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What's in a name? The science comes first

Posted by Brian Plosky

Whether you're known or unknown, you have a place at Cell Press (image adapted from Natalie Maynor via Flickr)

We often get comments related to whether a young investigator or someone who is an "unknown" to a journal is likely to have more difficulty getting a paper published in Molecular Cell. We've thought about this qualitatively, and our impression is that each issue of our journal is diverse and represents a good mix of new authors and repeat authors. But is that impression accurate?

I dove into our manuscript submission system, where data on submissions has been archived since the end of 2003. After a bit of finagling with Editorial Manager and Excel, I had some real numbers!

One of the most striking numbers to me (and other Cell Press editors) was that roughly 70% of accepted papers were from corresponding authors with just one accepted paper in Molecular Cell in the previous 12 years. Approximately 25% of accepted papers were the only submission to Molecular Cell from that particular corresponding author over the same time period.

What do these numbers really mean? What aren't they telling us? What are the caveats of the analysis? These (and other questions you might have) are all good "reviewer questions." As an editor, I would certainly want you to ask these questions, and I was initially thinking of pre-emptively answering them. But that isn't really why I wrote this post.

Why did I? I'm glad you asked.

What I want you—our readers, authors, reviewers, and anyone else who thinks about scientific publishing—to know is that we are thinking about this and challenging our selves to acknowledge our inherent biases towards the familiar people, places, and topics in our comfort zones.

If I've met a scientist at a meeting or they've reviewed many papers for us, then will I react to a submission from them differently from one from someone I've never met before? I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't. Even if I don't want to, my brain can't help it. For more on why, I'll refer you to Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow.

To counter this, we are blinding ourselves to the authors' names until after we have recorded our initial reactions to the title and abstract for new manuscripts. For now, "we" means me and my colleagues at Molecular Cell, and I'll give a bit of inside information into how this fits into the editorial process.

          Each day, we get a spreadsheet of new submissions that has just the titles and abstracts for each manuscript (it used to list authors, too). Please check out Milka Kostic's 
tips for the title and abstract
        . Each scientific editor records their reaction to this information with one of five possible "votes" (gradations of thumbs up vs. down):

  • Up = Definitely review (assuming the paper actually shows what is claimed)
  • Leaning up = Probably should review (same assumption as above)
  • Across = Need more information
  • Leaning down = Probably should not review (at least if the paper is really what the title and abstract advertise)
  • Down = Do not review (most often used for papers outside the scope of the journal)


We also make specific comments about what we would expect to see in the paper or about related papers we have read or handled.

Then, one of us carefully reads the cover letter and the manuscript and determines whether those initial reactions were accurate. If they weren't or the reactions were mixed, then we have a discussion.

Up until a few months ago, the author names might have influenced our judgment, and I think eliminating them has changed the way we evaluate papers. Instead of react to the science and a name together, we are first reacting to the science.

It will be interesting to see whether this approach will change the percentages above. Even if it doesn't, if you have a paper that's a good fit for Molecular Cell, whether you're a "known" or an "unknown," we care about the science first and foremost.

Access our information for authors

 

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