From owner-chemistry@ccl.net Sun Aug 19 21:19:01 2012 From: "Salter-Duke, Brian James - brian.james.duke*|*gmail.com" To: CCL Subject: CCL: On "defending" and "opposing" science Message-Id: <-47413-120819184207-5386-3uFaUYb1OFnr2jSzkwgdWg++server.ccl.net> X-Original-From: "Salter-Duke, Brian James -" Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2012 08:41:52 +1000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Sent to CCL by: "Salter-Duke, Brian James -" [brian.james.duke]^[gmail.com] I would like to add another issue. It seems to have become common for the authors to be asked to nominate referees. The editor then takes the easy way out and uses the nominated referees at least in part. This should be stopped as it allows two groups to mutually support each other, even if subconsciously. However, authors should be allowed to nominate people who they do not want to act as referees, thus allowing them to not have their paper refereed by people they think are prejudiced against their ideas. Brian Duke. On Sun, Aug 19, 2012 at 07:41:52PM +0000, Mezei, Mihaly mihaly.mezei###mssm.edu wrote: > > Sent to CCL by: "Mezei, Mihaly" [mihaly.mezei-.-mssm.edu] > Greetings, > > This thread has touched upon many important issues so I feel justified to include one more: the abdication of responsibilities of many editors. Like one of the posters' experience where an editor ignored a referee suggestion because of two other referees' opposing view, I had editor ignoring my specific arguments against a referee's (negative) argument and telling me that I have to convince that referee (not him). I suggest that the community insist of the editors being more than simple vote counters; instead they should actively arbitrate the discussion between the author(s) and referees. This way there would be less need for a post-publication discussion. There is, of course, always the avenue of publishing a comment on a paper in the traditional way. > > Mihaly Mezei > > Department of Structural and Chemical Biology, Mount Sinai School of Medicine > Voice: (212) 659-5475 Fax: (212) 849-2456 > WWW (MSSM home): http://www.mountsinai.org/Find%20A%20Faculty/profile.do?id=0000072500001497192632 > WWW (Lab home - software, publications): http://inka.mssm.edu/~mezei > WWW (Department): http://atlas.physbio.mssm.edu > -- Brian Salter-Duke (Brian Duke) Brian.Salter-Duke() monash.edu Adjunct Associate Professor Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences Monash University Parkville Campus, VIC 3052, Australia