Why success is not enough

Are you successful? What does success look like? Is it a specific number of published works? Is it a certain amount of annual royalties? Is it the completion of a degree or the achievement of a specific title or position? How do you define success?

Now that you have a clear image of success in your mind, ask yourself, is success the goal? Will those checkmarks of achievement satisfy your pursuit of happiness and meaning or are they merely stepping stones to something more?

Don’t get me wrong, I want to be successful – and you should too – but success is not enough.

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Developing #TrustInPeerReview from author to audience, Part 4: Trust is appreciated by the reader

We have now explored the roles of authors, reviewers, and publishers in the peer review process and how those three sets of actors affect an established culture of trust in peer review – the theme of this year’s Peer Review Week event. In summary, authors establish trust through integrity of research and reporting, reviewers develop that trust through unbiased and constructive feedback, and publishers demonstrate trust through effective and transparent communication of the peer review processes in place.

When in concert with one another, these three aspects lead to an ultimate reader satisfaction and appreciation of the process by which they can trust the results of the peer review process culminating in the manuscript they receive.  In today’s post, we will explore some of the factors of audience appreciation as they relate to trust in peer review.

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Most useful textbook and academic posts of the week: September 25, 2020

As we come to the end of Peer Review Week 2020, this week’s quote from Harper Lee seems rather appropriate – “I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide.” When we write and publish, we invite feedback on the results of our work.

Given the event this week, there are a number of posts in our collection related to the peer review process, but we also have some additional items of interest on such topics as literature reviews, motivation, productivity, and open access.

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Developing #TrustInPeerReview from author to audience, Part 3: Trust is demonstrated by the publisher

So far this week, we have explored aspects of how trust in peer review is fostered and maintained in academic publishing environments. Specifically, we have examined the responsibility of authors to establish trust through honest manuscript submission and of reviewers to further develop that trust by conducting unbiased and quality reviews.

In this post, we’re going to look at how the publisher is ultimately responsible for demonstrating that established trust to an audience of readers.

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Developing #TrustInPeerReview from author to audience, Part 2: Trust develops through the reviewers

In this series of posts exploring how trust in peer review is established, maintained, and delivered, we began yesterday by discussing the author’s role in establishing trust through honest research and reporting practices.

Today, we will explore the responsibilities of the reviewers to further develop that trust through unbiased and quality review practices that lead to an ultimate goal of publishing quality work that is accepted and trusted by the readers.

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Member Spotlight: Prs Murthy

TAA member Prs Murthy is a freelance IIT JEE physics professor and is both a textbook and academic author in the physics writing discipline.

His most recent publications are Rotational motion and gravitation (along with properties of matter) DPP Vol-3 and Oscillations and waves DPP Vol-5.

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