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Published online 9 April 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/452677d
Pfizer fails to gain access to peer-review files
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Dr. Kevin Lee, Associate Professor, Department of Biology, The Hong Kong University of Science & Technology. Not sure if I have understood correctly but, based on my experience, it appears that a distinction might usefully be drawn between access to peer reviews versus the anonymity of the reviewers. Can someone clarify the legal ruling with respect to the above ? Personally I can see no basis for resticting access to known scientific opinion, which was, after all, solicited from experts. Then a second point, which does seem debatable in a legal context, concerns whether the opinion need remain anonymous.
I agree with Kevin. Maintaining anonymity is justified. It is however difficult to comprehend why access to scientific opinion should be denied.
I thought the issue was related to the fact that the community of scientists qualified to review the particular area of medicine was rather low, making it difficult to remain anonymous.
To Dr Lee: I am not a legal expert, but a fairly experienced editor at Nature. I think that peer-review identity has not been tested in the courts much if at all until the events described here and in the previous News story, so journals are to some extent feeling their way about setting their policies. At the Nature journals, we state in our guide to reviewers: http://www.nature.com/authors/editorial_policies/peer_review.html "Reviewers should be aware that it is our policy to keep their names confidential, and that we do our utmost to ensure this confidentiality. Under normal circumstances, blind peer-review is protected from legislation. We cannot, however, guarantee to maintain this confidentiality in the face of a successful legal action to disclose identity in the event of a reviewer having written personally derogatory comments about the authors in his or her reports. For this reason as well as for reasons of standard professional courtesy, we request reviewers to refrain from personally negative comments about the authors of submitted manuscripts. Frank comments about the scientific content of the manuscripts, however, are strongly encouraged by the editors." We have been advised that if peer-reviewers follow this advice, any legal case for forcing us to reveal their identity would be unlikely to succeed. Of course, the journal would do everything in its power to maintain anonymity.
To Dr Kelly-Gerreyn: I think there is a difference between a reader guessing the identity of peer-reviewers in a small sub-field, which has no legal aspect and in any event could be wrong; and in a journal being legally forced to reveal the actual identity of a reviewer, and thus exposing that person to some specific legal action against him or her personally.
To Maxine Clarke: Thanks for your comment. I continue to feel that formally anonymous information should always be open to scrutiny when a serious conflict arises. Moreover I feel that Journals should also be seen to be operating objectively, when the need arises. The latter can, to a significant extent, be achieved without disclosing reviewer identity. To move the discussion on, perhaps the real problem here is that reviewers (i.e. scientists) are a bit too cosy in the knowledge that they can make anonymous and perhaps ill-advised comments with impunity. Recently in PLoS One I am happy to have the option of identifying myself as a reviewer; science above all should embrace such transparency and thereby strengthen it's role and lessen the need for unnecessary legal ponderings.
Personally, I would be more than a little nervous at the prospect of a corporate giant learning my name if I had participated in making a decision that affected its profits. Defending against a single spurious lawsuit would bankrupt me, never mind its potential effects on my reputation or future funding prospects. Thus while I could imagine hypothetical justifications for disclosing reviewers' identities, in practice in a case involving corporate concerns it could have overwhelmingly unpleasant repercussions.