Nature: End the wasteful tyranny of reviewer experiments - 未名空间MITBBS历史存档

Nature: End the wasteful tyranny of reviewer experiments# Biology - 生物学

s*r2011-04-28 07:04

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D*a2011-04-28 07:04

2 楼

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110427/full/472391a.html?utm_so
Peer review of scientific papers in top journals is bogged down by
unnecessary demands for extra lab work, argues Hidde Ploegh.
Hidde Ploegh
Submit a biomedical-research paper to Nature or other high- profile journals
, and a common recommendation often comes back from referees: perform
additional experiments. Although such extra work can provide important
support for the results being presented, all too frequently it represents
instead an entirely new phase of the project, or does not extend the reach
of what is reported. It is often expensive and unnecessary, and slows the
pace of research to a crawl. Among scientists in my field, there is growing
concern that escalating demands by reviewers for the top journals, combined
with the increasingly managerial role assigned to editors, now represents a
serious flaw in the process of peer review.
Here, I offer some suggestions. The generalizations that follow have their
pleasant exceptions, but the trend is that useful interventions are becoming
exactly that — exceptions.
Rather than reviewing what is in front of them, referees often design and
demand experiments for what would be better addressed in a follow- up paper.
It is also commonplace for reviewers to suggest tests that, even if
concluded successfully, do not materially affect conclusions. These are
known in the trade as reviewer experiments. The demands seem to increase
with the impact factor of a journal, as if referees feel that they need to
raise the bar on the journal’s behalf.
This has a serious and pernicious impact on the careers of young scientists,
because it is not unusual for a year to pass before a paper is accepted
into a high-profile journal. As a result, PhD degrees are delayed, postdocs
may have to wait an entire year to compete for jobs and assis- tant
professors can miss out on promotions.
The system also adds to tension between established, tenured lab heads
charged with proper allocation of limited resources, and students and
postdocs whose careers rely on papers in high-impact journals. The two sides
will disagree on whether to cut their losses and consider lower-ranked
journals, or to cave in to reviewers’ demands.
The extra months of experiments increase costs for labs, without any obvious
advantage for science. Although journals profit handily when prospective
authors offer the best science possible, most do not spend money to produce
it. For the publishing industry, this is an accepted business model, but it
should come with greater responsibilities.
The scientific community should rethink how manuscripts are reviewed.
Referees should be instructed to assess the work in front of them, not what
they think should be the next phase of the project. They should provide un
impeachable arguments that, where appro- priate, demonstrate the study’s
lack of novelty or probable impact, or that lay bare flawed logic or
unwarranted conclusions. They should abandon the attitude that screams: “
look, I’ve read it, I can be as critical as the next dude and ask for
something that’s not yet in the manuscript”, a reflexive approach to
reviewing that has unfortunately become more or less standard. Many
reviewers are also, of course, authors, who will receive such unreason- able
demands in their turn, so why does the practice persist? Perhaps there is a
sense of ‘what goes around comes around’, and scientists relish the
chance to inflict their experiences on others.
The problem is made more acute by the unwillingness of editors to express
their opinions. Instead, they consult an increasing num- ber of reviewers (
four or five is no longer an exception) in search of a majority opinion.
Rather than taking a hard look at reviews and the experiments requested by
referees, editors seem to default to the position that almost every
requested experiment or revision can be justified. Editors often do not (or
cannot?) assess revised manuscripts, and so send them out to reviewers again
, losing more time and often bringing still more demands for further
experiments.
I see three steps that journals can take to improve this deteriorating
situation. First, they should insist that reviewers provide a rough esti-
mate of the anticipated extra cost (in real currency) and effort associated
with experiments they request. This is not unlike what all research- ers are
typically asked to provide in grant appli- cations. Second, journals should
get academic editors with expertise in the subject to take a hard look at
whether the requests of reviewers will affect the authors’ conclusions, and
whether they can be implemented without undue delay. Third, reviewers
should give a simple yes or no vote on the manuscript under scrutiny,
barring fatal shortcomings in logic or execution. Once editors have decided
that, in principle, the results are of interest to their publication and its
readership (which is their editorial prerogative), passing a simple test of
logical rigour and quality of data should be enough to get them through
peer review. Multiple revisions rarely affect the overall conclusions of a
study, as many an editor (and author, for that matter) would agree.
These changes would save time, speed exciting science to the public eye and
provide much-needed clarity to authors — with significant savings to boot.
Having read some of the biographies of the founders of molecular biology, it
is hard to escape the impression that, once, the mechanics of science were
indeed thus. It is worth revisiting the experiment, I should think.
■Hidde Ploegh is a professor of biology at the Whitehead Institute of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. e-mail: p****[email protected]
edu

J*n2011-04-28 07:04

3 楼

写的好。

y*u2011-04-28 07:04

4 楼

to get my paper out, i had to almost do another small paper...the reviewer
simply ignored my citation. the guy turned out to be a competitor and
FRIEND of my boss...cost me more than a year.

e*s2011-04-28 07:04

5 楼

说得好！切中要害
难得把这么长的英文看完了。

journals

【在 D*a 的大作中提到】

: http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110427/full/472391a.html?utm_so
: Peer review of scientific papers in top journals is bogged down by
: unnecessary demands for extra lab work, argues Hidde Ploegh.
: Hidde Ploegh
: Submit a biomedical-research paper to Nature or other high- profile journals
: , and a common recommendation often comes back from referees: perform
: additional experiments. Although such extra work can provide important
: support for the results being presented, all too frequently it represents
: instead an entirely new phase of the project, or does not extend the reach
: of what is reported. It is often expensive and unnecessary, and slows the

k*o2011-04-28 07:04

6 楼

虽不是免疫界的，但Hidde一直是我偶像之一。最近刚补完reviewer需要的数据。赞好
文。