Okay let me monitor it on youtube. Also okay so um good morning good afternoon. Good evening um to everyone since it’s all remote now and uh people are joining from different places so um i hope everybody is having a good day so far. Uh thank you for joining us today. Today’s session is pretty interesting. Uh we have a very good friend of mine. But that’s not why i invited him. He is also a very prolific research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologyer editor. And one of the most active reviewers in my circle. Uh professor stan. Even from warner university of management which is in bulgaria. So i know professor stan from what like maybe six years or something now and he has been an incredible friend. Uh never said no to me whatever i have requested him to do for uh research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology and my channel and everything. So thank you stan for accepting this invitation as well. Today’s session um is a live session. Uh the idea is actually to talk about reviewing papers and um why did i come up with. This idea was based on a lot of discussions that i had with many people including stan in malaysia. Last time when we met we talked about these things as well. I personally believe that. We as a scholarly community do not do enough to train people to review papers. In fact earlier i was talking to stan that when universities are preparing students they mainly focus on research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology or teaching. But then all of us have to write papers and those papers go to journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys and then journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys keep send those papers to reviewers so um entirely our research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology depends on the gatekeepers who are the reviewers but then uh most of the times. Well i i don’t i won’t say most of the times but many times we get good reviews but then many times. We don’t really get good reviews so the idea for today’s session was to talk about how to review a paper. And who better than stan to talk about this because not only he is an active reviewer but also an editor and very dangerous editor when it comes to plagiarism. So uh all right. So thank you stan again. Um uh would you want to say a couple of words.
Well thank you so much for the invitation and i hope that sharing ideas about the review process will be helpful for all participants in this session. Thank you uh so um those of you who are watching are live. You can use youtube chat feature to ask any questions that you have about reviewing a little bit about stan. Obviously some of you may know him. He is currently in one university of management. He also holds a position. Um or i don’t know if you are currently vice vector for research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology then or yes you are still currently vice vector for research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology for one university of management um and a professor plus uh editor in chief for european journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology of uh tourism research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology and recently he started another journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology called robonomics exactly and he also got some submissions for that journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology. So if you are working in robotics and stuff like this maybe consider submitting your uh manuscript to stance journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology. Um so. That’s a little bit about stan. We will directly start with the question so um i have a few questions then before you talk about how do you review papers or some tips. And i’ll go with those a few basic questions that i have um the first question so if you are preaching reviewing what is the or what are the benefits of reviewing in your opinion well um to participate in the review process is a great benefit for the reviewers. Obviously it takes time so this is the cost. It takes time reviewing reviewing a paper can be as short as 30 minutes if the paper it will be very bad and it will be rejected but it it can take more than two hours if it is a longer paper and it needs greater scrutiny however it the benefit for the reviewer is that the reviewer can see what is the current stage of research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology even before it is published it can it can generate ideas. Uh it can uh it also and also review by reviewing a paper you can uh you can put yourself in the shoes of the reviewers so that when you write papers by yourself you can you can.
Also you can start thinking as a reviewer and uh because we should not forget that the reviewers are the second group of people who will read our paper. The first this is the editor the second this is the reviewers and on the basis of their decision. Our paper uh will be published so uh practically it helps a lot to be part. Uh to be a reviewer because you can see how reviewers think and you can have this uh mindset critical attitude towards towards your own publications right so um stan you talked about um something for review and you said that as a reviewer you get to know about the new research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology and i completely agree to that sometimes. It’s so interesting because you don’t know whose review paper are you reviewing right so sometimes it can be leading scholars in the field and they might be writing some very good research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology piece. It doesn’t mean that you copy their research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology but it gives you an idea for your own research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology and it happened to me several times in fact. I recently got to know that one paper that i reviewed for a journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology from my good friend levant service and decision which later got published and i also now got to know the authors inspired me to do a couple of research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology papers all also accepted very so. It’s it’s it’s one of in my opinion. One of the major major benefits is that you get to know the latest really latest research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology in the field. It’s a very good point all right so um obviously it’s 10 just like anything else. I don’t think that review is also all positive right so when you are reviewing papers there might be some limitations or some disadvantages as well so in your opinion what are some of those disadvantages when you are reviewing papers well. From my perspective. The disadvantage in reviewing paper for the reviewer for the reviewer. It’s uh only the time because that you that you invest there because the review process is double blind you are anonymous and practically the other costs that are involved for you as a reviewer do not do not exist at least at least in my mind in my mind.
