[Insight-developers] PLoS Biology: Peer Review—The Newcomers' Perspective

[Luis Ibanez]

http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10%2E1371%2Fjournal%2Epbio%2E0030326

Gaell Mainguy, Mohammad R. Motamedi, Daniel Mietchen*

Gaell Mainguy and Mohammad R. Motamedi, who made an equal contribution 
to this work, and Daniel Mietchen, are all with the World Academy of 
Young Scientists (http://www.waysnet.org).

*To whom correspondence should be addressed: E-mail: peer_review at waysnet.org

Published: September 13, 2005

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0030326

Copyright: © 2005 Mainguy et al. This is an open-access article
distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License,
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any
medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abbreviations: DBPR, double-blind peer review; SBPR, single-blind peer
review; WAYS, World Academy of Young Scientists

Citation: Mainguy G, Motamedi MR, Mietchen D (2005) Peer Review—The
Newcomers' Perspective. PLoS Biol 3(9): e326

Created under the auspices of the United Nations Educational,
Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as an offspring of the
“International Forum of Young Scientists,” the World Academy of Young
Scientists (WAYS) was officially launched in November 2003 at the World
Science Forum in Budapest, Hungary. Our organization represents a
permanent global platform for young researchers, and presently gathers
some 2,000 members in all disciplines from about 100 countries. WAYS
benefits from the support of a number of distinguished senior
scientists, including several Nobel laureates. Our objectives are to
make science more attractive, comprehensible, and accessible, and to
support career development opportunities for young scientists from
around the world. WAYS encourages interdisciplinary collaboration and
networking among scientists, irrespective of their age or institutional
affiliations. We provide a global forum to communicate the opinions,
concerns, and questions of young scientists to decision-makers in
science policy.

At our first general assembly in December 2004 in Marrakech, Morocco,
peer-review procedures in scientific publication and research funding
were debated intensely. Even though peer review is universally accepted
as an essential element of research, considerable debate persists on how
to implement it. The vast majority of our members, especially from
developing countries, were concerned about the apparent unfairness of
the current procedure, a perception that is prone to generate
frustration, fear of discrimination, and distrust. We reached a
consensus that slight modifications to the current review process would
help in getting more objective reviews based on the quality of the
research rather than the age, affiliation, gender, or pedigree of the
authors.

Single-blind peer review (SBPR), in which the reviewer knows the
identity of the author but not vice versa, is the currently accepted
practice. Because SBPR can be vulnerable to sexism and nepotism [1], its
ethical foundations have come under criticism; the method is frequently
recognized to be biased against new ideas, women, young scientists,
career changers, and scholars from less prestigious universities and/or
from developing countries (see [2] and references therein). Generally,
two policies have been proposed to eliminate bias from the peer-review
process: open peer review and double-blind peer review (DBPR).

We believe that current peer-review process, even though functional, can
be, and should be, improved.

In open peer review, the identities of both authors and reviewers are
revealed, affording the authors the ability to identify the reviewers'
comments to a person. Even though this might be an equitable strategy to
prevent unfair rejections, this process has no safeguard against unfair
acceptance of papers—reviewers, and especially newcomers, may feel
pressured into accepting a mediocre paper from a more established lab in
fear of future reprisals.

DBPR, in which both the reviewers and the authors remain anonymous to
each other, is thought to disentangle the peer-review process from
non-scientific factors, thereby presenting an appealing alternative. The
a priori case for masking and blinding is strong, and several studies
have suggested that articles published in DBPR journals were cited
significantly more often than articles published in non-DBPR journals
[3,4]. However, other studies have been less convincing; critics of DBPR
argue that it is difficult to hide the identity of the institution,
laboratory, and/or authors of a paper from the reviewers, especially in
smaller specializations. For instance, in a DBPR policy trial, despite
explicit instructions to authors, 34% of prospectively evaluated
manuscripts contained hints to unblind the authors, and editors
correctly identified the authors or institutions of 25% of the
manuscripts [5]. The disconnection between principle and practice is
evident, and so far, few journals, and even fewer in biomedical
sciences, have implemented DBPR policies. The reasons appear to be
partly historical, as journals are used to SBPR, and partly
intellectual, as the benefits of DBPR still remain controversial [6].

Maintenance of trust within the international scientific community is
crucial, not only for future scientific development, but also to
continue the dialogue of civilizations. We believe that the current
peer-review process, even though functional, can be, and should be,
improved to bolster a more even playing field for all scientists. In
biomedical sciences, the effectiveness of DBPR is hotly debated.
However—using data from computer science, philosophy, or economics,
which have adopted and have been using DBPR for some time—the
inescapable conclusion is that DBPR performs at least as well as the
traditional peer-review process. We propose here that DBPR is a better
system because, in addition to being a reasonably fair process, it also
bears symbolic power that will go a long way to quell fears and
frustrations, thereby generating a better perception of fairness and
equality in global scientific funding and publishing. This will, in
turn, help to keep research more accessible for future generations.
References

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