Scholastica Blog

5 Ways to Resurface Your Scholarly Journal’s Articles Online

Thu, 12 May 2016 10:20:05 -0500

Are you publishing your scholarly journal the same way online as you would publish it in print? And, if so, have you asked yourself why?

In the print publishing model journals publish articles once and then have to move on to printing their next issues, with few opportunities to resurface, or share and republish, old content. But, with the dawn of digital publishing all of this has changed. On the internet your journal faces virtually no limitations because, unlike print, online publications don’t have to follow a one-size-fits-all format. From the number of pages you publish to the articles you choose to highlight on your website, the sky’s the limit. Bringing us back to the question - why publish your journal online in the same way you would a print journal? Digital publishing is ripe with opportunities to resurface content that you could be using to extend the reach of your articles.

In recent years mainstream news media and blogs have been finding creative ways to resurface old articles, and some journals have been catching on. Want to know how your journal can start doing the same? Here are 5 steps you can take to start resurfacing content:

1. Give readers the opportunity to find articles by topic

One of the primary benefits readers get from mainstream digital publishing is personalization. Most people don’t visit online blogs or news outlets with the intention of reading every new article published. They visit in order to check for content that’s of interest to them, generally by clicking into different website sections or categories.

Take a look at the example from the Scientific American website, below.

Image: Scientific American homepage

Consider how you would navigate this website. When you enter, you might scan the homepage for any new articles that catch your interest. Once you’ve spotted something you’d like to read there, your next move will likely be to visit the topic in which you’re most interested whether it be “health,” “tech” or one of the other categories listed in the website’s navigation bar. Scientific American makes it easy for readers to select articles of interest because it arranges articles by topic, rather than by magazine issue like they would appear in its print edition. By arranging articles by topic Scientific American also makes it more likely for readers to spot past articles. In this way, organizing articles by topic can help readers resurface old content. Journals can follow this article organization model to get the same content resurfacing benefits.

When the Scholastica team designed the website for new free-to-read and free-to-publish-in math journal Discrete Analysis, launched by Sir Timothy Gowers, we kept content resurfacing in mind and helped the journal organize its articles by topic, like Scientific American and other mainstream sites. Scholars visiting Discrete Analysis can access a running list of all new and old articles on particular topics to quickly spot articles of interest to them, unlike journals that force visitors to scroll through long lists of articles organized by issue, which can get tedious and lead to scholars leaving the website before finding anything to read.

Image: Discrete Analysis homepage

As journal’s leave behind the convention of organizing their online articles by issue, many are also recognizing that in online publishing it’s not necessary to follow the issue model at all. Some journals are choosing to follow a rolling publication model in order to publish new research faster, among other benefits.

2. Feature top articles or publication highlights on your journal’s website

In the above example of Scientific American, we mentioned that many viewers coming to the publication’s website would likely peruse its homepage before navigating to the topic they’re most interested in. The same will likely go for your journal. Your homepage is your opportunity to showcase your newest and top content to readers. One of the easiest ways to do this is to highlight the content you want readers to pay special attention to by placing it in callout sections on your homepage.

For example, as pictured below, Vox.com has a “top” section on it’s homepage where its editors showcase top articles, videos, maps, and other content they put out.

Image: Vox.com top articles section on homepage

Your journal can similarly showcase your top articles, media, or datasets on your homepage. You can determine your top content via analytics tracking such as Google Analytics (free software from Google) or an altmetrics tracking service. Based on the analytics source you use, you can explain how you made your top articles selection for your website, whether it be articles that got the most page views, most mentions in mainstream media, or some other criterion. Top content lists are a great opportunity to resurface past articles, because it often takes some time for articles to gain traction in the scholarly community. When you showcase current activity around past articles you make it more likely for scholars who weren’t aware of those articles to check them out.

In addition to using your homepage to highlight your top articles, you can also use it to broadcast calls for papers, as pictured in the example below from Hybrid Pedagogy’s journal website.

Image: Hybrid Pedagogy call for papers

By posting specific calls for papers on your homepage you may catch the eye of scholars who hadn’t been planning on submitting to your journal and potentially change their mind if they see that you have the perfect place for a manuscript they’re working on. Calls for submissions on your homepage can also serve as sort of “teasers,” giving readers a glimpse at new content they should be on the lookout for in the near future.

3. Republish popular articles in a special series or eBook

If your journal receives many submissions related to a particular topic or area of study, or if you choose to solicit special issues of related manuscripts, another strategy you can use to resurface content is to repurpose related articles into an online series or eBook. This is a strategy mainstream news outlets and blogs often use to generate more interest around a group of articles and to make it easier for readers to find related content.

Below is an example of a series from the London School of Economics Impact Blog. The Impact Blog put together a series on “The Accelerated Academy,” for which it solicited articles from academics about the high-speed nature of their life as researchers and professors. This series was featured on the Impact Blog homepage while it was running. After the series ran it was also added to the “series” link in the top navigation bar of the Impact Blog. So readers visiting the Impact Blog today can still find this series and other compilations of related content the blog has published by visiting the “series” link.

Image: Blog series from the LSE Impact Blog

Some journals are similarly creating articles series and even eBooks of related articles, like a selection of journals from MIT Press including International Security, Linguistic Inquiry, and The New England Quarterly, which pooled together their articles on related topics and repackaged them in eBooks called “BATCHES.”

4. Add a subscription option to your website

When you visit a new blog or website that you love, you find yourself wanting to take steps to remember it. We all like to keep tabs on our go-to sources of information either by bookmarking those sites, following them on Twitter, or better yet subscribing for daily, weekly, or monthly updates from our sites of choice. You’ve likely been presented with and embraced this opportunity when visiting your favorite sites. For example, as shown in the image below, National Geographic makes it easy for visitors to sign up for updates by displaying a signup window to all of its website visitors from its homepage.

Your journal can do the same. You can add a “subscribe” option to your website and then send regular emails to your list to share your journal articles, issues, and other news. You can also send your subscriber list special content you create to resurface old articles such as lists of top articles, a new journal series, or an eBook.

5. Start a journal blog or post videos

As you build in new ways to promote your newest content and resurface old articles on your website, you may also want to consider starting a website blog. Blogging is a great way to add some color to the research you publish by presenting information in a more digestible format than the traditional academic paper.

Your journal can start a blog as a place for your editors to communicate what your publication is working on and for authors to share more accessible overviews of their published works. Below is an image of a blog started by the Journal of the History of Ideas. The journal uses its blog as a place for scholars to write short form posts about topics of interest to them or to recap information about their articles.

Image: Journal of the History of Ideas blog

As with your main journal website, be sure to organize your blog by topic areas, so scholars can easily navigate to posts on topics of interest to them.

Another option to build content resurfacing into your website besides a blog is using video. For example, Gastrointestinal Endoscopy posts video interviews of its authors describing their latest published research on the journal website, as pictured below.

Image: Gastrointestinal Endoscopy author video

Gastrointestinal Endoscopy films many of its author interviews during the annual American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ASGE) meeting. If your journal doesn’t have an opportunity like a major conference to get a bunch of authors in the same room, you can also do your video work online. In addition to its conference videos, GIE invites authors of accepted articles to submit their own video interviews to its blog, which can either be Q&A interviews or videos of themselves discussing their work.

Whether you choose to start a written blog or log of videos for your journal you’ll be taking a great step to get readers more engaged with your content and to expand its reach.

Have you taken any steps to resurface content on your journal’s website? Or, do you have any questions about content resurfacing? Let us know by tweeting at @Scholasticahq!

How Law Reviews Use Social Media

Fri, 06 May 2016 08:49:49 -0500

“How can law reviews improve their social media presence” is a question legal academia has been asking for quite a while now. But what does having a social media presence mean for a law review?

Based on what we’ve heard from law review editors we’ve talked to, having a social media presence means that a law review is engaging in some online activity outside of sharing links to the PDFs of print issues on its website. It means leveraging social media to connect with [more] authors and readers.

Whatever it means to you, we know it can feel daunting to kickstart a social media presence — so we did some research. We looked into how some law reviews use social media, and asked how it helps them connect with authors and readers. Below are two interviews with law reviews that have active social media presences, one with the EIC of Charleston Law Review and one with the Symposium Editor of Georgia State University Law Review. We hope these editors’ first hand experiences are helpful as you plan to start or revamp your law review’s social media presence!

Charleston Law Review

Website | Twitter | Facebook

Answers provided by David DuTremble, Editor In Chief, Charleston Law Review Vol. 11

How (or why) did your law review became active on Twitter and Facebook?

DDT: The basic social media plan for CLR is pretty simple - focus on emerging areas of the law, keep current with what’s coming out of SCOTUS, and share various posts regarding the writing/editing process. We want to remain visible, grow our network, and ultimately show our commitment to the craft of legal writing in hopes of recruiting potential authors and subscribers. Like any other form of networking, if you don’t put your name out there (akin to ‘face time’, in the real world), no one will be thinking about you. After exams are over and my schedule is a little freer, I may start tying in our Student Works Edition in some of the posts.

Has having a social media presence helped your law review?

DDT: I’m not entirely positive if social media has helped. I wish I had a great story about snagging a new author or something, but it hasn’t happened - yet! Fortunately, though, Facebook has a nice metrics panel for pages that you manage that shows how many people you’ve reached and engaged - in just one week of making one post per day, our page views (and hopefully relevance!) has gone through the roof. Here’s a screenshot of the graph before I took over doing the social networking and then after.

Do you have any advice for a law review that wants to start using social media?

DDT: Keeping current on social media for your journal isn’t really that time consuming. I follow sites like Oyez and SCOTUSBlog on my personal Twitter account, along with Reuters, the Associated Press, Grammarly, Oxford English Dictionaries, etc., because I’m a major nerd and like to be (somewhat) informed. I’ll peruse my feed while I’m eating breakfast, and when I see things that are relevant (and not too political or controversial), I sign into the CLR Twitter and Facebook accounts and post it. It takes me about 15 minutes per day. Just follow some of the things you think would be pertinent to a journal on a personal account and re-post things that seem interesting if you’re crunched for time.

Georgia State University Law Review

Website | Twitter | Facebook

Answers provided by Luke Donohue (@lukedonohue), Symposium Editor, GSU Law Review Vol. 32

Can you talk a little bit about how (or why) your law review became active on Twitter?

LD: The current editorial board (2015-2016) made the decision to become active on Twitter as part of our strategic plan to create a more accessible publication. The plan involves increasing our online presence, creating online content, and using social media to interact with authors, readers, and the broader world of academia.

Has having a social media presence helped your law review?

LD: This year, our law review symposium centered on transparency in the Supreme Court. The conversations focused on issues like cameras, recusal, and the Justices’ Papers, but there was also discussion of the role of social media. Throughout the day, we used #GSULawSymposium to interact with people nationally. Lawyers from across the country were able to tune in. It allowed our symposium to have an impact beyond the four walls of the school. We posed questions from twitter users to our panelists; we tweeted pictures throughout the event; and we even captured a moment of Judge Posner on live-feed taking a picture of us.

“Tweetception” with Judge Posner, discussing live-tweeting in the courtroom. #GSULawSymposium pic.twitter.com/En9L8fDNLq
— GSU Law Review (@GSULawReview) February 11, 2016

Because of social media, we were able to further the discussion and debates on the proper role of judges on Twitter and other social media sites. Georgia Court of Appeals Judge Dillard (@JudgeDillard) spoke to the panelists the night before at a dinner about his views on social media. On one of our panels, Justice Willett (@JusticeWillett) of the Texas Supreme Court explained how valuable social media is to him as a judge and an elected official. These judges are some of the most prevalent legal personalities on social media and it was a great experience to hear them speak about the value of that vehicle.

By the end of the day, our hashtag was trending on twitter. We were able to bring attention to our transparency in the Supreme Court and increase the visibility of the Georgia State Law Review, which in the future may help us solicit articles or attract professors who otherwise may not have us on their radar.

