coppens@acsu.buffalo.edu,dmitrien@crys.ras.ru,h.schenk@uva.nl,steve.wilkins@csiro.au,pierre.bordet@grenoble.cnrs.fr,gervais.chapuis@epfl.ch,chris.howard@newcastle.edu.au,kaduk@polycrystallography.com,Keiichiro.Ogawa@post.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp,urszular@amu.edu.pl,mark.spackman@uwa.edu.au,dave.billing@wits.ac.za,ssctng@sscu.iisc.ernet.in,welberry@rsc.anu.edu.au,a.j.blake@nottingham.ac.uk,adb@chem.sdu.dk,m.r.j.elsegood@lboro.ac.uk,falvello@unizar.es,pfanwick@purdue.edu,actac@st-andrews.ac.uk,iguzei@chem.wisc.edu,mkubicki@amu.edu.pl,langer@chalmers.se,bds@uic.edu,a.l.spek@uu.nl,amber.thompson@chem.ox.ac.uk,d.s.yufit@durham.ac.uk,baggio@cnea.gov.ar,daran@lcc-toulouse.fr,john.gallagher@dcu.ie,mitchell.guss@sydney.edu.au,janet.newman@csiro.au,elspeth.garman@bioch.ox.ac.uk,kbiradha@yahoo.com,idbrown@mcmaster.ca,vladimir@struct.chem.msu.ru,parthod123@rediffmail.com,l.fabian@uea.ac.uk,fabry@fzu.cz,fejfarov@fzu.cz,magdan@amu.edu.pl,ken.haller@gmail.com,owenjohnson26@gmail.com,kojic@irb.hr,sergey.lindeman@mu.edu,g.s.nichol@ed.ac.uk,parvez@ucalgary.ca,G.M.Rosair@hw.ac.uk,Rybakov@struct.chem.msu.ru,Edward.Tiekink@gmail.com,avderlee@univ-montp2.fr,mzeller@ysu.edu,terese.bergfors@icm.uu.se,jmgruiz@ugr.es,robyn@scripps.edu,sewonsuh@snu.ac.kr,andrew.allen@nist.gov,borbely@emse.fr,tforsyth@ill.fr,kantardjieff@csupomona.edu,sasaki@n.cc.titech.ac.jp,berman@bnl.gov,craievich@if.usp.br,IceGE@ornl.gov Plenary Meeting 2011 Euroforum Infantes, San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Spain 19 August, 19:00-20:00; 21 August 11:00-13:00, Auditorio-02 Chair: Gernot Kostorz Attendees: all Editors and Coeditors Chester staff : Nicola Ashcroft, Jill Bradshaw, Sean Conway, David Hoare Gillian Holmes, Louise Jones, Peter Strickland, Tony Weight INTRODUCTORY PLENARY MEETING (19 August, 19:00-20:00) 1. INTRODUCTION AND WELCOME Gernot Kostorz opened the meeting by welcoming everyone and thanking everyone for attending and for their work on the journals. 1.1. WELCOME AND PRACTICAL ARRANGEMENTS Peter Strickland outlined the general arrangements for the meeting. 1.2. INTRODUCTIONS All attendees were asked to stand up and introduce themselves to everybody, saying a few words on what they enjoyed about working on the journals and why they chose to accept to become Co-editors. 1.3. SCIENTIFIC EDITING - PUBLISHING A GOOD JOURNAL AND THE WORK INVOLVED Gernot Kostorz described the work involved in scientific editing. He began by describing the publishing activities of the IUCr journals, highlighting that approximately 7000 articles were published last year, the majority in Acta E. He also congratulated Peter Strickland for an ALPSP Award [details?]. Other topics covered included the impact factor of the journals, citations and research integrity. The duties and responsibilities of Co-editors were also highlighted, including problem areas to look out for such as plagiarism and fabrication of data. MAIN PLENARY MEETING (21 August 2011, 11:00-13:00) 2. CHESTER REPORT Appendix 1 of the agenda notes described general information on the journals, including the triennial report, journal printing, finances and subscriptions, journal statistics, author rights and open access. Peter Strickland was available to answer any questions on the information provided in Appendix 1 and on any other aspects of the IUCr publishing operations. No questions were asked, and it was noted that the triennial report will have a new format in the future with separate statistics and summary for each journal. 3. MATTERS ARISING FROM INDIVIDUAL JOURNAL MEETINGS Walter Steurer suggested that the scope of Acta A should be extended, and perhaps for the journal to have the subtitle of `Frontiers of Crystallography' or `Advances in Crystallography' rather than the current `Foundations of Crystallography'. The scope should also include photonic crystals and multiferrics, and Co-editors should be sought to cover these topics and review articles invited. Carol Brock announced that the new Section Editor for Acta B would be Sander van Smaalen, who would be a strong editor for modulated and incommensurate structures, phase transitions and electron density studies. There are concerns about the place of molecular structures in Acta B, with declining contributions and the loss of papers to competitors such as Crystal Growth and Design. What can we do to make Acta B more attractive to authors? Crystallographers are not in general self-promoting but they must make their case. It was questioned whether there would be an overlap with Acta A, but Walter Steurer replied that he did not think so but there should be discussions on which areas go in which journals. Sandy Blake reported that the meeting for Acta C was based around the induction of new Co-editors, the challenges for the journal, and the standards to be kept. One issue arising was the difficulty in finding suitable reviewers. It was questioned as to whether the standards applied to ACta C papers are accepted in the field; Sandy replied that if we lower them we will receive less reliable papers; the standards are high but justified. Ted Baker summarised the combined Acta D and Acta F meeting. There were two main points: (i) For structural papers we are the only journal requiring validation so are ahead of the field; but we would like to go one step further and give reviewers access to coordinates and experimental data, so would like to discuss this with the Protein Data Bank. (ii) We would like to give the reviewers access to the reports of the other referees as it is good for reviewers to see other opinions. There are two places we could