"On Hochberg et al.'s, the tragedy of the reviewers commons"

We discuss each of the recommendations made by Hochberg et al. (2009) to prevent the “tragedy of the reviewer commons”. Having scientific journals share a common database of reviewers would be to recreate a bureaucratic organization, where extra-scientific considerations prevailed. Pre-reviewing of papers by colleagues is a widespread practice but raises problems of coordination. Revising manuscripts in line with all reviewers’ recommendations presupposes that recommendations converge, which is acrobatic. Signing an undertaking that authors have taken into accounts all reviewers’ comments is both authoritarian and sterilizing. Sending previous comments with subsequent submissions to other journals amounts to creating a cartel and a single all-encompassing journal, which again is sterilizing. Using young scientists as reviewers is highly risky: they might prove very severe; and if they have not yet published themselves, the recommendation violates the principle of peer review. Asking reviewers to be more severe would only create a crisis in the publishing houses and actually increase reviewers’ workloads. The criticisms of the behavior of authors looking to publish in the best journals are unfair: it is natural for scholars to try to publish in the best journals and not to resign themselves to being second rate. Punishing lazy reviewers would only lower the quality of reports: instead, we favor the idea of paying reviewers “in kind” with, say, complimentary books or papers.Reviewer;Referee;Editor;Publisher;Publishing;Tragedy of the Commons;Hochberg

Improving the efficiency of manuscript selection

Science relies strongly on the publication of articles in scientific journals and it is clear that decisions concer¬ning which papers merit publishing should be based on a process of manuscript selection that is as objective, repeatable, reliable and transparent as possible. Manuscript selection, however, has many practical downfalls. There is considerable controversy concerning issues such as whether or not the process should be blind both for authors and reviewers in order to prevent biased selection in relation to country of origin (Budden et al., 2008), sex (Young et al. 2008) or research topic (Michaels, 2008). Another critical point is the imbalance between supply and demand of manuscripts as this likely leads to biased selection (Young et al., 2008). Also important is the issue that following rejection, the editor and reviewers of the new journal selected for would-be publication by the authors start the process from scratch, as if the opus had not already passed through a thorough process of peer review. Such rules of play seem to promote the role of sheer luck in the process of manuscript selection. Authors of a rejected paper have the growing hope of "greater luck" the next time regarding reviewer assignment as they believe in the quality of their work. For the correct advancement of science I consider there should be a common global database available to editors, where each manuscript which has been subjected to an SCI journal is recorded. It should include a copy of the editor’s and reviewers’ comments, and also the authors’ replies. Hochberg et al. (2009) recently expressed their concern regarding the fact that authors usually think that manuscript submittal is a stochastic process, whereas in fact reviewers usually focus on the same set of criticisms. To solve this problem they suggest a) having colleagues reviewing a manuscript before submission, and b) requiring authors to state in a cover letter that reviewer comments from the previous submittal were taken into account. Option b is suggested as an alternative to obliging authors to declare whether or not their submission was previously rejected by another journal, because they think this could prejudice the evaluation of the new submission. However, I believe that the system I propose here would prevent prejudiced evaluations because authors would have the opportunity to upload the response to reviewer’s comments so that second-round reviewers would have the chance to see both the problems previously de¬tected in the manuscript and the defence offered by authors. Although not a perfect system its benefits would probably outweigh the caveats. Such a system would improve the quality of the final paper and facilitate the work load for second–round reviewers and editors. Indeed, some journals already seem to be implementing a solution which is fairly similar to our proposal, asking authors of rejected papers for permission to forward reviewer reports to the new journal chosen by the authors to submit the revised work (see Hochberg et al., 2009). Proposals to reward or punish reviewers depending on their rapidity to elaborate their reports (Hauser & Fehr, 2007) does not foster accumulated quality improvement. Science quality would undoubtedly gain from making previous information concerning a manuscript’s review available to new reviewers, as in a Bayesian framework of inference (Martin et al., 2005) because starting a new each time, as if previous information did not exist, is simply not an efficient way to proceed in science

