News release - A re-review of peer review: Leading journal looks to end the 'review nightmare'

[<Charlotte.Webber@biomedcentral.com>]

News release from BioMed Central
27 January 2009

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A re-review of peer review: Leading journal looks to end the 
'review nightmare'

Every scientific researcher has asked themselves the question at 
some stage in their professional career: Why has the paper I 
submitted to be peer reviewed disappeared into the ether?

Scientists, like most people, desire immediate results. In the 
case of peer review, researchers want to learn whether their 
paper has been accepted or rejected as soon as possible. 
Unfortunately, the review process rarely seems to work in this 
manner, even with the enhancements that the Internet has bought.

The primary source of frustration for authors is peer reviewers 
who insist on time-consuming and sometimes iterative re-review 
that makes little difference to the eventual validity or quality 
of the final research paper. For that reason, Journal of Biology 
is today embarking on an experimental policy of allowing authors 
to opt out of re-review in an effort to dramatically speed up the 
publication process.

Led by Miranda Robertson, the newly appointed Editor of Journal 
of Biology and a former Biology Editor at Nature, the new policy 
will see all research papers submitted to Journal of Biology 
first screened by a member of the Editorial Board for suitability 
of inclusion into the journal.  If any of the reviewers then has 
suggestions or demands revisions, including the addition of data, 
authors will be asked to respond to the referees and revise the 
manuscript.

However, under the new experimental policy, the authors will then 
be able to decide whether or not they wish the referees to look 
at their manuscripts again.

Where authors opt out of re-review their responses and the 
editors will carefully scrutinize revised manuscripts and if it 
is clear that substantive issues have not been addressed then the 
manuscript may be rejected. Otherwise it will be published, with 
an accompanying minireview in which any flaws in the paper may be 
highlighted.

The decision to launch this experiment was taken after 
consultation with members of the Editorial Board, who were in 
general emphatically supportive of this new policy. 'Something 
surely needs to be done about the review nightmare that so many 
people face' said Editorial Board Member, Arthur Lander, 
University of California San Diego'...what is in the paper is 
fundamentally the responsibility of the authors, not of the 
reviewers' added Robert Horvitz, Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology and Nobel Laureate.

Speaking of the launch of the policy, Miranda Robertson said 'Of 
course journals must do their best to ensure that the research 
they publish is valid, but the primary function of a journal 
editor is to promote the dissemination of research results, not 
to obstruct it. I hope this experiment will show that referees, 
authors and journals can work together to accelerate the 
publication of important research.'

-ENDS-


Media Contact
Matt McKay
Head of PR
BioMed Central
Email: matthew.mckay@biomedcentral.com

Notes to Editors

1. Editorial What are journals for? Journal of Biology 2009,
    8:1doi:10.1186/jbiol111 http://jbiol.com/content/8/1/1

Please name the journal in any story you write. If you are 
writing for the web, please link to the article. All articles are 
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access policy.

2. Journal of Biology (http://www.jbiol.com/) is an international
    journal that publishes biological research articles of
    exceptional interest, together with associated commentary.
    Original research articles that are accepted for publication
    are published in full on the web within two weeks, are
    immediately made freely available to all. Articles from the
    full spectrum of biology are appropriate for consideration,
    provided they are of outstanding interest and importance.

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