It’s uh mostly the positive. That’s why i review. What okay so that also makes sense. Now uh stan because you are an editor right so i have actually two questions for you. Uh one is. Let’s say we have some young scholars about to finish their phd. Or i don’t know how do you feel about having phd students as reviewers. How can one young research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologyer become a reviewer like should they approach the editor. Well what do they need to do to become a reviewer. Yeah thank you uh. This is a fantastic question. Um journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys al always lack sufficient number of reviewers the more reviewers that we have available the better because this will decrease the workload for all reviewers so uh young young research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologyers what i strongly recommend them is to make themselves available on the reviewer market in human language this means to make accounts in the journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys in their submission systems and also to uh to to a point to point uh explicitly that they are available as reviewers. This is important because in some systems. You don’t have uh this option by default but it is opt-in so by default you are an author but you have to explicitly mention that you will be that you are available as a reviewer. Uh so uh um also to put which are the keywords. Uh papers from which field you would be interested to to review so in that way you show that you are available. This is the proactive. But also it’s a largely hidden uh process because the editors they will not know that you are available until they start searching for uh reviewers in the system. The second more vis again proactive. But more visible approach is directly to write the to the editors. But first again you have to make you have to be sure that you have already registered that you have already registered in the journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology submission system you have a complete profile there and then uh you can inform the editor that he or she can rely on new on reviews in this or that field so this is important.
Proactivity okay so very good point proactivity. One thing. I want to end here. Stan is uh most of the submission systems now. Also when even as an author you are submitting your paper you can opt to be a reviewer in the journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology right so there is a question that says would you like to review um and i’ve seen that there’s a one problem. Is that many people. They put their profiles up as a phd student but then they do not update the profile which is also very important so maybe when you are a phd student you are working in. Let’s say something called emotional stability of employees. Let’s say and then after your phd. Now you want to work on. Let’s say something else employee stress or something else right so your research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology area changes so it’s a good idea also to go back and update your profile so that whenever a new paper comes into that new area that you’re working on you can get the review request for that. Um so that’s um one thing to consider um stan one other question okay. So um you know in research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology just like any other field right um there’s a lot of um stereotypes. There’s a lot of things that pass on from people to people or myths. I would call it. It’s like there’s a lot of myths one of them is um about reviewing that i hear so often like on different support groups and different forums. People say that okay when i submit a paper to a journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology okay and then right after that or within a week or so i get a review request from the same journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology right um so should i accept it. Would it increase my chances of getting my own paper accepted in the journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology. Have you heard something like this. How true is that. Well uh i can speak here. From the three positions. As an editor as a reviewer as an author as an editor as an editor it is well the european journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology of tourism research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology this year we have 430 440 submissions. Um i say that. There’s a relationship between the submission and uh the review. Uh within a week or two but probably if you have sub but if you have submitted uh an article you have to be ready to review so definitely you will be allocated as a reviewer you will receive an invitation for this one probably not immediately within a couple of weeks but probably in few months next year.
That’s absolutely possible as a reviewer. I have experience. I have experienced this but i don’t think that it is a relationship because between this because uh uh because i register myself in the system i i create an account i update it and i submit a paper so that uh the editor when when the editor sees this. Uh um i don’t think that there’s a relationship between my previous submission. It is just because i i received invitation just because i am already there and i have created an updated uh profile and as an author as an author i have received invitations. I review for some journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys. I i write many reviews for some journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys where i receive many rejections so but for a few invitations but i have published. Uh main a lot there so i personally think that this is really a myth and rather than a reality and reviewing for a journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology is not at least from my perspective and my experience of dealing with reviewing and editing for 14 years. I don’t think that there’s a relationship between these. The fact that you review a word for a journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology does not improve your your chances for of your current papers. Uh that are there all right. Thank you stan. So the other side now of the same myth and this recently and you know there’s a group on facebook called reviewer. Two must be stopped right where she talks about a lot of fun stuff about reviewing and recently. I saw somebody posted in that group saying that i recently submitted my. I don’t remember the exact words but the idea of the post was that i submitted a paper to a journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology which was rejected and now the editor asked me to review for the same journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology. Is it ethical to do. I don’t i don’t see a problem. I don’t see a problem on this because it is possible that an article is rejected.
