Science is incremental. It is a time-consuming, slow, mechanistic process. Insights, unfortunately, are gained only slowly as evidence accumulates, as different varialbes are added to models, or when evidence emerges contradicting previously accepted viewpoints. I think we all know this, or at least give it tacit recognition. What this means, however, in terms of publication is that articles will sometimes look somewhat similar, that tests with additional variables under varied statistical assumptions will be published, and that papers will at least look "piecemeal." Personally, I do not see a problem with this as editors and reviewers are more than capable of making a judgement as to when a paper's contribution is marginal. We do this all the time.
Even so, it appears that an effort is now underway to more completely police and control the publication process--a process that is already too laden with subjectivity and bias. While I understand that editors do not want papers that are plagiarized, I think it is a stretch to now consider as some type of ethical violation the submission and publication of a paper that someone may deem as piecemeal.
The problems with this approach are serious: Are we going to now level ethics allegations against those whose work is derivative? Are we going to subject each paper an author submits to another review process to determine if the paper crosses some magical threshold where it is no longer deemed "piecemeal?" Are we going to establish an operational definition of "piecemeal" so there is no question of what constitutes derivative work? After all, if I view a paper as "piecemeal" and an author does not, how will we determine who is correct? And have we thought about the potential negative career effects this will have on the live's of individual scholars when their work is labeled as "piecemeal" and rejected.....or worse?
I'll make one other point: We should be worried more about the limited explanatory powers of our theories, more worried about the terrible measures that are included in national datasets, and more worried about the continual efforts of the Federal government and institutional IRB's to restrict research and access to data than we should be if a paper gets published that is "piecemeal." There are larger, more pressing problems ASC should address.
To close: I see no scientific benefit to this proposal. Indeed, I see only problems, more control of science, and the injection of new criteria to limit what is published. Moreover, if I am asked to verify what I have already published and what I intend to publish, I'll simply no longer publish in criminology journals. I will not prove my innocence in a system that automatically suspects me of engaging in nefarious behavior. Have we really been reduced to this level of distrust?
I applaud the editors of Criminology for starting a dialogue on the problem (yes, I consider it problem, though a complicated one) of ‘piecemeal’ publishing. I recently reviewed a manuscript submission that used a dataset to complete a comparative analysis of race/gender effects by grouping the sample into four categories for the purpose of the analysis: African American males, white males, African American females, white females. Great to see this kind of analysis being done. What was not so great (in my opinion) was that this same author had already published two similar articles: one that grouped the same sample into two categories: African American and white; another that grouped the same sample into two other categories: male and female. The framing of the analyses in all three cases were quite similar: add gender and stir, add race and stir, add gender and race and stir.To me, this was a clear-cut case of salami slicing done “primarily for the purpose of maximizing the number of articles that can be wrung out of a single data set,” to quote from Criminology’s editors. That said, as Cullen points out, as a reviewer I identified this problem, and it weighed heavily on my review and my comments to the editor.
The editors raise a number of important issues that contribute to ‘piecemeal’ publishing in our field. But there’s an additional problem that hasn’t been raised in the dialogue to date: the recent move to rigid expectations for maximum word counts or number of pages in journal submissions. I’m likely especially sensitive to it because I am a qualitative researcher, and it is notoriously difficult to do our analyses justice in 25 pages or 7,500 words – and especially to present enough of our empirical findings to allow the reader some mechanism to assess the rigor of our analyses. For this reason, the hypothetical example the editors pose at the start of their September/October essay in The Criminologist doesn’t come across to me as a case of piecemeal publishing, but instead the reality of having to carve up complex analyses into ‘slices’ that can fit the space constraints increasingly required of us. Page limits are useful; they help us tighten our writing, be more concise in making our points, and (hopefully) sharpen our analyses. And I’m appreciative that editors of Criminology (past and present) have never imposed unrealistically small page limits. Many journals now do, however. This is to the detriment, I think, of knowledge-building. And it inevitably results in the slicing we have reason to lament.
