Hartstein Judith, Blümel Clemens
German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (DZHW), Berlin, Germany.
Department of Social Sciences, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
Front Res Metr Anal. 2021 Oct 19;6:747562. doi: 10.3389/frma.2021.747562. eCollection 2021.
Many journals now rely on editorial management systems, which are supposed to support the administration and decision making of editors, while aiming at making the process of communication faster and more transparent to both reviewers and authors. Yet, little is known about how these infrastructures support, stabilize, transform or change existing editorial practices. Research suggests that editorial management systems as digital infrastructures are adapted to the local needs at scholarly journals and reflect main realms of activities. Recently, it has been established that in a minimal case, the peer review process is comprised of postulation, consultation, decision and administration. By exploring process generated data from a publisher's editorial management system, we investigate the ways by which the digital infrastructure is used and how it represents the different realms of the process of peer review. How does the infrastructure support, strengthen or restrain editorial agency for administrating the process? In our study, we investigate editorial processes and practices with their data traces captured by an editorial management system. We do so by making use of the internal representation of manuscript life cycles from submission to decision for 14,000 manuscripts submitted to a biomedical publisher. Reconstructing the processes applying social network analysis, we found that the individual steps in the process have no strict order, other than could be expected with regard to the software patent. However, patterns can be observed, as to which stages manuscripts are most likely to go through in an ordered fashion. We also found the different realms of the peer review process represented in the system, some events, however, indicate that the infrastructure offers more control and observation of the peer review process, thereby strengthening the editorial role in the governance of peer review while at the same time the infrastructure oversees the editors' performance.
现在许多期刊依赖编辑管理系统，该系统旨在支持编辑的管理和决策，同时力求使沟通流程对审稿人和作者而言更快且更透明。然而，对于这些基础设施如何支持、稳定、转变或改变现有的编辑实践，我们却知之甚少。研究表明，作为数字基础设施的编辑管理系统是根据学术期刊的当地需求进行调整的，并反映了主要活动领域。最近已经确定，在最基本的情况下，同行评审过程包括假设、咨询、决策和管理。通过探索来自出版商编辑管理系统生成的过程数据，我们研究了数字基础设施的使用方式以及它如何呈现同行评审过程的不同领域。该基础设施如何支持、加强或限制管理该过程的编辑机构？在我们的研究中，我们通过编辑管理系统捕获的数据痕迹来调查编辑过程和实践。我们利用了向一家生物医学出版商提交的14000篇稿件从投稿到决策的稿件生命周期的内部表示来进行研究。通过应用社会网络分析来重构这些过程，我们发现该过程中的各个步骤没有严格的顺序，这与软件专利方面的预期不同。然而，可以观察到稿件在哪些阶段最有可能以有序的方式进行。我们还发现了系统中所呈现的同行评审过程的不同领域，不过，一些事件表明该基础设施提供了对同行评审过程更多的控制和观察，从而加强了编辑在同行评审管理中的作用，同时该基础设施也监督编辑的表现。
