The peer review process can be frustrating to researchers eager to get their work published. Changes to the process might be warranted—but only if they are based in fact, not conjecture. (Click here to continue reading)
Spoonful of Medicine
a blog from Nature Medicine
It seems to me that one of the most difficult issues for editors is to identify a poor (unhelpful, obstructive, incorrect) review. It seems to me that the reviewers themselves are in the best position to vet reviews as they are, presumably, already expert enough to understand the science and have put the time in to read and understand that manuscript already. Why doesn’t the journal ask for feedback from the other reviewers before sending comments to the authors? In most cases, this would have to be more onerous than checking a box that says that the other reviews are reasonable. Further justification would only be required if a problem was identified in the other reviewer’s comments.
I know that Nature Medicine already says that it consults the other reviewers, but having watched this process in action, it took some negations and the problem could have been resolved much earlier. Adding a very short “pre-vetting” step would be simple within the context of the current peer review process, and would potentially weed out many of the deliberately obstructive reviews, or those that result from a reviewer that doesn’t understand the study properly. I think that these are the kind of reviews that authors fear most.
Another issue that was not addressed by the editorial is the nature of the review itself. The process is blinded to the authors but not to the reviewers and this raises the issue of bias against authors that may be young, not at major centers, or new to the field. It seems to me that the most unbiased approach would be for the process to be blinded to both authors and reviewers. Essentially, the cover page should be removed before it is sent to the reviewers. This would go a long way to eliminate that bias.
Steven, that is an interesting suggestion about reviewers “reviewing” each other’s reports. Peer-reviewer reports come in at different times. Do you think reviewers who had delivered a report a week ago (say) would be happy to do this, if two other reviewers had not delivered their reports until later?
Also, do you think there is any merit in this process being part of a discussion between the referees, eg if one of them wants substantive revisions and another does not, could the referees discuss this between themselves and agree (or not) before the journal’s decision is sent to the author?
Or is there a point at which already busy scientists feel that a journal is asking too much of them?