| 1 | Mar 20, 2011 4:59 PM | Honestly I'm thinking of retiring from this duty. I know that I actually get fewer submissions than other co-editors (for which I'm grateful), but as I stated previously, the work has just become onerous. Although it is a duty that I accept as part of my career, reviewing for other journals at least provides me with some satisfaction in learning some new chemistry and keeping up with the scientific literature. |
| 2 | Mar 18, 2011 4:57 PM | I find GOOGLE useful for checking doubtful references! |
| 3 | Mar 17, 2011 1:16 PM | At this stage I am early in my career as a co-editor and am just "learning the ropes". I do not have any further considerations at this time. |
| 4 | Mar 16, 2011 1:13 PM | Refereeing is the most problematic part of the process. Co-editors frequently review papers themselves. The increasing lack of willing and competent referees is troubling and there is also a rift on this matter between the IUCr journal leadership and the co-editors as the former seems not to be willing to acknowledge the problem.
Furthermore, even if a referee is used the quality of the report is normally of moderate quality. For sure the co-editor is left with the responsibility to debug the paper in detail. Obviously this process is not water proof and the blame then falls on the latter, which can at times be trying. It stands to reason that there are different opinions already amongst the co-editors as to the importance of various editorial principles. To that should be added the standards set by the Chester editorial group and the section editor.
Finally, the editorial group in Chester does a great and relentless work, vis-a-vis the individual co-editors and the community as a whole. Over these years the technical developments of submission handling for the IUCr journal is nothing short of impressive. Clearly it represents the cutting edge within scientific publishing. |
| 5 | Mar 16, 2011 4:37 AM | NIL |
| 6 | Mar 15, 2011 2:50 PM | An easy access to the English language dictionary |
| 7 | Mar 15, 2011 11:40 AM | The most time consuming part for me is finding reviewers. It is also not clear sometimes whether the reviewers have the same view of the journal as the co-editors: for example, reviewers are often more sympathetic to accept "routine" structures for Section C. I would appreciate some specific discussion of the present and projected future role of reviewers for Section C at the JComm meeting. |
| 8 | Mar 15, 2011 8:59 AM | Are reminders sent to referees who are late with their reports? I don't know. |
| 9 | Mar 15, 2011 5:50 AM | I think we need to start looking at powderCIF more seriously. Submissions containing significant amounts of powder related work is bound to increase |
| 10 | Mar 15, 2011 4:48 AM | I have problems judging the extent of my editorial powers. For example can I overrule a reviewer? |
| 11 | Mar 15, 2011 1:49 AM | As for Mercury, Mogle check would be useful. It would be better not to check the software name, but also check what module to be used. After this survey, the summary would be helpful. Or is there any typical (or suggested) and detailed procedure list for co-eds? |
| 12 | Mar 14, 2011 11:34 PM | I have found access to all the Acta journals essential and suggest that this tool be always available for those co-editors who are not members of subscribing libraries, |
| 13 | Mar 14, 2011 11:27 PM | For me, everything is nicely in hand at the present time. |
| 14 | Mar 14, 2011 8:16 PM | The system works pretty well! |
| 15 | Mar 14, 2011 7:02 PM | Keep up the proactivity! I'm very impressed. |
| 16 | Mar 14, 2011 6:42 PM | Re referees: Since I am doing Acta E and have only dealt with 2 submissions, I did not find a need for a referee. That may change if I get a difficult submission.
So far, the resources I have access to have been quite adequate to deal with the two submissions I have had so far. In the future I may fine I need others. |
| 17 | Mar 14, 2011 6:33 PM | I guess I once mentoned that all hints and recommendations issued by eidtors are useful, but one consolidated easy to follow up-to-date list with all issues to check before accepting the paper in one place would be a useful thing to have. |
| 18 | Mar 14, 2011 6:11 PM | The problem refers to application of the difference electron density maps. It should be more and more applied.
Perhaps there can be added some book of examples on the web page that can be referred to in typical cases. |
| 19 | Mar 14, 2011 5:14 PM | Not day-to-day, but online access to the International Tables Vol. A would occasionally be useful. |
| 20 | Mar 14, 2011 5:01 PM | Grammar checking facilities which point out to user the deficiencies before the Coeditor sees the paper |
| 21 | Mar 14, 2011 4:46 PM | 1- Any action encouraging authors to check as deeply as possible their drafts BEFORE submission.
