Peer-review and authorship

Transcription

1 Peer-review and authorship Riitta Kaarteenaho Professor of Respiratory Medicine UEF Doctoral Programme of Clinical Research

2 Engagements in past two years MD, PhD, specialist of respiratory medicine, specialist of pathology, special competency in medical education Main occupation Professor of Respiratory Medicine, University of Eastern Finland Acting professor of Respiratory Medicine, University of Oulu Secondary occupation Physician-in-Chief, Kuopio University Hospital Acting Physician-in-Chief, Oulu University Hospital Research and development PI of the study group researching severe lung diseases and association of cell changes with the clinical course of the disease Educational activities Editor-in-Chief in the textbook of Respiratory Diseases diagnostics and treatment, 2013 Other engagements Received congress travels from pharmaceutical companies (Boehringer-Ingelheim, Intermune, Roche, Orion)

3 Peer review

4 What is peer review? Critical assessment of manuscripts submitted to journals by experts who are usually not part of the editorial staff unbiased, independent, critical assessment is an intrinsic part of all scientific research Peer review is an important extension of the scientific process

5 How does peer review affect? Ideally peer review facilitates a fair hearing for a manuscript among members of the scientific community helps editors decide which manuscripts are suitable for their journals may helps authors and editors improve the quality of reporting

6 What is peer review in practice? When an article is submitted to a journal, an editor contacts reviewers (= referees) to be experts in their field and asks them to comment on the article reviewers are expected to be independent, both of the journal and of the work under scrutiny the term peer (= vertainen) denotes the authors s equals Decision about whether to accept (=publish) or to reject is made by an editor or an editorial board most journals do not pay their peer reviewers

7 Difficult to find suitable and qualified reviewers Some journal reserve external review for the submissions most likely to be published, and reject others on the basis of the editors opinion alone preliminary in-house review has become more and more common Lancet rejected 80% and JAMA 60% on the basis of in-house review (Fontanarosa 2007) Nowadays probably even more often?

8 The actual value of peer review is widely debated and criticized for long

9 Timeline: Past notes How organized academic review has evolved over 300 years Csiszar Nature 2016

10 1973 External refereeing becomes a requirement for publication in Nature An /ftp server at xxx.lanl.gov for freely sharing unreviewed physics preprints goes live. Later relocated to the web at arxiv.org, it becomes a touchstone for discussions about the end of peer-reviewed journals PLoS ONE launches as an open-access journal that eschews importance as a factor in peer review EMBO Journal, the Frontiers series and BMJ Open, among other journals, experiment with open peer review, publishing reviewers names or notes alongside papers. Csiszar Nature 2016

11 The peer review process determines selection of studies that will inform health care decisions

12 Who chooses reviewers? Editors choose reviewers non-author or author suggested Authors may have opportunity to suggest potential reviewers, which editors may choose or not author-suggested reviewers are compulsory in many journals authors may suggest also non-preferred reviewers (excluded reviewers)

13 How is peer review performed today? Number of reviewers varies 1 to > 3 most journals use 2 reviewers editors may act as a referee Decision can be made by a single editor (most common) or an editorial board Reviewers often disagree about the submission Publishing decisions rely on the editor or editorial board the views of peer reviewers may be ignored or overruled

14 Submission and peer reviewing in a nutshell Submission of a manuscript by a corresponding author editors decide wheather to reject or to send for peer review Peer review process, comments to the editor editor decide whether to reject or accept (with minor or major revision) Comments to the authors sent by the editor Revision of the manuscript and a point-by-point letter to the editor by the authors Editor decision whether to accept or reject sometimes second round of peer review and second round revisions Final decision of the publication by the editor Proof reading

15 Models of peer review Single-blind model reviewers unknown to authors adopted by most biomedical journals Double-blind model both author and reviewer blinded Open peer review all actors are known to each other editorial process public and transparent

16 Problems in single-blind review Numerous potential risks! bias (positive or negative) unqualified reviewers delays challenges for plagiarism duplication corruption scientific misconduct

17 Advantage of open system Open system with posting of pre-publication histories changes the overall perspective and the goal itself of peer review it brings under the spotlights all the editorial activities linked to article publication, overcoming the limits of an excessive focus confined to reviewers' role It seems ethically sound that each step that leads to publication of studies that may imply consequences for patients is rendered transparent Vercellini et al Eur J Intern Med 2016

