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A survey of accepted authors in computer systems conferences.

ABSTRACT: Computer Science researchers rely on peer-reviewed conferences to publish their work and to receive feedback. The impact of these peer-reviewed papers on researchers' careers can hardly be overstated. Yet conference organizers can make inconsistent choices for their review process, even in the same subfield. These choices are rarely reviewed critically, and when they are, the emphasis centers on the effects on the technical program, not the authors. In particular, the effects of conference policies on author experience and diversity are still not well understood. To help address this knowledge gap, this paper presents a cross-sectional study of 56 conferences from one large subfield of computer science, namely computer systems. We introduce a large author survey (n = 918), representing 809 unique papers. The goal of this paper is to expose this data and present an initial analysis of its findings. We primarily focus on quantitative comparisons between different survey questions and comparisons to external information we collected on author demographics, conference policies, and paper statistics. Another focal point of this study is author diversity. We found poor balance in the gender and geographical distributions of authors, but a more balanced spread across sector, experience, and English proficiency. For the most part, women and nonnative English speakers exhibit no differences in their experience of the peer-review process, suggesting no specific evidence of bias against these accepted authors. We also found strong support for author rebuttal to reviewers' comments, especially among students and less experienced researchers.

SUBMITTER: Frachtenberg E

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7924675 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:Aim. To determine the characteristics of megajournal authors, the nature of the manuscripts they are submitting to these journals, factors influencing their decision to publish in a megajournal, sources of funding for article processing charges (APCs) or other fees and their likelihood of submitting to a megajournal in the future. Methods. Web-based survey of 2,128 authors who recently published in BMJ Open, PeerJ, PLOS ONE or SAGE Open. Results. The response rate ranged from 26% for BMJ Open to 47% for SAGE Open. The authors were international, largely academics who had recently published in both subscription and Open Access (OA) journals. Across journals about 25% of the articles were preliminary findings and just under half were resubmissions of manuscripts rejected by other journals. Editors from other BMJ journals and perhaps to a lesser extent SAGE and PLOS journals appear to be encouraging authors to submit manuscripts that were rejected by the editor's journals to a megajournal published by the same publisher. Quality of the journal and speed of the review process were important factors across all four journals. Impact factor was important for PLOS ONE authors but less so for BMJ Open authors, which also has an impact factor. The review criteria and the fact the journal was OA were other significant factors particularly important for PeerJ authors. The reputation of the publisher was an important factor for SAGE Open and BMJ Open. About half of PLOS ONE and around a third of BMJ Open and PeerJ authors used grant funding for publishing charges while only about 10% of SAGE Open used grant funding for publication charges. Around 60% of SAGE Open and 32% of PeerJ authors self-funded their publication fees however the fees are modest for these journals. The majority of authors from all 4 journals were pleased with their experience and indicated they were likely to submit to the same or similar journal in the future. Conclusions. Megajournals are drawing an international group of authors who tend to be experienced academics. They are choosing to publish in megajournals for a variety of reasons but most seem to value the quality of the journal and the speed of the review/publication process. Having a broad scope was not a key factor for most authors though being OA was important for PeerJ and SAGE Open authors. Most authors appeared pleased with the experience and indicated they are likely to submit future manuscripts to the same or similar megajournal which seems to suggest these journals will continue to grow in popularity.

Project description:ObjectiveThe extent to which biomedical authors have received training in publication ethics, and their attitudes and opinions about the ethical aspects of specific behaviours, have been understudied. We sought to characterise the knowledge and attitudes of biomedical authors about common issues in publication ethics.DesignCross-sectional online survey.Setting and participantsCorresponding authors of research submissions to 20 journals.Main outcome measuresPerceived level of unethical behaviour (rated 0 to 10) presented in five vignettes containing key variables that were experimentally manipulated on entry to the survey and perceived level of knowledge of seven ethical topics related to publishing (prior publication, author omission, self-plagiarism, honorary authorship, conflicts of interest, image manipulation and plagiarism).Results4043/10 582 (38%) researchers responded. Respondents worked in 100 countries and reported varying levels of publishing experience. 67% (n=2700) had received some publication ethics training from a mentor, 41% (n=1677) a partial course, 28% (n=1130) a full course and 55% (n=2206) an online course; only a small proportion rated training received as excellent. There was a full range (0 to 10 points) in ratings of the extent of unethical behaviour within each vignette, illustrating a broad range of opinion about the ethical acceptability of the behaviours evaluated, but these opinions were little altered by the context in which it occurred. Participants reported substantial variability in their perceived knowledge of seven publication ethics topics; one-third perceived their knowledge to be less than 'some knowledge' for the sum of the seven ethical topics and only 9% perceived 'substantial knowledge' of all topics.ConclusionsWe found a large degree of variability in espoused training and perceived knowledge, and variability in views about how ethical or unethical scenarios were. Ethical standards need to be better articulated and taught to improve consistency of training across institutions and countries.

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A survey of accepted authors in computer systems conferences.

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