Publishing Addiction Science: A Guide for the Perplexed

An Idea Whose Time Has Come

The development of this book had many complex motives but a single purpose. The motives include improving scientific integrity in the field of addiction studies, sharing information with junior investigators, and strengthening addiction specialty journals. The single purpose of this volume, however, is to provide a practical guide to scientific publishing in the addiction field that is used othen enough to affect personal decisions, individual careers, institutional policies, and the progress of science. The time is ripe for such an ambitious undertaking: The field of addiction research has grown tremendously in recent years and has spread to new parts of the world. With that growth has come a concomitant increase in competition among researchers, new bureaucratic regulations, and a growing interest in addiction research by health agencies, policy-makers, treatment and prevention specialists, and the alcohol industry. New professional societies, research centers, and university programs have taken root, and regulatory responsibilities such as confiict of interest declarations, human and animal subjects assurances, and the monitoring of scientific misconduct are now common.

The journal-publishing enterprise, the main organ of scientific communication in the field, has an important role to play in all of these developments, and the third edition of Publishing Addiction Science is designed to meet this need. The inspiration for the first edition of this volume came from the International Society of Addiction Journal Editors (ISAJE), which is not only the first society for addiction journal editors, it is also the first international organization specifically devoted to the improvement of scientific publishing in the addiction field.

From its inception, ISAJE has recognized a need for ethical guidelines for member journals. There are several reasons why ethical issues are particularly important in the addiction science field. Strong industries, such as pharmaceutical manufacturers, tobacco companies, and alcohol producers, have important financial interests to protect, and they pay special attention to the work of addiction scientists. Further, many addictionrelated issues are politically loaded, a situation that could affect the objectivity of researchers. Many of the individuals who are the object of addiction research are vulnerable and in need of special protections. Finally, the field of science has become much more ethically challenging because of its growing importance and complexity. Although ISAJE offers a set of ethical guidelines, abstract policy statements and moral pronouncements are rarely read carefully or applied to the day-to-day business of conducting research and communicating ideas to the scientific community. This book aims to improve transparency in addiction publishing and, in the process, show how young investigators can negotiate the complex and sometimes bewildering ethical challenges faced on the path to a successful career in the field.

Rationale for the Third Edition

There are several reasons why a third edition of Publishing Addiction Science is necessary. First, rapid developments in the field of addiction publishing necessitate revisions of parts of this book, particularly the move to online and open-access publication options, the launching of many new addiction specialty journals, and the new ethical and technological challenges facing addiction publishing. For example, more than 30 new journals have been identified since the second edition of the book was published in 2008, many of them launched by for-profit enterprises with little appreciation for scientific quality or peer review. Another reason for the third edition is related to experience from our Publishing Addiction Science workshops, which have been conducted during • the past few years in many parts of the world, including Denmark, Finland, Greece, Jordan, Nigeria, South Korea, Uganda, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The workshops identified new areas of interest that needed attention. To make Publishing Addiction Science even more relevant to its target market of advanced students and young professionals, the third edition has accordingly added new material on publication issues faced by postdoctoral researchers, the ethical challenges of research funding, how to write a research paper, and procedures for peer-reviewing manuscripts,. The development of new online training material will enable the book to continue to be used as a textbook for research ethics in colleges and universities and in training workshops at scientific meetings.

E-Attachments

e-Attachments are additional supplementary materials that can be used to deepen your understanding of the concepts in Publishing Addiction Science. e-Attachments comprise additional information sources, readings, examples and exercises that can improve your skills and help you practice your first steps in the publishing world. You can find 6 different kinds of e- Attachments on our websites: readings, exercises, examples of good practice, simple PowerPoint presentations, videos and full e-learning lessons. Some items are used for more than one chapter while others are quite specific to their chapters. For your effective use of the e-Attachments and the book, please follow the instructions on our website. All e-Attachments are free to download from the website of the International Society of Addiction Journal Editors (ISAJE) on www.isaje.net. e-Attachments will be updated continually. ere are six kinds of e-Attachments, each with a different purpose:

• Readings provide additional information about a chapter or issues discussed in more than one chapter. Some of these documents provide more contextual information or are original documents to which the chapter refers.
• Exercises are materials for practicing and training. ey are appropriate for individual or group application.
• Examples of good practice provide a better understanding of topics or themes discussed in the chapters.
• Simple PowerPoint presentations are mainly designed for use by teachers and lecturers but students and readers may find them useful as simple e-learning documents that provide wellstructured information complementary to the full chapter text.
• Videos, like the PowerPoint presentations, provide actual presentations or workshop/training lectures given by the chapter author(s) or one of more of their colleagues from ISAJE.
• Full e-learning lessons provide more sophisticated e-leaning support. They combine PowerPoint slides with the full text of a presentation and finish with a knowledge test that lets you check your understanding of the lesson.