eos, vol. 75, no. 34, august 23, 1994...
TRANSCRIPT
Eos, Vol. 75, No. 34, August 23, 1994
AGU
GRL Editor Geller Pushes Clarity and Foreign Review PAGE 389
In his 3-year term as an editor of Geophysical Research Letters, which he began earlier this year, Robert J. Geller of Tokyo University is working with authors to ensure that AGU's interdisciplinary rapid-publication journal both meets high professional standards and serves its readers.
Geller, a seismologist, has been a faculty member at Tokyo University since 1984. He received his undergraduate and graduate degrees at Caltech in 1973 and 1977, respectively.
Currently, his main research interest is inversion of seismic waveform data for three-dimensional Earth structure. He questioned the underlying premises of Japan's earthquake prediction program in Nature in 1991 {352, pp. 275-276 and 353, pp. 611-612).
During his tenure as editor, Geller says he plans to encourage the publication of papers of interest to all the various segments of AGU's membership and GRLs readers. Although Geller says it is hard to set down firm rules, he will direct highly technical papers of interest to only a small segment of the community to specialized journals rather than to GRL. He also plans to encourage authors to strive for clarity and review of papers by referees outside the author's own country.
Geller Defines His Role
The following are Geller's words to the wise about what he seeks to accomplish in his role.
"Obviously, the most important task of an editor is reaching decisions when the referees disagree.... I'll do the best I can, but reading about the rejection of the first paper reporting an operating laser by Phys. Rev. Lett, is certainly sobering (Physics Today, pp. 28-31, Oct. 1993). On the other hand, the consequences of printing everything and letting the readers decide for themselves would be equally disastrous. People are busy enough as it is; one of the main functions of a journal is to filter out trivial, incorrect, or unoriginal papers to save the readers' time and energy.
"I offer a few tips, in order of importance, for how to maximize the chances of having your paper rejected by GRL (with apologies to the author of "How to Write a Truly Terrible Abstract").
• Don't decide what you want to say before writing the paper. At all costs, avoid having two or three main points that you clearly communicate to the reader.
• Make sure the title is obscure and doesn't accurately describe the paper's contents.
• Make sure the abstract is incomprehensible to nonspecialists, including the editor.
• Don't bother to have any of your colleagues read the paper critically before sending it in.
• Make sure you don't cite all of the pertinent literature.
• Don't check the spelling, punctuation, etc. before mailing in your paper. Leave that up to the referees and editor.
If your goal is instead to maximize the chances of having your paper accepted, make sure you don't inadvertently follow the above rules.
"Anyone can submit a paper to any editor of GRL. For example, Japanese authors are welcome to submit papers to U.S. and European editors; conversely, U.S. or European authors are free to submit papers to my office. However, as a practical matter, most papers submitted to my office will come from Japan or other nearby countries.
"In most cases the authors will not be native speakers of English. . . . I will do what I can to help. I won't, however, have time to rewrite each paper. One possible solution might be to put authors in touch with grad students in the U.S., U.K., etc., who for a mutually agreed f e e , . . . could help authors rewrite their papers. If any grad students out there are interested in this possibility, let me know.
"I think the judgment of referees from outside the author's own country lends a much needed objectivity to the review process. Whenever possible, say for authors based in Japan, I try to use at least one reviewer from outside Japan. The availability of e-mail and fax makes this much easier and faster than even 10 years ago. . . . I'd [also] like to encourage U.S.-based editors to use referees from outside the U.S. as much as possible."
To submit a paper to GRL, send five copies to the editor with a cover letter containing the author's telephone number and the names, addresses, and phone numbers of five potential referees. Geller may be contacted at the Department of Earth and Planetary Physics, Faculty of Science, Tokyo University, Yayoi 2-11-16, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113, Japan; tel. 81-3-5800-6973, fax 81-3-3818-3247; e-mail [email protected]. As an experiment, Geller would like to try receiving manuscripts as LaTeX or postscript files. If interested, please e-mail him in advance.
This page may be freely copied.