“Select Crowd Review”: A New, Innovative Review Modality for The Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeon

Abstract

The quality of scientific articles is traditionally assured by the peer-review process.[1] [2] The Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeon (ThCVS) uses double-blind peer review in which both the authors' and the reviewers' identities are kept anonymous. One of the most important issues in today's scientific publishing world is to offer a rapid process without compromising quality or integrity. The whole peer-review workflow, however, is often time consuming until a final decision can be made.[1] Each year the number of scientific papers submitted continues to grow, in turn increasing pressure on the system. For the individual reviewer, this can result in an overload of requests. Moreover, medicine and natural sciences are subject to expanding specialization, again limiting the number of potential reviewers qualified to evaluate a manuscript in its entirety. This situation is an incentive to explore alternative systems, models, and solutions for quality assurance and sustained efficiency of scientific publications.