Findings: April 2024
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win.
We bring you the latest from the community of researchers who publish in Findings, an interdisciplinary, independent, indexed, community-led, peer-reviewed, self-sustaining, open access journal focused on short, clear, and pointed research results.
You can find us on the socials at: RSS, Mastodon: @FindingsPress@Fediscience.org, BlueSky, LinkedIn (and even X if you must).
We are now going quarterly with the Findings Newsletter.
One round of external peer review
At Findings, we believe the first round of reviews is critical (by editors with domain expertise and/or external reviewers). We have decided to forego the second (and subsequent) rounds of external reviews, and instead insert editorial judgment: A binary Accept or Decline decision on the revised paper. The Findings team has learned through experience as editors, reviewers, and authors: that there are sharply diminishing returns to additional rounds of review; that if a paper has issues so severe that they can't be fixed in one round, it probably shouldn't have been submitted in the first place; that it is a drain on reviewers' time to go over the same paper again and again, and makes them less willing to review in the future; that it is frustrating for authors to have a paper rejected after multiple rounds of review.
Therefore we have now updated our Peer Review Policies:
After the first round of review, Findings provides "Accept", "Decline", or “Revise and Resubmit” decisions.
There will be no more than one round of external peer review for each paper. The results of the review will be conveyed back to the author. If the paper is given a decision of "Revise and Resubmit", the authors at that stage may revise and resubmit the paper, with a letter detailing the reviewer queries and the authors responses, which will then be adjudicated by the editors as either "Accept" or "Decline".
As an author, you have the confidence of knowing there will be only one round of reviews to deal with. But in return you accept the responsibility for addressing all comments and accept the risk of a rejection if you do not adequately address them,.
As a reviewer, you give up some control, but in return you know that we won't be bothering you again.
Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting
Big changes may be coming to the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting.
If it holds, conference submissions will be more like Findings:
"Minimum of 1000 words and a maximum of 1750 words
Maximum total of 4 figures and/or tables (not counted in the word limit)
Required elements: Title page, Introduction, Methodology, Findings, Conclusion, References”
This is due in large part to an AI-reviewing scandal. The generation of those Findings-compatible papers for the Conference may result in an uptick in submissions to Findings (and of course, we welcome any high quality papers to be submitted).
Which leads to our next point:
Editors wanted
Findings is interested in additional editors, both in Transport to share duties with David and in potential new growth areas. Please email me with inquiries.
More on AI
Findings has an AI-Policy. The rise of AI-enhanced (or worse, AI-generated) spam papers is an issue warranting concern. While we expect at the current stage of technological development to be able to identify them quickly and filter them from reviewers, and if not, our reviewers filtering them from readers, there are no guarantees that as AI improves it will not become trickier to identify. We think retaining the submission fee will be a further dissuasion from putative authors trying to sneak an AI-authored paper in to accumulate credit in the increasingly quantified promotion and tenure system that has grown up over the past few decades.
Articles
The following were published in Findings between January - early April 2024. We encourage you to read them all, or at least the one’s you are interested in, and share with colleagues.
How much is US Office Building Space Reduced per Teleworker?
When is Perceived Accessibility Over- or Underestimated by Accessibility Indicators?
Site Selection for Future Mobility Hubs in Melbourne: A Multicriteria Location-Allocation Analysis
Value of Travel Time is Lower When Being Driven than when Driving Oneself
Preparing for 2024 Total Solar Eclipse: Mining Social Media Data to Understand Spectator Experience
If Transit is Free will Older Adults use it More? A Longitudinal Analysis
Comparison of Embodied Carbon of 3D-printed vs. Conventionally Built Houses
Accessibility and Affordability Impacts of Half Price Public Transport Fares in Aotearoa New Zealand
Super Speeders: Mining Speed-Camera Data to Analyze Extreme Recidivism in New York City
Equity in Resilience Hub Design and Transportation through Community Discussions
Submissions
Findings always welcomes submissions, please see the For Authors for details.
