This post was also published in the LSE impact blog today.
A few weeks back, the LSE Impact blog had a piece by Jason Priem on the use of twitter by academics that suggested peer review journals might become a thing of the past. Austin Frakt and I wrote a brief post noting that as much as we love twitter, the role of peer review journals cannot be replaced by twitter, blogs or anything else (and we really believe in blogs!). We need the slow deliberative process that emphasizes trying to get it right, as opposed to doing it quickly. We concluded:
We absolutely need the slow, peer review system as the foundation of thoughtful, careful scholarship. Twitter and other social media are important additions that can give scholarly content “reach” and “relevancy”. However, it’s a both/and, not an either/or proposition. Traditional peer review journals should remain the bedrock of the research evidence that can be brought to bear on health policy.
However, I think the peer review process often is too slow and could be sped up without losing precision. In addition, I think there is too much secrecy in the process and a bit more disclosure would likely be good (though there are likely pluses and minuses). Following are a few personal thoughts about changes I would like to see in the peer review process used by journals that are based on my personal experience and preferences (I have published ~70 peer review papers and reviewed dozens of manuscripts for journals). Others will likely have different thoughts, and I would be interested to know them. This is not meant to be a definitive word, just my personal thoughts.
- The identity of reviewer and reviewee should be known to one another
- The title of manuscripts under review should be public, along with the authors of the manuscript and the identity of the reviewers
- How long the reviewers have been reviewing the manuscript should be public
- How long authors have had a request for revision should be public
- Upon publication, the correspondence between reviewers/editors/authors should be public (this is important because often people say “why didn’t you do this sub-analysis”; often it was done, but cut from a published paper due to length restrictions)
- The use of online early publication is a good thing; I wonder if it will eventually become the only modality? (I only take one journal in hard copy now, Health Affairs, and otherwise utilize Duke’s global subscription service)
- Gated papers hinder academic investigation and discourse, but I am unsure of how to fund journals without subscriptions
Making the identify of all parties public and how long they have had to review a manuscript or complete revisions should provide some “speed” to the process. More information about the give and take leading up to the publication would provide a fuller context for the paper. And a big issue going forward is the financial model by which journals survive. Who should pay for them and how much?
DT
update: a few tweaks for clarity