And then you to receive something to reveal a paper to review because uh you may because the paper might have been rejected for countless reasons it may be rejected because of plagiarism. Methodological flaw or something else but uh you may be invited to review the paper because you have strengths in other in uh in a specific area for for that paper probably because for the literature review or probably in the analysis something that was not related to the previous one. But i as i said before i have received many rejections for some journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys but i still receive invitations from them and i still continue to review for them. I don’t see a problem here right um a very good point so i just want to add something very quickly here. Um and that is i’ve seen this uh talking to many young research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologyers one thing to understand for everybody. Is that many times when the email that you get from the editor to review is a standard email and normally that email comes from the system. It’s a system generated email right template based so sometimes those uh emails say that you are seen as an expert in this area or something like this and many young research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologyers take it in literal meanings. Uh and that’s why these type of questions come right so this question that i earlier told you on that forum um now i remember that that lady actually said that how is it that the editor rejects my paper for being worthless. And then the next week’s the editor thinks i’m an expert and sends me a review request right so i think it’s important to understand that these review requests come from your keywords that you put into the system so make sure that those are updated and one thing is that maybe the reviewer the editor may not know you in the start as a reviewer right maybe the system suggests the editor or whatever but if you provide good review and consistent reviews maybe after three or four reviews the editor will know you personally and it happens to many of us where you get personal messages from editors and you get this review or whatever right so very important to consider um okay stan i have a question from a good friend of mine dr andrea mcneil.
Her question is good morning. Is there a strategy. You employ as a reviewer as you review as a new reviewer. How would you suggest i approach my first review. Okay so a strategy employee is uh. So if i am the reviewer how do i review the paper so this is the way i understand the question for the first time. Yes for the first time so um i would suggest i would suggest that we follow um that we follow the three stages of the review process from the review point of view we have invitation preparing the review. And then the post review of this so when we receive the invitation it is good to respond in a timely manner to it so usually we have something like one week to respond to the to the review invitation. But it’s good to respond. Uh uh once we receive once we receive it. This is uh it’s better to give uh it. It’s better to decline the invitation rather than uh rather than not respond at all. Uh also uh we when we receive the invitation. We need to see whether we can prepare this in this review in a timely manner. So if we have received let’s say 28 days to prepare the review. Just check the calendar and see whether this is feasible. Uh what uh or what work we or what work you have planned in your calendar but also account for any other work that may come and so that there might be possible uh delays look also at the uh at um at the con at the paper. The content of the abstract the field of the paper. Is it part of your expertise or do you have the sufficient knowledge to provide constructive feedback and also be curious. Sometimes the topic might not be exactly. What what you are expert in but you might be expert in the methodology so you you may be an. You may not be an expert in uh in a particular field. But you’re an expert in uh structural equation modeling. So why not review the paper from that point from methodological so that you can so this will also expand the uh your own knowledge but then when you accept the invitation the actual review what i recommend you is the following.
What i do is first. I look at at first. I check briefly the paper for about. Let’s say five minutes. Uh and look for significant force directly go to the methodology so i see what is uh first of course first. What is the aim and objective. What needs to be done and then uh to see what uh to see. What is the methodology whether this is irrelevant usually uh this is because everything else everything else like having a stronger rationale in the introduction. Uh having more literature or uh having some more discussion these things they can be rewritten. But uh but if you have a flaw in the research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology design which invalidates uh the findings then practically the paper. The paper cannot be saved from thinking so if there are significant force in the research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology design then this absolutely then then it’s deliver process will be very easy then then i go deeply into the different sections and they look for things that are um for example in the introduction there needs to be a strong theoretical rationale the aim and the objectives. They need to go beyond uh beyond the simple description. The literature review needs to be. Let’s say well structured with current literature. Uh uh sometimes uh what. Sometimes what i see is that uh let’s say a paper is submitted in 2020 but the literature but the most recent literature is from 2015. Why because uh uh because the literature review is taken directly from the phd thesis which was submitted in 2015 and the literature was not updated but five years a long period in social sciences. And many things develop it needs to be updated also in the methodology. Uh if the research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology design is fine is there a sufficient transparency. You know that when you go to a doctor you don’t hide anything you show everything when you go to a lawyer you because the world needs to uh to build the defense on the basis of everything but uh when you write them it and when you write the methodology you have to be extremely transparent regarding.
What was your research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology population. How did you develop the questionnaire which platform you used. How you distribute it. How you filtered out the non-relevant respondents. What methods for data analysis did you use. Why did you use parametric and not non-parametric methods why you use these ones or the others etc they need to be uh there needs to be huge transparency. Um uh then uh in the results. I’m working whether the whether uh there’s a well-structured data. I’m probably too obsessed with this. Uh and uh i prefer data to be in in table formats well structured. Uh also there’s no need to explain something uh in to repeat something in the text that is already available in the tables. It is good also to structure the results as the structure. The results to mirror the aim and to mirror the objectives to mirror the literature review. I will also at the weather days. Critical discussion critical discussion in on two levels. First this is the first. This is narrow discussion in the narrow field of uh the topic so if you write about or if the paper is on robots and tourism whether this is uh i’m looking for a discussion on uh with previous papers on robots and tourism but then also for a discussion in the broader context of service robots and then the bro the broadest field of let’s say automation technologies not necessarily related to um the two robots uh also and the conclusion where uh the conclusion. It’s good to provide a summary table with the research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology questions with the hypothesis. Uh also to have something like a hundred words uh um summary with with a message with the theoretical contribution something like take home message so that when someone reads this to know uh what exactly is the theoretical contribution. Don’t be shy. We don’t need to be shy. We need to write explicitly what is our contribution.
