来源：《新科学家》
原文刊登日期：2023年1月16日
More than 1 in 10 researchers who are also the editors of science journals publish a fifth of their own papers in their journals – and 1 in 20 publish a third of their own work. This raises the question of whether editors’ submissions get treated more favourably.
在担任科学期刊编辑的研究人员中，超过十分之一的人在自己的期刊上发表了自己五分之一的论文，二十分之一的人发表了自己三分之一的工作。这就提出了一个问题：编辑的投稿是否得到了更有利的对待？
Decisions on which papers to accept are made by a journal’s board of editors, who are usually practising research scientists. While editors seek advice on submitted papers from other scientists who are experts on the topic, known as peer review, they still have a lot of influence over the process.
期刊的编辑委员会决定接受哪些论文，他们通常是义务的研究科学家。虽然编辑们会向该领域的其他专家寻求对提交论文的建议，也就是所谓的同行评议，但编辑对接收过程仍然有很大的影响力。
To gauge the extent of the problem, Bedoor AlShebli at New York University Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates, and her colleagues analysed a database of more than 1000 journals published between 1980 and 2018 by Elsevier, a company behind one-fifth of the world’s scientific papers.
为了衡量这个问题的严重程度，阿拉伯联合酋长国纽约大学阿布扎比分校的AlShebli和她的同事分析了爱思唯尔(Elsevier)在1980年至2018年间发表的1000多种期刊的数据库，该公司拥有世界上五分之一的科学论文。
While there was great variation in the self-publishing rates, 12 per cent of these journals’ editors published more than a fifth of their papers in their journals and 6 per cent published more than a third in their journals.
尽管编辑自主发表论文的比例存在很大差异，但在这些期刊的编辑中，12%的编辑在自己担任编辑的期刊上发表了超过五分之一自己的论文，6%的编辑在自己担任编辑的期刊上发表了超过三分之一自己的论文。
The team used software to match each of these editors with a similar researcher, for example one in the same scientific field. Results show that these comparison researchers generally had only a small percentage of their papers accepted by the journal in question.
该团队使用软件将这些编辑中的每一位都与一位类似的研究人员相匹配，例如同一科学领域的研究人员。结果表明，这些对照研究人员通常只有一小部分论文被相应期刊接受。
This raises the possibility that papers submitted to a journal by its editor are treated more favourably, “which may be considered an abuse of the scientific publishing system”, according to AlShebli’s team.
根据AlShebli团队的说法，这增加了编辑提交给期刊的论文受到更优惠待遇的可能性，“这可能被认为是对科学出版制度的滥用”。
“Publishing in a journal is supposed to be a signal that the journal thought this is good-quality science,” says Stuart Buck, who runs the Good Science Project, a non-profit US organisation that aims to improve scientific rigour. “At the very least, self-publishing seems like a conflict of interest.”
“在期刊上发表论文本应是一个信号，表明该期刊认为这是高质量的科学研究，”提高科学严谨性的美国非营利组织“好科学项目”负责人斯图尔特•巴克表示。“至少，自主发表论文似乎存在利益冲突。”
Dorothy Bishop at the University of Oxford, says some editors may try to publish high-quality science in their own journals to improve its profile, rather than to boost their own careers. In such cases, the scientists should step back from editorial board decisions on whether to accept the work and state in the paper that this has happened, says Bishop.
牛津大学的多萝西·毕晓普表示，一些编辑可能会尝试在自己的期刊上发表高质量的科学研究，以提高期刊知名度，而不是提升自己的职业生涯。毕晓普表示，在这种情况下，论文作者应该从编辑委员会决定是否接受这项研究的决定中回避，并在论文中声明已经发生了这种情况。
This is recommended in a set of guidelines from the Committee on Publication Ethics, an international journal advisory body. The editors whose research was included in the latest study may have followed this process, as AlShebli’s team didn’t assess how often any such statements appear in self-published papers.
这是国际期刊咨询机构出版伦理委员会的一套指导方针所建议的。研究被纳入最新研究的编辑可能遵循了这一过程，而AlShebli的团队没有评估此类声明在自主发表论文中出现的频率。
A spokesperson for Elsevier says it does not exclude editors from publishing in their own journals as some scientific fields are narrow and may only have a handful of relevant journals. Nevertheless, editors should not be involved in decisions about papers they have written and there must be a clear statement to this effect when any such paper is published, they say.
爱思唯尔的一位发言人表示，该公司并不排斥编辑在自己的期刊上发表文章，因为一些科学领域比较狭窄，可能只有少数几家相关期刊。然而，出版公司说，编辑不应该参与对他们自己所写论文接收的决定，并且在任何此类论文发表时都必须有明确的表明这一情况的声明。