Dear Colleagues,
One thing that would help is avoiding misappropriated priority of
research
results would be to join the math and physics community in their robust
use of open-access
preprints in arXiv. Such public preprints establish reliable timelines
for research credit
and help to ensure timely access to new results by the entire community.
Fully peer-reviewed publications in "real" journals are still desirable,
but to make
this work, our journals would have to be willing to accept papers for
which such
a preprint system has been used. To understand the complexity of the issue,
see
http://nanoscale.blogspot.com/2008/01/arxiv-and-publishing.html
I believe the IUCr is willing to accept papers that are posted on a
preprint server (somebody
correct me if I am wrong).
It works for the math and physics community. Perhaps it would work
for the
crystallographic community.
On 4/3/12 1:28 PM, Mark J van Raaij wrote:
In fact, I would put it even stronger, if we know a referee is being dishonest,
it is our duty to make sure he is removed from science, blacklisted from the
journal etc.
Mark J van Raaij
Laboratorio M-4
Dpto de Estructura de Macromoleculas
Centro Nacional de Biotecnologia - CSIC
c/Darwin 3
E-28049 Madrid, Spain
tel. (+34) 91 585 4616
http://www.cnb.csic.es/~mjvanraaij
On 3 Apr 2012, at 19:13, Maria Sola i Vilarrubias wrote:
Mark,
I know some stories (which of course I'll not post here) from the Crystallography field
and from other fields where reviewers profit from the fact that suddenly they have new,
interpreted data which fits very well with their own results. Stories like to block a
manuscript or ask for more results for the reviewer to be able to submit its own paper
(with "new" ideas) in time, or copy a structure from the figures, or ask for
experiments that only the reviewer can do so he/she is included in the paper, or submit
as fast as possible in another journal with an extremely short delay of acceptance (e.g.
10 days, without revision?, talking to the editorial board?) things like this. Well, it
is not question of making a full list, here!. The whole problem comes from publishing
first, from competition.
The hope with fraud with X-ray data is that it seems to be detectable, thanks
to valuable people that develop methods to detect it. But it is very difficult
to demonstrate that your work, ideas or results have been copied. How do you
defend from this? And how after giving to them the valuable PDB?
Finally, how many crystallographers are in the world? 5000? The concept of
ethics can change from one place to another and, more than this, there is the
fact that the reviewer is anonymous.
I try to respond to my reviewers the best I can and I really trust their criteria, sometimes a bit
too much, indeed. I think they all have done a very nice job. But some of the stories from above
happened to me or close to me and I feel really insecure with the idea of sending a manuscript, the
X-ray data and the PDB, altogether, to a reviewer shielded by anonymity. It's too risky: with an
easy molecular replacement someone can solve a difficult structure and publish it first. And then
the only thing left to the "bad reviewer" is to change the author's list! (and for the
"true" author what is left is to feel like an idiot).
In my humble opinion, we must be strict but not kill ourselves. Trust authors
as we trust reviewers. Otherwise, the whole effort might be useless.
Maria
Dep. Structural Biology
IBMB-CSIC
Baldiri Reixach 10-12
08028 BARCELONA
Spain
Tel: (+34) 93 403 4950
Fax: (+34) 93 403 4979
e-mail: [email protected]
On 3 April 2012 16:58, Mark J van Raaij<[email protected]> wrote:
The remedy for the fact that some reviewers act unethically is not withholding
coordinates and structure factors, but a more active role for the authors to
denounce these possible violations and more effective investigations by the
journals whose reviewers are suspected by the authors of committing these
violations.
I have witnessed authors being hesitant to complain about possible violations
and journals not always taking complaints seriously enough.
Mark J van Raaij
Laboratorio M-4
Dpto de Estructura de Macromoleculas
Centro Nacional de Biotecnologia - CSIC
c/Darwin 3
E-28049 Madrid, Spain
tel. (+34) 91 585 4616
http://www.cnb.csic.es/~mjvanraaij
On 3 Apr 2012, at 16:45, Bosch, Juergen wrote:
Hi Fred,
I'll go public on this one. This happened to me. I will not reveal who reviewed
my paper and which paper it was only that your naive assumption might not
always be correct. I have learned my lesson and exclude people with overlapping
interests (even though they actually might be the best critical reviewers for
your work). Unfortunately you don't really have control if the journal still
decides to pick those excluded reviewers.
As a suggestion to people out there, make sure to not encrypt your comments as
pdf and PW protect them - that's how I found out about the identity of the
reviewer - as it couldn't be changed by the journal.
I agree though that it shouldn't happen and I hope it only happens in very few
cases.
Jürgen
On Apr 3, 2012, at 9:10 AM, Dyda wrote:
I think the argument that this may give a competitive advantage
to the referee who him or herself maybe working on the same thing
should be mute, as I thought article refereeing was supposed to
be a confidential process. Breaching this would be a serious
ethical violation. In my experience, before agreeing to review,
we see the abstract, I was always thought that I was supposed to
decline if there is a potential conflict with my own work.
Perhaps naively, but I always assumed that everyone acts like this.
......................
Jürgen Bosch
Johns Hopkins University
Bloomberg School of Public Health
Department of Biochemistry& Molecular Biology
Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute
615 North Wolfe Street, W8708
Baltimore, MD 21205
Office: +1-410-614-4742
Lab: +1-410-614-4894
Fax: +1-410-955-2926
http://web.mac.com/bosch_lab/
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