Prepublication histories and open peer review at The BMJ
BMJ 2014; 349 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g5394 (Published 03 September 2014) Cite this as: BMJ 2014;349:g5394
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The peer review system is one of the pillars of Scientific publishing which gives much credibility to journals following it. Prepublication histories and open peer review is definitely a brave welcome step taken by The BMJ. As peer reviewers devote their valuable time and knowledge in reviewing articles sent to them by the Editors of the journals they hardly get any incentives or credits for their efforts, only thing they get an acknowledgement in the last issue of the year and that is also on the last pages of the journal which hardly anybody reads. In the era of open access journals readers usually read articles of their own interest and nobody is interested in reading the acknowledgment section apart from reviewers themselves. This new system will definitely make reviewers visible to many readers and will also improve performance of the reviewers.
Though Certain downsides of this system are also discussed in the article, we would like to add a few more suggestions to improve the proposed system. As per Peter Casserly in the article "Is an Open Peer Review System the Way Forward?", the quality of the review is paramount, whatever way it is reviewed. But could an open review system be more effective than what is currently in place? An open reviewing system can lead to very tame reviews being given. If the reviewer knows that their opinions and recommendations will be seen by everyone, they may not be as critical as if their review was blind. Reviewers do not want to be “hassled” for the critique they have given, and may lead to less reviewers offering their services down the line. It is recommended that reviews must be given honestly in a straightforward way irrespective of the author's position or other influences; this open review may lead to less honest reviews in which politeness or fear of retribution may cause a reviewer to withhold or tone down criticism - for example, junior reviewers may hesitate to criticize more esteemed authors for fear of damaging their prospects. This system must be reviewed on the regular basis for corrections and improvement.
Competing interests: No competing interests
Re: Prepublication histories and open peer review at The BMJ
I believe that the BMJ’s open peer review and pre-publication histories are steps in the right direction in efforts to expand transparency in science. However, in some instances this approach provides only a portion of the true history of a journal article. I wonder about the practicality and usefulness of extending such a history by, for example, requiring authors to provide, at the time of submission, prior referee reviews and editorial correspondence in cases where the submitted paper had been previously rejected from another journal. In addition, why not require authors to also make publicly available their ethics committee applications, along with any other existing, but related paper work such as adverse event reports and the like. It seems to me that at a time when supplementary materials can be made easily available to readers, access to a more complete history of a paper would be similarly desirable.
Competing interests: No competing interests