Also what are the implications uh limitations future research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology. Uh so this is uh this is quite clear so then comes the the practical writing so this is checking and this is the criteria but the practical writing um the review. It’s good to be sufficiently detailed. So if you have a 20 word review. That’s that’s not acceptable. Even if the paper is fantastic and can be discussed it can be accepted in its current form. Uh it’s good that the review provides justification uh about the theoretical contribution that the literature review is uh is thorough that the methodology is appropriate that the analysis uh has been sufficiently in there the days or the the theoretical contributions are justified et cetera et cetera. Um but um also uh when you but also uh um the review needs to give um constructive comments constructive comments and i emphasize on the word constructive because uh every paper can be rejected. There is no such thing as a paper cannot be rejected. Uh they because they are always areas of improvement of on anything but the question is um whether this whether the which improvements to be made so that the paper can be the quality of the paper can be improved and the paper itself can be published here. The way of expression is very is very important when i write my reviews. I try to apply the so-called sandwich strategy which means i start with uh with uh general comments general or general comment general positive. I emphasize the positive sides. Then i give uh some uh areas for improvement they can be sometimes. They are in just bullet for in bullet form others which are quite generic otherwise like the paper needs proofreading while others will go very deeply into uh justification about the justification of the methodology or uh the literature review uh then uh and then at the end there will be also some uh i also try to have some um positive uh thing even if it is even if the paper is going to be uh rejected because at the end of the day the end of the day we are all human uh beings and uh it’s good uh it’s good the writing to be how to say uh to be based on facts to be based on uh what uh um if we criticize when we create criticize because we we need to uh to have a critical approach to the paper when we provide when we provide critical feedback we provide feedback to the material to the paper we do not provide we do not criticize the property of the author so we cannot say that uh the authors are incompetent they have not done good job on this or that we can but uh we focus on the material so we we we focus on the paper not on the personality of the person of uh of the authors uh this is important because authors often uh perceive uh the feedback the negative feedback as focusing on them rather than the paper i remember for example the first time i submitted the paper to an international journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology it was in 2004 i submitted it to announce of tourism research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology and i received three reviews 24 reasons for rejection when i read the reviews i was like crazy i thought what are they writing why do they criticize me in that way but uh um after one month after my emotions uh updated um i read the reviews again and i found that they were not criticizing me.
They were criticizing the work i did. These are two different things. Uh and uh in my mind i was uh combining this and these reviews. They helped me improve my uh phd dissertation so the reviews the comments we provide. They need to be constructive. Um how to improve the methodology. What to improve in the literature review and also they. It’s good that they are specific so if we say that the literature review needs an update of sources. Uh if it is very if the sources are really very outdated we can write just a general comment like references need significant update with sources from the last. Let’s say five years but uh if it is about but if uh the problem is not with the uh with the recency of publications but with the relevance and the scope of publications we can we can recommend papers to be included there but of course we should not recommend only our papers i.
It’s not a problem that if we recommend our papers. That’s uh uh but it’s a problem if we recommend only our paper so predominantly uh our papers. We need to be fair and not to push self-promotion and to coerce citations to our publications um regarding the length because this is also a question it all depends on the paper but if the paper is going to be revised something one page is fine as a review two pages. I’ve seen the longest. The longest review i have seen submitted to the european journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology of tourism research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology was submitted. Seven eight years ago it was nine pages nearly three thousand words. It was extremely detailed. Um the longest i have prepared was four pages usually something about one between one and two pages but sometimes even so but most commonly around one pages one page so um also something uh in the review process. It’s good to uh it’s good to put our. It is good the reviewer to put him herself in the shoes of the author sometimes. The problem is not so much with the methodology with the. But it’s a problem with the writing because i’m not a native speaker in english. Uh so and uh i also find it challenging to express myself uh but uh the majority of the authors uh in english are not native speakers. So it’s good to see whether it is a matter of um of expression rather than it’s a matter of of serious force in the paper but anyway we but anyway papers uh before they accept it they have to be uh with in good quality english. All right thank you stan. This is very detailed so um i actually wanted to ask you a couple of questions which you answered in in your in you know when you were answering this one was about suggesting your own papers in the review. So you said that. It’s okay as far as they are one relevant like you’re talking about a relevant paper here second. It’s not only your papers or predominantly your papers that you are suggesting.