I believe most scholars in our field would agree that “overly similar” publications are problematic. However, to build off of Jody Miller’s comment about manuscript page limits, many scholars would also likely agree that there are other aspects of the peer review process that are at least as concerning and that also deserve attention. For example, any serious discussion about revising the peer review process to enact formal checks against duplicate publications should probably also consider revisions addressing the following:
(1) Excessively long review times. While some journals such as Criminology and Justice Quarterly manage average turnaround times of only 2-3 months, the process at other journals often takes 5-8 months, if not longer. Although somewhat understandable 10 years ago, when most correspondence occurred through snail mail, review times of 5+ months are simply not excusable in today’s society where everything is done online. It’s not just scholars’ careers that suffer because of excessively long review times. The field also suffers, because 5+ month review times prevent the timely dissemination of important research findings.
(2) The democratic nature of editorial decisions. Some editorial decisions are seemingly based simply on the proportion of positive vs. negative reviews. This is likely in part due to the large number of submissions (250+) that many journals receive each year. Thus, a given paper will automatically be rejected if a certain proportion of the reviews are negative. This approach to editing treats all reviews as having equal merit. It thus assumes that all reviewers (1) are equally knowledgeable about a given topic, and (2) give equal time and effort to reviewing manuscripts. Democracy in editorial decisions is particularly unjust for those reviewers who take the time and effort to provide solid, thoughtful reviews. Under this approach, their reviews ultimately matter no more than a review written by someone who just read the abstract of a manuscript.
(3) Inadequate feedback on submissions from editors. For whatever reason, some editors do not explain editorial decisions to authors or respond in meaningful ways to inquiries about the review process. Many, if not most, rejection letters are standardized and provide no insights whatsoever about which of the reviewers’ critiques the editor thought were most important or which parts of a paper the editor thought were most problematic. Similarly, authors who have a paper under review for several months and decide to email the journal to inquire about the status of the process often simply receive a response like: “Thank you for your recent inquiry. Your manuscript is currently undergoing evaluation. We will be in contact soon to inform you of our final decision.”
(4) Authors’ inability to address factually inaccurate reviews. A reviewer could recommend the rejection of a paper because it doesn’t discuss a nonexistent literature showing that self-control influences juveniles’ ability to levitate, and at least in a minority of cases this recommendation would probably influence the editorial decision. What is worse is that authors have few meaningful options for countering such factually inaccurate reviews. If an author does decide to contact an editor to point out that this literature doesn’t’ exist (and that juveniles can’t levitate), it will be unlikely to have any influence. What is the benefit of not providing a meaningful route for authors to point out and address factually inaccurate reviews?
-- Edited by Henry on Thursday 21st of March 2013 08:46:02 PM
As a reviewer, I get annoyed when I discover that my time and mental effort spent reviewing a paper were ill-used because the author has published "an
overly similar" paper elsewhere; I feel resentful and my interest in reviewing diminishes. Thus, I was pleased when the current editors of
Criminology raised this issue. I share some of the concerns Frank Cullen discusses and it is clear from their Comment, that the editors also
recognize the validity of some of his points. Frank agrees that "excessively similar publishing" should be discouraged and that it is
reasonable for editors to address these situations; yet he fears that these efforts will increase editorial snooping, policing, control, and
compromise our academic freedom. A point John Paul Wright echoes in his blog post.
I think that there are ways to discourage excessively similar publishing without requiring the excessive editorial policing or snooping that Frank and others fear.
Most, but not all of us, do not send the same paper simultaneously to two journals and pull the second one when the first one gets accepted (there are a host of
"explanations" one could provide the second editor for needing to pull the second paper). Although the viability of the strategy
for any one person decreases with use, it is a perfectly reasonable approach to use occasionally (from an instrumentalist point of view), and
one that editors cannot easily and do not actively "police"; yet, yet I think it occurs relatively infrequently. Perhaps the fear of discovery, the recognition that such a
practice is a bad use of reviewers' and editors' time, or that there is a strong stigma associated with such an act explains its rarity;
regardless of the reasons, my point is that it is not editors' "policing" that explains its infrequency (I also think, but do not know, that people did not collect
data on the frequency of this act before stating that it was not acceptable). By making explicit the expectation, "tell us if you've
submitted an overly similar paper elsewhere," the editors of Criminology are perhaps hoping that this will also become a norm.
