A bill of rights for authors?

An enquiry of several mid- or late-career much-published engineers and scie ntists about their experiences having their papers and books published will usually produce a surprising number of 'horror stories'. If one discounts the tendency of many people to prefer transmitting, and Possibly embellishi ng, bad news rather than good, one is still left with the strong impression that serious ethical lapses can take place in the reviewing and editing Pr ocesses. The most serious problems are very long delays - periods of two ye ars are often experienced - before acceptances or rejections of manuscripts are made known. All too often, such a delay is coupled with the appearance of a publication on the same topic by a (suspected) later-starting rival. In several cases, authors have claimed proof that these rivals were reviewe rs of their papers In some cases, the reviewer has even 'lifted' material f rom the submitted manuscript. This is a very difficult area for editors and publishers to police. A group of aggrieved authors in the US drew up a 'bi ll of rights' and negotiated, with some success, with the then-editor of Sc ience for its acceptance.