So that’s good. You know i think that um when it comes to review right and you did talk about uh constructive comments many times uh people are just criticizing papers and it you know all of us get those reviews where the reviewer is saying. This is bad. This is bad but there’s no constructive comment there like. Okay maybe. Sometimes it’s a good idea to suggest something instead of only criticizing right um i i want to um share my own experience with you. Recently i got. I don’t know if i should name the journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys or not but anyways recently i got a review from um i jhm there were four reviewers and three of them perfectly fine. It was very okay to deal with them. Even though it’s you know a pretty good amount of review for the fourth one uh i had to write an email to the editor asking. I don’t understand what the reviewer is asking um so this was one situation the other one. Maybe some of the people who are watching this video. If they’re on my facebook uh i recently submitted a paper to cornell quarterly and i got five reviewers one editor and one associate editor seven. People commented on that paper and my response to reviewer comments was more than 14 000 words it was. I don’t know 23 or 24 pages. Just the response. Yeah just the response to reviewers right. But i did not feel bad at all doing all this because all every single comment was constructive so as a research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologyer as an author it was very fulfilling doing all this right because you know getting something good out of it so i just want to share this with people who are watching. Um okay so stan um you talked about benefits limitations. You talked very detailed about how to go with the review process and everything one thing that was missing in your answer and this is an important question. How important is it to look for the journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology that you are reviewing for sorry can you. How important is the journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology. How important is the journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology. Yes like sometimes you know as a phd student you don’t realize journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys and you know predatory journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys or journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys that are charging authors money or whatever and then you just feel happy for the first time getting an email from in from a journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology to review.
Is it an important thing. Yeah the quality of the journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology or no. Well it’s it is important but not so much so uh first. From my experience i don’t review for predatory journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys and i do not review for mainstream journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys who charge authors. So i only i personally review only for journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys. They do not charge authors regardless whether they are with paid access or subscription journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys or whether they are open access journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys they do not charge authors or readers. This is first second. Yes we all feel flattered when we receive invitations from journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys with a high impact factor high side score etc etc. But you know my opinion about these metrics so that they reflect citations. They don’t reflect the quality and i also review for many journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys which are not indexed in scopus or in web of science. So the question is how you rationalize your time. Because i i think this year i have made something like 140 reviews and i still have 12. I need to finalize before new year which is a lot which is all if you put two hours on average you can see 300 hours per year. Go only only on this but so you you need to. You need to prioritize at one point and to say no but it’s good to have but it’s good to be a reviewer in different journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys in journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys which are highly ranked in journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys which are not ranked in journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys that are in international journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys in local journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys etc. Because we do this for the research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology for the research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology community this is this is our payback to the list because when we submit an article we expect to receive reviews but someone needs to write this reviews and when this someone uh submits a paper this that person will receive uh will expect to receive reviews so uh uh this is the way to pay back to the um to the whole research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology community.
Uh so that’s why um that’s why i say that yes. The journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology is important. But it’s not so much about there are other uh there may be other criteria. Uh that are more important to this for example for me personally. This is the relevance whether i can provide a constructive feedback or not if someone submits uh uh if someone sent me an invitation to review a medical paper it is completely out of my scope so definitely i will decline the invitation sometimes sometimes also something that i forgot this is uh the timeliness of the review whether you can provide the feedback in a timely manner. I have uh uh um sometimes i have declined invitations even from uh top journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys just because they will be. I cannot provide feedback. Uh in the time frame that they request right. So uh thank you for that stan. I have a few questions in the chat. So i’m gonna put them up and then you know um this is a very good question because i’ve got into a situation with a particular this particular thing. Uh many journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys asked to uh you know list. The preferred or oppose reviewer names in fact a journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology of business research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology. You cannot submit your paper unless you suggest three reviewers now of course one perspective. It’s a way to increase the reviewer pool. It’s not necessarily you know your paper goes to the same reviewer but for the journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys where it’s an optional thing right where it’s optional. Do you think it’s a good thing to do. Well uh uh well in the european journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology of tourism research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology and in robonomics uh we don’t have this requirement because uh because my personal belief is that uh it is the editor’s the ultimate decision about acceptance and rejection and its editors ultimate responsibility about the quality of the journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology not reviewers reviewers only inform the edit. Help the editor take an informed decision. So i have a more how to say a little bit more active position in the decision making process than in other journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys. And uh so. We don’t have this in the ejection.
