A reviewer's lot is not a happy one

Journal of Neuroimmunology 141 (2003) 1 – 2 www.elsevier.com/locate/jneuroim

Editorial

A reviewer’s lot is not a happy one Sporting a title modified from that of a Gilbert and Sullivan ditty, this editorial highlights selectively the subject of peer-review and pays tribute to manuscript reviewers, a group of oft-overlooked, unsung heroes. Let me begin by saying that the single, daunting, daily task confronting an editor does not involve authors’ telephone calls, publisher demands, deliberating on manuscripts, or monitoring manuscript flow (inter alia), but rather the identification of appropriate reviewers for new submissions. It was precisely to alleviate this task that the Journal of Neuroimmunology instituted the requirement last year, that authors submitting manuscripts should include names and addresses of five suggested referees. Incidentally, do you know how many submissions still come in without suggestions? Would you believe 30– 50%? Surely with such an adjunct, we reasoned that the task of selecting reviewers would be greatly facilitated. Do you know the result? Not much difference at all, due largely to the high refusal rate or failure of potential reviewers to respond after e-mail contact, not to mention the time these failed requests add to the process. Sadly, apart from our trusty Editorial Board members and the many stalwart colleagues who unflinchingly agree to review manuscripts arriving on their desks unannounced, finding fresh reviewers willing to review manuscripts is ofttimes a formidable undertaking. Consequently, in the case of our Journal, the interval between manuscript receipt and dispatch to reviewers may take several weeks. Larger journals have tried to overcome this problem by consulting a database centered on key words and author specialty, but this system tends to identify reviewers outside the scope of the subject and many requests are needed before matches are made. At a time when our Journal is actively conducting a campaign to reduce manuscript processing time to a minimum (check the accession and acceptance dates in recent issues and compare them with those of other journals), this new impediment, the lag time in identifying reviewers occurring at the very beginning of the process, has reached a point where it needs to be addressed. When all else fails, we shall resort to the old technique of sending papers out without prior notification, except that the return rate of unreviewed manuscripts may be quite alarming at times. Meanwhile, we shall continue to try new angles to deal with this temporary glitch, currently our sole gripe with the peer-review system. Whatever happened to the honor traditionally associated with evaluating the work of col0165-5728/$ - see front matter D 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S0165-5728(03)00224-8

leagues for a journal? After all, don’t we all list Ad Hoc Reviewing on our transcripts? Meanwhile, we prevail upon our readers to bear with us until we readjust and ask those who have been selected to review for this journal in the past but were unable to do so, to consider their decision carefully before they respond next time. Reviewers of manuscripts are the backbone of any peerreviewed Journal, providing manna to its life and determining its standing in the field. Good, solid, decisive, helpful reviews allow for fair decision making. Fluffy, opinionated, sarcastic diatribes blur the process, may precipitate the need for additional reviewers, render the editor’s role more difficult, and usually upset the authors—sometimes to the extent that they go elsewhere with revised or forthcoming papers. Yes, reviews take time. They can be an imposition, an unwelcome chore, and sometimes they bring out the worst in us. However, by performing this duty, we do learn a lot and we do help shape the field. After all, someone has to review our papers, so for us to do it for others is merely reciprocation, isn’t it? Personally, I derive a feeling of satisfaction, bordering on pride, when a paper I have reviewed appears in the literature, particularly if it becomes a landmark. On the other hand, I worry little about papers which fail to make the grade (including my own), since we all know that papers are rarely discarded but tend to be passed on to other periodicals until they find a home. Despite personal prejudice and the constant ogre of conflict, in this editor’s opinion, the peer-review system does work. However, not all editors agree. Recently, I read an article from Europe (A. Bock, Cortex, 2002; 38: 419– 420), which, after presenting a rather negative viewpoint, concluded that peer-review as we currently know it, was not working and needed a radical overhaul due largely to a lack of objectivity. The suggestion was floated that peerreview might be replaced by a professional panel ‘‘not actively publishing at the same time’’ (sic), members of which would have no vested interest in the outcome of the review process. Short of finding a panel of retired Nobel laureates, I see no way such a group could be assembled, and frankly, I would question the ability of such a body to cover any field of science properly. When a journal to which I regularly contributed until about 10 years ago changed its reviewing procedure from one which relied upon the opinions of two to three outside reviewers to one based on the analysis of the reviewers’ opinions by a panel