Do you have any advice for a law review that wants to start using social media?

LD: I think my advice would be different based on what a particular law review intended to get out of its social media experience. My main advice would be to know your audience. We try to tweet out when new issues are available for download and to tag any of our published authors who use Twitter as well. This allows them another venue through which to bring attention to their work. Of course, we are also a student organization. So we like to tweet pictures of events, editorial board meetings, and highlight member accomplishments. Social media is ultimately a great tool for engaging authors, readers, students, and others and increasing the visibility of your organization.

Does your law review have a new or growing social media presence? How do you hope to make social media a part of your editorial strategy? Let us know on Twitter at @scholasticahq!

Twitter 101 for Scholarly Journals, Part 2: Grow your social following

Tue, 03 May 2016 15:01:20 -0500

Image Credit: Esther Vargas

This is the second post in the Twitter 101 for Scholarly Journals 2-part series. Click here to view the first post.

So you’ve set up a professionalized Twitter account for your scholarly journal, you’ve been tweeting daily and following relevant users in your field, but you feel like your journal’s account still isn’t growing as quickly as you’d like. Where are your first 100 followers? How can you get people to start mentioning your journal in their tweets? How can you start engaging with other users? There are many questions to address when getting a new Twitter account off the ground.

You can be sure that you’re not alone in wondering how to jumpstart your new profile. Fostering a well-known and engaging Twitter presence takes time and some trial and error. But, thankfully, there are some things you can do to speed up the process. Here are some steps you can take to grow your journal’s Twitter following:

Tweet about more than just your journal

In the previous post in this series we discussed the importance of tweeting about more than just your journal, and we think it bears repeating. Too often, journals fall into the pattern of only tweeting updates related to their publication and failing to engage with other scholars and organizations in their field. If you only use your account to tweet about your journal and nothing else, you can be sure people will start to get bored with it.

If you want to develop an engaging Twitter presence for your journal, it’s paramount that you post about a variety of things. Break up your tweets between different topics including:

Journal news and updates
Links to your new journal articles
Links to news and blog posts relevant to your journal’s readers
Links to resources for authors and fellow journal editors
Comments on tweets from other scholars and organizations

Mention other Twitter accounts in your tweets

When sending tweets that relate to other people be sure to also mention their Twitter handles in your posts. When you include Twitter handles in your tweets the people who manage those handles will be notified. People like to be mentioned on Twitter, especially if you’re sharing something they wrote or a project they’re working on. If the person you mention isn’t familiar with your journal’s Twitter account, seeing you mention them on Twitter may make them more likely to follow you. When you mention others in your tweets, since they’ll be able to see it, you’ll also be giving them the opportunity to like or retweet your post. When people engage with your tweets that activity will show up in their followers’ feeds, thereby creating more opportunities for scholars to stumble upon your account and follow you.

The more you mention and talk with other people on Twitter the more likely they’ll be to talk to, mention, and retweet you. For example, in the tweet below Hybrid Pedagogy journal shared @writingasjoe’s podcast and mentioned her in the tweet. She was able to see this and then retweet the post, which also got retweets from other scholars expanding its reach even further.

Image: Example of Twitter mention leading to retweets

Retweet and like other people’s posts often

In addition to mentioning other people in your journal’s tweets, one of the easiest ways you can engage with scholars and organizations on Twitter is by retweeting and liking their posts. As we explained in part 1 of this blog series, you can click the square arrows icon below other people’s tweets to retweet them and you can click on the heart icon below a tweet to like it.

Retweets are a way to reshare other people’s posts. You can retweet people mentioning your journal, news and announcements in your journal’s field, or other interesting content. Your retweets will be publicly visible on your journal’s Twitter feed, as pictured below.

Notice that in the below example MIT Press retweeted an article with tips for scholars preparing to submit to journals. This is a great example of finding content being shared by others that you know will be of interest to your journal’s audience, which will likely be made up of many submitting authors. As with diversifying the topics of your tweets so you’re not only tweeting about your journal, be sure to avoid only retweeting tweets that mention your journal. Make a point to retweet helpful outside articles and information as well.

Image: Example of retweeting relevant outside content

You’ll want to try to retweet somewhere between one and five posts per day. Retweeting is a good way to make the people you’re retweeting and their followers more aware of your account and to show goodwill to fellow Twitter users by helping them expand their platform, but as with regular posts every retweet you send will show up in your followers’ feeds. You’ll want to avoid sending too many tweets or retweets so you don’t overpower people’s feeds and cause them to unfollow your journal’s account.

Liking posts is a bit less obvious than retweeting. Your “likes” do not show up in other people’s main Twitter feeds or your own. Instead to view posts you’ve liked others have to click “Likes” in your Twitter profile to pull up that separate feed. Since likes are more low key you can use them more liberally than retweets. Use likes to acknowledge that you’re interested in news or content others are sharing, to like musings or humorous posts from scholars, and more.

If you’re not sure of how and when to jump into conversations on Twitter, retweeting and liking other people’s posts are great ways to easily engage with Twitter users.

Use hashtags to make your posts easier to find and join relevant conversations

Twitter can be overwhelming at times. With new posts coming out by the second and an endless feed of activity to scroll through you may find it difficult to know where to begin to look for posts to engage with. You may also be wondering how other people will find your journal’s posts amid all the other posts out there. The good news is, Twitter has a built-in tool to help you find relevant conversations and make your tweets stand out at the same time - hashtags!

You’re likely familiar with people including words or phrases with pound signs in front of them in their tweets. These are called hashtags. Some popular academic hashtags include: #scholcomm (short for scholarly communication), #scholarlypublishing (usually referring to scholarly journals or books), #acwri (short for academic writing), and the list goes on. If you’re not familiar with the use case for hashtags, you can think of hashtags as tags applied to tweets that all relate to the same category. Twitter users can click on hashtags in other people’s tweets or type them into the Twitter search bar to pull up a feed of all of the tweets from those on Twitter that use that particular hashtag or categorization.

For example, if you type “#acwri” into the Twitter search bar you will see a feed with results like those pictured below. All of these tweets relate to academic writing in some way whether they’re people talking about their writing, sharing academic writing resources, or posting some academic writing humor.

Image: Example of Twitter results for #acwri

Many scholars follow relevant hashtags, like #acwri, so when you mention hashtags in your tweets you make it more likely for scholars to find them. You can also choose to follow hashtags that are relevant to your journal in order to more quickly identify conversations among scholars in your field that you may want to engage in or retweet. For example, if you’re a sociology journal you may want to follow “#sociology” or “#SocSci” (short for social science). Scroll through the profiles of popular accounts in your journal’s field to see which hashtags they use and start to take note of them so you can search for those hashtags and include them in your tweets.

Engage in conversations about your journal and its field

In addition to finding interesting tweets to like and retweet, don’t be afraid to engage in conversations with fellow Twitter users. Tweeting congratulations at authors of your journal’s newest articles is one easy way to do this. Your journal can also comment on tweets about the work being done by leading scholars in your field, which can raise those scholars’ awareness of your publication and potentially help you get more submissions.

Your journal can even take engaging with users a step further by creating your own hashtags. The tweet below shows a great example of this from Sociological Review. The journal decided to ask its sociologist followers to share pictures of their desks using the easy-to-recall hashtag “#sociologicaldesk,” which the journal came up with. Below is an example of Sociological Review sharing a #sociologicaldesk image from another Twitter user and getting likes and retweets in response. Sociological Review got a lot of activity from this initiative and was able to compile the #sociologicaldesk tweet images into a blog post gallery. Your journal can also come up with creative hashtags and use them to get Twitter users to engage with your account.

Image: Post using #sociologicaldesk

Use lists to stay in touch with the primary accounts you want to follow

As you get more familiar with Twitter there will likely be accounts you find you want to pay more attention to, perhaps because they share the best content or they are affiliated with your journal. Luckily, Twitter makes it easy to keep track of what specific people are talking about via lists. You can create any number of lists of fellow Twitter users, which you can keep private or make publicly visible.

To create a list click on your journal’s Twitter icon in the top right of your profile, click “Lists” and then “create new list” on the following page. One of the best ways to use lists is to make lists of users who share content that’s of interest to your journal’s readers. You can then visit these lists to find articles your journal can share and comment on, as well as posts to like and retweet.

We hope this Twitter 101 series will inspire you to create a Twitter account for your journal or start using your existing account more. Do you have any journal Twitter tips to share? We’d love to hear them! Tweet them to us at @scholasticahq!

Twitter 101 for Scholarly Journals, Part 1: Setting up a professionalized journal profile

Fri, 29 Apr 2016 15:38:40 -0500

Image Credit: Andreas Eldh

If your scholarly journal is not active on Twitter, you could be missing out on a big opportunity to attract new readers and manuscript submissions.

In recent years, a growing number of scholars have been taking to Twitter and using it as platform to discuss their research interests, higher education news, and thoughts on the state of journal publishing. Scholars’ affinity for the 140-character-max social network has even made academic news, with stories like Times Higher Education’s recent article “The weird and wonderful world of academic Twitter.”

So how can your journal become a part of this “weird and wonderful” academic Twitterverse? Whether you’re signing up for a Twitter account for the first time or you’re looking for ways to spruce up a slow-growing account, here are some steps you can take:

Choose a memorable Twitter handle

The first step to developing a Twitter presence for your journal is of course setting up an account. If you don’t have a Twitter account, you can easily create one by clicking “sign up” on the Twitter website and then following the prompts.

One thing you’ll need to figure out before you get started is what you want your Twitter handle (username) to be. Twitter handles have a 15 character limit, so if your journal has a long title you’ll need to shorten it in your handle. If you’ve established an acronym for your journal, then you should be good to go! But, if you haven’t established an acronym, another journal already has your journal’s logical acronym, or you have a long title that doesn’t lend itself to one, take some time to think about how to shorten your journal title in a way that will be easy for people to recognize and remember. For example, the Journal of the History of Ideas’ Twitter handle, pictured below, combines an acronym and part of the title so that it is memorable and not confused with other journals with the same acronym (JHI) such as Journal of Hospital Infection.

Image: Example of shortening journal name to create memorable Twitter handle

If you already have a Twitter account set up for your journal but you’re not happy with your handle, Twitter offers the option to change it. Just go to your journal’s Twitter “account settings” page update the handle listed and save your changes.

Professionalize your journal’s Twitter profile

Once you’ve created your Twitter account, the first place you’ll want to start working on is your profile. The key aspects of your journal’s Twitter profile page that you need to focus on are your:

Profile picture: For your profile picture, you’ll want to use either an image of your journal’s cover or logo so scholars can quickly make the association that this is your professional journal account and know to follow you.
Header photo: Along with your profile picture, your header photo is the first thing anyone will notice when they click on your journal’s Twitter profile. Try to think outside of the box when it comes to picking a header photo and choose something other than a generic Twitter background. Some options include using: an image of past journal issues you’ve published, a photo of your editorial team, an image of the institution your journal is affiliated with (if applicable), or an image relevant to your journal’s field such as a photo of a lab for a STEM journal.
Journal description: Your journal’s Twitter profile will also include space for a 160 character bio. Given the tight character limit, be sure to hone down your description to the key information you need to get across. In your bio you’ll want to include a brief line about your journal’s aims and scope and some detail about your publication, such as the scholarly organization you’re affiliated with (if applicable). Use your bio to highlight your journal’s mission and anything that sets you apart from similar publications. You may also want to include your journal’s ISSN or journal-wide DOI to help viewers find it faster.

Below the Twitter bio field you’ll also find a field to list a website. Be sure to include your journal’s website link here so people can check it out!

Image: Example of a professionalized journal Twitter profile

The above image of Journal of Applied Bioanalysis’ (JAB) Twitter profile is a great example of combining all of the profile components we discussed above. JAB uses a recognizable image of its journal cover for its profile picture and combined with it’s dynamic header photo it immediately communicates to readers that this is a bioanalysis journal. JAB’s description explains the goal of its Twitter feed - to share the latest journal news - and includes the journal’s publisher, ISSN, website link, and that it’s open access.

