Improvements on the Scientific Review Process?

myc asks: "A recent story has discussed the pros and cons of the publishing end of scientific literature, but what about the review end? I work in biology and recently have run into a slew of frustrations trying to get my work published. For instance, one really frustrating thing is, because of the need to keep the reviewers' identify confidential, communication between authors and reviewers is essentially one-way via the editorial office. When the reviewers encounter something that might be confusing to them in the manuscript, they take it as a negative, when really a very simple explanation from the authors would clear it up. After all, its the scientific content, not 1337 wr171ng skillz that is being reviewed. What are some of the frustrations you have come across when trying to publish your work, and have you any ideas on how to improve on the review process?"

"Another really frustrating point is many people feel that some papers are accepted on the basis of the reputation of the senior author and not purely on scientific merit (i.e., the burden of proof is lessened for established scientists), while the opposite is true for younger investigators (i.e., the burden of proof for novel findings may be higher, sometimes unreasonably so). One's scientific pedigree also helps, to a certain extent (if you trained with a big name, you are more likely to get published).

In the examples above, 2-way communication via anonymous email between the authors and reviewers might solve this particular problem; also, I think that if the identities of the reviewers are protected, why not the authors? Perhaps a solution to my second issue would be to have the author's names hidden from the reviewers until after the review process is complete."

Comments

publishing

[mcelrath]

If the reviewer can't get past your l33t wr171ng ski11z to figure out what the hell you're trying to say, that is a legitimate gripe, and in principle should be cleared up in the text without requiring communication with the authors. So your article gets rejected, you reword it, and resubmit it. Sounds like the review process is working fine to me. Sounds like you got burned. Pay an english major to read your stuff.

Of course, the process could be faster, don't we all know. It can be upwards of 6 months to years to get an article published, depending on the journal and diligence of reviewers. But who has time to review? It's an unpaid, thankless job!

Electronic journals, open, double blind review processes. Open archive (arxiv.org) for everything. That is the way this should go.

-- Bob

2-way communication

[Alomex]

In the examples above, 2-way communication via anonymous email between the authors and reviewers might solve this particular problem;

Actually all the journals I know of in computer science allow two-way communication anonymized via the editor.