do this: when the revised article is sent back for a final check, and when the final decision on the paper is made. This could also be made possible for the other IUCr journals. Howard Einspahr added, for Acta F, a proposal to have a more skeletonized structure representation, which would help publishing papers more rapidly. This will be worked towards in the next triennium in order to formulate a more Acta-E-like publication. Jim Simpson, reporting on the Acta E meeting, discussed the common problems associated with the submission of a large number of papers, and expressed concern at the level of carelessness of some authors. Education to improve submissions is required for some authors. The journal was thought to be alive and well on the whole, even though there have been some difficulties like the fraud cases discovered earlier in the year. Also, open access does not seem to have put people off publishing in Acta E. Andrew Allen, commenting on the JAC meeting, said that the journal has a very broad remit and a wide range of papers. Occasionally there are issues, such as with the Computer Programs type of papers, where authors need to read the Notes for Authors and keep to the guidelines for that type of paper. Finding reviewers is also becoming more of a problem. He questioned whether we could we make it a requirement for a submitting author to list five possible reviewers. It was also suggested that, for the International Year of Crystallography in 2013, perhaps all papers could be made open access. Peter Strickland also added that Co-editors could be reminded when an article has been with a reviewer for some time, for example 2.5 weeks; an email could be sent automatically to the Co-editor. Reviewer anonymity was also brought up as it is important to make sure all contributions by a reviewer are anonymous. At the moment, for Co-editors who use the submission system, the IUCr makes all attachment files anonymous, but this is only 95% safe. It was questioned whether the 5% that fail could be marked and highlighted so that the Coe-ditor can check the attachments manually. Gene Ice missed the JSR meeting owing to flight problems so Ake Kvick reviewed the meeting. The next three years will show the emergence of papers on free-electron lasers (FELs) so the journal should be active in attracting these papers. In the near future there is expected to be a lot of submissions from China so we need to find a new Co-editor from mainland China to filter out these papers. Support was given to the new category of beamlines papers, which will be good for the impact factor and good for the beamline scientists; the IUCr should contact all beamline managers to encourage and invite submissions. It was also mentioned that it is becoming more difficult to find reviewers for a paper, and that the publishing special issues in JSR continues. Gernot suggested that all journals might look for mainland China Co-editors. He also mentioned the problems of finding reviewers and wondered whether we could reward reviewers or give them some kind of recognition. Peter added that we now have a database of al the referees that have worked with us since the new submission system was set up, and perhaps we could give them an electronic reprint of the papers they have worked on or send out New Year's greetings, for example. 4. TERMS OF OFFICE The conditions of the terms of office for Editors and Co-editor were highlighted and it was proposed that the maximum nine-year period remained intact. The IUCr are responsible for keeping a record of the length of time a Co-editor has been working for a particular journal. 5. TALK ON FRAUD Jim Simpson gave a summary of the problems with fraud in Acta E and the various strategies that have been used to identify problem structures. He began by giving the history and background of Acta E, including its attractiveness to authors without a good command of the English language owing to the relatively small amount of text in an Acta E paper. He went on to discuss validation techniques, including PLATON and checkcif, and then described how, in 2010, a random check resulted in some suspicious structures being found in papers published in 2007, with further checks unearthing about 70 structures found to be falsified. There have now been about 140 retractions and by the end of this year this number is expected to have risen to about 200. The three major strategies used to falsify the data were described, and the retraction process and aftermath once the fraud was made public were discussed. As a result validation checks have improved since the discovery and new checks have been incorporated. 6. NEW JOURNALS 6.1. PROCEEDINGS JOURNAL An outline was given in Appendix 2 of the Agenda Notes for the proposal of a proceedings journal, `Advances in Crystallography', which would cover large proceedings that might have been published in IUCr Journals such as those of the SAS and XAFS meetings. Generally proceedings are difficult to produce, with a large workload for Chester staff and also for Co-editors. They are also expensive, with our prices being higher than for `camera-ready' publishers. Comments on the proposal from the attendees were requested, and the question was asked as to whether the IUCr should get involved with publishing such proceedings. It was mentioned that the impact factor is generally low for such journals as there are a lot of papers and many are not too interesting; also, few recognised authors tended to publish in large proceedings, and not many original or good papers were submitted. In view of these remarks it was questioned why we were