Uh now i think uh i think the logic behind having this preferred and the post actually that they don’t have preferred they have suggested reviewers and the posterior switches which is a bit different. Uh concept a post reviewers. That’s that’s absolutely clear. There might be conflict of interest personal conflict personal conflicts. Uh you know we are human beings and you don’t want your paper to be rejected. Just because the reviewer identifies who you are the reviewer hates you and that’s it but uh suggested to the viewers. It’s a good idea because first it helps that it helps the editors especially if we’re talking about a paper in a very narrow field this is one the second one it it may help. The editors evaluate whether the authors are practically familiar with the experts in the field and because because names of potential reviewers. Who are let’s say how to say not experts in the field then probably it will be uh this is not this may not be perceived as a good idea by the editors all right. Thank you stan. Um another question is uh from a good friend of mine. Uh professor ali ustaran. He says how do we make sure that the paper has the originality and this is a very good question because it can come back to bite you even uh well whether it has originality so uh do you mean by uh well originality can be understood in two in two ways one is about plagiarism. And the second one is about uh uh theoretical originality so if we talk about pl about whether the text is original. That’s absolutely easy. Uh the software that can be used uh and to check the similarity uh every year. I reject something like 25 30 papers in djtr for plagiarism. And there’s no mercy and some and in second case of plagiarism. The uh the authors receive a ban in submission and they’re duly informed but if we talk about the theoretical originality of the paper this goes to the theoretical contribution of the paper. Well um this is um it is more difficult to be determined.
Sometimes sometimes it’s easy so uh if you because some fields are very narrow. Some fields are very narrow. So uh if you write about automation in tourism automation technologies and tourism. There are several hundred papers on the topic less than 200 on robots definitely definitely probably less than 500 altogether written in all the journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys all the time. But uh so it’s it’s easy but if it is about a topic that relates to let’s say customer satisfaction or destination branding where you have thousands or ten thousand thousands of papers conference reports and etc. Then it’s a little bit more difficult here. It is the here. The authors need to be proactive. And they need to uh explain uh they need to provide an extremely strong theoretical rationale about the originality of their paper in the introduction then in the conclusion they have to reiterate this as a hundred hundred and fifty word homage about the theoretical contribution. So i hope this helps and all right so stan you know this is you. You said it completely right so you know plagiarism. There are softwares and you know all this stuff however i want to bring you back to a recent event um that involved both of us. Uh you may remember this. So in some cases these softwares are also not accurate right so recently for one of the special issues. I was editing. I sent you a request to review a paper without knowing anything because the paper was about automation and you are one of the leading experts. Um in interestingly that paper we checked through turn it in and the match was only i don’t know what three percent four percent something like this right so it passed the initial review. We send it to you and then you got back to me within an hour of the review obviously very upset because the paper was 99 match to a chapter. That was in your book that you edited. And you got to know this because you edited that book and you knew the book chapter but if it was somebody else how would they know that because they might not have read the book or saw the book chapter and turnitin is not catching it so well.
Yeah well practically. I know the case that i know the case very well. Uh but uh what i can say is that uh not turnitin is not uh universal solution but because it all depends on what is inside sometimes authors. They are very creative and they change words they change they change uh letters for example. Uh if uh um you can if you change uh o e in uh latin with the serialic alphabet visually. They will look the same the silica which we use in bulgaria we created it with uh e2 e2. It will uh look visually absolutely the same in the pdf file but with the computer this will be completely different symbols and uh the plagiarism. The system may not check may not find this. Uh usually uh you um but when you start reading uh it’s um yeah here. Artificial intelligence cannot help but the human intelligence can help. Because you can see the changes in the in the style of writing you start reading you start reading initially and you see that the the style is a little bit sloppy but then suddenly. The academic writing is flawless very high level. So and the system doesn’t find this so probably you can use some uh you you can check some sentences online and usually this may uh this may appear all right perfect so this uh makes sense now uh one other idea is also maybe if you get a paper to review you can also check the title or the abstract and google um or google scholar or google because sometimes they have different indexing right so that can also come up with some um stuff all right so this is great. Um there are a couple of other questions then we can go through them and then i think we will finish soon one question that i have from another good friend of mine dr sedan is what are the most common mistakes that are done by the reviewers okay. This is a fantastic question. Uh thank you sir then because i have a special lecture in my research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology methods class which is the last one which is common mistakes in the research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology which is from the viewpoint of the authors but i have never thought about common mistakes.
