Scholarpedia:Editor Help
From Scholarpedia
Scholarpedia is a peer-reviewed encyclopedia containing articles (entries) that are written, peer-reviewed, and accepted according to the same rigorous academic standards as in the best peer-reviewed journals. This process is supervised by Scholarpedia Editors - the leading experts in their respective fields.
Similarly to most peer-reviewed journals, Editors of Scholarpedia are responsible for the peer-review process. They are respinsible for assigning reviewers, for reading the reviews, for resolving possible misunderstandings, and eventually for accepting the articles.
In contrast to most peer-reviewed journals, Editors of Scholarpedia do not deal with manuscripts "submitted for possible publication". Instead, they have the luxury of selecting the topics within their areas of expertise and the honor to invite the best living experts to contribute these topics (see 'Chose an author' below).
Currently, Editors of Scholarpedia are invited by the Editor-in-Chief. Soon, editors will need to be elected using the same mechanism as election of authors in Scholarpedia.
For more info, see Scholarpedia:Editor FAQ.
Contents |
The Scope of Your Editorial Privileges
Categories in Scholarpedia
Each article in Scholarpedia belongs to one or more categories (i.e., major topics), which are listed at the bottom of the article. For example, the article "Bursting" belongs to categories "Neuroscience", "Computational Neuroscience", and "Dynamical Systems" because its wikitext contains
- [[Category:Neuroscience]], [[Category:Computational Neuroscience]], [[Category:Dynamical Systems]]
(at the bottom).
Your category
As an editor, you are assigned to a category of Scholarpedia, which is listed on your userpage (click your username link at the top right corner). You have editorial control over all articles in your category. When you create a new article stub and invite an expert to write it (see below), the article is automatically moved into your category and remains there as long as it contains the text [[Category:your category name here]].
To Get Started
Create your category page
Your category page should contain a short summary paragraph and the alphabetical list of all articles, see, e.g., Category:Computational Neuroscience or Category:Algorithmic Information Theory. The list is compiled automatically as new articles appear, but the summary paragraph must be written by you. Just go to your category page, press 'edit this article' button, write the text, then press 'save page' button.
Move relevant articles to your category
Agree with the editor-in-chief on what articles should and should not be in your category. If there is a chapter with your category name in one of the Encyclopedia pages (see left menu), then the articles in the chapter should probably belong to your category (they were put there by the editor-in-chief). Go through them and make sure they all have the line [[category:your category name]] at the end. If they do not, add it. If there are articles that are not in that chapter but should be there, consult the editor-in-chief and add them to the chapter and to the category.
Greet existing authors in your category
Remind the editor-in-chief of Scholarpedia to send a letter to all authors of articles in your category to let them know that they have a new editor. It is a good idea to put some information into your userpage in Scholarpedia, including your photo, so that the authors can get to know you better. To edit your userpage, click your username at the top-right corner.
Customize your invitation letter
Next, you need to edit your generic invitation letter, the link to which was provided to you by the editor-in-chief. You can find it by typing "Scholarpedia:Invitation to your category name here" (e.g., "Scholarpedia:Invitation to Dynamical Systems") in the search window and pressing 'Title' button. Alternatively, you can click your name (top right corner), then the name of the category, and you will find a link to the template at the top of the page.
The letter contains placeholders %NAME%, %TITLE%, etc., that will be replaced by the name of the person you invite, the title of the article, your name, and other relevant information.
Please, customize your letter. You might mention the major experts in your field who already agreed to write articles, list all planned articles in your category, provide links to sample articles, and give other relevant information. You need to update the letter from time to time as more experts join the project and more articles in your category are peer-reviewed and accepted.
How to create and reserve an article
Choose your topics and authors carefully: There is no mechanism of rejection of articles in Scholarpedia; they can only be renamed by the editor-in-chief. For example, the article initially solicited for "Instrumental Conditioning" was later renamed Computational Models of Classical Conditioning because the text fell short for the general article on conditioning but had a nice computational flavor. The article initially solicited for "Attention from Consciousness" was later renamed to "CODAM Model" because it dealt mostly with that model.
Create new titles and redirects
To create a new title, just type it in the 'search scholarpedia' window on the left and press 'title' button. You will get the message 'no page with this title exists' and a prompt (in red) to create a new article. Just click on the red prompt.
Some topics are known by multiple titles. For example, Basin of attraction is known as Attraction domain and Domain of attraction. It is useful to have all such alternative titles pointing to the Basin of attraction. Not only does this make searching for the article easier, but also the autolinker of Scholarpedia will create automatic links from every article mentioning domain of attraction to the appropriate article. To create a redirect, just create a new title (e.g., attraction domain) and then write in the first line:
#redirect[[Basin of attraction]]
Use only singular nouns, as the autolinker will try the title with and without s at the end. Thus, there is no need to create attraction domains redirect, because it is equivalent to the attraction domain.
Choose a good title
First, you need to partition your field into (ideally) non-overlapping topics. Each topic must have a brief and descriptive title (e.g., "Brain", "Neuron", "Hippocampus"). Scholarpedia has an autolinker option that creates automatic links between articles. For example, every article containing "neuron" has an automatic link to the article "Neuron".