thinking of publishing a proceedings journal, and Gernot replied that no-one is pushing for it but we must put the issue out there for reaction. It was pointed out that Journal of Physics recently published papers from a recent conference online free of charge, could we not do the same? Peter reported that the costs involved, even for an electronic-only journal, are similar to those for a printed journal, and that if work needs to be done at the Chester offices then the costs will be higher. Andrew Allen suggested that the issue was not the impact factor but how many citations the conference issue receives, and thought it made a lot of sense for the IUCr to cover conferences. Jim Kaduk, having experience of the Denver Conferences, commented that it was becoming more and more difficult to get authors to contribute as such journals do not count for much in their minds. It was also mentioned that a proceedings journal would not affect special issues, where 10-15 selected papers are published from a conference, which will remain in the individual journals. 6.2. OPEN ACCESS JOURNALS An outline was given in Appendix 3 of the Agenda Notes for the proposal of an open access journal covering crystallography as a whole. This is in response to a number of larger publishers starting open access peer-reviewed journals covering a wide subject area. For example, the Public Library of Science has launched PLoS ONE, covering all disciplines within science and medicine; the Nature Publishing Group launched Scientific Reports in June 2011, which covers biology, chemistry, the earth sciences and physics; and the American Physical Society will launch Physical Review X in autumn 2011, which will cover all fields of physics. These may overlap and be competition for IUCr journals so we must investigate quite quickly so we do not lose ground. Comments were invited from the attendees. It was questioned whether this might compete scientifically with topical reviews in Acta A or Acta B, but the proposal would be to convert a current journal to open access, perhaps Acta A, so would not expect much competition, though we would need to be careful and if set up correctly it should be ok. 7. GENERAL POLICY MATTERS 7.1. ARTICLE TRANSFER The process of trasnferring a paper to another IUCr journal was highlighted. The final choice about transferring a paper should be the author's, if they want to re-submit let them decide where to; though the Co-editor should have the courage to reject a bad paper rather than moving it around other journals. 7.2. REVIEW BOARDS A review board (a set of reviewers who agree to handle a defined number of papers per year for a journal) has been in place for Section F for over a year. This has shown to be working well for Acta F and it was mentioned that it might be a way of reducing the number of Co-editors on some journals. 7.3. PUBLICATION ETHICS Publication ethics have been discussed at the last three Commission meetings; Ted Baker is currently acting as ethics adviser to the Commission. The general feeling was that there are no current problems and we do not need to change the guidelines at the moment. 7.4. CITATIONS IN SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS An Editorial on the problem of undercounting of citations that are published only in supplementary material was published in Acta D, Acta F and JAC. Manfred Weiss commented that another journal, Science, was changing its procedures and would check up on this. 7.5. MICROFILM ARCHIVE The IUCr Editorial Office has an archive of supplementary materials deposited between 1977 and 1997. The archive is currently held on microfilm and an item is digitised when there is a request for it. The question was raised as to whether we should convert all our microfilm library to PDF format. We have not done this so far as the content is of very poor quality such that character recognition programs cannot be run so we cannot create a full digital archive. There were no further comments on this subject. 8. FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS Recent and future developments in Chester were outlined in Appendix 1 of the Agenda Notes. There were no further comments on this subject. 9. COMMUNICATIONS BETWEEN COEDITORS The IUCr has recently set up a number of online discussion forms. The question was asked whether such forums would be useful for communications within individual journals. If such forums are to be set up then volunteers would be needed to help manage the forums. It was suggested that each section Editor would need to decide on this and run their journal's forum. 10. JOURNALS PROMOTION It was announced that Andrea Sharpe, the IUCr Promotions Officer, would talk about journal promotion at the Congress. The budget for promoting the journals was currently about USD 50000. The question was asked whether we should have more advertising in the journals. There were no further comments on this subject. 11. ISSUES RAISED BY EDITORS AND COEDITORS No issues were raised. 12. MATTERS FOR THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE AND THE OPEN COMMISSION MEETINGS The punishment for the authors of the fraudulent Acta E papers was raised. The authors have been banned and mechanisms exist to check all submissions for the banned authors. It was pointed out that if a Co-editor suspects fraud they should not accuse the authors but pass the case on to the Section Editor. 13. ANY OTHER BUSINESS There were no comments on this item. 14. DATE AND PLACE OF NEXT MEETING The next JComm meeting will be held in conjunction with the 2014 IUCr Congress, which is to be held in Montreal, Canada.