Follow relevant accounts and ask others to follow you

Having a professionalized profile will make it more likely for Twitter users to recognize your journal and follow your account, but you have to help them find it. On Twitter, people tend to find and follow accounts that their existing connections start following, so you’ll want to quickly build a base of followers to work from. One of the fastest ways to start attracting followers is to follow other relevant organizations, publications, and people in your journal’s field. You can use the Twitter search bar to find scholars and institutions. Another easy way to find accounts to follow is to look at who top scholars and organizations in your field are following.

Along with following relevant accounts, you’ll want to get all your editors on board to help promote your journal. Make sure editors who use Twitter know to follow your journal and to mention it in tweets. You and your fellow editors can also ask colleagues who have expressed support for the journal to follow your new account.

In addition to asking the people who’ve supported your journal to follow you, don’t be afraid to reach out to submitting authors and reviewers on your email list to ask them to follow you too. You can do this by sending an email announcing that your journal is now on Twitter and inviting your email list to follow you. Be sure to explain the value your account will offer followers, such as tweeting journal updates, helping authors promote their newest articles, and sharing relevant research in your field.

You can also have your editors include a link to your Twitter profile in their email signatures so authors and reviewers see it each time they interact with your journal. Each of your editors can include their role at the journal in their signature along with any other job titles and write “Follow [insert journal name] on Twitter at [insert Twitter handle]” along with a link to your journal’s Twitter profile.

Start tweeting and engaging with other accounts daily

If you want to have an active Twitter account, you obviously have to start tweeting! Be sure to tweet at least three times every day. Tweets have a short shelf-life in people’s feeds once they go, out so you’ll want to post at least three tweets per day to ensure people are seeing yours.

When it comes to tweeting, also be sure to send out a mix of content, not just tweets promoting your journal. Journals, like other organizational Twitter accounts, can often fall into the pattern of only tweeting about themselves. While your followers will of course want to hear about your newest articles and other journal news, they’ll also want to see how your journal fits into and engages with the greater scholarly community both in its field and beyond. No one likes to be in a conversation with someone who only wants to talk about him or herself. Think of Twitter in the same way. If all you ever tweet about is news from your journal, people will likely start to tune you out and eventually they may just unfollow you.

Be sure to mix up your tweets using a combination of journal announcements and scholarly news. You can also tweet directly at scholars, by putting their Twitter handle at the beginning of a tweet to start a conversation with them (these conversations will only be visible to the recipient and their followers). If you want your tweet to another scholar to be publicly visible, such as a tweet highlighting the great work a scholar associated with your journal is doing, be sure to put a word or character in front of their handle to make your tweet publicly visible, as in the example below.

.@mike_bader & Warkentien mentioned in great OpEd in @latimes! “L.A. is resegregating…” https://t.co/XtOxcl2Pjw pic.twitter.com/6Qgg4WqMxX
— Sociological Science (@SociologicalSci) April 4, 2016

In addition to tweeting, don’t forget to take advantage of Twitter’s other opportunities to engage with followers. You can click the small heart icon below tweets to “like” what other people are talking about and click the square arrows retweet icon to re-share posts from other accounts. Liking and retweeting other people’s tweets are great ways to make more scholars aware of your profile and make your account more engaging.

Good example of constructive online conversation in soc sci. Authors’ creation of a replication pkg is a good step. https://t.co/3SYZDRoexK
— Carl Schmertmann (@CSchmert) April 18, 2016

Interesting debate happening in the comments here (and forthcoming at AJS). New feature of open-access pub. https://t.co/FEKarwxGN5
— Michelle S. Phelps (@MichelleSPhelps) April 11, 2016

As you take the time to highlight what other people are working on and to engage with others on Twitter you’ll be glad to find people will likely start sending tweets aimed at engaging with your journal, too. Soon you may find yourself retweeting tweets that relate to your journal, like in the tweets above highlighting Sociological Science, an open access sociology journal.

The more you tweet and engage with other accounts on Twitter, the more likely they will be to respond to you and to tweet about your journal, helping you develop your Twitter presence.

For more tips on how to grow your journal’s Twitter following check out the next post in this 2-part series!

Mathematician Asks Peers How They Feel About Scholarly Journal Publishing: Interview with Mark C. Wilson

Wed, 27 Apr 2016 13:23:16 -0500

Image Credit: Ivan T, Mathematica

How do academics really feel about the state of scholarly journal publishing? Mark C. Wilson, a mathematician from the University of Auckland, wants to know. Wilson put together an open Google survey of “opinions on mathematical journal reform,” which he is soliciting his peers in the mathematics community to complete. He is seeking responses from mathematics journal editors, authors, and peer reviewers regarding their thoughts on current models for academic journal publishing, impact assessment, and open access and if things need to change.

While some commercial publishers have run surveys in recent years on the current peer review and publishing system, few surveys have been launched by and for academics and aimed at assessing need for change. Wilson’s goal is to get a clearer picture of what the greater mathematics community wants from academic journals and to pinpoint the primary areas where scholars believe reform is necessary. The survey, which has received over 800 responses so far, is still running and can be openly accessed by anyone via the Google form. Wilson shares more details about the survey in the interview below:

Q&A with Mark C. Wilson

Can you briefly explain your impetus for creating this survey and what the goal is?

MW: It appears that there is much dissatisfaction about the current state of research publishing. Among the ills I read about almost daily are:

Slow and poorly executed peer review processes
Proliferation of poor quality journals
The uselessness of journal measures such as impact factor for evaluating researchers, and the fact that administrators don’t realize this
Commercial publishers charging excessively for journals, and profiting from the free labour of researchers
The restriction of access to published research to those who can’t afford to pay
Resistance by editors and publishers to improvement and innovation
Lack of transparency in journal operations
Old-fashioned and inefficient pre-Internet processes

On the other hand, there have been relatively few changes made to the way we publish academic research in the last few years. It struck me that no one really has any data on how academics feel about the issues, so we are only speculating on how much appetite there is for real change. My goal for this survey is to elicit enough responses that it is clear what the overall priorities of the community are. I want to get a large and representative sample from the entire world math community. There are clear challenges in doing this, especially given my approximately zero budget. But I think it can be achieved.

Image: Initial results from of survey of opinions on mathematical journal reform

Who is behind the “Survey of Opinions on Mathematical Journal Reform” and who is it for?

MW: I am behind it, on behalf of an international group of librarians and researchers interested in improving the current publishing system. As for who it is for, everyone who has acted as editor, author, referee/reviewer, or reader for a mathematical journal (broadly interpreted - roughly speaking, one indexed by Mathematical Reviews).

The survey is completely anonymous. The data will be made public as soon as I think there are enough responses (sometime later this year). I expect that journal editors in particular will find this survey useful to have a better idea of what readers, authors and reviewers think should happen.

What aspects of the publication system is the survey focused on?

MW: The survey has 3 parts: basic demographic information about the respondent; questions about how urgent the problems are with journals, which journals need the most work, and what editors should do; questions about attitudes towards open access, publication charges, peer review innovations, accountability improvements (e.g. editorial term limits, community election of editors) that journals might undertake. For example, respondents can indicate whether they support various forms of open and post-publication review, term limits for editors, or credit for referees. We also ask about which factors are important for journal reputation, because reputation is often cited as a barrier to reform.

What made you choose to focus on mathematics, specifically?

MW: It is mainly a matter of limiting the scope of the survey, because the entire world community of researchers is too big and diverse. There are tens of thousands of mathematicians alone, and it is a relatively small field. There is some reason to believe that mathematicians have different attitudes on publication reforms than biomedical researchers, who have tended to dominate in online discussions. I would be happy if others do similar surveys in other research areas to get more opinions.

What is your hope for this survey, how do you plan to use the data?

MW: I hope that the survey gets enough responses that the results are clear. If it turns out, for example, that there is large support for open access but implacable opposition to article processing charges (APCs), then this is important to know and should influence efforts to reform the current setup. Very preliminary results show much more appetite for, and openness to, some reasonably radical changes in peer review practice, for example, which I had not predicted. If there is enough data, breaking it down by continent might be revealing. There are some issues, for example Google Forms might not be viewable from China, and we will work through those somehow.

Has a project like this been attempted before? What makes this survey different?

MW: As far as I know nothing like this has been done before. Commercial publishers have done some author/reader surveys on attitudes towards open access, for example, but I know of nothing instigated by the research community itself. Of course this survey deals with much more than just open access, also.

The scope of the questions is one thing. Another is the ambition to actually do something serious to improve the status quo, without narrow commercial objectives. One purpose of the survey is to provide a place for people to have their say, and promote the “community” that is often talked about but not so often seen. Modern ideas of democracy and wisdom of crowds are not very prominent in the current journal system (in fact the entire profession has many pre-modern aspects, which in my opinion are no longer useful, if they ever were - meritocracy is fine, but we have very few objective ways of assessing merit, and it can degenerate to aristocracy and patronage).

Also, the kinds of system problems we see cannot be easily solved by individual action. Collective action is required, and we first need to get some kind of broad agreement on goals, and work out what the interests of funders, readers, authors, editors and reviewers are. These are unlikely to coincide with the interests of the traditional commercial publishers. The present journal system evolved over many decades. It is important to the research community, yet the community has relatively little control over it. Surely we can do better.

You Can Keep Author and Reviewer Communication Personal and Use Peer Review Software

Sun, 24 Apr 2016 16:25:24 -0500

Image Credit: Pic Basement

Do you still manage your journal’s communication via email? If so, you know how time-consuming it can be to send individual emails with the same basic information to authors and reviewers, not to mention remembering to send review reminders. Rather than writing out every email by hand, wouldn’t it be easier to automate recurring communication? You can, with the right peer review software.

There’s no question that automating recurring emails will make things easier for your journal. But some editors can be wary about using peer review software for communication, because they’re worried automated emails will seem less personal. Journals, understandably, want to be sure that submitting authors and peer reviewers feel like they’re getting personal attention from their editors, not just computer-generated “do not reply” emails. The truth is, though - using templates and automation for recurring emails can actually help you make your journal’s communication more personal. Here’s how:

Automated emails are often just as “personal” as hand-typed ones

When thinking about how automation will affect your journal’s communication, it’s important to take a step back and consider how “personal” the informational and reminder emails you’re sending actually are.

If you’re like many editors, when it comes to sending basic informational emails, you’re likely copying from emails you’ve already sent other people, swapping out the person’s name, and maybe adding a line or two to make the email “personalized.” The reality is, you’re essentially using email templates; however by copying, pasting, and updating them by hand you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to automate the process. You can be sure that reviewers and authors would prefer regular automated updates and reminders from your journal, rather than having to wait for the occasional hand-typed check-in.

Automation helps you stay in constant contact with authors and reviewers

Handling journal communication manually means that you have to carve out a few hours every week for things like sending individual due-date reminders to the peer reviewers working on your manuscripts. Or, if you’re especially busy, it means you may not always be able to make the time to send such emails, which can ultimately lead to delays in the peer review process.

Only being able to send courtesy emails like review reminders when you remember to isn’t ideal. Nor is falling days behind in sending necessary information such as review feedback forms and manuscript formatting guidelines to authors and peer reviewers. On the other hand, even if you are conscientious and remember to send every email on time, the hours it takes to do so is a major drag on productivity.

By sending automated emails you can ensure that you are always in contact with authors and reviewers and that everyone has the information they need without risking falling behind in sending emails and without draining your limited time. With the time you save by not hand-typing all of your emails, you’ll also likely be able to make manuscript decisions faster, which authors will love.

You can create email templates that address specific situations

Peer review software can help you speed up your journal’s email communication and still keep things personal. Just be sure to choose a platform that gives you the ability to write custom email templates. As you transition to a new peer review system, take some time to map out the most common communication you send to authors and peer reviewers and consider the questions you’re most often asked. For example, what email do you send all of your peer reviewers to ask them to review a manuscript? Or if you’re reaching out to a new reviewer for the first time, what questions do they often have about your process that you could potentially address upfront?

