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Transparent peer review—An appreciation of the reviewers’ contribution to a published article
European Journal of Cell Biology 89 (2010) 779
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
European Journal of Cell Biology journal homepage: www.elsevier.de/ejcb
Editorial
Transparent peer review—An appreciation of the reviewers’ contribution to a published article
In January 2009, the EMBO Journal started the experiment of a transparent peer review process (Rørth, 2009), i.e., publishing a supplementary Review Process File (RPF) accompanying the online version of articles. The RPF contains the timeline and all relevant communication from the review process, including the anonymous referees’ comments, decision letters and the responses from authors. This initiative has been highly welcomed – among others – by stem cell researchers, who published an ‘Open letter to Senior Editors of peer-review journals publishing in the field of stem cell biology’ on July 10, 2009, via the EuroStemCell (European Consortium for Stem Cell Research) web pages (http://www.eurostemcell.org/commentanalysis/peerreview) in which they encouraged other journals to follow suit. In October 2009, the EMBO Journal took a first stock of the experiment, indicating its success (for details, see http://www.nature. com/emboj/about/emboj review process.html). They conclude: “We therefore hope that other journals will now move into the same direction with similar initiatives.” We, the Editors and Managing Editor of the European Journal of Cell Biology, wish to congratulate the EMBO Journal on this successful experiment and are more than happy to follow in their pioneering footsteps. From our editorial experience we know that the comments provided by the referees very often help to improve and strengthen a paper considerably. Currently, however, public tribute is only rarely given to this important contribution of the reviewers. In addition, the authors’ response letter accompanying a revised version often contains important information, which may be regarded as an added value to the final version of the manuscript. Therefore, we decided that the non-confidential comments of the reviewers and the non-confidential authors’ responses will be published as online supplementary material together with the final version of an eventually accepted article. Of course the reviewers’ anonymity will be strictly preserved, and authors will still have the opportunity to include confidential comments in their response letters to the Editor. We announced this new policy on the homepage of our online submission system (http://ees.elsevier.com/ejcb/) as of June 2010
0171-9335/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ejcb.2010.07.008
and in our editorial correspondence to reviewers and authors. We have not yet received any objections from authors or reviewers since then. We are pleased to announce now the publication of the first two articles under this new policy (Piekarska et al., 2010; Kirschner et al., 2010). The corresponding peer review details can be found in the Supplementary Material to the online versions of these articles. We intend to implement this policy for all regular articles. Special issue articles, at the guest editors’ discretion, may or may not reveal the peer review files. We are confident that our readers will appreciate this valuable additional information. It is also our sincere hope that, following the pioneering EMBO Journal initiative, adoption of this policy will spread among primary research journals of all subject areas, and will thus both acknowledge the important task of referees and enrich published articles, resulting in a more rewarding experience for the reader. References Kirschner, N., Houdek, P., Fromm, M., Moll, I., Brandner, J.M., 2010. Tight junctions form a barrier in human epidermis. Eur. J. Cell Biol. 89, 839–842. Piekarska, I., Kucharczyk, R., Mickowska, B., Rytka, J., Rempola, B., 2010. Mutants of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae VPS genes CCZ1 and YPT7 are blocked in different stages of sporulation. Eur. J. Cell Biol. 89, 780–787. Rørth, P., 2009. The EMBO Journal 2009: new initiatives. EMBO J. 28, 1–3.
Editors Stefan Linder Manfred Schliwa Sabine Werner Managing Editor Dagmar Gebauer ∗ ∗ Corresponding
author. E-mail address: [email protected] (D. Gebauer)
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
European Journal of Cell Biology journal homepage: www.elsevier.de/ejcb
Editorial
Transparent peer review—An appreciation of the reviewers’ contribution to a published article
In January 2009, the EMBO Journal started the experiment of a transparent peer review process (Rørth, 2009), i.e., publishing a supplementary Review Process File (RPF) accompanying the online version of articles. The RPF contains the timeline and all relevant communication from the review process, including the anonymous referees’ comments, decision letters and the responses from authors. This initiative has been highly welcomed – among others – by stem cell researchers, who published an ‘Open letter to Senior Editors of peer-review journals publishing in the field of stem cell biology’ on July 10, 2009, via the EuroStemCell (European Consortium for Stem Cell Research) web pages (http://www.eurostemcell.org/commentanalysis/peerreview) in which they encouraged other journals to follow suit. In October 2009, the EMBO Journal took a first stock of the experiment, indicating its success (for details, see http://www.nature. com/emboj/about/emboj review process.html). They conclude: “We therefore hope that other journals will now move into the same direction with similar initiatives.” We, the Editors and Managing Editor of the European Journal of Cell Biology, wish to congratulate the EMBO Journal on this successful experiment and are more than happy to follow in their pioneering footsteps. From our editorial experience we know that the comments provided by the referees very often help to improve and strengthen a paper considerably. Currently, however, public tribute is only rarely given to this important contribution of the reviewers. In addition, the authors’ response letter accompanying a revised version often contains important information, which may be regarded as an added value to the final version of the manuscript. Therefore, we decided that the non-confidential comments of the reviewers and the non-confidential authors’ responses will be published as online supplementary material together with the final version of an eventually accepted article. Of course the reviewers’ anonymity will be strictly preserved, and authors will still have the opportunity to include confidential comments in their response letters to the Editor. We announced this new policy on the homepage of our online submission system (http://ees.elsevier.com/ejcb/) as of June 2010
0171-9335/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ejcb.2010.07.008
and in our editorial correspondence to reviewers and authors. We have not yet received any objections from authors or reviewers since then. We are pleased to announce now the publication of the first two articles under this new policy (Piekarska et al., 2010; Kirschner et al., 2010). The corresponding peer review details can be found in the Supplementary Material to the online versions of these articles. We intend to implement this policy for all regular articles. Special issue articles, at the guest editors’ discretion, may or may not reveal the peer review files. We are confident that our readers will appreciate this valuable additional information. It is also our sincere hope that, following the pioneering EMBO Journal initiative, adoption of this policy will spread among primary research journals of all subject areas, and will thus both acknowledge the important task of referees and enrich published articles, resulting in a more rewarding experience for the reader. References Kirschner, N., Houdek, P., Fromm, M., Moll, I., Brandner, J.M., 2010. Tight junctions form a barrier in human epidermis. Eur. J. Cell Biol. 89, 839–842. Piekarska, I., Kucharczyk, R., Mickowska, B., Rytka, J., Rempola, B., 2010. Mutants of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae VPS genes CCZ1 and YPT7 are blocked in different stages of sporulation. Eur. J. Cell Biol. 89, 780–787. Rørth, P., 2009. The EMBO Journal 2009: new initiatives. EMBO J. 28, 1–3.
Editors Stefan Linder Manfred Schliwa Sabine Werner Managing Editor Dagmar Gebauer ∗ ∗ Corresponding
author. E-mail address: [email protected] (D. Gebauer)