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Editorial

of in-house ‘‘experts’’, I promptly terminated my association with it. This panel was not always capable (in my experience), of synthesizing the outside reviews correctly and the reviews themselves were not shared with the authors. What was sent to the author was merely a truncated list of deficiencies perceived by the panel. Why, thought I, did this journal even bother to have reviewers when their comments were not made available to authors? I have since watched the popularity of this journal dwindle and its impact factor decrease accordingly. Therefore, I take issue with the rather pessimistic opinion of the above writer and fervently state that the standard and success of the review process for any journal lies firmly in the lap of the editor. It is the editor who has a finger on the pulse of the Journal and the field it represents. If the review of a paper is not satisfactory for any reason (difficulty in finding reviewers, overdue reviews, split-decisions, fluffy reviews, etc.), then the task of rectifying the situation lies with the editor who might need to seek further counsel. Sometimes this meets with great protestation from the unfortunate authors whom the editor is trying to help since they are compelled to wait another week, or two, or three. For some readers, this may be de´ja` vu, having experienced similar incidents from this office, and each time, it was the editor who was behind it, trying to extract from the review process a fair, decisive outcome. We admit, some papers may fall through the cracks when we find ourselves under pressure to quell a distraught author. For example, some impolite remark from a reviewer may be transmitted in error to an author (several letters from upset individuals come to mind), but in general, we screen reviews for content and modify inappropriate remarks that may detract from the ruling. Nothing can be more destructive to an author (young and old, alike), than callousness, sarcasm and ridicule in a review. Surprised I was last month to notice that remarks of this type can even find their way into a high impact journal (Nature Medicine, May 2003), where a book review described its subject as ‘‘a rambling, pretentious synthesis based on a poor understanding of the biologic research literature’’. Perhaps a high impact factor bestows upon a Journal a certain omnipotence, but I still think the basic rules of reviewing should be observed in science, even for book reviews. The old adage ‘‘Do unto others as you would they do unto you’’, comes to mind. Enough about the process. Now a few words on one of this Journal’s most valuable assets, its reviewers. On the one hand, these people constitute a rare strain of Homo sapiens who are special, dedicated, non-paid, non-complaining volunteers (or conscripts), whose efforts, though most appreciated by the editor, are often taken for granted by the populace. On the other hand, reviewers are regular people with lives of their own who sacrifice private time

for the benefit of the scientific community. A couple of months ago I received a letter from one of our reviewers in Australia describing how she and her family had lived through the Canberra bush fires. ‘‘We still have a house’’, she wrote, ‘‘We are Number 8. Number 2 burned down. Seven houses opposite us burned down. The two adjacent streets to the west burned down. The whole pine forest which began from the second street, burned down.’’ She went on to describe in detail a harrowing series of events concerning their efforts to preserve their home. Fortunately, her home was spared and in her concluding remarks, she mentioned that ‘‘The support from friends was heartwarming!’’ Thank you for sharing your experience, Dr. Staykova. I hope the clean-up was not too overwhelming. But it doesn’t end there. A few weeks later, she wrote again, this time to apologize for being two weeks late with a review for our Journal! The point of the above account? I reiterate, reviewers have lives, too. And what is more, they take the task of reviewing seriously. In his farewell piece as Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Pathology, (Am. J. Pathol. 2000; 157: 1757– 1758), Dr. Nelson Fausto graciously recognized with admiration the efforts of his reviewers over the years and summarized his feelings by saying that he continues ‘‘to be amazed by the amount of time and care spent by the vast majority of our reviewers in the evaluation of manuscripts’’, a sentiment that can never be overemphasized. Dr. Fausto also raised the need for reviewers to remain vigilant for the notorious MPU (minimal publication unit) syndrome, where an author divides a study into as many papers as possible to pad a resume´. Fortunately, our Journal sees this syndrome not too often although I never cease to be amazed how attuned are our reviewers and how quickly they draw our attention to it. Again, this highlights another key role of reviewers, that of quality control managers, helping to maintain the standard of the field they represent. To repeat, an editor depends heavily on reviewers, and on those rare occasions when their reviews come under fire from disenchanted authors, perhaps in an attempt to alter a decision (a past-time known in the trade as ‘‘reviewer bashing’’), the editor invariably defends the reviewer’s call. After all, who are we to question the decision of someone who may have devoted much time to the manuscript? Thus, pressures to make decisions and to meet deadlines will always exist but the editor must respect and await the response of reviewers, even the slow ones, whose lot it remains to judge contributions objectively without compromising the science. This office will continue to do all it can to make this lot ‘‘an happy one’’. Cedric S. Raine New York, June 2003