Peer Review Debate concludes, Peer Review Trial gets interesting
The final batch of contributions to Nature's peer review debate were published last week (while I was away at the Databasing the Brain workshop in Oslo, so excuse my tardiness). It's another fine set, but I have to single out the contribution from Charles Jennings, a former Nature colleague of mine. Charles is open-minded, analytical and articulate, attributes that every scientist should have, but which many of us fall short of. His opening sentence sets the tone:
Whether there is any such thing as a paper so bad that it cannot be published in any peer reviewed journal is debatable.
This is a very important point: peer review is not one thing but a whole collection of different practices. To some journals it means sending the manuscript for detailed review by three or more independent experts, to others it means an internal editor reading it through for obvious howlers. Charles goes on to argue — quite convincingly, I think — that the primary purpose of peer review is not to ensure that bad papers don't get published, but that each paper gets published in the journal that it deserves (and, furthermore, that this serves a useful purpose). He then proposes ways in which the various costs and benefits of peer review could be analysed. It's brilliant stuff so read it.
Meanwhile over at the peer review trial, it's good to see some really meaty comments coming in. (As I write, this seems to be the best example, but manuscripts are coming and going all the time, so that will change). I'm not knowledgeable enough to say how useful these comments are to the review process, but it's interesting to see the conversation (perhaps) starting to take off.