You can make as many customized templates as necessary to address specific reviewer and author scenarios. Then, rather than having to re-type those emails or copy, paste, and update them each time you have to send one, you can just select the template that best fits the situation you’re in and send it out in a few clicks. Authors and reviewers will appreciate you sending them the information they need in a timely manner.

Templating recurring emails frees time to respond to individual questions

We’ve talked about the benefits of using software to create automated emails to handle recurring communication, but how can software make it easier for you to stay on top of communication that can’t be automated?

Even with the most advanced peer review software, there will of course be emails you send that can’t be automated, such as responding to manuscript-related questions from authors and reviewers. You certainly can’t automate all aspects of your journal communication - and we don’t recommend trying to! But, by streamlining the emails you always send all authors and peer reviewers you can free up time to address emails that require individual responses.

With the extra time you’ll have from email automation, you can even take responding to author and reviewer questions a step further by carving out some time to follow up on those personal emails to make sure things are going smoothly. You can also take time for things like sending personal thank you emails to your journal’s peer reviewers once they’ve completed an assignment.

Software can help avoid emails falling through the cracks

In addition to giving you tools to automate recurring emails, some peer review systems also have features to help you keep all of your journal correspondences organized. For example, with Scholastica you can use manuscript Discussions to send messages to anyone — reviewers, editors, or authors — and the responses to each Discussion you send will be saved on Scholastica next to the manuscript it’s about. All Scholastica Discussion messages are also delivered to each recipient’s email address, so Discussions can be replied to either on Scholastica or via email.

Integrating all journal emails with your peer review software will also make it easier to set up a separate email inbox for journal communication, so you and your fellow editors can keep emails related to teaching, research, or other outside work separate from journal emails. You won’t have to worry about logging into multiple email inboxes everyday, because you can just use your journal software to check for new messages.

With tools like Discussions you can be sure you will always know which manuscript an email relates to and that all of your journal communication is stored in a logical place. Well-implemented software can help you avoid hours of sifting through your email inbox and coming up with folder and archiving systems to keep emails separated - or worse, those instances where you overlook an email that got buried in your inbox. Finding software that can help you not only automate emails but also keep them organized is key.

The SEC’s Ultra Vires Recognition of the FASB: Interview with Dennis Huber

Wed, 20 Apr 2016 09:58:39 -0500

Image Credit: Dimitris Kalogeropoylos

Did the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) meet all the criteria of The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) when it was approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2003?

Passed by Congress in 2002, SOX was enacted with the purpose of protecting investors from fraudulent accounting activities by corporations. The bill was created in response to major corporate accounting scandals that shook the U.S. at the time, including those of Enron and Worldcom. SOX, which is comprised of eleven sections requiring added criminal penalties for certain misconduct, requires the SEC to ensure corporations comply with the law. But when the SEC approved the FASB, it may not have had adequate proof of its standing.

In a recent paper published in the Richmond Journal of Law & the Public Interest titled “The SEC’s Ultra Vires Recognition of the FASB as a Standard-Setting Body” Dr. Wm. Dennis Huber (“Dennis”), professor of Forensic Accounting and Business Law at Capella University, argues that the FASB did not meet the standards set by SOX and that the SEC exceeded its statutory authority in recognizing the FASB as a standard-setting body. Huber took some time to share the details of his paper in the interview below.

Q&A with Dennis Huber

What conditions must private accounting standard-setting bodies meet to be officially recognized by the SEC under SOX?

DH: As part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 Congress gave authority to the SEC to officially recognize private accounting standard-setting bodies provided that the private standard-setting body met five conditions. For a private accounting standard-setting body to be recognized it must: (1) be organized as a private entity; (2) its trustees must serve in the public interest; (3) it must be funded according to 15 U.S.C. § 7219; (4) it must have adopted procedures for prompt amendment of accounting principles; and (5) it must consider “in adopting accounting principles, the need to keep standards current in order to reflect changes in the business environment, the extent to which international convergence on high quality accounting standards is necessary or appropriate in the public interest and for the protection of investors.”

After the FAF and FASB sent a letter to the SEC affirming that FASB met the standards of SOX, was any evidence uncovered to suggest the contrary?

DH: Yes, an investigation of the FAF and FASB’s internal documents uncovered evidence that the FASB does not, in fact, fulfill the criteria set out in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. I recently detailed that evidence in my article “The SEC’s Ultra Vires Recognition of the FASB as a Standard-Setting Body” published in the Richmond Journal of Law & the Public Interest.

In what ways does the FASB fail to meet SOX standards?

DH: The FAF created the FASB to which it “delegated all authority, functions, and powers of the Corporation and the Board of Trustees in respect of standards of financial accounting and reporting…which authority, functions, and powers shall be exercised by the FASB in conformity with the By-Laws.” According to the FAF’s Bylaws members of the FASB must have “knowledge of accounting, finance, and business.” In addition, they must also have “a concern for the public interest in matters of financial accounting and reporting.” Unfortunately, “concern for the public interest” is not measureable and certainly not enforceable. Nor is it equivalent to protecting either investors’ interest or the public interest.

Does the FAF, as the parent organization of FASB meet any of SOX standards?

DH: The FAF’s 2014 Annual Report states it is an independent, private-sector, not-for-profit, non-stock corporation with responsibility for establishing financial accounting and reporting standards and educating stakeholders about those standards. The FAF is responsible for the oversight, administration, finances, and selection of the members of the FASB. The FASB’s 2014 Annual Report states that the FASB “was organized in 1973 as an independent standard-setting body created by the FAF” and that “the FASB is the designated body in the private sector responsible for establishing standards of financial accounting and reporting in the United States for non-governmental entities. Those standards govern the preparation of financial reports and are provided for the guidance and education of the public, including issuers, auditors and users of financial information.” As with the Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws, nothing in either annual report suggests that the purpose of either the FAF or FASB is to protect investors or to protect or be concerned with the public interest.

Both the original 1972 Articles of Incorporation of the FAF and the amended Articles of Incorporation of 2002 and 2012 state that the purposes of the FAF are: “To advance and to contribute to the education of the public, investors, creditors, preparers, and suppliers of financial information, reporting entities, and certified public accountants in regard to standards of financial accounting and reporting; to establish and improve the standards of financial accounting and reporting by defining, issuing, and promoting such standards; to conduct and commission research, statistical compilations, and other studies and surveys; and to sponsor meetings, conferences, hearings, and seminars, in respect of financial accounting and reporting.” There is nothing in the Articles of Incorporation that refers either to protecting investors, or considering or protecting the public interest.

What constitutes a body “serving in the public interest” and why do you think the FAF and FASB do not adequately fit this criteria?

DH: The Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires that trustees of a private standard setting “serve in the public interest.” Trustees serving in the public interest is not equivalent to the standard-setting body itself protecting either investors’ interest or the public interest. In fact, to “serve in the public interest” means only that “the majority of [Trustees] are not, concurrent with their service on such board, and have not been during the 2-year period preceding such service, associated persons of any registered public accounting firm.”

Since the FASB does not meet the criteria set forth by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the SEC’s recognition of the FASB was not authorized by Congress and therefore its accounting standards cannot be recognized. Thus, unless either the statute is amended, or the FAF’s Articles of Incorporation are amended, the FASB’s accounting standards may not be enforceable. Consequently, violations of the FASB’s standards may be difficult to prosecute.

Getting Started with DOIs at Your Journal: Interview with Anna Tolwinska, Crossref

Sat, 16 Apr 2016 17:50:16 -0500

Image Credit: Steven Depolo

The internet is in a constant state of change, with new content being added to the web by the minute and old content sometimes getting moved around. While the benefit of publishing scholarly outputs online is that it’s possible to update them at any moment, moving or modifying content can also make keeping track of different versions a bit tricky at times. That’s where digital object identifiers or DOIs come into play.

A DOI is a persistent link to a piece of content online that is made up of a prefix and a unique suffix. Adding DOIs to all your journal’s articles will ensure that even if you have to change your journal’s web address, or if there are authors circulating different versions of their articles, readers will be able to recognize the official version of an article by its DOI. Each DOI has bibliographic and other metadata behind it that includes the most up-to-date URL, or the location, of that piece of content online.

How can you get DOIs for your journal’s articles? And what are the benefits you can expect? We caught up with Anna Tolwinska, Member and Community Outreach Manager at Crossref, a DOI registration agent for scholarly outputs, for a full breakdown on what you need to know to begin using DOIs at your journal.

Registering a DOI with Crossref

Your journal can easily sign up to start adding DOIs to all of its content. In order to start adding DOIs to your articles, you’ll need to first become a Crossref member. You can fill out the membership application form online. Once you fill out and submit your application, Crossref will review it and then send you a membership agreement to sign.

“After a journal’s publisher or editor signs the agreement, and pays the initial annual fee, we issue them a prefix – which is the first part of the DOI – and give them a username and password for the Crossref system,” Tolwinska explained.

“Once they obtain the prefix from us they can create their own suffix for each article using the Crossref guidelines and give each of their articles a unique DOI. We recommend keeping them short, especially since they will be visible and displayed on the article page. They then have to create metadata files for each article which includes the URL, the DOI, and other key metadata such as authors’ ORCID iDs, references, abstracts, full-text-links and license info. These files then need to be deposited into our system. Once that information is with us, the content is registered and the DOI link is immediately available and part of the global scholarly citation network - a network of over 80 million scholarly items.”

For more technically-savvy journals, Tolwinska said it is also possible to automate the DOI deposit process for new articles. “If you have knowledge of XML, you can create your own XML files based on our schema, and use HTTPS POST to deposit in a more automated way.” Tolwinska said Crossref is currently consolidating its metadata tools to streamline the deposit process and reduce manual effort for publishers.

In addition to assigning DOIs at article level, journals can choose to have a journal title level DOI as well, to incorporate components or content such as images and figures. Since scholars tend to search for individual articles online, rather than journals, Tolwinska said having article DOIs remains key.

Making sure your DOIs remain persistent links

According to Tolwinska, one of the most important things to remember when it comes to DOIs is that they don’t update themselves. Publishers are responsible for maintaining the metadata behind the DOI, to make sure it’s always up to date.

“You shouldn’t forget about your DOIs once you deposit them. If the content moves somewhere online and you don’t update the article’s URL in the metadata with Crossref the DOI won’t work, researchers will come across frustrating dead links, and that is what the whole infrastructure aims to avoid,” Tolwinska explained.

The only time you have to worry about updating your journal’s DOIs is if you move your articles. Otherwise, for articles that remain in the same place, you can leave your DOIs as is. However, updates are always encouraged; for example, when there are corrections or additional metadata is available such as Funder IDs, references, or license information.

“Because online journals switch publishers and hosting platforms quite often, the URLs behind the DOIs do tend to change,” said Tolwinska. “So it’s really crucial for publishers and editors to keep that in mind when they become Crossref members.”

Benefits of adding DOIs to your journal’s articles

So what are the benefits of adding DOIs to your journal’s articles, aside from creating a unique identifier for each version of record?

According to Tolwinska, the main benefit is enhancing article discoverability. “Different pieces of metadata will make your content more discoverable. The more metadata you deposit with your article, the more discoverable it will be because discovery services will pick it up faster, as will search engines and some library systems that are now based on metadata searches. Our free metadata search tool is also one of the most used services we provide, along with our open Metadata API, so having your content discoverable via these two routes is a major plus. A really important part of being a Crossref member is depositing as much – and as error-free – metadata as possible.”

Crossref also recently announced an integration with ORCID. Crossref publisher members that include ORCID iDs in their metadata deposits, now have the works pushed automatically into authors’ ORCID records (should the author grant permission). In this way journals can offer authors added value by helping them keep their ORCID records up-to-date and increase the visibility of their work.

