At the Wiley Editor Symposium in London, UK in October, Sarah Oates, Senior Editorial Director for Psychology and Human Behavior, led a workshop on readiness for open research. We discussed preprints, data sharing, transparent peer review, registered reports and author contribution taxonomies in social science and humanities journals (see Figure 1 for overview). During the session we polled the editors and found that the majority felt ready to start experimenting (see results below).
Following on from the session, we have decided to tackle some common myths surrounding some of these open research initiatives.
Editors won’t consider my manuscript for publication if I have already published it on a preprint server.
Wiley believes that journals should allow preprints to be submitted to our journals. Allowing submission does not, of course, guarantee that an article will be sent out for review; it simply reflects a belief that availability on a preprint server should not be a disqualifier for submission. For more information see our preprint policy.
Our author compliance tool allows authors to check the preprint policy of their chosen journal.
A number of preprint servers are available for Social Science and Humanities researchers including:
SocARxiv, PsyARxiv, MetaArXiv, MediArXiv, BodoArXiv, SSRN, RePEc, Mendeley, ResearchGate, bioRxiv and the Open Anthrolopology Resource Repository.
Researchers in my discipline don’t use data OR My data is too sensitive to share publicly.
Data sharing practices and norms will of course vary by discipline and we have multiple categories of data sharing policies to reflect this. Our ‘Expects Data’ policy requires researchers to include a data availability statement in their article . We would prefer that the data supporting an article is available to others, however our Expects Data policy recognises that this isn’t always possible: it doesn’t require researchers to share their data but, if they don’t, we to expect them to say how it can be accessed, for example, by contacting the authors directly.
Data sharing requirements from funders are increasingly more common. At the Editor Symposium, Jean Claude Burgelman, in his role as Advisor Open Access Envoy at the European Commission said it was likely that future EC funding will require making data available on the European Open Science Cloud.
Registered Reports are not relevant for my discipline, aren’t they more appropriate in medical journals?
Registered Reports are relevant in social sciences. In fact, a large number of journals already offer Registered Reports in psychology, economics, business and management, education, linguistics and political science. A full list is available from the Center for Open Science and Wiley provides greater details on the Registered Report process including a list of participating journals.
Campbell Systematic Reviews, a new partner with Wiley, is a great example of how to do registered reports in the social sciences. They have a growing list of editorial topic areas, including Methods, Social Welfare, Disability, Education, International Development, Crime and Justice, Training, Knowledge Translation and Implementation, and Business and Management. All content is open access and they are a member of the Centre for Open Science. To publish a review, there are three documents that must be submitted in succession by the review team: (a) a title registration form describing the topic to be reviewed, (b) a protocol for the proposed review, and (c) the completed review.
Here’s a first hand version of one behavioural scientist’s experience with Registered Reports. For an overview of how the initiative is working at Wiley, our preprint shares feedback from editors, authors, and peer reviewers.
ORCID is just another step in the submission process which could put authors off submitting to my journal. What is in it for my authors?
We’ve heard ORCID being described as a DOI for researchers. It’s at the heart of our open recognition strategy. We were the first major publisher to mandate ORCID at submission because we believe that it is important to link professional activities back to the right people. It also allows funders, institutions, and societies to see their impact. 55% of the journals we publish require the corresponding author to enter their ORCID on submission and a further 22% encourage it. It doesn’t seem to put anyone off — 74% of submissions to our journals had an ORCID in 2017.
Just one example of why it’s useful. How often do you have to update your publications list on your professional page? ORCID will do this for you automatically ensuring that your research record is always refreshed
Find out more about how ORCID benefits journals in this blog.
My journal can’t do Transparent Peer Review as we currently do double blind peer review OR Doing Transparent Peer Review would make it harder for me to find reviewers.
The Transparent Peer Review pilot at Wiley offers authors the choice of transparent peer review when they submit to the journal regardless of the peer review model. If their article is published and authors have elected for transparent peer review, the peer reviewers’ reports, authors’ responses, and editors’ decisions will then accompany their published article. Reviewers also have the option to disclose their names alongside their reports, if they so choose. Journals that operate double blind peer review are not prevented from taking part.
For the eleven journals that were part of the original pilot we found that: a high proportion of authors chose transparent peer review (87%); editors did not send more reviewer invitations (it wasn’t harder for them to find reviewers), and the time taken to reach a first decision did not change. Read more about the findings of our pilot on the Editor hub. Twenty-nine more journals joined the initiative in September and October 2019 and we have a waitlist for the next group of journals.
To find out more about any of the initiatives above, and to consider implementing one or more of them on your journal, please speak with your Wiley Journal Publishing Manager.
