[Taxacom] Pre-submission peer-review and online import of specimen records from BOLD

Wed Sep 23 13:32:40 CDT 2015

Thanks to all who commented and apologies for the slow reply. I preferred
to summarize the questions addressed to me (more or less). Please feel free
to ask me, if I've missed something.

1. Open and public peer-review. These two terms are often used with some
ambiguity, but generally "open review" means that the identity of the
reviewer is disclosed, while "public" means that the review is also
publicly available, e.g., published alongside with the article. An open
peer-review might be public (highly desirable) but also restricted for the
editors and authors; a public peer-review can be open (highly desirable),
but also anonymous, if the journal policies allow that.

One would ask what would be the incentive for the reviewers to go open and
public?

I would ask, however what is the benefit for the reviewer in the
traditional closed review process? Millions of manpower hours are spend on
peer-review, but what happens to the results of this giant effort?
Naturally, they improve the quality of the articles, but the reviews
themselves, in the best case, are recorded somewhere in hidden journals
systems (quite many journals do not do even that!) and from there they go
straight into the nothingness. The reviewer, also in the best case, gets
anonymous "thanks to an anonymous reviewer for the useful comments" in the
article Acknowledgements section and that is!

Normally, public reviews are assigned with DOIs and can be cited. Many
reviews certainly deserve that, as they often offer useful suggestions and
comments of value beyond the article they review. A good public review on a
good publication improved thanks to it brings "scores" to the reviewer's
reputation, to the least.

2. Pre-submissiion review. If I can take the same "detailed and perfectly
elaborated species description" from my previous email as an example, and
if I were the author of this manuscript,  I would invite a colleague who is
known as specialist in genomics, another one who is authority in microCT,
and a third one who knows the taxon and especially the historical
literature on it. Anyone of these three reviewers would look at a
particular aspect of my manuscript (instead of trying to review everything,
including parts s/he has a slight idea what is all about). In total, it
would take less effort for all reviewers to provide such a focused
pre-submission review. The author can easily correct or clarify their
comments still during writing. No need to wait submission to the journal,
or re-submissions to other journals, if the manuscript is rejected by the
first one. As Doug said, in such a system we could have 12 reviews in 3
weeks instead of 3 reviews in 12 weeks. Benefits for all? I think so.

Is the pre-submission review always open and public? It can not be, but
what then would be the sense in it?  Open - definitely YES, as
pre-submission reviewers are invited by the authors. The review process is
NOT public, however, until the manuscript is submitted. I guess it won't be
terribly exciting for the public to watch how the author corrects some
grammatical errors, for example.The final pre-submission review statements,
however should go public together with the publication of the article.

For those who are interested, the pre-submission and post-publication
peer-review are described in two recent blogs
<http://blog.riojournal.com/2015/09/17/peer-review-at-rio-part-1/> in
relation to our latest project called Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO
Journal <http://riojournal.com>.)

3. Reviewing in taxonomy by experts and non-experts on the taxon. Stephen,
I would try to give back a King Solomon-style answer to this: better have
both!

4. Traditional (printed) and non-traditional (online) journals. In my
view, the distinction between the two for quite a time already is not in
being "print-only" or "online-only", but in something different. We can
group the journals into: (a) PDF-only journals that are intended for use
mostly by humans, and (b) journals that produce also machine-readable
versions of their articles (XML). The second group could further be divided
in such that provide: (*i*) rudimentary machine-readability of their
content (e.g., a computer can recognize which part is the title, which part
list the authors) and (*ii*) atomization of the content into finer pieces
of information (e.g., a computer can separate treatments or occurrence
records within treatments, extract these and put them together with
analogous information from other journals). Maybe it sounds a bit too
technical as an explanation, but personally I find machine-readability of
the content, and especially of data, something that will unavoidably put
some journals ahead of others.

Print-only journals look indeed anachronistic (sorry to say this, we all
are grown up with these journals!) and I feel the PDF-only ones quickly
follow the same road.

How traditional journals could use systems like ARPHA? Well, pre-submission
open peer-review could happen also via email exchange of files, although it
will probably be much less efficient.  Technology is definitely important,
but the journal policy is even more important in this process.

Using the various services <http://arphahub.com/about/services> of the ARPHA
Publishing Platform <http://arphahub.com> is of course possible and could
perhaps offer a good solution for society and institutional journals.
Please ask me, if interested.

Thanks once again, happy to continue the discussion on these important
changes (possible off-list also).

Lyubo

On Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 8:56 AM, Donat Agosti <agosti at amnh.org> wrote:

> "how could traditional journals implement the ARPHA or a similar system
> seamlessly?"
>
> We can't disregard changing technologies. The development of steam engines
> has changed transportation industry - so might the Internet the print-based
> publishing. But we had at the end a much more efficient system, even though
> less horses have been used.
>
> But the advantages are clear.
>
> Donat
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Taxacom [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of
> Dan Lahr
> Sent: Tuesday, September 22, 2015 8:06 PM
> To: Doug Yanega <dyanega at ucr.edu>
> Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Pre-submission peer-review and online import of
> specimen records from BOLD
>
> Full support to this initiative from my part.  Working on a group with
> relatively few experts, it is fairly obvious and easy to realize who is
> reviewing your taxonomic paper.
>
> My only concern at this point would be one of implementation --  how could
> traditional journals implement the ARPHA or a similar system seamlessly?
>
> dan
>
> __________________________________
> Daniel J. G. Lahr
> PhD, Assist. Prof.
> Dept of Zoology, Univ. of Sao Paulo, Brazil Office number: + 55 (11) 3091
> 0948 http://www.ib.usp.br/zoologia/lahr/
>
>
> On Tue, Sep 22, 2015 at 1:30 PM, Doug Yanega <dyanega at ucr.edu> wrote:
>
> > Given that I've spent around 15 years advocating that we replace
> > traditional peer review with a public review system, I am happy and
> > encouraged by Lyubo's initiative on this front, and hope that it is
> > just the first step of many to come. Frankly, I'm frustrated that it
> > has taken this long to get even this small step taken - this change
> > can't come fast enough to suit me.
> >
> > As for comments regarding the "small research community" issue, the
> > status quo has a potentially very negative side, and that is the "clique"
> > mentality. Public review is the only cure for cliques. It broadens the
> > range of referees beyond the boundary of the clique, and - most
> > importantly
> > - exposes the clique members to scrutiny; any reviews that lack
> > objectivity will be seen for what they are. At the same time, it
> > prevents people from making false accusations that they are being
> conspired against.
> >
> > I would consider it an improvement to how we do science if instead of
> > manuscripts being reviewed by three referees in 12 weeks, we could
> > have 12 reviews (or more) in 3 weeks. There is no limit to how many
> > referees an online document can have, and shared documents reduce
> > redundancy of referee effort (e.g., if one referee fixes a typo, no
> > one else has to). The review process can be made faster, more efficient,
> and more objective.
> >
> > Sincerely,
> >
> > --
> > Doug Yanega      Dept. of Entomology       Entomology Research Museum
> > Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314     skype: dyanega
> > phone: (951) 827-4315 (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
> >              http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
> >   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
> >         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82
> >
> >
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> >
> > Celebrating 28 years of Taxacom in 2015.
> >
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>
> Celebrating 28 years of Taxacom in 2015.
> _______________________________________________
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>
> Celebrating 28 years of Taxacom in 2015.
>

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