New game rules for paper review?

I think it is time to call for a re-examination of the review procedures commonly used in the scientific community and come up with a new set of game rules. Given that publications play an important role in the making or breaking of a person’s academic career, I think a new set of game rules should be adopted to be fair to everyone. Over the years, I have come across various kinds of reviews, just like everyone else who has stayed in science long enough. There were reasonable reviews. There were horrible reviews. There were personal attacks blatantly embedded in the mediocre reviews. Who knows? Maybe the reviewer just had a bad day. Nevertheless, I think we should all start to be responsible for what we say.

I propose that all reviews and the names of the reviewers should be made public after a paper has been accepted or rejected. Supposedly, reviewers are experts whose critiques the editors can reply on. However, such is not always the case. We see good quality papers, but oftentimes we also see some awful papers in the journals. I often wonder how those papers can be published. The original intention of an anonymous review system was good. Unfortunately, I think it has been abused and misused. I think it is time that reviewers should stop hiding behind the anonymous umbrella and stand behind their words by revealing their identity and their reviews. If the reviews and the identity of the reviewers are made public, I’m sure everyone will be cautious about what they write because their reviews will be “reviewed” by the whole scientific community. That way, we will definitely see the improvement of the reviews, and consequently the improvement of the paper itself. Not only that, we will see less of erroneous reviews passed on authoritatively by the reviewers to the editor. Further, I am pretty sure we won’t see any personal attacks that shouldn’t even be there in the first place. Reviewers will focus more on the science content of the paper and not use the review as an outlet for his/her personal feelings.

Do we have the resources to do that? With online journals making headway, I think it won’t take much to include the paper and the reviews next to it, regardless of whether the paper is accepted or rejected. That way, we can witness how the paper was reviewed, and if the reviewers did their job properly and appropriately. We can also go a step further if the journals allow readers to post their views on the paper or the reviews of the paper. I would also urge that the funding agencies adopt the same game rules so that everything is out in the open to ensure that the review process can be fair.

Below are the summaries of my suggestions to the Editorial Boards of scientific journals. I hope that the Editorial Boards would take them into considerations when the editors and the scientific community are ready to re-examine the current review practice. I am certain that I speak for a substantial group of people who share my views.

1. I hope that in the future reviews and author’s responses can be visible to the journal readers. Instead of these being handled in a black box, I hope that the review process can be transparent by making them visible. I think they are equally important as the paper itself that they really deserved to be viewed as well. With things moving toward publishing electronically, I think it is viable to do so.
2. Revealing reviewers’ identities should be implemented. It should not be optional. If everything is done objectively and professionally, I don’t think reviewers should feel any resistance in standing behind what they state in their reviews by revealing their names. I think this will be a very positive change. This will work even better if Suggestion 1 is adopted as well. Oftentimes, we know who reviewed the paper only because they gave favorable reviews. If it is the science content that the reviewers review, they should not be afraid to stand behind their words whether the review is favorable or not.
3. Reviewers’ views are not always correct. I have come across with a few reviews over the years that exposed the inadequate expertise of the reviewers. The current review practice does not always allow reviewers to learn about author’s feedback on their reviews. As a result, the reviewers continue to hold the inaccurate views and will reject the paper based on the same inaccurate beliefs next time.
4. Lastly, papers that are not in the direction of main stream or are controversial will often not see the light of a day. This I have no solution to suggest, but still would like to bring that to the editors’ attention. This is a much debated topic in Letters of Physics Today. It seems that it occurs in every field of science, and no one has come up with a solution to resolve that. But I think if the aforementioned suggestions were adopted, such things would have been minimized greatly.