@teixi

To your first question:
There are a ways how editors can help, although things will often be determined by the publisher/journal management team. Transparent reporting of methods and statistics important, improving figures and plots (for example showing individual data points, ideally machine readable), increase deposition of datasets for other researchers to use and analyse, help authors with pre-registered reports, improve sharing of protocols and materials, etc.

#AskTheEditor

#AP drops the mic on #hyphenation: "My colleague who answered your question last week didn't think the hyphen was necessary. He believes that it just adds clutter and distraction in your example. Editors from previous years preferred to use the hyphen in this term. Both are right. Neither is wrong. That's often the case in matters of hyphenation."

(from an #AskTheEditor response in October last year)

@chrisXrodgers

I am really grateful for the great reports that reviewers submit to improve a paper and make sure that the claims are supported by the data. One of the more challenging situations are when reviewers are late and we don't hear from them anymore. Are they still working on the review or do I need to invite a replacement reviewer? Circumstances can change and everyone understands that. Just let us know if you need more time or cannot review the manuscript anymore.

#AskTheEditor

@chrisXrodgers Thanks Chris, great question. I don't know if there something very common that authors do wrong. Sometimes we see that authors do not respond in a professional and constructive way to the reviewers or editors. Of course it can be frustrating if reviewers don't see the advance in your study or misunderstand it. But it is very rare that they do this on purpose. If authors have reason to believe that comment is not justified, let the editor know. We're there to help

#AskTheEditor

@schoppik @NicoleCRust @albertcardona @brembs

This leads to the filtering work that journals do. Most of us would probably love to read more or all the papers published in field. But that's just not possible. So as an editor, you try to publish those studies that you know your readership is likely to be interested in. Maybe because a lot of progress is currently made in this area. You also aim to filter out studies of lower quality and scientific rigour.

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@schoppik @NicoleCRust @albertcardona @brembs

Curation is another major part. It starts with someone (for example the publisher, the editor-in-chief, etc) to define the scope of the journal. What area does a journal want to cover? What type of studies? Is the major focus on novelty of a finding or the research question itself (no matter the result)? Does the journal require mechanistic insight (how/why is something happening) or is a description of the phenomenon sufficient?

#AskTheEditor

@schoppik @NicoleCRust @albertcardona @brembs

Thanks David! Coordination of peer review is indeed a major part of our work. I agree that this can be quite challenging. It includes identifying suitable reviewers, finding reviewers who are available, and then making a decision based on the information from the reviewers' reports. It's rarely straightforward but almost always interesting as you can learn so much about a field from these reports.

#AskTheEditor

That's a majority for Yes! So let me answer your questions. Feel free to post them here in this thread or email your question to c.schnell@cell.com and I'll post them anonymised. I'll try to answer the questions during the week. Maybe a hashtag would be helpful: #AskTheEditor

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