2- For small, not disordered molecules: ask for a VRF not only for PLATON ALERT A but also ALERT B warning. |
| 22 | Mar 14, 2011 4:10 PM | There are sources used in my editorial work which are not asked in the questionnaire: International Tables for X-ray crystallography, IUPAC Nomenclature of Inorganic and Organic Chemistry, Free Chemistry Databases on the Web, Chemical Dictionaries, Textbooks on Chemistry, Stereochemistry by K. Mislow. |
| 23 | Mar 14, 2011 3:59 PM | Automatic rejection of any CIF which does not have all of the required fields. I have had many submissions which did not have, anywhere in the CIF, an experimental or related literature section. |
| 24 | Mar 14, 2011 3:33 PM | If there was any way to automate the checking of numerical data and symmetry codes in text and captions, this would be great, but I suspect if is a tough problem. As a first step, possibly one could check that symmetry codes with the same code number in text/captions/tables were all self-consistent, i.e. that code (i) was unique throughout, etc.
Ways to address the unresponsive reviewer problem.
Ways to prevent E style papers being submitted to C. Still a problem. The word count test still lets papers clearly written for E into C. What about checking the requested journal and paper type data items? Many such papers arriving at C have E as the requested journal in the CIF! Such cases could be flagged as publication A alerts and block the submission until at least the requested journal and the one actually chosen are the same. |
| 25 | Mar 14, 2011 3:20 PM | The IUCr has and continues to improve the lot of Co-editors, in particualr with PubCIF. Thanks! |
| 26 | Mar 14, 2011 3:04 PM | Some problems with structures not created with Shelxtl did arise with the new fcf based checking procedure (e.g. with the weighting scheme used in Crystals).
There are quite often problems with schemes and figures that do upload into the pdf file in much reduced resolution. |
| 27 | Mar 14, 2011 3:03 PM | I find the setup as it is quite efficient.
The main problems I come across concern mainly the poor English of some of the authors and the fact that they never seem to read the Notes to Authors. Some never read an actual paper in Acta Cryst E to see how they should prepare their own paper. |
| 28 | Mar 14, 2011 3:01 PM | Can publCIF become my helper application when clicking on the 'CIF' link on the paper details web page? |
| 29 | Mar 14, 2011 2:28 PM | I have difficulty keeping up with the changes make in the editorial on-line system without trying to figure out what further changes I would like to see :-) |
| 30 | Mar 14, 2011 2:28 PM | a reminder if a paper that has been updated by the authors has not been inspected with e.g 3 days of revision |
| 31 | Mar 14, 2011 2:26 PM | This is a very personal point of view, which may have to do with a rather deficient level as a Co-Editor on my side (Mainly regarding ACTA C): I have sometimes declared papers as accepted, overlooking some points spotted afterwards by the much more expert eye of the Section Editor, and which required getting back to the authors after having informed them that the paper had been found adequate for publication. I do not know how often this situation happens, but it could anyway be avoided if the acceptance mail to the authors be delivered ONLY after the Section Editor gives the OK (something which usually takes just a few days), thus avoiding the rather unpleasant situation of showing some kind of disagreement between Journal officers.
I would like to emphasize also that this suggestion tries to defend the Journal's image, and not the Co-Editor's one! |
| 32 | Mar 14, 2011 2:20 PM | An already generated .hkl file would be nice, but, of course, I can do it by myself using PLATON. |
| 33 | Mar 14, 2011 2:13 PM | In my opinion on the site menu of the IUCr web server for review is complicated because there are several ways of making acceptance of the articles. Also the name of the actual .cif file available for revison has not the version number, so the check for the last version has to be done by the date. |
| 34 | Mar 14, 2011 2:00 PM | I would like to can access to spell checking program. |
| 35 | Mar 14, 2011 1:55 PM | In addition to comments above - I would like to see a way to require authors to actually provide responses to the editors comments rather than to just say 'done' and submit a new cif that has often ignored many comments. |
| 36 | Mar 14, 2011 1:49 PM | Probably my answers to PublCif are a liitle bit doubtfull, cause I start now as a co-editor to use it. I only submit quite rarely manuscripts to IUCr journals.
As mentioned earlier, the refinement input file (shelxl.ins) but also all data (not only the merged data in *.fcf) would be very helpful. Sometimes also a log-file from the data collection program might be usefull (to find out, what the authors have real done during the data collection). |
| 37 | Mar 14, 2011 1:48 PM | Sorry, this is my last year anyway! Best wishes for the future ... |
| 38 | Mar 14, 2011 1:45 PM | If I receive a submission which was formerly rejected by a colleague (Acta E or C) it would be nice to know the reasons for rejection. If the complete review cannot be provided (which I would understand) some catchwords (e.g. language, poor data, errors in the refinement) would be helpful. |
| 39 | Mar 14, 2011 1:41 PM | It is becoming more difficult to find time to do Co-Editorial work given increasing academic pressures - this can have a knock-on effect on the quality of the co-editor reviews. |
| 40 | Mar 14, 2011 1:37 PM | Acta is miles ahead of most journals! |
| 41 | Mar 14, 2011 1:36 PM | How to deal with potential referees. Being nice just results in no response while setting hard limits can offend some. I have yet to find a balance here. |