Peer reviews are used for publication in many scientific fields. For publication, something that has passed a peer review is considered trustful, while something that has not yet is deemed to be looked at with squinty eyes. Generally, the peer review systems ensure the quality of scientific work and proposals. However, I have healthy doubts. Are they? Maybe we are giving unreasonable trust in it.
Publishing. Printing on paper is a great invention in human history. Your ideas and stories can be shared with others beyond physical distances and time. Publishers own the machine for printing. Editors make decisions on content in books and journals. Because of printing on paper, there are physical limits in opportunities and content volume. Not everything can be printed. Editors need to choose and select content. Each content is created by writers, artists, photographers, creators, etc. Editors have the power, privilege, and responsibility to choose the content based on their own aims.
Scientific publications are not the exception. Publishers and editors. What is unique in scientific publications are two folds. First, there are two types of publishers—commercial (profit) and community (non-profit). Second, editors use the peer review system to evaluate the content (in this case, articles) because the scientific assessment of a manuscript's quality is beyond each editor's expertise.
What is the standard peer review system in the biomedical science field? Two to three anonymous experts in the respective field of the topics of a manuscript are selected as reviewers by an editor who receives it. In most cases, within 10-14 days, the reviewers read the manuscript and provide expert comments. In an ideal world, the reviewers evaluate data quality and statements' validity. Then, assess the strength of logic. Any logical gaps, limitations and alternative interpretations of the data will be questioned. Potential solutions to address those questions are usually suggested. Reviewing a manuscript is a voluntary activity of individual scientists to help improve someone else’s work.
This sounds cool and trustworthy. Professional individuals support each other. We are relying on the good nature of scientists. But are we such good people?
If the stake is low, like money, fame, etc., the system works relatively well - good old days. On the other hand, when the stake gets higher with the increase of participants, the system does not perform as well as initially hoped for.
Scientific communities are similar to Guilds in the Middle Ages. A relatively small number of people know each other's face, assuring the quality, representing and protecting their interests. Reputations within the community matter. If you are excluded, you have no chance of surviving. Individuals and the community have mutual benefits. However, when diversity in the community increases, the vision and interests are also diverged. The power of quality assurance of the Guilds system and its governance declines.
This is the situation of the current biomedical community. The size of participants gets too big, and their interests are too diverged. The common sense of scientists is diversified in each narrow discipline. The task of scientific reviewers is supposed to be gatekeepers for the quality of work. It should not be censorship or inspection. But this gets very difficult because we all have conscious and unconscious biases. What is getting even worse recently is that the task of reviewers has expanded. The reviewers need to evaluate the importance and impact of the manuscript and justify their evaluation. Anonymous reviewers evaluate If the manuscript in review can fit the submitted journal's quality. What is this? I wish to say all reviewers are open-minded. However, this is too much to hope for. No one wants to see something conflicting with your view or compromising your previous work. In the end, we can only understand something we want to understand or are ready to accept. Not many can use their imagination to see things from alternative views. By staying anonymous, the reviewers make arbitral suggestions that align with their value direction. Some abuse this power with/without consciously noticing it.
In addition, something is fundamentally wrong in scientific publication. General commercial publishers, like newspapers and weekly journals, struggle to maintain their companies. Many journals are closed. Selling books and charging online readerships as subscriptions are not easy.
Scientific publishers are the exception, expanding and releasing many new journals in the last ten years. The publishers do not need to print anything anymore because of online journals. However, the authors must pay publication fees, and the readers must pay subscription fees. All contents are created by scientists who applied for government or private funding grants. Each manuscript is the consequence of many hours of work in the lab. Scientists voluntarily serve as reviewers to evaluate the manuscript and provide suggestions for improvement. After all these, scientists still need to pay substantial subscription fees to read it.
When publishers were actually printing on papers as journals, the limited space was the excuse to select publishing manuscripts from submitted ones. Nowadays, all new journals are online journals. No printing and no space limit, but still selecting. Many manuscripts rejected in one journal are published in another journal without modification. Whose decision in the first journal rejected the manuscript? If this is the editorial decision, it is still OK. How much reviewers’ comments are weighted? Who controls the flavour - some may say quality - of journals? Why do we value publishing in specific journals? How much do we appreciate brands?
Other advances in scientific publication are PubMed and Google. Searching engines and databases. Contrasting to 20 years ago, all published work is searchable and citable. No striking difference exists regarding the impact of individual works at the time of publication. The novel problem now is curating. High- and low-quality work will be searched simultaneously.
In this line, journal branding by publishers has been very successful in science, similar to luxury branding in the fashion and car industries, like CHANEL and Mercedes. It has created its value of prestige. Then, If you publish the work in those journals, academia and scientific communities give credit and benefits for future employment, promotion and funding based on the prestige of the journals, not the quality of the work itself. Because each discipline is so narrowly diversified, others not in the same field cannot evaluate the work objectively, except for the brand names.
Consequently, the manuscript writing style turns into two directions: the flashy, overstating manner that often ignores or minimizes the previous works in the field to maximize the impression of novelty or the conservative, flatter manner that jumps on the bandwagon following the popular trend for easy publication. Science is not a popular vote for the majority. Everyone knows that their current common sense in the field may only last for a while. But the funny thing is that everyone believes their common sense is secure and often has no doubts about it.
Why do scientific journals exist in the first place? Dissemination. Before the digital internet era, publishing in journals, printed on paper, was the only way to share scientific work. Although we live in a different era with new technologies, our minds have been frozen in the old place. Why? Because of our sabotage as scientists and vested interests associated with the old-style scientific publication. As a consequence, research funds are sucked up by publishers.
The current system is trimming innovative perspectives. It has been generally true that creative views were not popular and accepted by peers in their infancy. Galileo Galilei’s work was not published in Latin but in Italy to avoid inspection of the Roman Catholic church, the primary academic community at that time. Charles Darwin’s work was not published in the standard scientific format. Lynn Margulis’ work was rejected about 15 times. Peers cannot accept unorthodox ideas but deny them.
The peer review system cannot take innovative ideas. How about if the peer review systems can eliminate bad works? That is also impossible. There are many tragic, insane frauds in scientific publications in highly-impact journals. Unfortunately, the peer review system cannot prevent them.
Peer review systems only work as a quality control. It does not work to facilitate innovations and cannot prevent fraud. It goes strongly against paradigm shifts because it works to protect vested interests. Ordinal scientists work with the core of vested interests—a bit of new knowledge alongside the current trends. We cannot select anything better for the sake of the future. Things often turn out wrong when we start selecting something better for the future with logical, solid justification. Better logical intention gets the worst outcome.
We need to recognize who holds vested interests. All values are tied up with them. Is it worth keeping the value system we are using right now? Can we alter our own view to cultivate innovation?