Peer evaluation by committee? New journal rethinks outdated mannequin

The peer-review system has been confused and stretched to a near-breaking level. It’s changing into tougher to search out reviewers, a lot of whom see reviewing as a burden that isn’t adequately rewarded. The rise of predatory publishers, a lot of which falsely declare to offer a peer-review course of; paper mills, that are identified to manufacture peer evaluations; and plagiarism of peer-review stories have harmed belief within the system.

The Stacks Journal is aiming to offer a quicker, extra clear and reliable peer-review mannequin by organizing committees of researchers to evaluate manuscripts.

Launched in July as an open-access, digital-only publication, the Stacks Journal is the brainchild of David Inexperienced, an ecologist based mostly in Portland, Oregon. The inspiration, says Inexperienced, was his personal expertise with the inefficiencies of educational publishing. In 2020, Inexperienced, who had completed a research on the affect of wildfire on carnivores¹, needed to get the outcomes out shortly in order that they may inform land-management coverage. However his paper languished within the publishing system for nearly two years, with no clear rationalization as to why. So, he resolved to alter the method.

Inexperienced spoke to Nature Index concerning the inspiration for the Stacks, and the way he hopes it should repair a few of the weaknesses of educational publishing.

What impressed you to launch the Stacks Journal?

I talked to different ecologists at conferences and subject websites, and everybody was pissed off with the established order of scientific publishing — from enormous article-processing charges and lengthy peer-review instances to the rise of predatory journals. These and different components undermine individuals’s capacity to publish their analysis; estimates from clinical-trial knowledge recommend that round 50% of fine knowledge by no means get revealed². We’re lacking out on a variety of necessary data.

I began researching peer evaluation and learnt that it hasn’t modified a lot prior to now 40 years. So, I explored what a brand new system might appear like. I did in-depth interviews with dozens of researchers in several fields and surveyed a whole lot extra to check concepts.

The result’s the Stacks Journal’s peer-review course of, which was designed to mirror how individuals talk about concepts within the Web age: assembly on-line to collaborate throughout social-media platforms, for instance. Advances in the way in which we talk haven’t but made it to the peer-review course of.

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How does the Stacks Journal’s peer-review mannequin work?

We’re shifting peer evaluation away from a person gatekeeper mannequin, whereby an editor at a journal decides what must be revealed. As an alternative, we use a community-based mannequin, wherein we collect enter from a gaggle of individuals to collectively decide whether or not an article is revealed. We’ve designed this mannequin to be rewarding to each authors and reviewers, and utterly clear.

What’s key’s that the Stacks Journal’s peer-review course of occurs in collaboration as a substitute of isolation. That is how peer evaluation and publishing used to work. As an example, within the nineteenth century, the Royal Society in London invited teams of students with experience in particular matters to come back collectively, debate new work and decide whether or not it might be revealed. Now, most journals have two reviewers who assess a manuscript individually. On the Stacks, we convey collectively communities of reviewers to collaborate. It’s double-blind, to make sure equity, and reviewers can see one another’s feedback and talk about whether or not they agree.

All of the peer-review stories, underlying knowledge and code are publicly posted, together with the names of the reviewers.

What else units the Stacks Journal aside?

We’ve created a ‘credibility rating’ for every revealed article, so readers can shortly get a way of the reviewer’s suggestions. The credibility rating is calculated as the share of reviewers who voted to simply accept the article for publication. So, for instance, if six out of seven reviewers suppose an article must be revealed, its rating will probably be 86%.

To acknowledge the function of the reviewers in contributing to the analysis, they’ll decide in to be credited as ‘collaborators’, listed just under the authors on the revealed article. That approach, a reviewer can embrace their work on their CV.

Our publishing mannequin can be totally different — we provide an annual membership for US$199 that enables limitless open-access publishing. In standard publishing, it could actually value 1000’s of {dollars} to publish one article. In our analysis, we discovered that this limits a variety of researchers from ever sharing or publishing their findings.

How does the journal discover and coordinate reviewers?

The Stacks is constructed on communities of researchers that type round particular matters. Proper now, we’re centered on ecology, however quickly we’ll add chemistry, laptop science and drugs. Any eligible researcher can signal as much as be a reviewer on our web site free of charge. To be eligible, you need to have revealed no less than one peer-reviewed article within the related subject of research.

After we obtain a submission, we ship it to reviewers with experience within the paper’s subject. Reviewers submit their suggestions on our on-line platform, which they use to debate amongst themselves. The reviewers are all blinded to one another’s identities through the course of, and no particular person carries extra weight than one other.

It has been simple for us to search out reviewers. They discover the method rewarding, and so they maintain coming again.

What challenges have you ever encountered?

We’ve needed to cap the variety of reviewers on every article at seven, as a result of that’s what our software program can deal with. This implies we’ve needed to flip individuals away. We wish to have limitless reviewers on each article, so we’re constructing new software program to make this occur.

One other problem is the truth that we’re a brand new journal — we don’t have an effect issue or third-party marker of credibility, so some scientists are usually not able to submit their analysis to us. Nevertheless, authors who’ve say that they love how streamlined the publishing course of is and the way a lot our evaluation system strengthened their papers, which brings credibility to their analysis that’s extra long-lasting than that afforded by most journals.

Over the following 12 months, we goal to publish greater than 100 articles, together with our first particular problem, and can proceed discovering methods to do peer evaluation in a extra productive and environment friendly approach.

This interview has been edited for size and readability.

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