On Hochberg et al.’s “The tragedy of the reviewer commons”

Abstract

We discuss each of the recommendations made by Hochberg et al. (Ecol Lett 12:2-4, 2009) to prevent the ''tragedy of the reviewer commons''. Having scientific journals share a common database of reviewers would be to recreate a bureaucratic organization, where extra-scientific considerations prevailed. Pre-reviewing of papers by colleagues is a widespread practice but raises problems of coordination. Revising manuscripts in line with all reviewers' recommendations presupposes that recommendations converge, which is acrobatic. Signing an undertaking that authors have taken into accounts all reviewers' comments is both authoritarian and sterilizing. Sending previous comments with subsequent submissions to other journals amounts to creating a cartel and a single allencompassing journal, which again is sterilizing. Using young scientists as reviewers is highly risky: they might prove very severe; and if they are not yet published authors themselves, the recommendation violates the principle of peer review. Asking reviewers to be more severe would only create a crisis in the publishing houses and actually increase reviewers' workloads. The criticisms of the behavior of authors looking to publish in the best journals are unfair: it is natural for scholars to try to publish in the best journals and not to resign themselves to being second rate. Punishing lazy reviewers would only lower the quality of reports: instead, we favor the idea of paying reviewers ''in kind'' with, say, complimentary books or papers.

Author‐suggested reviewers: gender differences and influences on the peer review process at an ecology journal

“…The most striking effect observed in our study is that author-suggested preferred reviewers gave more positive ratings to papers submitted to Functional Ecology than did other reviewers in every year for which we have data. This is consistent with previous studies; in every study we could find, author-preferred reviewers rated papers (or grant proposals) more positively than did reviewers not suggested by authors (Scharschmidt et al 1994;Earnshaw et al 2000;Jayasinghe, Marsh & Bond 2003;Hurst, Howard & Wedzicha 2005;Schroter et al 2006;Wager, Parkin & Tamber 2006;Marsh, Bond & Jayasinghe 2007;Rivara et al 2007;Bornmann & Daniel 2009, 2010Helton & Balistreri 2011;Moore, Neilson & Siegel 2011;Kowalczuk et al 2015). Likewise, reviewers listed as nonpreferred by authors rate papers less positively than do other reviewers (Moore, Neilson & Siegel 2011), though few studies have examined nonpreferred reviewers, likely because they are rarely invited by journals (at Functional Ecology, only 20 nonpreferred reviewers have reviewed for the journal during the period for which we have data).…”

“…1a; variation among years; logistic regression, X 2 10 = 99Á5, P < 0Á001). In contrast, the proportion of authors suggesting nonpreferred reviewers varied little across years, and did not increase in later years (2010Fig. 1a; note that the journal has never required that nonpreferred reviewers be suggested at submission; X 2 10 = 14Á7, P = 0Á14).…”

“…Yet peer review faces growing challenges and is increasingly criticized for its flaws and limitations (Benos et al 2007;Trafimow & Rice 2009). The growth of the scientific literature and the increasing selectivity of top journals in most fields have increased the peer review "burden" on scientists that serve as reviewers (Cooper 2009;Stahel & Moore 2014;Blume & Schmaling 2016), reducing the proportion of review requests that scientists accept (Fox, Burns & Meyer 2016) and increasing the work required by editors to find suitable reviewers (Hochberg et al 2009;De Mesnard 2010;Fox & Burns 2015). Peer review is also widely argued to be subject to many systematic, albeit subtle, biases (Opthof, Coronel & Janse 2002;Ross et al 2006;Lee et al 2013;Kaatz, Gutierrez & Carnes 2014).…”

Worsening file-drawer problem in the abstracts of natural, medical and social science databases

“…The selective publication of some results against some others is worrying because it can lead to bias in meta-analysis and hence to a distorted picture of the evidence for or against a certain hypothesis (Begg and Berlin 1988;Khoury et al 2009;Levine et al 2009;Song et al 2009). Some scholars have expressed the feeling that the peer review system is in need of reform because of the worsening delays in obtaining constructive reports (Lawrence 2003;Hauser and Fehr 2007;Primack and Marrs 2008;Hochberg et al 2009;Schwartz and Zamboanga 2009;de Mesnard 2010;Pautasso and Schäfer 2010). The trend documented here away from publishing studies that report the absence of significant differences is a further symptom of bad health and should be counteracted.…”

Writing a narrative biomedical review: considerations for authors, peer reviewers, and editors

“…Thoughtful selection of responsible editors and peer reviewers experienced in both writing and commenting review manuscripts is a major task, which contributes to further increasing a journal's rank and widening its audience (i.e., readers and authors) [57]. To ensure objective, rigorous, and a timely peer review, it seems crucial to support the selected reviewers by providing access to the sources used by the authors (e.g., through access to Scopus, Web of Science, or relevant digital libraries during the peer review), by sharing other reviewers' comments, and by acknowledging their eVorts [58].…”