Mentorship, meritocracy, and scientific journal reviewing

Journal Aspirations: Improving Scientific Writing and Publication Through a Writing Mentorship Program

Looking to help novice scientific writers improve their skills and enhance the likelihood of scientific publication, the IJTMB launched a writing mentorship program. Research indicates that when novice writers have a mentor and work on writing as a team, the authors can gain self-efficacy, manuscripts are improved, thoughts and writing are clarified, and differing perspectives are added. This e...

Reviewing scientific papers.

Guidelines for the preparation of structured reports for laboratory studies, clinical studies, epidemiological studies, and observations could be useful. A structured report should prompt reviewers to acknowledge familiarity or otherwise with method, background papers, and so on. New reviewers could draw up their own system. Reports should be helpful and courteous so that whether or not the pap...

Reviewing, Reviewers and the Scientific Enterprise

Despite their critical importance to the scientific enterprise, reviewers receive no formal training and reviewing has become a skill that they pick up through trial and error. Additionally, because most reviewers do not receive any feedback on their performance, any bad reviewing habits become entrenched over time. This has contributed to significant and unnecessary anxiety about reviewing and...

Essays Meritocracy and Brazilian Society down with Meritocracy

“Down with meritocracy” is a frequent sentence in posters displaying demands from different professional categories on strike and other union demands in Brazil. So, it is far from being new. What is interesting, in the present moment, is that this demand – “down with meritocracy” – is reproduced simultaneously with a Brazilian party-political, administrative and institutional discourse change, ...

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Pride Displays Communicate Self-Interest and Support for Meritocracy