18 - Comparison of quality of peer review of two journals similar in most aspects but differ in peer review model - Effect of change of model across single journal (J Inflammation) BMJ Open 2015

19 Kowalczuk M BMJ Open 2015

20 Kowalczuk M BMJ Open 2015

21 Kowalczuk M BMJ Open 2015

22 Double-blind peer review Nature journals have offered double-blind peer review for the authors since March 2015 Advocates of double-blind peer review suggest that it eliminates personal biases, such as those based on gender, seniority, reputation and affiliation

23 Mulligan et al J Am Soc Inf Science Tech 2013

24 Open peer review in Nature Nature experimented with open peer review in 2006, but at the time, despite expressed interest, the uptake from both authors and reviewers was low and the open reviews were not technically substantive Views about open peer review are probably still evolving as several journals continue to experiment with variations on this practice

25 - No substantial difference in the peer review self citations in single-blind (J Psychom Res) vs open (BMC Psych)

26 - Publishers retracted articles: Singer 64 articles from 10 journals, Springer 43 articles, Informa 28 articles due to fake addresses and fabricated peer review reports - Increasing number of retractions due to fabricated peer reviews from Authors have created false reviewers and addresses providing peer reviews of their own manuscripts - Agencies that first helped authors write or improve their scientific articles and then sold them favorable peer reviews - Even (guest) editors have created fake reviewers

27 As long as authors are (mostly) rewarded for publishing many articles and editors are (mostly) rewarded for publishing them rapidly, new ways of gaming the traditional publications models will be invented more quickly than new control measures can be put in place. Haug CJ NEJM 2015

28 Becoming a Reviewer You may receive invitation to act as a referee Be careful for not accepting manuscripts outside your area of expertise may results in poor-quality reviews and excessive time spend reading literature Record your reviewing work it can be presented in CV

29 Authorship

30 Who is an author? 1. Substantial contributions to conception or design of work; or acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND 2. Drafting the work or revisiting it critically for important intellectual content; AND 3. Final approval of the version to be published; AND 4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved

31 Why authorship matters and what does it require? Confers credit and has academic, social and financial implications Author is a contributor who has made substantive intellectual contributions to a paper Author is responsible and accountable for what is published Many journals request and publish information about contributions of each author often a separate chapter in a manuscript

32 Identifying co-authors An author should be able to identify which coauthors are responsible for specific other parts of the work Authors should have confidence in the integrity of the contributors of their co-authors All individuals who meet the first criterion should have the opportunity to participate in the review, drafting, and the final approval of the manuscript

33 Non-author contributors Those who do not meet all four criteria should be acknowledged Examples of activities that alone do not qualify a contributor for authorship acquisition of funding general supervision of a research group general administrative support writing assistance technical editing language editing proofreading

34 Corresponding author Takes primary responsibility for communication with the journal during manuscript submission, peer review, and publication process cover letter Ensure that all the journal s administrative requirements are properly completed Respond editorial queries in a timely way point-by-point letter Respond to critiques after publication

35 Own experience of correspondence Previously supervisor / last author often acted as a correspondence if the first author is in the beginning of the scientific career Nowadays practical issues on the submission process are so multiple that it is often necessary that the first author act as a corresponding author

36 Conflict of interest Exist when professional judgement concerning a primary interest may be influenced by a secondary interest (such as financial gain) Perceptions are as important as actual ones Financial relationship employement, consultancies, stock, ownership, options, honoraria, patents, paid expert testimony Personal relationships rivalries, academic competition, intellectual beliefs

37 Reporting of conflict of interest Articles should be published with statements or supporting documents, such as ICMJE conflict of interest form, declaring: authors conflict of interest sourse of support for the work, including sponsor names whether the authors had access to the study data

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43 Conclusion Peer review process will probably change in the future Finding of qualified reviewers is one of the most serious problems causing the use of inhouse-review Numbers of manuscripts, journals and published articles have increased explosively Open access, open data and open repository huge evolution in science in the near future

44 Reading International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE): Recommendations for Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals (updated December 2015) Holliman R et al (ed). Practicing. Science Communication in the Information Age Bartling S & Friesike S. Opening Science Cope B, Phillips A. The Future of the Academic Journal Regazzi JJ. Scholarly Communications. A History from Content as King to Content as Kingmaker Baldwin M. Making Nature. The history of a scientific journal. 2015

45 Thank you!