilitate this type of publication. Here we report our experience publishing a commentary intended to offer constructive feedback on a previously published article. We found that publishing our comment required more time and effort than foreseen, because of obstacles encountered at some journals. Using our professional experience as authors’ editors and our knowledge of publication policies as a starting point, we reflect on the probable reasons behind these obstacles, and suggest ways in which journals could make PPPR easier. In addition, we argue that PPPR should be more explicitly valued and rewarded in biomedical disciplines, and suggest how these publications could be included in research evaluations. Eliminating obstacles and disincentives to PPPR is essential in light of the key roles of post-publication analysis and commentary in drawing attention to shortcomings in published articles that were overlooked during pre-publication peer review.

E-journal databases: banche dati della produzione giornalistica italiana

Even though journalism is a strong and important economic sector in Italy, few Italian newspapers and periodicals are available in archive form in the Web. Even fewer of these publications are available as databases, i.e. structured archives that permit searching with keywords and citation data, and not simply browsing of online issues. The Guide to Italian Databases, a Web-based resource describing online and portable databases with content focused on Italy, offers a starting point for analyzing the offer of Italian journalistic databases (e-journal databases). The latest update of the Guide identified 43 e-journal databases, including 20 periodicals, 18 daily newspapers and 5 newswires, offered directly to the user by the producer or through the services of a database aggregator. Since 1999, the offer of Italian e-journal databases has grown, but the turnover of products at the latest update was notable. This panorama of Italian e-journal databases suggests that in Italy it is difficult to market "information" as a product. This lack of access to journalistic information in Italy may contribute to limiting the country's competitiveness in a global context

Relationship between quality and editorial leadership of biomedical research journals: a comparative study of Italian and UK journals.

The quality of biomedical reporting is guided by statements of several organizations. Although not all journals adhere to these guidelines, those that do demonstrate "editorial leadership" in their author community. To investigate a possible relationship between editorial leadership and journal quality, research journals from two European countries, one Anglophone and one non-Anglophone, were studied and compared. Quality was measured on a panel of bibliometric parameters while editorial leadership was evaluated from journals' instructions to authors.The study considered all 76 Italian journals indexed in Medline and 76 randomly chosen UK journals; only journals both edited and published in these countries were studied. Compared to UK journals, Italian journals published fewer papers (median, 60 vs. 93; p = 0.006), less often had online archives (43 vs. 74; p<0.001) and had lower median values of impact factor (1.2 vs. 2.7, p<0.001) and SCImago journal rank (0.09 vs. 0.25, p<0.001). Regarding editorial leadership, Italian journals less frequently required manuscripts to specify competing interests (p<0.001), authors' contributions (p = 0.005), funding (p<0.001), informed consent (p<0.001), ethics committee review (p<0.001). No Italian journal adhered to COPE or the CONSORT and QUOROM statements nor required clinical trial registration, while these characteristics were observed in 15%-43% of UK journals (p<0.001). At multiple regression, editorial leadership predicted 37.1%-49.9% of the variance in journal quality defined by citation statistics (p<0.0001); confounding variables inherent to a cross-cultural comparison had a relatively small contribution, explaining an additional 6.2%-13.8% of the variance.Journals from Italy scored worse for quality and editorial leadership than did their UK counterparts. Editorial leadership predicted quality for the entire set of journals. Greater appreciation of international initiatives to improve biomedical reporting may help low-quality journals achieve higher status

Congresso Annuale AIIP. New Orleans, aprile 2001

The annual conference of the Association of Independent Information Professionals (AIIP) was organized in general session on invitation and in concurrent session, in which associated people present and discuss relevant topics. The three general session have been presented by Gary Price and Chris Sherman on the “invisible net”, by Dr. Carlos Quadra awarded with the "Roger Summit Award" on database development and by John Deveney on industry communication

Transparent Attribution of Contributions to Research: Aligning Guidelines to Real-Life Practices

Research studies, especially in the sciences, may benefit from substantial non-author support without which they could not be completed or published. The term &ldquo;contributorship&rdquo; was coined in 1997 to recognize all contributions to a research study, but its implementation (mostly in biomedical reports) has been limited to the inclusion of an &ldquo;Author Contributions&rdquo; statement that omits other contributions. To standardize the reporting of contributions across disciplines, irrespective of whether a given contribution merits authorship or acknowledgment, the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) was launched in 2014. Our assessment, however, shows that in practice, CRediT is a detailed authorship classification that risks denying appropriate credit for persons who contribute as non-authors. To illustrate the shortcomings in CRediT and suggest improvements, in this article we review key concepts of authorship and contributorship and examine the range of non-author contributions that may (or may not) be acknowledged. We then briefly describe different types of editorial support provided by (non-author) translators, authors&rsquo; editors and writers, and explain why it is not always acknowledged. Finally, we propose two new CRediT taxa and revisions to three existing taxa regarding both technical and editorial support, as a small but important step to make credit attribution more transparent, accurate and open

Improving the biomedical research literature: insights from authors’ editors can help journal editors define and refine their core competencies [version 2; referees: 2 approved]

A team of stakeholders in biomedical publishing recently proposed a set of core competencies for journal editors, as a resource that can inform training programs for editors and ultimately improve the quality of the biomedical research literature. This initiative, still in its early stages, would benefit from additional sources of expert information. Based on our experiences as authors’ editors, we offer two suggestions on how to strengthen these competencies so that they better respond to the needs of readers and authors – the main users of and contributors to research journals. First, journal editors should be able to ensure that authors are given useful feedback on the language and writing in submitted manuscripts, beyond a (possibly incorrect) blanket judgement of whether the English is “acceptable” or not. Second, journal editors should be able to deal effectively with inappropriate text re-use and plagiarism. These additional competencies would, we believe, be valued by other stakeholders in biomedical research publication as markers of editorial quality