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• W2528440739 abstract "In an ideal scientific world, bright ideas lead to hypotheses that are tested by performing carefully designed, well-controlled and rigorous experiments. These lead to exciting results that form the basis of a paper that is written and submitted for publication, followed by the rapid receipt of a letter of acceptance. But life is rarely like that. (Joels et al., 2015). However, the power is in our hands to ensure that this system works. We all have to contribute to restore good practice in peer review, not only by being ‘good’ scientific citizens ourselves and approach all of our reviewing assignments fairly and seriously but also by training the next generation appropriately to ensure that future scientists also enjoy the intellectual independence the scientific community benefits from through the peer-review process. It all comes down to constructive peer reviewing. Writing a constructive peer review is not a trivial exercise and it is a skill that has to be learned and can be constantly refined. We are still in the process of refining our methods, but discussing with colleagues we have tried to identify the most important strategies one could follow (see below), but the most important is to keep a positive attitude throughout the process. Make sure your score sheet matches your review and the feedback you offer the authors. We would suggest that the score sheet be sent to the authors as part of an open peer-review process. In general, all papers can be improved, so when to reject? For first review we would argue a straight rejection when the paper is beyond improvement – when a great number of experimental flaws are identified that need a dramatic change in experimental design or the data have been presented in a previous paper by the same authors, or when there seems to be substantial concerns over ethics, fraudulent data or figure presentation. On rare occasions, papers are rejected at resubmission if authors do not take on board the reviewers’ comments and fail to address them appropriately in a well-constructed rebuttal letter. Assessing a resubmission is not a ‘fresh’ review, one should steer away from identifying new criticisms that one overlooked when seeing the paper at the first round. We approach the assessment of a resubmission, in addition to reading the rebuttal letter, by reading the old version and the new version to both refresh ones’ memory and to identify how the changes made have improved the overall paper; and to evaluate whether our comments – and those of the other reviewers –, have been appropriately addressed. Then, ensure that the changes, in general highlighted in the manuscript and justified in the rebuttal letter, and occasionally additional experiments, have sufficiently improved the manuscript. If they have, then suggest the manuscript be accepted and congratulate the authors on their work. If not then write a constructive comment on how the paper can be further improved – in line with what was stated before –, so that you give the authors a second chance to address your concerns. Upon the second revision, if the authors to not satisfactorily address your major comments, then you can suggest the paper to be rejected. Should you adjust your assessment to the expectation, such as impact factor, of the journal? Should papers submitted to high-impact journal be reviewed differently than papers submitted to a lower-impact factor journal? What is the definition of when to review ‘rigorously’ or ‘less rigorously’ according to impact? – is there some clear definition out there? – We do not think so. We argue that it is the question addressed and the knowledge gained that determines the impact of a paper, not the technology used in the study or how fashionable the topic is. Thus, often ‘low’-impact factor journals publish ‘high’-impact papers. For example, many papers contributing to Nobel Prizes have been published in journals such as Brain Research, Experimental Neurology and Pflügers Archiv European Journal of Physiology rather than in Nature, Science and Cell. Thus, our approach is to review each paper on its own merit (as listed above), it is the quality of the paper that will define its impact, not the impact factor of the journal in which it is published. Thus, only comment on suitability if it is clearly outside the scope of the journal, and leave the decision on whether the paper fits the editorial policy of the journal in the hands of the editors. We must ensure our contribution to the field goes beyond the papers score on the Web Of Science Board or their associated Impact Factor and think about the right things to do, so that the next generation will thrive in a positive and constructive system – with all its limitations. By contributing to a new generation of reviewers who produce constructive and fair feedback on manuscripts – we will safeguard the honesty and integrity of science and the scientific record and prevent the ever-growing trend of ‘impact factor obsession’. At any time during the reviewing process, but preferably at the start, if you identify that you may have a potential conflict of interest – contact the editor immediately and discuss with them how best to continue. Contact the editor if you are in doubt or if you find that the authors have not stated/revealed a clear conflict of interest in the manuscript. Writing a constructive peer review requires time, a great deal of curiosity, honesty and expertise, but most of all, it relies on one being devoid of any form of jealousy. In other words, if you feel frustrated in your current situation, do not accept to review a manuscript. Your mind-set would not be compatible with the requirements of the task. How do you expect to treat the manuscript of a colleague who has a tenure track position with a big laboratory and a lot of funding and whose work you judge to be of a lesser quality than yours when you are on a 2-year contract, or struggling to get enough money to finish setting up your laboratory or struggling with a manuscript in an unfair reviewing process? Writing a peer review is an exercise that can be performed only if you can master your emotions! It can often become frustrating, if not infuriating, sometimes as much as it is to receive the decision letter from the editor when you are on the other side. Choose to decline to review if the moment is not right – never use it as an opportunity to vent your anger or get even! This piece is mostly about what a reviewer should do, as also described in the Council of Science Editors’ white paper (Scott-Lichter, 2012). However, what a reviewer should clearly not do is be judgmental and/or ask endlessly for more, often unnecessary experiments. That often reflects the reviewer's volition to tailor one's study, that is not theirs, to fit their intellectual approach and their own scientific background, or even worse when they set out simply to ‘kill’ the manuscript; all manuscripts can be argued to death if so wished. These are often referred to as ‘reviewer 3’. We have all