Tolwinska said whether or not journals are able to gather and deposit all the recommended metadata, just the increased discoverability that DOIs generally offer articles benefits journals, as well as their authors and readers. “Readers are more likely to find and cite articles with DOIs, which helps them and the journal. Authors also like to submit manuscripts to journals that are more discoverable because more people will read their research. So it sort of all connects in the big scholarly communications realm.”

National Conference of Law Reviews 2016: recap

Thu, 14 Apr 2016 10:31:24 -0500

Anna and I recently got back from the 2016 National Conference of Law Reviews, hosted this year by Syracuse Law Review. We had the chance to chat with dozens of ambitious new law review editors while we were there, and we also got to present about the best practices that we see law reviews follow.

This year we noticed conference attendees and presenters were discussing 3 things in particular:

1. How law journals can use websites and social media

It is possible we heard so much buzz about maintaining (or simply establishing) a law review’s presence online because the conference morning kicked-off with Steve Kranz’s plenary session, “Social Media for Law Journals.”

@unbundledlaw Steven Kranz gave a great presentation this morning at #NCLRSyracuse about the power of social media! pic.twitter.com/F9S8f7TPX6
— Syracuse Law Review (@SyracuseLRev) April 1, 2016

Whether Kranz was the impetus for the social media chatter or not, having and maintaining an online presence was something that many law reviews were considering. It makes sense, too. When a law journal has a pulse online, it makes it easier for prospective authors to get a feel for what publishing with that law review might entail — or more specifically, how their article might reach a broader audience by way of the law review promoting their piece online.

Great presentation on use of social media to boost the buzz at NCLR! #NCLRSyracuse
— Mich. St. Law Review (@MichStLRev) April 1, 2016

Having an online presence was something we heard mentioned at last year’s conference as well. It seems like the editors and presenters (professors, authors, and others involved in legal academia) at NCLR this year continue to find an online presence something important for journals of all sizes.

2. Publishing in other forms besides traditional print issues

Similar to having an online presence, we heard from many editors who wanted to expand on the ways they’re publishing issues. There were sessions at the conference about publishing issues online, publishing in ebook format, and ensuring that published work is indexed correctly.

I spoke to editors who wanted to try a new and non-traditional way of publishing during their term. Some editors talked about publishing their existing (or soon-to-be existing) issues as ebooks as well as in print issues. Others wanted to start online components to publish shorter articles faster. I even talked to one editor who was considering transitioning his or her law review to online-only, which would mean articles could be published faster and on a rolling basis.

3. Improving communication between law reviews and authors

Many of the panels at the conference were hosted by authors, former authors, and law review article editors. These are people who have a lot of experience working with (or, as!) authors during the stressful process of an article being submitted and reviewed.

There was a lot of emphasis at the conference about understanding and improving the ways law reviews and authors communicate with each other. In fact, that’s exactly what Scholastica’s breakout session was about!

You can get the Law Review Starter Kit here: https://t.co/Rgj3QKNfHj #NCLRSyracuse
— Elli Olson (@elli_olson) April 1, 2016

Jessica Schneider, EIC of the Brooklyn Law Review, appreciated the insight to the world of authors — something many law review editors are frankly unaware of. She told us:

One of the things I liked the most, and really hope that they will do more of, is panels with the professors. They gave some great insight into what they look for when deciding which offers to accept. Professors and other authors not only check the Washington and Lee Law Review rankings, but also the general ranking for the schools. They also spoke about how tenure or pre-tenure factors into the decision: rank and timeline of publication matter more in these instances. Another piece of advice was that the authors would prefer to hear from the law reviews that their pieces are under review and/or rejected.

We had a great time in Syracuse at NCLR this year — and not only because the Orange Nation was pumped up for the Final Four. Ethan Dazelle, EIC of the University of Massachusetts Law Review articulated his conference takeaways with the same kind of excitement and enterprising attitude we saw in most editors we met:

“Nerding out” over law review has never been so much fun! NCLR was a tremendous opportunity to meet other future lawyers and discuss the privileges (and burdens!) that comes with running a legal publication. NCLR was a chance to see the next generation of legal writers and thinkers working towards the same goal: publishing worthwhile academic articles into the public discourse.

Special thanks to Amy Doan of the Syracuse Law Review who was responsible for planning and coordinating the conference. It will be hard to beat NCLR 2016, but we are looking forward to next year’s conference already!

Keeping the People’s Voice in the Legal System & Advice on Getting Published as a Law Student: Interview with Inga Ivsan

Thu, 14 Apr 2016 08:49:36 -0500

Image: Inga Ivsan, 3L at University of Miami Law School

In all of her legal research, Inga Ivsan keeps in mind the importance the Founding Fathers placed on having a system of checks and balances in order to prevent abuse of power in the United States. Having grown up in the ex-Soviet Union Republic of Lithuania, Ivsan said she has an especially great appreciation for freedom.

“Much of what I write is meant to showcase gaps in the law that are being afforded by actions the government, private individuals, or corporations have taken that can cause abuse of power corrections to slip,” explained Ivsan.

As a third-year law student at University of Miami Law School, Ivsan has already published multiple papers on topics related to protecting people’s constitutional rights. We spoke with her to learn more about her research interests and how she finds time to write and submit papers to law journals while juggling law school (joint J.D./LL.M in Estate Planning program), a clerkship, and work for Swiss Private Wealth Advisors, a business she founded.

Q&A with Inga Ivsan

Can you give us an overview of your most recent paper on the discretion of the trial judge?

The article, “The Judge is Supposed to be an Independent Arbiter; Allowing Boundless Judicial Discretion Violates the Sixth Amendment Under Hurst v. Florida,” is on a topic that the late Justice Antonin Scalia often discussed. It is about how the inquisitorial system of justice is finding its way into the American way of life and how this could fundamentally change the nature of the U.S. legal system, which was intended in the Constitution to be an adversarial system. Our Founding Fathers considered the inquisitorial system a threat to liberty at the time of the American Revolution, and many of the colonies at the time had opted instead for an adversarial system in which judges served as neutral arbitrators.

The case I looked at dealt with the death sentence, which is not something I usually focus on in my articles. I was alarmed that the judge, following Florida law, exercised his own judgment in lieu of a jury in deciding whether to sentence someone to death. In Hurst v. Florida, the United States Supreme Court agreed and found this practice unconstitutional. Rather than breaking new ground, the Hurst Court relied on earlier Supreme Court rulings that limit the scope of judicial discretion over sentencing. One such case, Blakely v. Washington, involved a judge who decided that a sentence handed down by a jury was not tough enough and added three more years to the sentence. Striking down the sentence, Scalia lamented in Blakely that “the framers would not have thought it too much to demand that, before depriving a man of three more years of his liberty, the State should suffer the modest inconvenience of submitting its accusation to the unanimous suffrage of twelve of his equals and neighbors rather than a lone employee of the state.”

The goal of my article is to show that we never meant to have unlimited judicial discretion in the U.S. legal system. If we did, we would lose the protections of an adversarial legal system. Today we are slowly creeping towards the kind of system I grew up in, in the ex-Soviet Union, where power rests within one unit that has total discretion and no real accountability. My paper doesn’t deal with the death sentence, but more with whether judicial discretion should be limited under our adversarial system when deciding fundamental matters such as life or death.

How is judicial discretion being distorted in the U.S. legal system today?

In the U.S. today, over 96% of criminal cases do not go to trial. Most cases are dispensed with by plea bargain. With a trial, we know, more or less, what the power of the judge should be. They rule over the motion and supervise how the parties behave, within a sort of designed limit. Certain powers are delegated to the parties, certain powers are delegated to the judges, and certain powers are delegated to the jury. By contrast, in the plea bargaining process, we don’t have a well-defined discretion of the judge. Since plea bargains are done behind closed doors, they are often only partially on the record, or they may be made entirely in secret. We don’t have a lot of access to the decision-making process and there are no set rules or even grey ones.

In many plea bargains, the defendant is paralyzed and their constitutional rights are non-existent. Consider a situation in which a prosecutor comes up to you and says, “We’re indicting you for a list of crimes that will put you behind bars for ten years, but – if you cooperate, plead guilty, and point the finger at others we want to indict – we will give you six months’ probation.” If you do not take the deal and are subsequently convicted, your life is over. On the other hand, if you just admit to being guilty, you incur a modest amount of pain but the prosecutor is happy. In many cases, the choice is pretty stark: A light sentence with perhaps some probation, or ten years in prison if you choose to assert your Sixth Amendment right to trial.

This practice really skews justice in America. One may argue that plea bargaining deprives the judge of a role to play, since the prosecutor and defendant have their deal. But the mere act of accepting a plea bargain still requires a fundamental exercise of discretion by the trial judge to ensure that the plea bargain is voluntary and supported by the facts. Too often, judges look askance and do not look behind the plea bargain to see if the prosecutor has extorted a deal through threats and intimidation, essentially depriving the defendant of the Sixth Amendment right to trial.

Have you examined plea bargaining further in your other research?

Yes, my most recent paper, “To Plea or not to Plea,” is really based on seeing how we’re shifting away from the adversarial system that was intended for the U.S. and how, as a result of unequal bargaining powers in plea bargains, we’re slipping into inquisitorial practices. That paper is not published yet, but I’m hoping to get it published because it’s a very important piece to me.

I spent a whole summer working with well-known defense lawyer Roy Black, who graciously agreed to supervise my research. To me, he’s the authority on the subject. I hope this piece reaches its intended audience so people start to think more about what is happening to plea bargaining. It is not going away, so maybe it needs to be more transparent, or the process needs to be better equalized between the parties. If we do not address plea bargain reform, we risk losing our adversarial system of justice and repeating the mistakes of history.

As a third-year law student with a career, when did you start publishing? And how do you balance your regular work and your research?

Miami Law requires all students to take two different courses in writing as part of the curriculum. The school also offers opportunities to do independent writing with guidance from law professors. I thought, “Why not find something that I am passionate about, something that makes me feel like I am writing for a cause that is important to the public?” I can get writing credit for my classes and I can also start working towards a real research project.

My first article was “Emerging Challenges in Asset Protection Planning,” which talked a lot about the imbalance between debtors and creditors. It is being published in the University of Miami Business Law Review this month. After that, I decided I wanted to write on the plea issue, which was bothering me even before I started law school. I found out that Roy Black was teaching an evidence workshop, and so I asked him whether he would be willing to supervise my research on plea bargains. To my surprise, he had similar thoughts and, as we compared notes, we realized that we were working toward similar conclusions. It’s been great working with him and learning from him.

In terms of balancing everything, for me, I think it helps to make the work fun and to make sure that you are researching and writing about a topic that matters to you and that you are passionate about. I think it also helps to find ways to use school assignments as opportunities to start working on publishable research. Do not just write papers to get them done, think about where they might take you.

What advice do you have for law students who want to write and submit an article for publication for the first time?

I have never written anything with only the goal of being published. I have focused instead on researching and writing about different topics that matter to me. I would say, make any goal of being published secondary, and make your first goal to research a topic that you care about.

The other thing I would say is, never get discouraged by a rejection. I have been rejected many times and never blinked. Journals have limited space, and even the best article may not find a place. But if you write an article with passion, and it is organized and concise, you will likely find a place in some journal or magazine. In the internet era, it does not really matter if your article is published in the best-known law review with an Ivy League school or a lesser-known journal by an upstart university, as long as the article reaches your audience.

What You Need to Know About NISO's Altmetrics Use Cases and Definitions Report

Mon, 11 Apr 2016 09:03:01 -0500

Image Credit: Steve Jurvetson, the Internet Mapping Project

Scholars and academic journals are increasingly turning to altmetrics, or alternative metrics, as a powerful way to track the broader and more immediate impacts of published research. However, despite growing adoption of these new impact indicators; there are still limited standards in place for altmetrics assessment and usage. Given that altmetrics collate metrics from a variety of sources, ranging from social media to Wikipedia, how scholars should be weighing and using different types of altmetrics remains subject to interpretation.

