Editorial Policies of Scientific Journals
The recent results of an Independent Verification of a calculation at Climate Audit and discussed here brings me to mention the editorial policies of scientific journals relative to Verification, Validation, Software Quality Assurance, and Qualfications of models, methods, software, calculations, users, and applications. I have posted comments about the issues relative to publication of peer-reviewed papers on several blogs and given more detailed discussion here.
According to the results of a very unscientific survey by me, the scientific journals have no interest in these very important issues. Many engineering journals, however, have addressed the problems and developed editorial appropriate policies which must be met by authors.
A little over two years ago I wrote letters to the editors of several scientific journals in which the climate change community publishes papers. I have uploaded an example of the letter.
I think it’s time to followup on that letter, for a second time.
The example letter was to the editors of journals published by The American Geophysical Union (AGU). The AGU has an enormous editorial board, most likely due to the large number of journals they publish. I was unsure to which particular journal and editor the letter should be sent. I encountered the same problem with other journals and organizations to which I sent letters. I might have not made contact with the proper persons, but I’ll never know because I received a reply from only one organization. Let me know if you’re interested in the journals and organizations I wrote to.
The AGU publishes the Journal of Geophysical Research. This is the journal in which the peer-reviewed papers about the average temperature of the United States, the subject of the Independent Verification mentioned above, appeared; in 1999 and 2001. Complete citations to the journal articles can be found here.
I think it’s time to followup with the AGU, and all other journals and organizations I wrote to. Thanks to the work at Climate Audit we now have an actual real-world illustration of the failure that results from lack of attention to these very important issues.
More examples are certain to be revealed in the future.
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