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(Label the COVER LETTER separately and the LETTER TO THE EDITOR )…
(Label the COVER LETTER separately and the LETTER TO THE EDITOR)
Question: Respond to Science Journals Editor-in-Chief Marcia McNutt’s request for user feedback on Sci-Hub below by using critical reading abilities. Get ready to reply in the format required by the Journal for letters to the editor.
Letters to the editor: Discuss recent articles published in Science or other topics of interest.
Include a cover letter containing:
The title of the paper and a statement of its main point.
any information needed to ensure a fair review process
Use the following eight part structure so that the focus is not only on the criticism
Begin by showing appreciation. Try to generate a bridge between you and the recipient in which you show that you want to be helpful and cooperative. In some way the opening statement should provide ‘good news’ for your recipient.
Demonstrate that you are in agreementof the overall aim of what your colleague is trying to achieve. Show interest in the paper and find areas of the research / manuscript that you are in agreement with.
Indicate the parts that you like in what your colleague has done
Identify your concerns (this is the part where you introduce criticisms)
Tell the authors what you have done
Make any suggestions in a soft way for example;
Offer further help and tell them when you would be available.
End on a positive note
EDITORIAL
The Paper: My love-hate of Sci-Hub
Like many scientist-editors of journals published by non-profit scientific societies, I have a love-hate relationship with Sci-Hub, the website operated out of Russia that provides access to 50 million pirated scientific articles to researchers worldwide (see the News story on p. 508). I recognize the underlying motivation of bringing global research content to the developing world. However, I also recognize that much traffic to Sci-Hub is from researchers who already have access to the articles they seek through mechanisms such as site licenses, open access, or other means. Authors who publish in Science journals, for example, can make their papers available immediately upon publication through free referrer links at the authors’ websites. Research published after 1996 in a Science journal is made free with registration 1 year after its publication date. So what does the scientific community risk by gathering papers illegally?
The collateral damage may not seem obvious. When researchers access papers through Sci-Hub, article usage information is lost. Authors do not benefit from download statistics, for example, which are increasingly being used to assess the impact of their work.
Libraries cannot properly track usage for the journals they provide and could wind up discontinuing titles that are useful to their institution. As institutions cancel subscriptions, the ability of nonprofit scientific societies to provide journals and support their research communities is diminished. Journals published by scientific societies such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science (the publisher of Science journals) are not the sole contribution to the research community; such non-profit societies also support a range of efforts that have a history of benefiting the greater scientific enterprise, such as fellowships for young scientists, advocacy for science, science diplomacy, science education, and fostering science’s many interfaces with culture and society. Like non-profit scientific societies, university presses, largely subsidized by their parent institutions, are also at risk. These publishers already face many challenges, which now include Sci-Hub’s unauthorized collection of their monographs.
Journals have real costs, even though they don’t pay authors or reviewers, as they help ensure accuracy, consistency, and clarity in scientific communication. For most of the Science journals, editors are paid professionals who carefully curate the journal content to bring readers an important and exciting array of discoveries.
They make sure that papers are broad and conform to standards of quality, transparency, openness, and integrity. There are layers of effort by copyeditors and proof-readers to check for adherence to standards in scientific usage of terms to prevent confusion. Illustrators create original illustrations, diagrams, and charts to help convey complex messages.
Scientific communicators spread the word to top media outlets so that authors get excellent coverage and readers do not miss important discoveries. Our news reporters are constantly searching the globe for issues and events of interest to the research and non science communities. Our agile Internet technology department continually evolves the website, so that authors can submit their manuscripts and readers can access the journals more conveniently.
The costs of scientific publishing are increasing worldwide, driven by the expansion of content, which includes more contributions from the developing world, as well as open-access papers, which are supported through a different business model. Today, digital publishing is just as expensive as print for a state-of-the-art Web design that incorporates multimedia, is responsive to desktops, tablets, and smartphones, and maintains access to back content.
Scientific nonprofit societies do indeed understand the need to continue addressing research accessibility by those in challenged regions, but through legitimate means. For those who have such avenues but choose to pirate a paper instead, ask yourself whether it is worth risking the viability of a system that supports the quality and integrity of science.