Uh by the reviewers what i can say is um is that providing only negative comments and over criticizing. I remember several times when i had to write in the section to the comments studio to the editor confidential comments to the editor that the particular reviewer was over critical uh to the uh to the authors so uh second not providing constructive comments or providing comments that are very shallow and it’s like oh this is a great paper. Oh it’s fantastic and that’s it without seeing that. There’s some uh obvious force like the paper is very descriptive. Or there’s a complete disconnection between the literature review the methodology and the results or or such things or trying to mix something that i mentioned before that mixing uh uh criticizing the work with criticizing the personality of uh of the authors. This this this uh there should be a wall between this we should never as reverse. We should never criticize the authors. We should criticize the work. Not the authors and uh yeah or i’ve seen uh not so often but when reviewers overly suggest their own work to uh to uh to the author so when you see uh five suggestions and uh four of them are uh with the same author or uh four of them the four out of five they come from the same journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology so probably you can. Uh you can figure out that it’s either the author or someone affiliated to the journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology that uh wants to boost the citations uh which is which is not ethical. This is not ethical. All right thank you um but there are obviously a few other questions. But i’m going to go with the most important ones. This one is an interesting one that says that uh you know several journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys have different type of criteria for the reviewers right and why the journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys do not let the reviewer amend or comment straightforward. Um so i just want to add something here so for instance when you review something for emerald journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys so emerald has like a set form so there’s like different type of forms um probably this is what this question is talking about.
So what do you uh well uh when i review for emerald and i write many reviews for their journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys. Uh some i write uh i write in my own format in the sandwich format that i mentioned general positive comments uh the negative comments and then uh a summary uh then the the recommendation but uh and i put this in the freaktext comment in the other section. I just write with few words. Uh excellent well done or cbo or this is a weakness see comments below or something like this. Practically this structured abstract is there to help the reviewers uh uh in the european journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology of tourism research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology anti-neurologics. Uh we don’t have structured. Uh we don’t have structured reviews so it is it is free text format but uh uh some of you may remember those of you that have reviewed for the ejtr before we launched the system in july. We had a score a scorecard for the different sections which is uh which is also a type of structured review providing comments to the different uh sections. But uh this this is there for uh to help the reviewers not to uh not to hinder them but anyway you can write all your review in the uh general comments to the authors and in the other section just to write cbo. That’s it all right so this is good. Yeah i normally do the same. I mean i um write the review and then put it into the comments to the author because sometimes there’s like a free text place and then for the other places where it’s like structured. I just said please see my comments or something like this. So that’s completely okay. Um all right so another question that we have uh one question you will like a lot. I will not put it on this. You know i’ll keep it to the end but this one um so this question actually. These are two comments. Uh the first one says that normally when you get an invitation to review now the abstract is sent to you right uh and this abstract sometimes is 150 words or 200 words.
So how do you do this. Because you don’t know the subject or methodology in detail. Yeah i completely agree. Sometimes i have received for example papers so to review on service. Robots the methodology which use a methodology. Which is uh. I would which i’m not in. Uh it’s it’s not my strength what i do is i focus on the other sections on all the other sections and i explicitly write in my comment to the editor or in the review. That uh i do not comment on the uh on the methodology because because it’s outside of my expertise all right perf perfect. Thank you so stan. Uh two smaller questions very quickly one. Is this one. Which is that before submitting if you check it by yourself and turn it in. It’s gonna show hundred percent to the editor how to solve this. Uh well uh days so uh um there’s a solution uh the editor. Uh well first. The author should not do this. They should use uh sandbox in the system in turnitin. Uh where the system where the turnitin where the manuscript will go to be checked in 13 but it will not be kept in the repository intermittent. This is first second if they if the others have made the mistake to check it through turnitin the uh the editor can exclude this source and can exclude this source from from the similarity report and use use the other and check the other sources they will also appear there all right. Thank you so stan. Another related question is what is the acceptable similarity rate internet. And this is a good one because uh you know when you are studying for phd then. The universities normally have 20 percent yeah authors go with the same perception to journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologyists. Well how is it in ejpl. Well there is no such thing as acceptable similarity rate. It all depends so when i uh when i check the papers in djtr or in for other submissions which i have a suspicion that the day’s plagiarism. What i uh well i will upload the whole papers uh which means that the references are also there which means that it is possible that 20 25 percent of similarity come from the references.