Then, you need to verify that the topics do not exist or were not reserved in Scholarpedia. Type the topic name in the search window and search existing articles. Watch out for synonyms like "Neural Oscillators" vs. "Neuronal Oscillators" vs. "Neuronal Oscillator". You do not want to invite an author for an article just to learn a few months later that essentially the same article with a similar title was written by somebody else.
You can also create additional titles, synonyms (e.g., 'neurone', 'neurons', 'neural', 'neuronal'), and redirect them to the main title "Neuron", so that mentioning any of these words would result in the automatic link to "Neuron". For example, to redirect 'Neurone' to "Neuron", create a new article "Neurone" with only one line of text:
#redirect[[Neuron]]
The Editor-in-Chief will help you create additional titles.
Choose the author
The 13th edition of Encyclopedia Britannica has the "Space-Time" entry written by Albert Einstein and the "Psychoanalysis" entry written by Sigmund Freud. If Britannica had the feature of curatorship, physicists and psychologists of today would be fighting each other for the honor to be curators of these articles. It does not matter whether the original articles were good or bad; what matters is that they were written by Einstein and Freud.
The goal of Scholarpedia is to invite today's Einsteins and Freuds to write entries on their major discoveries so that future generation of experts would be willing to maintain these articles via the process of curatorship. The Editor-in-Chief has spent quite a substantial amount of his time creating the initial seed of legendary participants of Scholarpedia. Your goal as an Editor is to maintain such an elite group of participants.
Thus, if an entry describes a result or a phenomenon and the person who discovered the phenomenon is still alive, start with that person regardless of his/her age. Be bold and ambitious (though do not wake up certain 86-year old Nobel Laureates in the middle of the night just because you forget that there is time difference between US and UK).
If the original author is not available, invite the person who has made the most fundamental contribution to the topic. Contact existing authors and other experts in the field and ask them to suggest the names. If all of them focus on the same individual, then invite this individual. Start your invitation letter with something like "A. Einstein, N. Bohr, and M. Planck suggested that you would be the best expert to invite to write a short entry ..." (change the names to whoever your advisers are provided that the invitee knows these advisers).
If there is no clear choice, if there are many people who are worthy the topic, initiate election of authors and let the public decide who should write the article. Consult the Editor-in-Chief if in doubt.
Remember that the goal of Scholarpedia is not to fill in all the articles as quickly as possible, but to get to the original inventors/discoverers. This is why the invitation process is slow, involving research and communication with other experts.
Quite often the best person for an article is a senior or retired scientist who has limit access to Internet and limited knowledge of wiki-technology or who is no longer active in the field. In this case, you need to arrange for a co-author for that person who is actively engaged in the field. This worked well for Otto Rossler (Rossler Attractor), Richard FitzHugh (FitzHugh-Nagumo Model), Richard Plant (Plant Model), Nancy Kopell (Fast Threshold Modulation), and many other legendary experts.
Invite the author
Once you identified the best possible living expert for an article, you need to send an invitation letter and reserve the article. Chances are that this person has already been registered and invited for another topic in Scholarpedia. To check, go to user list and find the username of that person. Alternatively, you can find any person by typing his/her last name in the search window and pressing 'Title' button. If the person with such a username exists, you will see the link 'User:<lastname>'. The person may have a different username, so there is a line "See all users with names/affiliations containing ...". Follow this line.
If the person you are inviting is registered, proceed to #Send letter of invitation.
Register new author
To register a new user, just click 'invite (new)' link in the editorial menu on the left and fill out all fields. Whenever possible, use the last name for the username field. If the username is taken, e.g., 'Smith', use 'SmithGreg' or 'SmithGreg2'. Make sure the email address is valid; it does not go through the validation procedure. Provide complete affiliation ("Department, University, City, State/Contry"); accounts with short or incomplete affiliations, e.g., "Joe Smith, Math Univ Tex", could be deleted by the spam filter.
When you press 'create new account' button, you will see the invitation letter window with all the fields filled in for you.
Send letter of invitation
To reserve an article and send an invitation letter, you need to register the author first (see above). If the author is registered, you click 'invite (registered)' link in the editorial menu on the left and fill in all the fields (username, article title, your category).
You can edit the invitation letter to tailor it to this particular person, e.g., to mention who suggested his/her name. Any changes to the text will apply only to this letter and will not affect subsequent letters of invitation. To edit the template, type "Scholarpedia:Invitation to your category here" in the search window and press 'Title'.
To send the letter, press 'Send' button. You should receive a copy of your invitation. The article will show the name of the person you invited and the time the invitation letter was sent.
The invitation letter contains two special links with a 32-digit token, one for 'agree' and one for 'decline' response. The article will be on hold until the invitee clicks one of the links.
Invite Co-Authors
You can invite more than one person for the same article in Scholarpedia. If both agree, they will be co-authors. Each of the co-authors can change the order of authors by clicking 'author' link above the article's title. The co-authors need to agree among themselves who is the first and who is the last.
