Stirring the publishing pot by ending accept/reject decisions.

Abstract

Ever had a very good manuscript rejected by a scientific journal for reasons that appear illogical or strange? This experience is the destiny of most (if not at all) who try to communicate their discoveries through this pathway. But, does it have to be so hard? Should there be more transparency? The editorial process and peer review are the long-established methods to get new information to readers https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4975196/ and have a long and honourable history. This pathway curates the information for three principal reasons: are findings new, are they true and—is information ‘digestible’ (i.e., is it understandable, concise, logical, clear, etc.)? As part of this process, there are important hidden and often binary decisions depending on numerous human, organizational and other ‘chance’ factors that are seldom evident. For example, your studies discover a novel biomarker for disease X. The submission to a journal is reviewed by editors and reviewers who happen to know (via other sources) that the biomarker may also be present in disease Y. Paper rejected (patient population too limited). At journal B, nobody is aware of this unpublished but related data, paper accepted and editorial commissioned. Luck and serendipity at every turn, could there be another way? Recent innovation in this area by the journal eLife caught my attention https://elifesciences.org/for-the-press/b2329859/elife-ends-accept-reject-decisions-following-peer-review. The byline is arresting: ‘eLife ends accept/reject decisions following peer review’. A diagram explaining the process is available https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1U6pX-CtO3gTMdoSuuQ9WVlpB2cvGvHnV. What does this mean and is it too good to be true? In essence, the ‘invisible parts’ of the peer review process will be transparently displayed on the eLife website as a ‘Reviewed Preprint’. The website will also publish expert reviews and an eLife editorial assessment of the strength of evidence presented and the significance of the findings. This is followed by author revisions and publication on the eLife website of a new ‘Reviewed Preprint’ with updated reviews and assessments. Finally, once the authors are happy and approve, the paper will be published as the ‘Version of Record’ to be indexed in PubMed. What to make of this new process? It will undoubtedly make peer review and the subsequent processes more transparent and enable researchers to place their data for scrutiny in the public square, in the format(s) they prefer. There will be much to learn from explicit and ‘public’ interactions between editors, authors and reviewers. There will be no more of those awful rejection e-mails and authors grappling to understand the adverse verdict delivered by the journal. But—there are also questions and potential problems: who and what gets through the gate for peer review, what if serious and unredeemable flaws emerge during peer review invalidating the research and what if the authors then insist on publishing erroneous findings as the Version of Record? These and other unforeseen questions and outcomes are likely to emerge during the implementation of the new process. The new pathway is likely to require tweaks and modifications. Philip Bardin is Co-Editor in Chief of Respirology.