In July 2013 The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) launched the NISO Alternative Assessment Metrics Project with the goal to create basic standards for altmetrics usage by:

Devising definitions for terms commonly used in assessing altmetrics in order to make it easier for stakeholders to discuss them
Identifying primary use cases for altmetrics and key stakeholders
Developing a statement about the role altmetrics should play in evaluating scholarly research

The group just released Altmetrics Definitions and Use Cases, a report on their findings, which we’ve taken some time to breakdown.

So, what are the new altmetrics standards that NISO is working on? And what does this mean for academic journals? Here’s what you need to know:

Defining altmetrics and their role in assessing research impact

Even if you’re familiar with the notion of altmetrics as a way of indicating research impact, you may be struggling to put a finger on how exactly to define them. Here’s what NISO’s working group has to say:

“Altmetrics is a broad term that encapsulates the digital collection, creation, and use of multiple forms of assessment that are derived from activity and engagement among diverse stakeholders and scholarly outputs in the research ecosystem.”

As NISO states, when using the term altmetrics it’s important to keep in mind that it is a broad one. Depending on the method you use to track altmetrics impact, altmetrics can include: the number of times research is viewed and downloaded online as well as how often research is referenced online in public policy documents, databases, social media, news media, post-publication peer review forums, blogs, Wikipedia, and more.

While the broad scope of altmetrics impact can make it hard to place into one neatly packaged definition, the versatility of these impact indicators also has its benefits. Altmetrics look at research impact from many angles, focusing more on the early and broader impacts of research accrued separately from and often prior to traditional bibliometric citations. NISO’s report points out that because of this altmetrics can be used as a complement to bibliometric impact indicators, such as the Impact Factor. Of course, it’s essential to think of altmetrics and bibliometric impact indicators as separate entities that cannot be approached in the same way because they take into account entirely different types of impact.

Primary stakeholders and use cases for tracking altmetrics

So, who are the primary stakeholders that are and will continue to be impacted by altmetrics? - pun intended!

In the use cases and definitions report, NISO’s working group outlines 8 key personas and their different needs and motivations for tracking altmetrics. The report found that common threads among all key altmetrics stakeholders include a need and desire to: showcase achievement, evaluate the reach of research, and either more easily find or increase the discoverability of new research.

The 8 key personas outlined in the altmetrics use cases and definitions report are:

Librarians
Research administrators
Members of hiring committees
Members of funding agencies
Academic researchers
Publishing editors
Media officers/public information officers
Content platform providers

There are many commonalities among the 8 stakeholder groups, including that administrators, librarians, and those publishing and funding research all share the aim to showcase the reach and influence of content produced by their organization in order to incentivize scholars to work with them and report back to funders and decision makers. Hiring bodies, funding agencies, and publishers also share a desire to use altmetrics to identify scholars to work with and potential research trends. For publishing scholars, altmetrics are a way to showcase the reach, engagement and influence of their work for grant, funding and tenure proceedings as well as to find potential collaborators and identify popular research within their field.

The NISO report contains a full break down of the most prevalent key stakeholder altmetrics use cases.

Glossary of common altmetrics and impact indicator terms

In addition to a detailed altmetrics use cases breakdown by stakeholder, the report also includes a handy glossary of common terms used when discussing research impact and altmetrics in particular. The definitions offer an opportunity to create common ground among those discussing research impact in general as well as the specifics of altmetrics and bibliometric impact indicators.

What could the standardization of altmetrics mean for scholarly publishing?

The introduction of NISO’s altmetrics and use cases report suggests that altmetrics are and will continue to become a more common impact indicator within academia. As academics explore the many uses of altmetrics and increasingly come to consider them an impact norm, journals will need to take steps to ensure their research has the opportunity to develop altmetrics impact.

Altmetrics are a form of article level metrics collated from a variety of online sources - online being a key term. In order for research outputs to have a chance at developing altmetrics impact, they must have an adequate digital presence. For journals, this means focusing more on having a prominent web presence, publishing articles in accessible digital formats, and ensuring that their articles are discoverable.

Journals can help scholars improve their chances of altmetrics impact by using online social and scholarly communication channels, like social media and blogging, to share their published articles. In this way journals can help scholars get their research in front of a wider audience creating opportunities for it to have earlier and broader impacts within and beyond academia, for which some funding bodies such as the Research Excellence Framework in the UK are now requesting proof.

As more researchers and scholarly organizations embrace altmetrics, it seems that it’s becoming more important than ever for journals to embrace the digital publishing landscape and opportunities to encourage online engagement with their research.

Webinar On-Demand: Altmetrics for Journal Editors

Tue, 05 Apr 2016 11:38:00 -0500

Want to know how other editors are tracking and using altmetrics at their journals to see how you can start applying altmetrics to your publication?

In “Altmetrics for Editors: Engagement, influence, and authors,” a free webinar co-hosted by Scholastica and Altmetric, we asked representatives from 3 journals to explain how they’re using altmetrics impact indicators for both internal and external publication development and to offer advice for how other journals can do the same.

We encourage you to check out the webinar recording, featured above, which is also available on YouTube.

We’re grateful to the following panelists for joining us for this webinar:

Phill Jones: Head of Publisher Outreach, Digital Science
Aaron Weinstein: Managing Editor, Journals of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons
Dustin Lang: Digital Media and Supplements Coordinator, Journals of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons
Paul Trevorrow: Executive Journals Editor, Wiley
Chris Holmes: Serial and Reference Manager, SBL Press

Webinar Highlights:

“Altmetrics for Editors: Engagement, influence, and authors” offers a helpful mix of content, including an overview of what altmetrics are, an explanation of common misconceptions about altmetrics, and case studies of specific strategies and tactics journals have developed to to track and grow their altmetrics impact.

During the webinar, panelists shared the tools they’re using to track their journals’ altmetrics impact, as well as other impact indicators including: Altmetric badges, the SCImago Journal and Country Rank (SJR), Google Metrics and more. The panelists explained how they’re using altmetrics to:

See early impact of articles before citations accrue
Show broader impacts of articles beyond academia - such as mentions in mainstream media and Wikipedia
Track success of journal promotion and outreach activities on Twitter, Facebook, journal blogs and more
Communicate journal value to readers and submitting authors

This webinar highlights strategies that journals of all sizes can use to start tracking their altmetrics impact. We hope you find helpful tips that you can start applying to your publication. Check out the webinar recording above for the complete discussion!

5 Tips for transitioning your journal to new peer review software

Mon, 04 Apr 2016 14:18:15 -0500

Image Credit: James MacIndoe

Are you thinking about making the transition to use a new software platform to manage peer review at your scholarly journal?

Whether you’re currently managing your journal by email, or you’re using a designated peer-review system, you or your editorial board may have some questions about making the switch to new software:

Will the transition to a new platform take a long time?
Will editors or reviewers get confused by the change?
Will it be possible to make a clean break from the old system?

Rest assured, while the prospect of switching software may feel daunting it can be a seamless process and the benefits you’ll get from using a platform that’s a better fit for your journal will last long after you’ve made the switch. Here are some tips to help you make the transition to new software.

1. Map out your journal’s review stages, then determine the best workflow in your new software

Remember, when you adopt a new software platform you don’t want to find yourself trying to use it in the exact way you used your old software. Don’t get caught up trying to recreate every click from your old system - ideally, you’ll be able to have fewer clicks and fewer steps while using your new software so you can save time!

But trying to figure out how to use your new software to achieve your journal’s workflow while trying to learn that software isn’t an easy thing to do. To avoid confusion, you’ll want to take a two step approach to applying your journal’s peer review process to your new system.

As a first step, map out your journal’s review stages. To do this, make a numbered list of everything that needs to happen from the time a manuscript is submitted to your journal to the time a decision is made. Focus on listing out what steps you take during each phase in peer review but NOT how you currently do them. In short, leave your current peer review software system out of the story. Why? While the core of your peer review process should not have to change when you transition to new software (unless you choose to change it), the way you manage and organize peer review will likely change based on the structure and features of the software you choose.

Once you’ve mapped out what you need to be able to do during peer review, you’ll be in a much better position to figure out how to fulfill those steps with your new software. Take some time on your own, or work with a software support specialist, to determine the best way to achieve your journal’s workflow in your new platform.

Tip: What we at Scholastica have learned from working with editors is that it can be helpful to separate the three main aspects of transitioning to new software into discrete phases:

Learn the ins-and-outs of the software
Start managing peer review in the new system
Find ways to improve your peer review process

When editors try to do all three at once it can be frustrating: imagine on the first day of using new software trying to invite reviewers without knowing where that functionality lives, or fielding questions from editors who are still figuring out the new software and who don’t remember what’s next in the “new-and-improved review workflow.” By making sure you and your editors learn your new software first, you can all be successful in moving your peer review process forward. Once you’ve learned the new software, that’s a great time to revisit your peer review process and decide if there are improvements you can make.

2. Make sure all of your editors are in the loop and help onboard them

You’ll of course want to keep your editorial board in the loop as you decide which new software you want to switch to and as you make the transition to that system. Some of your editors may have concerns about how the transition will affect day-to-day peer review work, namely if it will make life harder for them. You’ll want to take steps to onboard your editors to the new software and assuage any concerns they have:

Take the peer review process you mapped out in step 1 and share it with your team. Make sure you’re all on the same page about the steps in your process and that everyone understands how you plan to recreate that process using your new software.
Have the lead user (whoever will be using the software the most) “scout ahead” and use the new system enough to write down the best way for everyone to use it. This will help other editors know exactly what to do rather than each person having to figure it out for themselves.
Reach out to your new software provider to see what training opportunities they offer. For example, Scholastica offers free lead editor and team trainings to all new journals.

3. Gather all of your peer reviewer data

Having easy access to your journal’s core pool of peer reviewers is paramount. Ideally, you should be able to transfer all the peer review contacts and information you need to your new software to avoid having to work between your new platform and a spreadsheet or email-based system.

Before switching to your new software, you’ll want to compile a list of all your journal’s peer reviewers and any pertinent information about them that you need to easily have on-hand. Among reviewer information to consider is:

If you use email, how often do you send reviewer reminders? Know this so you can program your new software accordingly.
Do you need to be able to categorize your peer reviewers based on availability, specialty etc.? Map out how you would like to be able to do that - then you can determine how to achieve this using new software. For example, Scholastica has the option to add custom tags to peer reviewers so you can group them in multiple ways using your journal’s terminology.
Have your reviewer feedback form ready so you can recreate it in the new system.
Move your commonly-used emails (reviewer invitations, decision letters, etc.) into your new software.

A tip for dealing with your past reviewer list: moving to a new system is a good time to clean up your reviewer database. Remove reviewers who have dead email addresses or have consistently declined to review for your journal.

4. Move manuscripts to your new system

When you make the transition to use new software, one thing you’ll definitely want to minimize is the time you spend continuing to manage manuscripts using your old system after your new software is in place. To avoid this:

Update your journal website and submissions page to link to your new submission system right away, so you aren’t getting submissions in two places. Move all new, untouched, submissions to your new system. Set a date for when you will switch to your new software, and from that point on make sure new and revised manuscripts go through your new system while you phase out the old system by completing reviews and making decisions for articles still active in it.

5. Start managing all peer review communication on your new platform right away

In addition to ensuring that all your journal’s submissions are moved to your new software, to avoid having to manage peer review in two places, you’ll also want to start moving all of your peer review communication over to your new platform.

For example:

Set up communication templates, such as decision templates and reviewer reminders in your new system (don’t use old templates, especially emai).
Use any built-in communication your new software offers rather than continuing to use email or another outside system.
Move any editorial team scheduling into your new software. For example, on Scholastica all journals have a Todo Dashboard, which is a collection of a journal’s to-dos and due dates across all manuscripts that editors can use to post the tasks they’re working on or assign tasks to team members.