Improving the reviewing process in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Mejora del proceso de revisión de artículos en ecología y biología evolutiva Se debaten los problemas actuales de la revisión y las prácticas editoriales en los campos de la ecología y la biología evolutiva, y se sugieren posibles soluciones para los mismos. La crisis por la que está pasando la revisión no cambiará a menos que las revistas tomen medidas para aumentar la inclusividad de los revisores y los incentivos a los mismos. Asimismo, tanto las revistas como las instituciones deberían prestar menos atención a las cifras relativas a la publicación (las unidades mínimas publicables) y los factores de impacto, y centrar el interés en la síntesis y la calidad de los artículos, lo que exigirá que las publicaciones sean más largas. Las instituciones académicas y de investigación deberían considerar la revisión de los manuscritos y las posturas de las editoriales como una parte importante de las actividades profesionales de un investigador, y compensarlas en consecuencia. Recompensar a los revisores, ya sea económicamente o con otros incentivos, como suscripciones gratuitas a revistas, puede alentar la participación en el proceso de revisión, para las revistas con y sin ánimo de lucro. Probablemente pueda mejorarse el rendimiento de los revisores con medidas que aumenten la inclusividad, como el envío a los revisores de las revisiones y las notificaciones de las decisiones adoptadas. Las revistas tal vez puedan evaluar la eficacia de sus procesos de revisión comparando las citas de los artículos rechazados que se hayan publicado posteriormente con las de los que se publicaron en la revista en el mismo momento. Por último, las revisiones constructivas deben: 1) determinar las deficiencias importantes y sugerir soluciones siempre que sea posible, 2) distinguir los problemas triviales de los que no lo sean y 3) contener las evaluaciones que el editor haga de las revisiones, incluida la determinación de las observaciones triviales y las sustantivas (las que deben abordarse).I discuss current issues in reviewing and editorial practices in ecology and evolutionary biology and suggest possible solutions for current problems. The reviewing crisis is unlikely to change unless steps are taken by journals to provide greater inclusiveness and incentives to reviewers. In addition, both journals and institutions should reduce their emphasis on publication numbers (least publishable units) and impact factors and focus instead on article synthesis and quality which will require longer publications. Academic and research institutions should consider reviewing manuscripts and editorial positions an important part of a researcher’s professional activities and reward them accordingly. Rewarding reviewers either monetarily or via other incentives such as free journal subscriptions may encourage participation in the reviewing process for both profit and non–profit journals. Reviewer performance will likely be improved by measures that increase inclusiveness, such as sending reviews and decision letters to reviewers. Journals may be able to evaluate the efficacy of their reviewing process by comparing citations of rejected but subsequently published papers with those published within the journal at similar times. Finally, constructive reviews: 1) identify important shortcomings and suggest solutions when possible, 2) distinguish trivial from non–trivial problems, and 3) include editor’s evaluations of the reviews including identification of trivial versus substantive comments (i.e., those that must be addressed).Mejora del proceso de revisión de artículos en ecología y biología evolutiva Se debaten los problemas actuales de la revisión y las prácticas editoriales en los campos de la ecología y la biología evolutiva, y se sugieren posibles soluciones para los mismos. La crisis por la que está pasando la revisión no cambiará a menos que las revistas tomen medidas para aumentar la inclusividad de los revisores y los incentivos a los mismos. Asimismo, tanto las revistas como las instituciones deberían prestar menos atención a las cifras relativas a la publicación (las unidades mínimas publicables) y los factores de impacto, y centrar el interés en la síntesis y la calidad de los artículos, lo que exigirá que las publicaciones sean más largas. Las instituciones académicas y de investigación deberían considerar la revisión de los manuscritos y las posturas de las editoriales como una parte importante de las actividades profesionales de un investigador, y compensarlas en consecuencia. Recompensar a los revisores, ya sea económicamente o con otros incentivos, como suscripciones gratuitas a revistas, puede alentar la participación en el proceso de revisión, para las revistas con y sin ánimo de lucro. Probablemente pueda mejorarse el rendimiento de los revisores con medidas que aumenten la inclusividad, como el envío a los revisores de las revisiones y las notificaciones de las decisiones adoptadas. Las revistas tal vez puedan evaluar la eficacia de sus procesos de revisión comparando las citas de los artículos rechazados que se hayan publicado posteriormente con las de los que se publicaron en la revista en el mismo momento. Por último, las revisiones constructivas deben: 1) determinar las deficiencias importantes y sugerir soluciones siempre que sea posible, 2) distinguir los problemas triviales de los que no lo sean y 3) contener las evaluaciones que el editor haga de las revisiones, incluida la determinación de las observaciones triviales y las sustantivas (las que deben abordarse)

Challenges in publishing: producing, assuring and communicating quality

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Fostering the next generation of reviewers in New Zealand ecology

Conservation Biolog

The next Generation of Action Ecology: Novel Approaches towards Global Ecological Research

Advances in the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge over the last decade have dramatically reshaped the way that ecological research is conducted. The advent of large, technology-based resources such as iNaturalist, Genbank, or the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) allow ecologists to work at spatio-temporal scales previously unimaginable. This has generated a new approach in ecological research: one that relies on large datasets and rapid synthesis for theory testing and development, and findings that provide specific recommendations to policymakers and managers. This new approach has been termed action ecology, and here we aim to expand on earlier definitions to delineate its characteristics so as to distinguish it from related subfields in applied ecology and ecological management. Our new, more nuanced definition describes action ecology as ecological research that is (1) explicitly motivated by the need for immediate insights into current, pressing problems, (2) collaborative and transdisciplinary, incorporating sociological in addition to ecological considerations throughout all steps of the research, (3) technology-mediated, innovative, and aggregative (i.e., reliant on ‘big data\u27), and (4) designed and disseminated with the intention to inform policy and management. We provide tangible examples of existing work in the domain of action ecology, and offer suggestions for its implementation and future growth, with explicit recommendations for individuals, research institutions, and ecological societies

Congestion in academic journals under an impartial selection process

This paper studies the publishing game played by researchers and editors when the editors adopt an impartial selection process. It analyzes the possibility of congestion in the editorial process and shows that, depending on the nature of the equilibrium, the rise of the rejection costs could be an inappropriate solution to avoid the congestion effect.Publication market, Academic journals, Editors, Congestion

The "Peer" in "Peer Review"

Gad Perry1, Jaime Bertoluci2, Bruce Bury3, Robert W. Hansen4, Robert Jehle5, John Measey6, Brad R. Moon7, Erin Muths8, and Marco A. L. Zuffi9,* 1 Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA; Journal of Herpetology. 2 Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil; Phyllomedusa. 3 USGS, Corvallis, OR, USA; Herpetological Conservation and Biology. 4 Clovis, CA, USA; Herpetological Review. 5 University of Salford, Greater Manchester, UK; Herpetological Journal. 6 University of the Western Cape, South Africa; African Journal of Herpetology. 7 University of Louisiana at Lafayette, LA, USA; Herpetologica. 8 USGS, Fort Collins, CO, USA; Journal of Herpetology. 9 Museum Natural History, University of Pisa, Italy; Acta Herpetologica