So this is disregarded however uh i look only on the main text there should be no chunks of text that are uh that are coming from elsewhere and so if it is uh half a sentence if it is a few words. That’s absolutely no problem if it is a direct quote no problem because it’s a direct quote there is a reference provided etc but if there is a whole sentence or a paragraph there is no mercy after that so practically i never look at the number the number of others the similarity is just an indication that there’s a high similarity it’s not an indication of plagiarism. So um yeah right. Also i think stan it also depends on the discipline academic discipline right so if you are like let’s say studying law or something where you have to put the clauses from the law or constitution you can’t paraphrase them. You can’t rephrase them so of course there will be high singularity there. I also think that many journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys where they ask you to be below 15 or whatever they still say that um each uh similarity should be less than one percent so that one percent is for you to have that similarity there but anyways. It’s a good so one thing is from sudan just to make you a bit happier. Uh she says may the academic force be with you so that is for you layers to them last question um is from again from professor aliostar and this is a good one. I have a personal interest in this one. What is your perception towards the sustainability journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology. Mpgi yes i don’t review. I don’t surf in the boards and i don’t publish so because the journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology the journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology may be good. But it goes beyond my ethical perceptions. I i think that authors should not pay for their publications because authors do all the work they collect the data they analyze the data they even obtain the uh the funding while the journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys. Uh editors work for free reviewers review for free and the journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys are taking thousands of euros just uh for for work which is practically not uh which is done by someone else who works for free.
I don’t think that this is ethical. It is legal but it’s not ethical in. Uh that’s why i don’t do anything for the journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology i used to do. Let’s say a few years a few years ago but then i saw that. It’s it’s not my field right so i just want to um highlight here a little bit. Stan and i like your answer. You said it’s uh legal but in your opinion it’s not ethical right so yeah i just want to say that. Recently i read about the sustainability journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology on trinette. I think there was a discussion going on. Yes and uh one of the editors said that he likes it because uh um sustainability mdpi they do all the stuff and editor only does the decision making which is a different model right. But i agree to this because i feel that if all the journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys were charging and then this journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology is charging less or whatever then it would be a different issue but right now we have several completely open access journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys like ejti is completely open access. It’s completely free for uh authors to submit all all the stuff um jihan i want to highlight completely open access journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys. He is working on so there is an opportunity so why then authors have to pay 1700 or 1800 uh dollars or swiss francs or whatever. I also want to comment a couple of other people. Here so sustainability journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technology. I think they say that they charge because they want to make it pretty quick so within a couple of weeks you get your decision and everything is quicker. I think there are a lot of journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys that are for profit journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys like by emerald or um by elsewhere but the editors have developed systems like i want to highlight professor de metros bohales. He has a team of associate editors right and the reason for that team is because as soon as the paper comes then it’s sent to the associate editor to deal with it. And um many times you get your first decision within three to four weeks so i think authors sometimes also are lazy not to find the right outlet to publish their favorites.
It’s it’s just a different model but i think people should look at different opportunities before going for completely for-profit journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologys all right. Um any last suggestions uh from you stand for people who want to be or let me rephrase my question. So you get a reviewer report okay. As an editor from a young reviewer may be reviewing for you for the first time. What do you see in that report. What what would i. What what do you see like what is it that you really look for in that report in the report. I look whether the comments are constructive whether they are relevant whether whether the comments will help the authors improve the paper because if the paper is uh well i usually this rejects something like 80 of submissions. Which means that. Uh this that if the paper is sent out of for review it has some merits get some merits. And it doesn’t mean that the paper cannot be rejected it can be uh rejected but it uh has some merits. So i’m looking for whether the paper can be improved or if there are significant faults and uh also uh not. I don’t expect 10 pages of review but uh uh but also something a few hundred words that can help the that can help the authors. All right thank you very much stan. I really really appreciate your time but before we sign off i just have a couple of quick announcements um i already shared it on facebook but i want to say that um you know. I’m doing all this stuff to try to help. Many betting research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologyers because the help is very limited to many people around the world. Um so i’m starting a newsletter for um graduate students and i urge you stan and any other like professor ali osterran or dr sedan or any other experienced people who are watching to help me with contributing to this newsletter and the basic idea for this newsletter is to highlight uh some important methodologies some tips and tricks just like this how to review papers or any issues with research journal of agronomy, international research journal of engineering and technologyers and if you have any students who have done an amazing job like beyond all the limitations and everything some motivational stuff right.
Um share with me and i’ll be happy to uh feature that in that newsletter completely. Free um and if you are doing any workshops uh any talks any webinars where people can join for free. Uh send all that to me so i can feature it in the newsletter. Um and then the other thing is that 19th of december i’ll share this on my social media also 19th of december morning. I have a three hours long session for nvivo so i have a certified trainer who will come and talk about mvo. Uh and it’s completely free. Nobody has to pay anything for any of this. So thank you again stan. Thank you everybody who was watching. I hope this was valuable to all of you. Thank you so much thank you bye.
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