Recent Innovations at Nicotine & Tobacco Research

Nicotine & Tobacco Research has recently adopted some important changes to our manuscript handling and review processes. First, all submissions to the journal are now screened by plagiarism detection software (iThenticate: www.ithenticate.com/). Second, we now explicitly offer our reviewers the option to sign their reviews so that their name is disclosed to the study authors in the decision letter. Here I describe the rationale behind these two innovations, and I welcome feedback from our readers, authors, and reviewers. The pressure to publish can lead to a number of unfortunate consequences, including the temptation to take shortcuts when preparing manuscripts. Plagiarism is certainly not a new problem, but it may have become more prevalent as electronic databases of articles and other resources have proliferated. Since introducing the routine use of plagiarism detection software, we have detected a small number of potentially problematic cases. It is important to note that these are all then carefully read by a member of the editorial team before a decision as to how to proceed is made. The cases we have identified typically involve either authors using sections from their own publications again (particularly descriptions of methodological procedures), or only minimally reworking passages from other publications that are not their own. The first case is often understandable, in that it may be inefficient to completely rewrite the details of a procedure that is routinely used across many studies (and there are presumably only a finite number of ways to do so). We tend to take a pragmatic view in these cases, whilst also asking our authors to minimize direct overlap as much as possible. The second case is more problematic, and here we will return the manuscript to the authors and ask them to express the relevant sections in their own words. There is potentially a third case, where authors attempt to pass off entire publications by other authors as their own. This is a much more serious situation, but fortunately we have not yet encountered this since adopting the routine use of the plagiarism detection software, and my hope is that by making it known that we are using this software the likelihood of this happening will be low. The introduction of the routine use of plagiarism detection software is motivated by a desire to prevent problematic behavior. The introduction of an explicit option for our reviewers to sign their review, on the other hand, is motivated by a despite to promote positive behavior. There is evidence that open peer review leads to higher quality reviews,1 and it is consistent with the growing interest in many quarters in open science (including open access, open data, and so on). Nevertheless, I am also conscious that some may not feel comfortable revealing their identity (eg, if an early career researcher has critical comments on the work of a more senior researcher). It is entirely at the discretion of our reviewers whether to sign their reviews, although I would encourage them to consider it. In my experience, it encourages more thoughtful, measured comments. It will be interesting to see what the uptake of this option is among our reviewers, but we are already beginning to see the option being used. I feel that these are important innovations. The first removes the onus from our editors and reviewers to detect possible cases of plagiarism, and makes it more likely that problematic manuscripts will be identified. The second offers our reviewers the explicit option to reveal their names, without requiring this. My hope is that our use of plagiarism detection software will become increasingly irrelevant, and that the option to sign reviews will lead to greater openness in our review process, and further improves the quality of the already-excellent reviews we receive.