TRANSPARENT REVIEW PROCESS AT THE EMBO JOURNAL: UPDATE OCTOBER 2009
The transparent review process has been in place for all manuscripts submitted for the first time after 1st January 2009. It was started as an experiment to promote transparency and good editorial processes overall (Rørth, 2009). Based on the below uptake information we have so far, this experiment appears to be successful. We therefore hope that other journals will now move into the same direction with similar initiatives.
The RPF:
Top of pageUnder the new transparent review process, all articles published in The EMBO Journal now have a supplementary Review Process File (RPF) accompanying their online version, containing the timeline and all relevant communication from the review process, including referees’ comments, decision letters and the responses from authors, offering more of the transparency that so many scientists feel is needed in science publishing.
In this respect, many of the RPFs show mainly the routine workings of the review process and may of primary interest mostly to scientists also working in the respective areas; at the same time, such standard RPFs may however also be helpful to younger scientists familiarizing themselves with the publication and peer-review processes of primary scientific literature.
In other cases, the comments from referees may directly provide added value, by revealing alternative views on data and interpretations, or demonstrating significant constructive discussion between authors and referees. This gives additional perspectives on the paper, and may therefore – especially in cases of controversial papers – be of particular interest to readers. Good examples of this can be found here:
Mochida et al. (2009)
Bhatia et al. (2009)
Tjeertes et al. (2009)
Wei et al. (2009)
Authors:
Top of pageIn implementing the process, we decided to allow authors the option to decline publication of the RFP. The vast majority of authors agree to publication of the RPF; at the time of analysis, authors had opted out in only 10 of 129 cases. Several initially skeptical authors in fact changed their opinion after having seen how the RFP would appear. To ease certain concerns, we can in exceptional cases agree to remove specific content, which is not essential for understanding the decision made, for example in cases where unpublished data or reagents shown to referees are intended to be part of future projects or publications. This will be indicated in the process file.
Referees:
Top of pageReferees are alerted to the transparent editorial process and the possibility of their comments to the authors being published as part of the RFP, both when initially invited to review and again when submitting their evaluations. This has overall not altered their willingness to review for The EMBO Journal: 43% of invited referees have accepted to review between the beginning of the initiative in January 2009 and the time of writing in October 2009; this is comparable to the overall referee acceptance rates of previous years (42% in 2008, and 41% in 2007). Only four asked referees (in around 3000 requests) so far declined specifically because of concerns with the transparent process.
The editors have been monitoring the contents and quality of reviews compared to earlier years, and have seen no indication of referee reports becoming less critical or less in-depth than before. Sometimes referees also expressed their satisfaction with the fact that their disagreeing opinions would not be lost and go on record in cases where studies where published against their (minority) recommendations. The EMBO Journal has in the past been fortunate to have had input from very conscientious referees, and this clearly continues.
Readers:
Top of pageSince RFPs only started appearing a few months ago, we have so far only limited information on their usage or on how often they may be viewed by readers. We did however already receive anecdotal reader feedback on various RFPs, and we also noted that some selected RFPs have accumulated considerable numbers of download, indicating heightened direct interest in some of them. Once more information will be available on reader viewing and usage of RFPs, we will provide further updates on this. We are also aiming at making the RFP, currently listed in the online supplementary information section, more conveniently accessible and more prominently visible.