come across one of them, we have all suffered the biased, unfair, acidic comments from ‘reviewer 3’ who asked for additional experiments worth two decades and which are not fully related to the working hypothesis of the study, but on which a decision to reject the paper has been issued. This upwards trend of extra experiments is evident as the amount of the data incorporated, and the amount of panels per figure in ‘high’-impact factor journals have quadrupled in the last few decades (Powell, 2016). This is a frightening fact, which threatens the independence of science and runs the risk that only large well-funded and well-established laboratories can contribute to the pinnacle of science. There are no recipes for a good study and such practice can easily be tackled by a change in the peer-review process, by ourselves! Some have blamed the blind review process for this, and it is not the scope of this opinion piece to discuss this. Several constructive initiatives, such as those promoted by Frontiers, or eNeuro, with its double-blind peer-review system in which an active engagement of the handling editor to find a consensus with the reviewers with regards to the justification for asking more experiments (https://www.sfn.org/News-and-Calendar/News-and-Calendar/News/Spotlight/2014/QA-eNeuro-An-Innovative-Open-Access-Publishing-Venue-for-Excellent-Science) may, in the near future, contribute to help the overall peer-review process mutate. EJN is also taking part in the initiative to support a more transparent and honest peer-review process. From the end of the year, the journal will make the peer review documentation (referees’ reports, authors’ responses and editors’ comments) available alongside the published article. However, at the individual level, you really can contribute actively to eradicate inappropriate reviewing behaviour, and it starts with taking an active part in the peer-review process. If your reviews are objective, constructive and really help the authors to improve their manuscript and equip the editors with material to make informed decisions, and your reviews are submitted on time, you will eventually take the place of this reviewer 3. Editors appreciate good reviewers and often complain there are too few of those who really do a good job. Reviewing is a skill that requires extended training before it is practiced individually. Among your mentoring activities, review training should be high on the list as it is going to contribute to shape the expertise and the behaviour of the next generation of reviewers. In that context, our generation must above all break with the cultural trend found in young graduate students or post-docs that pride is to be found in shredding a paper to pieces. For instance, we use ~5 to 10% of the papers we review for a training programme, keeping in mind that all manuscripts reviewed are confidential, we ensure the trainees (e.g. students and post-docs) are aware of this and will respect the confidentiality of the manuscript before they take part in the exercise. In this context, we ask one of our laboratory members if they are interested in reviewing a manuscript. If they are willing to perform the review, we give them 10 days to do so, during which time we perform our own review of the manuscript. Then, in DBs case, either the review is presented to the other members of the laboratory by his young colleague, during which DB actively contributes to the discussion and finalizes the review that will be sent to the journal at the end of the session, or, more often in RTKs case, the young colleague is asked to compare their review to the one written by their PI; in both cases the editor is made aware that the reviewer was assisted by a young colleague. Most of the time, the final review is a compromise between PI and trainee, but the decision is seldom to suggest to reject the manuscript (see above for a discussion on rejection). In a few cases RTK has set up a reviewing exercise of some papers where five young scientists work together to discuss the paper and how to improve it and draft the review. What is learnt in these different exercises is that it is more difficult to help the authors improve their manuscript than merely criticizing each and every word of it. It is our opinion that graduate students and young post-docs should receive as much supervision at peer reviewing as they do at writing. But whatever our opinion is on this topic, we should never let one of our laboratory members submit a review without an assessment of their work, as we would do for the submission of a manuscript we authored. By establishing yourself as a Principal Investigator you have demonstrated that you are capable of publishing and securing funding, two qualities for which peer-review journals (Scott-Lichter, 2012) and funding agencies/charities have an insatiable thirst. If, as a PhD student or a post-doc, you were already invited to review papers or grant applications, this will exponentially increase when you become PI. However, this activity is not remunerated, at least in the case publication peer review, and it remains somehow neglected as a service to the community. Indeed, even though the peer-review process is the corner stone of the current scientific dissemination system on which our careers depend, being actively engaged in peer reviewing does not count towards your career advancement. So why should you spend time reviewing your peers’ manuscripts and grant applications when you want first and foremost to dedicate your time and energy consolidating your laboratory and nurturing your laboratory members? In a nutshell, peer review is a skill that really needs training to acquire. It requires empathy, honesty and a real understating of the question addressed in the study you assess. This defines the remit of the study and its originality. Your duty is to help the authors improve their manuscript (not to the point that your intellectual contribution would justify you authored the manuscript, in that case it is not suitable for publication). You must avoid the temptation to ask for experiments that are not directly related to the study or do not necessarily strengthen the case made. There are many benefits to being actively engaged in peer review: contribute to eradicating reviewer 3 and shape a fairer peer-review process, disseminating your knowledge through constructive feedback to your peers, learning, learning, learning and teaching the next generation good values and good practice in the reviewing process. Much rests on our shoulders with regards to changing the system. We aspire to the future of fair, constructive and helpful peer review. DB and RTK are supported by the Wellcome Trust, DB is supported by the Leverhulme Trust and the Medical Research Council. The authors would like to thank Brett Benedetti for his constructive comments on the manuscript." @default.
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• W2528440739 title "Writing a constructive peer review: a young PI perspective" @default.
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