Peer-to-peer

In 2008, the journal Nature Neuroscience joined a newly created community consortium aimed at making peer review more efficient by allowing reviews to be transferred between consortium journals. In its current (April) issue, the editors look back at their experience with the Neuroscience Peer Review Consortium over the past year (Nature Neuroscience 12, 363; 2009).
Journals in the Neuroscience Peer Review Consortium (NPRC) offer authors whose papers are no longer under consideration at a journal an opportunity to transfer reviews of their manuscipts when submitting their paper to another consortium journal. After a year, Nature Neuroscience's experience is similar to that of other journals in the consortium, with only a handful of papers being transferred from Nature Neuroscience to another consortium journal.
Similar to the Nature journals' transfer system, the NPRC system is voluntary for authors and referees. Editors at one journal only know that a paper was reviewed elsewhere if the author chooses to inform them. At Nature Neuroscience, the editors ask referees for permission to release their identities whenever authors ask for their papers to be transferred to another consortium journal. If a reviewer declines to participate, the reviews (comments to authors only) are transferred anonymously.
All the transfers from Nature Neuroscience to date have been to the Journal of Neuroscience, and represent less than 1% of manuscripts that are eventually rejected after review. However, for the papers that were eventually published in the Journal of Neuroscience, the authors reported that the paper had been expedited. Even in the cases where new referees were solicited, authors felt that transferring the reviews from Nature Neuroscience had saved them time and effort.
No papers have been transferred to Nature Neuroscience from other consortium journals.
The Nature Neuroscience editors ask why so few authors are using the NPRC option. They conclude: "Authors may simply not be aware of NPRC or may not know what journals participate in it. Transfer rates may pick up as more authors learn of the consortium. At Nature Neuroscience, we have noticed an increase in the number of referees that state in comments to the editors whether they wish for their identities to be released to other consortium journals or not, suggesting a growing awareness of the NPRC.
It could also be that there are not that many papers that lend themselves well to this process. Many of our authors who have had papers rejected may prefer to take their chances with new referees at another journal, rather than making substantial revisions in response to the concerns raised by our referees. Certainly, our authors appear to be more conservative when deciding to transfer their reviews, preferentially choosing to utilize the NPRC transfer option when the reviewers reject the paper on conceptual grounds and not for technical reasons.
Another factor that influences the success of the transfer is whether the referees allow the release of their identities to receiving consortium journals. Previous reviews are clearly less useful to the receiving journal if the editors do not know who the reviewers were."
Nature Neuroscience concludes that it is premature to gauge whether the system truly could save referees, authors and editors substantial time and effort. The editors encourage authors, referees and readers to share their views, either by email or by commenting here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 31, 2009
Categories: Quality and value, Systems, Technical solutions | Permalink | Comments (0)

From Nature News, 17 March 2009 (doi 10.1038/458264b):
The Max Planck Society (MPS) in Germany has begun legal proceedings against publishers Wiley International in a dispute over an editorial in the February issue of Human Brain Mapping. The society alleges that the editorial grievously misrepresents it and harms the reputation of one of its scientists. It wants the journal to publish a letter from the society addressing these concerns without delay. Peter Fox, an editor-in-chief at Human Brain Mapping, says that the MPS letter went through normal refereeing processes "in a timely manner", but says he does not know when it will be published. MPS vice-president Herbert Jäckle, deputized to act for the society in this matter, claims that the journal has unfairly delayed the society's right to reply. Fox, a neurologist at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, accepted the MPS letter on 11 March, two days after the deadline the society set before taking legal action, says he will publish the letter together with a reply that "rebuts Dr Jäckle's various accusations".
The row originally centred on a dispute over who owned data gathered in the laboratory of Nikos Logothetis at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen. Last spring, Amir Shmuel and David Leopold used the data in a paper for a special issue of Human Brain Mapping on spontaneous brain activity — but Logothetis maintains that the data were used inappropriately because they had been gathered for a different purpose, and wrote to the journal asking for the paper not to be published. It was, however, published in May 2008. Logothetis published a scientific rebuttal in another journal, NeuroImage, in January 2009.
Fox and his fellow editors published an extended editorial analysing the dispute in the framework of ethics in the February 2009 issue of Human Brain Mapping. The MPS says that there are numerous factual errors in the editorial's account of events. Jäckle is also incensed by the article's claims that he had given permission to publish the disputed paper. "I was only a mediator in a dispute, not an adjudicator as the editorial claims," he says. "It is not up to the Max Planck Society to permit publication of anything — that responsibility lies solely with the editors."
The MPS has posted a response to the February editorial on the website of Logothetis's laboratory. "The goal of our editorial was to use this conflict to discuss the ethical principles that govern responsible conduct of research and peer review," says Fox, "and thereby to develop guidelines that would prevent future occurrences of this nature."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 22, 2009
Categories: Ethics | Permalink | Comments (0)

Brian Derby writes a post with the title Refereeing Chores at his Nature Network blog. Brian has refereed hundreds of papers in his scientific career, so he's as experienced as it gets at the process. Even so, he writes about how it took half a day to reach his decision - to recommend rejection of the submitted paper - and had yet to write his report in suitably critical yet constructive tones for the author and journal.
The process required a first read to form an initial impression, a second read, to use Brian's words, "required that I check up on some of the references and make sure that the article is consistent, which it was but I did not agree on the applicability of the model proposed. More reading of the bibliography. I discover at least one self-reference that appears to be there for no reason other than to (perhaps) improve citation score (I am now grumpy). I discover another reference that is on a completely different subject that must be in by mistake.... A discreet phone call to a colleague allows me to discuss the mechanism and we agree that it is flawed. Now follows the difficult bit, I have to write a carefully worded letter justifying my concerns to the editor."
Or to put it another way, here is how the Nature journals recommend a review is written:
"The primary purpose of the review is to provide the editors with the information needed to reach a decision. The review should also instruct the authors on how they can strengthen their paper to the point where it may be acceptable. As far as possible, a negative review should explain to the authors the weaknesses of their manuscript, so that rejected authors can understand the basis for the decision and see in broad terms what needs to be done to improve the manuscript for publication elsewhere. This is secondary to the other functions, however, and referees should not feel obliged to provide detailed, constructive advice to authors of papers that do not meet the criteria for the journal (as outlined in the letter from the editor when asking for the review). If the reviewer believes that a manuscript would not be suitable for publication, his/her report to the author should be as brief as is consistent with enabling the author to understand the reason for the decision.
Confidential comments to the editor are welcome, but it is helpful if the main points are stated in the comments for transmission to the authors. The ideal review should answer the following questions." (More than a dozen follow, and this list is followed by a second list of "further questions to consider".)

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 10, 2009
Categories: Quality and value | Permalink | Comments (1)