This article provides a brief history and review of peer review. It evaluates peer review models against the goals of scientific communication, expressing a preference for publish, review, curate (PRC) models. The review and history are useful. However, the article’s progression and arguments, along with what it seeks to contribute to the literature need refinement and clarification. The argument for PRC is under-developed due to a lack of clarity about what the article means by scientific communication. Clarity here might make the endorsement of PRC seem like less of a foregone conclusion.
As an important corollary, and in the interest of transparency, I declare that I am a founding managing editor of MetaROR, which is a PRC platform. It may be advisable for the author to make a similar declaration because I understand that they are affiliated with one of the universities involved in the founding of MetaROR.
Recommendations from the editor
I strongly endorse the main theme of most of the reviews, which is that the progression and underlying justifications for this article’s arguments needs a great deal of work. In my view, this article’s main contribution seems to be the evaluation of the three peer review models against the functions of scientific communication. I say ‘seems to be’ because the article is not very clear on that and I hope you will consider clarifying what your manuscript seeks to add to the existing work in this field.
In any case, if that assessment of the three models is your main contribution, that part is somewhat underdeveloped. Moreover, I never got the sense that there is clear agreement in the literature about what the tenets of scientific communication are. Note that scientific communication is a field in its own right. C
I also agree that paper is too strongly worded at times, with limitations and assumptions in the analysis minimised or not stated. For example, all of the typologies and categories drawn could easily be reorganised and there is a high degree of subjectivity in this entire exercise. Subjective choices should be highlighted and made salient for the reader.
Note that greater clarity, rigour, and humility may also help with any alleged or actual bias.
Some more minor points are:
I agree with Reviewer 3 that the ‘we’ perspective is distracting.
The paragraph starting with ‘Nevertheless’ on page 2 is very long.
There are many points where language could be shortened for readability, for example:
- Page 3: ‘decision on publication’ could be ‘publication decision’.
* Page 5: ‘efficiency of its utilization’ could be ‘its efficiency’.
* Page 7: ‘It should be noted…’ could be ‘Note that…’.
Page 7: ‘It should be noted that..’ – this needs a reference.
I’m not sure that registered reports reflect a hypothetico-deductive approach (page 6). For instance, systematic reviews (even non-quantitative ones) are often published as registered reports and Cochrane has required this even before the move towards registered reports in quantitative psychology.
I agree that modular publishing sits uneasily as its own chapter.
Page 14: ‘The "Publish-Review-Curate" model is universal that we expect to be the future of scientific publishing. The transition will not happen today or tomorrow, but in the next 5-10 years, the number of projects such as eLife, F1000Research, Peer Community in, or MetaROR will rapidly increase’. This seems overly strong (an example of my larger critique and that of the reviewers).
A list by MetaROR