My first reaction to this proposal of submitting an article to
multiple journals who would then "compete" for first acceptance is that it
is about the most unwise suggestion I have ever heard. Reasons:
· Authors want thoughtful review, not just rapid review. There will
be a direct tradeoff between quality and time of review. But more
importantly…
· If this became the norm, the number of manuscripts to review would
go up by a factor of 4-5 or whatever was the average number of journals to
which each manuscript was sent. Journals are suffering from an avalanche
of manuscripts, and to date, there has been no way of paying for
manuscript review. It is a voluntary effort by both editors and reviewers.
This idea would effectively kill peer review.
If the problem is that reviews can sometimestake forever, then the
journals should publish statistics on how long it takes to (a) complete
first review and (b) publish an article once accepted. The Journal of
General Internal Medicine publishes both statistics yearly, and if these
were kept in a database publicly available to authors, then that is where
the competition would come into play—keeping one’s times down. Perhaps the
World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) could create and maintain such
a database.
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests:
No competing interests
05 February 2005
William M. Tierney
Co-Editor-in-Chief, Journal of General Internal Medicine
1001 West Tenth Street, Indianapolis, IN 46202, USA
Rapid Response:
Killing peer review
My first reaction to this proposal of submitting an article to
multiple journals who would then "compete" for first acceptance is that it
is about the most unwise suggestion I have ever heard. Reasons:
· Authors want thoughtful review, not just rapid review. There will
be a direct tradeoff between quality and time of review. But more
importantly…
· If this became the norm, the number of manuscripts to review would
go up by a factor of 4-5 or whatever was the average number of journals to
which each manuscript was sent. Journals are suffering from an avalanche
of manuscripts, and to date, there has been no way of paying for
manuscript review. It is a voluntary effort by both editors and reviewers.
This idea would effectively kill peer review.
If the problem is that reviews can sometimestake forever, then the
journals should publish statistics on how long it takes to (a) complete
first review and (b) publish an article once accepted. The Journal of
General Internal Medicine publishes both statistics yearly, and if these
were kept in a database publicly available to authors, then that is where
the competition would come into play—keeping one’s times down. Perhaps the
World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) could create and maintain such
a database.
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests