Author : Dinara Bisimbaeva

When a new manuscript is submitted, the editorial team of Education and Self Development carries out a preliminary assessment and checks it for compliance with the journal guidelines. In case of successful initial check, the manuscript is sent out for peer review. Unfortunately, the percentage of papers that are rejected by editors prior to review is quite high. In this editorial I want to discuss why it happens and how to avoid a desk reject.
One of the key reasons for rejecting a paper is inconsistency with the Journal’s scope. When such cases occur, we realise that an author has not done the groundwork and has not read the journal aims. Before submitting a manuscript, authors must visit a journal website, get familiar with its mission, identify the target audience, learn about the submission process, and even read through some published works. It is highly recommended to select a target journal reasonably in advance, and this choice should be solely based on the scope of a journal.
The second ground for rejection is when a manuscript does not follow journal guidelines. As with the scope, submission guidelines can be found on the journal website. I should point out that instructions for authors who are interested in submitting their works to Education and Self Development are available on our website in the tab ‘Submit an article’ (Author guidelines).

Text recycling is widely discussed in the research community. However, editors and authors may have contrasting opinions on this matter. What are the reasons for their disagreement, in what sections text recycling is appropriate and how to avoid self-plagiarism? In this editorial I am going to illuminate these issues.
In the guidelines for editors the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) defines text recycling as the use of the same text in several publications of an author (Risser, 2020). According to Professor Cary Moskovitz from Duke University, this practice involves small text fragments that are amended to a slight extent between publications (ibid, 2020). Earlier policies on text recycling applied the term “self-plagiarism”, which was disused due to inaccurate implications. Lately, the definition was elaborated. Text recycling is currently perceived as the reuse of textual information in a new document where 1) material is identical or almost identical to the original work, 2) the material is not presented as a direct quote, 3) one author of the new document is also an author of the previous document (Hall et al., 2021).

Almost all my editorials were written drawing on the experience of working with authors. The articles examined issues that were considered controversial or challenging for authors. However, this editorial will focus on another important participants of the publication process, i.e. reviewers. Earlier we wrote about the history of peer review and discussed the need of open reviewing (Rushby, 2020), this time I am going to cover key principles of peer review.
During a review process a scholarly paper is subject to meticulous analysis from peers who are specialists in the same field as authors. Peer review ensures that articles meet the quality requirements and high standards in a given discipline (Kelly et al., 2014). This process filters out low quality manuscripts (ibid, 2014).
There are different peer review methods: open, single-blind, double-blind, public, cascading, and public disclosure (Smart, 2018). Despite this diversity, probably the widely used type is double-blind peer review. It is a model when the identity of authors and reviewers is not disclosed. This anonymity ensures objectivity which is perceived as a great advantage of double-blind review. However, this model can be criticized due to a lack of transparency (Rushby, 2020). Among other disadvantages is long review times (Kelly et al., 2014). Despite these drawbacks, the scientific community is not ready to switch over to alternative models of peer review.

Any scholarly journal undergoes changes at some point of its development. The updates can be large-scale and deal with the journal’s strategy, editorial policy or structure, or they can address technical issues. Whatever transformational processes are taking place, the journal’s activity is never void of them. In this editorial I want to focus on the E&SD transition onto a new platform and the submission process in this system.
Education & Self Development has been using the Editorial Park system for about ten months. Over this course of time, the editors and reviewers have gained first-hand experience of working with the new platform. Similar to OJS, the Editorial Park enables editors to manage all processes from the moment when the journal receives a manuscript to the publication stage. The system’s interface is user-friendly. However, the software is not localized. Thus, authors cannot switch to the Russian language, if necessary. Though the submission process does not pose serious challenges, there are some specifics that I would like to highlight here. The submission process involves five steps or stages that require consistency. Initially, authors are supposed to fill out a checklist. One should realise that the formal completion of the checklist can result in a desk rejection. We strongly encourage authors to check our guidelines before submitting a paper.

One of the most frequent comments that the editors of Education and Self Development make at the stage of preliminary assessment relates to the Discussion chapter. This section is either not discursive or written superficially. In this editorial I want to delve deeper into this issue.
To begin with the structure of a scholarly paper, we recommend using the IMRaD format. This is an acronym made up of the first letters of the following chapters: introduction, methods, results and discussion. There are variations within this format depending on the scope of a journal. For instance, the introduction can contain the analysis of prior studies, discussion can be integrated into the results chapter or the discursive aspect of a paper can be combined with conclusion. Though this practice is acceptable, we do not recommend authors to use integration. The rationale behind this recommendation is that it is difficult to achieve a balance in case of incorporation. When authors combine the results with the discussion, the focus is often shifted towards the findings, and the discussion usually gets lost in a huge flow of information or is not even presented. Therefore, separate sections eliminate such shortcomings.

This editorial was written following the discussion initiated at the conference for
scientific editors and publishers. The delegates raised a number of relevant and thoughtprovoking
issues. Among them was the quality of reviews, the author-editorship
interaction, ethical issues and many more. But the presentation on how to choose a title
for a scientific paper kindled my interest. The speaker showed examples of headings in
the manuscripts from the chemistry field. As the comments were quite universal, I would
like to share them with readers and potential authors of Education and Self-Development
Journal.

What makes a scientific paper good? I believe everyone has an answer or at least an assumption. The variations in answers are contingent on firsthand experience. The feed- back that we receive from reviewers and editors when we submit our papers to journals may help informing our opinion. When specialists scrutinize our manuscripts or when we act as reviewers ourselves, what part of work is of great importance to us? We tend to pay a special attention to methodology, results and discussion sections. Therefore, au- thors endeavor to present rigorous methods, valid and reliable results, and strong discus- sion points. But what about the literature review? Are we sufficiently critical of it?