Conclusion

If you want to make your transition to new software as easy as possible, it’s best to try and make a clean break from your old system. Make sure you have all the data you need to move over to your new software, get your editorial team onboard, and work with your new software provider to figure out the best way to use their software to fit your needs. By focusing on learning the best way to apply new software to your journal’s peer review process and working to switch to your new system as qiuckly as possible you’ll be able to make the transition with ease.

Getting Published in an Academic Journal for the First Time: One author’s experience

Thu, 31 Mar 2016 11:54:16 -0500

Julien Varennes

When it comes to getting published in academic journals, every scholar has to start somewhere. For researchers, their first journal submission can be a nerve-wracking endeavor, especially since most find themselves trying to learn the ins-and-outs of submitting to an academic journal and the peer review process on their own with little formal guidance. All challenges aside, tackling that first journal submission can also be a great learning experience for scholars, particularly graduate students working on their PhD thesis.

For Julien Varennes, a physics PhD student at Purdue University, the process of submitting a review to an academic journal helped him to not only get hands-on experience dealing with the technical requirements of preparing a review for publication, but to also expand his knowledge of his research field. Check out what Julien had to say about his experience getting published for the first time.

Can you briefly explain your first academic journal submission?

JV: My advisor and I were invited to submit a literature review to “Physics-inspired Micro/Nano-therapeutics,” a special issue of the American Chemical Society (ACS) journal Molecular Pharmaceutics. A research collaborator of ours invited us in August to submit a literature review by December, and my advisor asked that I take lead on the piece. The final article we submitted is entitled Sense and sensitivity: physical limits to multicellular sensing and drug response.

How did you go about preparing your submission? Did you have contact with the journal throughout the process?

JV: The only contact I had with the journal beforehand was a letter from one of the editors of the special issue stating our invitation to submit by a certain deadline. I realize this is more contact than most authors have with the journals they want to submit to, but I don’t think it necessarily made writing the article any easier!

As a physics graduate student who has been conducting research for only about a year, it is not typical to write a literature review on the subject you’re studying before having published any work in that domain. That said, being asked to write this review felt like a daunting task. I needed to do an expansive literature survey to make sure I understood the state of the art of the field in order to write with confidence.

My advisor and I worked together to create goals and outline milestones for the review’s progress as the deadline neared. Something that was nice about having a due date for the article was that in some respects the deadline was like a light at the end of the tunnel. I can imagine that writing an unsolicited article may seem more overwhelming because you’re working on your own timeline, and might feel prone to taking longer with the thought that more time will lead to a better article. Something I think might be helpful for students submitting to a journal for the first time without a due date is to set their own internal deadline so that they can have an end point to look forward to as they work.

Is there anything you learned while working on your review that would have been helpful to know in advance?

JV: Looking back on the process of composing my first submission, there are some things - both technical and knowledge-based - that I would have benefited from knowing before starting the paper. First, having a working knowledge of LaTeX, BibTeX, and also of some computer graphics software would have been enormously helpful. The review was written in LaTex and citations managed with BibTeX, so having a prior working knowledge of those would have been helpful.

Instead, I had to learn as I went using the internet as my guide. The LaTeX wikibook as well as the TeX Stack Exchange were the most helpful resources I used. Making figures for the review was something else I had to teach myself. I learned the basics of Inkscape (a vector graphics software package) by watching an introductory tutorial of Inkscape on YouTube, and was ultimately able to make the kind of figures I wanted to include in my article.

What was the actual submission process like for you - do you have any tips for authors to ensure things go smoothly?

JV: When it came time to submit my literature review, the actual submission process did not take very long - maybe a couple hours. My review was submitted using the source TeX files. A brief cover letter was also required along with a list of suggested reviewers. I did encounter some technical problems when I wanted to upload a preprint to the arXiv. The actual submission process to the arXiv is very straightforward, but once the review was uploaded I realized that some of the figures I had created did not properly render when viewed in most web browsers. This required saving the figures I made in a different file extension (.png instead of .pdf) and uploading a new version of the preprint to the arXiv. I think this was a problem caused by the figures outputted by Inkscape and not something on the side of the arXiv.

Of course, from this situation I would advise anyone to really check over every aspect of their submission before pressing send to make sure everything is the way it needs to be. Things can happen in the upload process so really look over your final submission carefully to catch any glitches.

What was your overall experience writing a literature review - do you think other graduate students could benefit from seeking the opportunity to do the same?

JV: Overall, the opportunity to write a literature review has been beneficial to the progress of my PhD. Generally, being published in an ACS journal will strengthen my research portfolio. More personally, writing the review on a deadline while also keeping up with my own research was an exercise in the balancing act that is academia! The review was difficult to write, to say the least, but taking the time to write it has also helped me as I am currently preparing for my preliminary exam. Writing the review required me to gain a deeper understanding of my field, which has helped me better frame my PhD thesis and understand how it fills a gap in knowledge in the field of biophysics.

Although the opportunity may be rare, I would definitely recommend writing a literature review to another graduate student. It may - and probably will - seem overwhelming at times, but in the end, you really will feel more confident in your understanding of your field and your future research projects.

I would also encourage more graduate research advisors to offer literature review opportunities to their graduate students. Most literature review invitations are given to established researchers because their experience and existing knowledge of the state of the field makes them the default options. However, I think graduate students would be eager authors of literature reviews, and could potentially offer different insights to literature reviews since they tend to not be as bound - an effect merely of their lack of experience! - to any one theory or practice.

5 Reasons Your Law Review Should be Sending Rejections

Tue, 29 Mar 2016 11:06:44 -0500

What a rejection decision email looks like to an author.

It’s easy to make article decisions in Scholastica. It takes exactly 4 clicks to send an “Accept” decision, and exactly 4 clicks to send a “Reject” decision. It takes 8 seconds to send a rejection — I timed it (ok, it takes 7.97 seconds if you want to be really precise).

Despite how quick and easy making decisions is, many journals still fail to notify authors of article rejections. We get it, sending rejections may not be the most pressing task on your mind when you have to think about getting out your next issue on time. But, have you considered some of the many reasons why you should be sending decisions for all articles? Here are 5 reasons your law review should start prioritizing sending rejection emails:

1. Rejecting articles keeps old submissions out of your Manuscript Table

Tired of tons of old submissions clogging up your Manuscript Table every time you log in to do your work? The easiest — and only — fix to get old submissions out of your view is to make decisions on them.

2. Rejecting articles helps your team focus on only what you might publish

It’s alright to reject an article without doing an in-depth review if it’s something that your law review would never publish due to being out of your journal’s aims and scope. As an editor, it doesn’t take long to know whether or not a submission is in the ballpark of something you would publish. Taking a few seconds to immediately reject those articles that aren’t in your ballpark will help keep your team’s queue short and focused — and it will let the submitting author know that your silence doesn’t mean you’re still considering them!

3. Rejecting articles can reduce the inbound emails you get from authors

When you never send an author an update about the article they submitted, then the author never knows your decision for certain. That means authors might keep reaching out to you, asking about where their article is in your review queue. The easiest way to keep authors from checking in on articles you have decided you’re not going to publish is to send them a rejection. It’s not mean, it’s courteous!

4. Rejecting articles lets authors make better decisions about where they’re going to publish

You as an editor you benefit when you reject articles you’ve decided not to publish (see 1-3 above!). Believe it or not, authors also get a benefit. When you let an author know that you’re not going to publish their article, you allow them to focus on submitting to other law reviews. Until you notify an author about your decision they reasonably will think that your team is still considering their piece for publication, which means they may not take offers elsewhere that they would take if they knew you were rejecting their article.

5. Authors prefer rejections over never hearing from you

I asked authors on Scholastica’s Conversation:

Given a law journal has decided not to publish your article, would you rather: 1) receive a rejection in Scholastica from the journal, or 2) never hear anything from the journal?

Here’s how they answered:

Urban Studies Research In Practice: Interview with Anaid Yerena

Mon, 21 Mar 2016 13:33:54 -0500

Image: Anaid Yerena

Academic research isn’t meant to just remain in scholarly papers, it’s meant to influence real-world ideas, initiatives, and decision-making. For researchers, that means finding ways to communicate their work to mainstream audiences and, where possible, ways to implement it.

Anaid Yerena, Assistant Professor of Urban Studies at University of Washington Tacoma, has made using her scholarship to create real social change a top priority. After becoming an architect, Anaid got her PhD in urban planning and found that low-income housing was the place where both of her interests converged, encompassing issues of social justice and the built environment. She now researches affordable housing and is pursuing projects to help cities more effectively design new low-income housing initiatives. In a recent interview, Anaid took the time to detail the kinds of projects she’s worked on, how she’s making her research more openly accessible, and how she brings experiential learning into her classes.

Q&A with Anaid Yerena

What sorts of affordable housing initiatives have you worked on?

AY: My first public project was for the city of Long Beach, California. I worked with a local advocacy organization, as part of a larger team of advisors, to help the city identify appropriate sites for low-income households. My goal was to help the advocacy organization provide substantive comments to the city that would further the affordable housing effort. This happened in the context of the city’s Housing Element plan, which is a plan that is developed by every city in the state of California every eight years.

In this work I was taking into consideration the end user, so someone who will probably benefit from having access to public transportation, who does not want to end up in an area that already has a high proportion of crime and poverty, and so on. I chose several criteria, assessed each one of the sites that was proposed for affordable housing, and set a benchmark. If any of the sites scored below the benchmark, they were not deemed suitable for affordable housing.

How has working on affordable housing initiatives impacted your research?

AY: As a researcher working on an affordable housing plan for the city of Long Beach, I realized that there was no way to really measure the kind and amount of influence advocacy organizations were having on city decision making. So, I did a study detailed in my recent paper, “The Impact of Advocacy Organizations on Low-Income Housing Policy in U.S. Cities,” which looked at a survey of all cities in the U.S. with over 100,000 people and measured the influence of advocacy organizations on housing policy. The analysis I conducted looked at how, holding everything else constant, certain variables impacted city decision-making. The city variables included: how much the city’s budget is allocated towards housing, and how that affects the portion they’re going to dedicate to affordable housing; how many people are in the city (larger cities have larger budgets than smaller cities); and how great the need for housing ranked among other factors. The variables I introduced about advocacy groups were the average age of the groups in each city and the combined income that the organizations had in each city.

The variables I was looking at showed that at the national level – and on average – advocacy organizations did make a difference on how much the city would spend on affordable housing. Specifically, on average, one extra year in advocacy organization mean age within the city results in a 4.2% increase in housing and community development spending per capita, all else being equal.

What steps have you taken to make your research on affordable housing available and digestible for a mainstream, non-scholarly audience?

AY: From my recent article on the impact that advocacy organizations have on affordable housing decision-making, I created a report that is really user-friendly. It’s a four to five page report of the findings. I intend for it to be distributed among the organizations I interviewed. This report is also accessible through my personal website for the general public.

I want to make sure that my research reaches people in cities in general, as well as the specific groups for which I am providing it. That’s where open access, in my view, makes the biggest difference, because I know that none of these people have access to journal subscriptions. The University of Washington library has been a huge help with this. The library encourages all faculty to have a selected works website. The library staff reads over any contracts we have with publishers and they then actually update our selected works websites and make available a copy of all our newest research as soon as possible. So if you wanted to download one of my articles and you don’t have a subscription to the journal where it was published, then you could go to my selected works website and you could have access to the latest draft before it was edited and formatted for the journal.

Are you working on any follow-up research to your recent article on the impact of advocacy organizations on low-income housing development?

AY: Yes. The second phase of the work is a qualitative piece. I looked at a case study of four cities in the county of L.A. that had strong support for low-income housing. Two of these cities had the expected results, in other words they had very strong advocacy organizations and they were spending more than the average city on housing. Vice versa, two of the cities did not have a lot of advocacy organizations and they were not spending a lot on affordable housing.

