San Diego, CA: Enago, the trusted name in author services for the global research community, attended the annual meeting of the Council of Science Editors (CSE) from May 20 to 23, in San Diego, California. Editors and publishers from various journals and academic societies along with industry experts attended the event to share their insights about the challenges and best practices in academic publishing.
With the theme, “Setting Sail: Navigating the Future of Science Publishing,” CSE’s 60th anniversary meeting celebrated its history of assisting editorial professionals in the field of scientific publishing. Nicola Unger (Senior Manager, Editing Operations) and Kuntan Dhanoya (Vice President, Business Development, Enago), represented Enago this year.
The meeting commenced with popular training sessions for journal editors, publishers, and managers on manuscript editing, publication ethics, journal metrics, and management. The highlight of the event was the keynote address by Mary-Claire King, PhD, Department of Genome Sciences & Medicine at the University of Washington, who gave an informative and humorous speech, referring to incidences from her life. Dr. King discussed several emerging issues such as the rise of predatory journals and technology-driven challenges whilst also criticizing journal websites for their inconsistency and lack of clarity in requirements, thus affecting the peer-review process. However, the major focus was on the responsiveness from journals. Dr. King pointed out that the major choke point for scientific journals is the second review and noted that it should take no more than two to three weeks. She also stressed on the need for pre-reviewing papers and minimizing the time for the second review. She further explained refining the competence of academic writing and the need to distinguish between ESL writing and making sense of an argument in a paragraph. She concluded by emphasizing on the power of journal editors in determining the direction of science.
Along with Dr. King’s informative presentation, various sessions were also organized sharing updates on open access journals and innovations in peer-review to enhance the overall effectivity of the process. “The gist of the conference highlighted the role of science editors in science publications and made many feel like heroes in the entire process. What was also pleasing was the awareness around teething issues in the publication process and the continuous effort and innovation by many journals and organizations to address these to make the publication process simpler and faster. The need and call for transparency is one of the biggest turning points in this conference and I am sure this will be a game-changer in the field of scholarly publishing”, said Nicola. Kuntan was also equally pleased after catching up with peers and said, “The program was well planned to address important trends in academic publishing and the keynotes were fantastic. Through several conversations with presenters and attendees, we learnt a lot about new initiatives and new approaches to solve current challenges in academia and publishing. Through the learnings of this conference, we hope to continue to provide insights to our existing clients, researchers, and authors.”