In addition, an author can invite a co-author without your assistance. He/she need to press 'author' button, then 'invite co-author' button, then type in the username of the co-author. The co-author will receive an email with the instructions.
Encourage your authors, especially senior ones, to take junior co-authors (former students or postdocs) who would do all the tedious job, such as converting the article to wikitext, uploading the figures, seeing it through the peer-review, etc. Your job as an editor will be easier if you do not need to babysit a 90-year old through the process of conversion of .doc file to wikitext or to explain how to see the modifications of the article made by reviewers.
Follow-up your invitations
Some people agree to write the article within minutes after receiving an invitation; Others need a month to think. You need to follow-up your invitations from time to time to remind the invitee that you received neither 'yes' nor 'no' answer. Just go to the article of interest and press 'followup' link at the top of the article. Change the follow-up letter if necessary. Scholarpedia sends automatic follow-ups every month.
Cancel invitations
If the invitation was declined other than by clicking the 'decline' link in the invitation email (e.g., via personal communication channels), you need to cancel the invitation yourself. Just go to the article and press 'cancel invitation' link at the top of the article. You do not want one person to write an article and then find out that another person can join him/her as a co-author by clicking an old (non-canceled) invitation link.
Review forum
When the author accepts the invitation, he/she chooses a self-imposed deadline and the preferred frequency of automatic reminders from Scholarpedia (weekly, monthly, weekly after the deadline, or never). Scholarpedia will be sending these reminders until the article is finished and submitted to the peer-review forum.
When an article is submitted to peer-review forum, you receive an email notification. In addition, the authors may suggest potential reviewers. Your job is to initiate the peer-review process and see it through.
While an article is in preparation or peer-reviewed, it contains a disclaimer below its title saying that "...it is not accepted yet; it may contain inaccuracies and unapproved changes...". When the article is accepted, this "consumer warning" sign is removed.
Click 'Review forum' link in the editorial menu on the left to see the list of all your articles undergoing peer-review. Click on any article to see its status.
Register new reviewer
To invite a new reviewer, click 'invite (new) reviewer' link in the pink 'peer-review status' box. You need to fill in all the fields there, making sure the email address is correct. When you press 'create new account' button, you will see the invitation letter window.
Send letter of invitation
To invite a registered reviewer, just press 'invite (registered) reviewer' link in the pink status box at the top of the article. Provide reviewer's username and then modify the text of the letter, if necessary.
Create customized invitation letter
By default, Scholarpedia uses a generic invitation template to invite reviewers for the article in your category. You can create your own customized template by following the corresponding link found in the editor box at the top of any article in your category that is being peer-reviewed. You may want to copy the text from the generic invitation template into your own invitation template, and then customize your text appropriately.
Manage your reviewers
The pink 'peer-review status' box provides you with the options to remind reviewers that they were asked to review an article, cancel a review request, add more reviewers, alert the reviewer if he/she is overdue, alert the author if the article was modified and needs evaluation.
Remember, that peer-review process in Scholarpedia does not have rounds, but it is continuous. A reviewer can work on an article at the same time as the author changes it in response to previous review. This process is faster and more effective, especially since the second reviewer reads an improved version of the article (modified by the author or the first reviewer), but such a novel review process may be confusing to some.
It is recommended that you review at least one article in your category just to see the review process form the reviewer's point of view.
Anonymity
The review process in Scholarpedia is anonymous by default, but you, as an editor, can see who makes each revision of the article in your category. Do not reveal anonymity of reviewers. If they choose, they can reveal their names via the 'anonymity' link above the article's title. In this case, their names will appear at the bottom of the article, after the author's name.
Acceptance
To accept the article, the reviewer has to press 'accept' button. If your reviewers complain that they do not see the button, then they are either not logged in or did not press 'agree to review' link in the invitation letter, so that Scholarpedia does not know that they are reviewers.
Once all reviewers accept the article (by pressing 'accept' button), the author becomes the article's curator. He/she receives an email saying that the article is accepted by all reviewers and that he/she needs to evaluate the article to make sure the reviewers did not introduce any mistakes. Then, the author needs to accept the very first "official/approved" version, which will be shown to all the readers. This version will have a page number. There will be a permanent link to this version at the end of the article, so that readers even 50 years from now could see what was the very first version of the article. All the figures in the article will be locked, so that the version is preserved for the future generation. (To modify a figure in the future revision of the article, one need to rename the figure file first.)
If no "approved" version exists, the latest version is shown, like in Wikipedia. The article remains vulnerable to vandalism and other non-approved modifications.
Your name, as the editor, appears at the bottom of each approved article in your category. If more than half of articles in your category appear in a printed issue of Encyclopedia, your name will appear on the front page of the Encyclopedia. The Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience, Encyclopedia of Dynamical Systems, and Encyclopedia of Computational Intelligence are scheduled to be published in 2008.
If you do not see the 'editor' menus, you are not logged in. Contact Editor-in-Chief if you have questions or problems.
