[Taxacom] Pre-submission peer-review and online import of specimen records from BOLD
Stephen Thorpe
stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz
Wed Sep 23 15:47:48 CDT 2015
Lyubo said:
>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!
Let me be brutally frank about this point, for the sake of clarity:
In the real world, particularly for small taxonomic communities, it often happens that a reviewer is a close colleague of an author, and this relationship influences the way that the review is handled. It can easily (but by no means always) result in only cursory attention being paid to the review, and an unwillingness to be seen to be "nitpicky", given that the author will likely be a reviewer of future manuscripts of the present reviewer. Life is easier for both parties if critiques are kept to a minimum. Open and public reviews may help to prevent these situations, but maybe not, for if the author can get away with publishing a poor quality paper, then the reviewer can get away with a poor quality review. Chances are that nobody will bother to look carefully at either paper or review! This is why we need a system whereby flaws and errors can be red flagged (and preferably fixed).
Stephen
--------------------------------------------
On Thu, 24/9/15, Lyubomir Penev <lyubo.penev at gmail.com> wrote:
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Pre-submission peer-review and online import of specimen records from BOLD
To: "Taxa com" <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Received: Thursday, 24 September, 2015, 6:32 AM
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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be searched at:
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> >
> > Celebrating
28 years of Taxacom in 2015.
> >
>
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>
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