I wanted to consider these two expected cases and two unexpected cases to ask the question: how do the advocacy groups in these cities go about promoting affordable housing policies? Additionally, I wanted to better understand what role the cities played in promoting affordable housing. Because, especially in cities where there weren’t many advocacy organizations but where the city was still spending a lot, I wanted to see how and why that was happening. I have an article on this research in the works.

As a teacher of urban studies, how do you help students make connections between their coursework and the real-world?

AY: Experiential learning is one of my motivators for being in the classroom beyond just sharing information, which I think is only a part of the education process. My goal is to give students the opportunity to feel like they’ve made a difference themselves. For example, last quarter I taught a class on research design, and I had the students experience what it is like to design a small research project, to go and survey people, to then analyze the information and come up with a conclusion based on the data they gathered.

We’re very fortunate here at the University of Washington Tacoma because we are an urban serving institution. You want students – especially in our field – to experience the city rather than living in suburban campuses where they are far removed from a lot of the problems we discuss in classes. At University of Washington we are in the city, we have urban issues, and we’re really part of the urban fabric.

Altmetrics for Editors: Free webinar hosted by Scholastica and Altmetric

Fri, 18 Mar 2016 08:52:50 -0500

On Wednesday March 30, 2016 at 10AM EST/3PM BST, Altmetric and Scholastica are co-hosting a free webinar, “Altmetrics for journal editors: engagement, influence and authors,” Click here to register!

If your editorial board is not yet tracking the altmetrics impact of your journal’s articles, you may be wondering how you can use altmetrics data to improve your journal’s outreach and engagement strategy and where to begin.

On March 30, 2016 at 10AM EST/3pm BST, Altmetric and Scholastica are co-hosting “Altmetrics for journal editors: engagement, influence and authors,” a free webinar that will overview what altmetrics are, ways to collect and interpret altmetrics data, and how your journal can benefit from tracking altmetrics.

You’ll learn:

What altmetrics are and how you can track them at your journal (including free tools!)
How tracking altmetrics can help you attract more readers and submissions
Ways journals that have an altmetrics strategy are using their data

Hosted by Phill Jones from Digital Science, the webinar will feature guest speakers from Scholastica, Wiley, Journal of Biblical Literature, and the journals of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. Webinar speakers will share strategies that journals of all sizes, regardless of budget, can use to begin gathering and applying altmetrics insights.

We invite you to join this discussion before and during the webinar via Twitter, by using the hashtag #AltmetricsForEds.

Use #AltmetricsForEds to post your questions about altmetrics and share your thoughts on and experience with altmetrics tracking. Altmetric (@altmetric) and Scholastica (@scholasticahq) will be using this hashtag to answer your questions during and after the webinar presentation and tweet out helpful tips and resources.

If you’ve been thinking about trying altmetrics tracking at your journal now’s the time to start! Visit the registration page to save your spot at this free webinar.

Your Guide to Digital Scholarly Journal Publishing: Announcing new free ebook

Tue, 15 Mar 2016 17:34:37 -0500

Get tips to make your academic journal more digitally focused in Scholastica’s new free-to-download ebook resource: The Journal Editor’s Definitive Guide to Digital Publishing.

Are you and your editorial team updating how you publish your academic journal to meet the needs of scholars in the “digital age”?

With scholars increasingly conducting the bulk of their research online, developing a digital-centric publishing strategy has never been more critical for the future of your academic journal. From giving your journal an appealing and mobile-friendly web-presence to ensuring your articles can be found in research databases and via mainstream search engines, there’s a lot to consider.

While most editors know that they need to make their journal more online-focused, taking steps to get started can prove challenging. Devising an effective digital strategy requires adopting new skills and technology, as well as reconsidering familiar publishing practices.

In a new free Scholastica ebook The Journal Editor’s Definitive Guide to Digital Publishing, we overview the primary aspects of digital publishing that your journal’s editorial board should tackle first, as well as steps to easily get started.

You’ll learn how to:

Establish your journal’s online presence
Make your journal’s website and articles more discoverable online
Find ways to link and resurface popular and related articles
Use technology to make your content cheaply or freely accessible

We’ve also included real-life examples of journals using Scholastica that have and continue to advance their digital-publishing strategy.

In addition to digital journal publishing steps and tips that you can implement right now, the ebook delves into the future of online journals. We explore the outlook for journals transitioning to digital-only publishing, as well as scholars using technology to publish journals on their own.

The ebook includes commentary from leading scholars including, Cambridge mathematician Sir Timothy Gowers, who worked with Scholastica to launch one of the first scholar-run, free-to-read and free-to-publish-in arXiv overlay journals Discrete Analysis. As well as insights from Peter Suber, director of the Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication and co-founder of the Open Access Directory (OAD), who’s followed the progression of journals declaring independence from corporate publishers since the late 1980’s.

The “digital age” presents endless opportunities for your editorial team to improve your journal. It’s also a time for the academic community as a whole to come together to revamp traditional journal publishing practices and make research more widely accessible. This ebook will help you gain your footing in the digital-publishing landscape and take the steps you need to start modernizing your journal.

We hope you enjoy this free resource and invite you to share it with your colleagues. We’d also love to hear what you think about it! Let us know on Twitter by tweeting at @scholasticahq!

The New Look of Law Review: The Legal Ease—Podcast of the Louisiana Law Review

Thu, 10 Mar 2016 11:13:39 -0600

The Legal Ease—Podcast of the Louisiana Law Review

The following post was contributed by Volume 76 of the Louisiana Law Review. If your law review is doing something cool to further your journal like the team at LLR, and you’d like to share it on our blog, please let us know!

Lawyers are busy people. And to be good at their jobs, they need to be able to easily access and consume the latest legal information. The Louisiana Law Review created our podcast—The Legal Ease—with this in mind.

For those new to podcasting, a podcast is a type of internet radio show that can be accessed at the convenience of the listener, and because all of our content is available on any smartphone, lawyers and students can listen to it while they drive, eat, or at any other convenient time. Not only that, podcasts are citable per The Bluebook, which gives the content of each episode academic and legal force.

Starting The Legal Ease Podcast

Making podcasts is cheap and easy. We started with under $800 in equipment that allows us to record phone and Skype calls, as well as quality in-studio interviews. We use Audacity, a free audio software, to edit each podcast episode, and our Online Editor learned everything that he needed to know to produce and edit the show from YouTube.

Our goal is to produce one podcast episode per month, and each episode may contain multiple segments. A segment may be student-run or an interview with a professional.

Getting law review editors onboard

Getting busy people — like law review members — to take on considerably more work with a podcast can be challenging. Here is what worked for us.

First, the Online Editor created titles and accompanying responsibilities for each title. This gave volunteers an extra line on their resume and allowed the volunteer podcast members to understand their new role. Second, we found that adopting an “eat what you kill” policy, where whoever pulled in a big name guest got to interview them, incentivized people to hunt down quality guests. Finally, we found people who were good behind a microphone and allowed them to appear in recurring segments so there was always content flowing into the show. Those who wanted to participate, but not necessarily be featured on the show, helped recruit interviewees, edit and brainstorm content, and schedule the recordings.

The type and direction of content on the show is mainly driven by the volunteer segment hosts, those that contribute ideas at our regular meetings, and the Online Editor. We often try to incorporate a Louisiana focus in our segments because that best suits our market, but we also balance this by periodically featuring national topics. In essence, we want to be sure that all of our material is current, compelling, and practical to our listeners.

A new way to facilitate the dissemination of legal content

So far, we have produced six episodes and have recently completed a two-part series with Judge James Dennis, former Chief Justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court and current judge on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. We have also featured federal Judges Lee Rosenthal and Elizabeth Foote, in addition to numerous local practitioners and professors. The caliber of the guests who agreed to contribute to The Legal Ease has exceeded our expectations. Judges, practitioners, and professors have gladly contributed, because they can easily impart knowledge on a particular legal topic, and recording the podcast is a lot of fun. Also, because interviews can be done by phone, we can work around our guests’ busy schedules, and it is not a problem if our guest cannot do the interview in-studio.

Expanding the Louisiana Law Review’s online presence was a priority for this year’s Board of Editors, especially the Online Editor. Although we started with minimal equipment and experience, The Legal Ease has taken off and is a growing topic of conversation among Louisiana’s legal community.

The Legal Ease is still in its infancy, but we look forward to being on the cutting-edge of disseminating legal information in an innovative way. Even though the Louisiana Law Review stays dedicated to its print publication, we recognize that the legal community consumes information in a different way today. Therefore, we strive to meet that need by providing easily accessible, relevant, and timely legal information through the vehicle of The Legal Ease.

The Legal Ease is free to listeners on iTunes and SoundCloud. The podcast, along with notes and commentary on each episode, can be found on the Louisiana Law Review’s website at https://lawreview.law.lsu.edu/podcast/.

3 surefire ways to be an author's favorite law review

Mon, 07 Mar 2016 11:42:46 -0600

It’s March. You’re a law review editor reading dozens of submissions per week, trying to find some articles that you want to publish. Your life is busy and stressful, and sometimes you feel like you just don’t have time to deal with authors who are inquiring about where their submission is in your selection process.

We get that. Authors get that. But there are still some easy ways to offer authors — who are also stressed out by the article selection process — at least a small sense of comfort about where their submission stands.

Here are 3 super easy ways that your law review can make the spring article selection cycle a little more bearable for authors:

1. Let authors know that you’re reviewing their submissions.

One of the most frustrating aspects of being an author submitting to law reviews is not knowing if and when your article is being read. Authors understand your law review is getting hundreds of submissions, and they want to be sure that their article is not lost in the abyss that is your Manuscript Table!

As a law review editor, you have a really easy way to let authors know that you are reading their submissions: use the submission hashtag to tweet out that you’ve started article selection! It’s as simple as:

We’ve started reviewing articles! If you’ve submitted or are planning on it, we look forward to reading your article soon. #LRSubmissions

That’s all it takes! And if you’re feeling really communicative, you can even tweet out mid-cycle that you’re still busy reviewing.

2. Send rejections! Trust us, authors love them.

Alright, authors probably don’t “love” rejections. But from all the authors we’ve heard from, we understand that getting a rejection is much more satisfying than never ever hearing back about a submission.

Don’t believe it? Read for yourself: authors want to hear a decision from you.

Why wouldn’t you want to make authors happy — not to mention keep your Scholastica account neat and tidy?

If you’re not going to publish an author’s article, you can let them know in a couple ways. You can Make a Decision on each article as you go, you can Quick Reject multiple articles at a time, or you can Bulk Reject when you’ve finished finding all the articles for your volume.

Hate the idea of emailing an author to tell them that you aren’t going to accept their article? You can still let them know without emailing them. Scholastica has a feature where you can send a decision to an author’s Scholastica account without emailing the author — that way they can see your decision when they log in, and you don’t have to feel like you’re ruining someone’s day by sending them a rejection email.

No author is going to dislike your law review because you send them a rejection. The probability of creating unhappy authors is much higher if you never send them a decision!

3. When you’re done reviewing submissions, let authors know so they can stop angsting about whether you’re going to publish their article.

We get it: you found great articles to fill your volume, and you just want to be done! By spending just an extra 15 minutes, you can do two things to be a very classy publication and offer all the authors you didn’t publish this year some closure.

First, you can close your law review to new submissions, and let all the authors you didn’t publish know that your volume is full. This means that authors will not continue to submit when you’re definitely not going to review their article, and the authors that have already submitted know that you’re all set for your volume.

Second, you can send a thank you to everyone who submitted. Maybe it’s via the Bulk Reject feature in Scholastica, where you can tell all the authors you didn’t publish that you appreciated their submissions and look forward to reading work from them in the future. Or maybe you send out a tweet again, to quickly get the word out that you’re done choosing articles from a great pool of submissions.

However you notify authors that you’re done reviewing submissions, they are sure to be more fond of your law review than of a law review that leaves it’s submitting authors hanging!

It’s not hard to reach out to authors, and the three ways listed above are some of the easiest ways you can communicate effectively with authors that want to publish with your law review. If you’re not doing any of the above points already, we hope you try some of them out!