Judging words rather than journals or authors: a reminder that peer review continues after publication
Sir,That the readers of scientific articles should judge words rather than journals or authors may appear to be stating the obvious, yet the fact remains that, in many cases, rather than what is written, where it is published, and by whom, appeals to and has impact on researchers, funding agencies and universities. In the pre-publication phase, journal editors and reviewers try hard to judge what and how scientific material will see the light of publication. To this end, scientists like Drummond Rennie and his colleagues, for instance in the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE)1 or in the Council of Science Editors,2 enabled remarkable improvements of the formal pre-publication peer review system in past decades.
And yet, beyond journals, it is the readers of articles who have both the chance and the responsibility to continue peer review after publication (Erren TC. Peer review effectively begins with publication. Rapid response to: Charlton BG. Peer usage versus peer review. BMJ 2007; 335:451. Available under: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/335/7617/451). In this vein, Charles Poole has advocated appropriately that ‘publication lies much closer to the beginning than to the end of peer review’; in fact, ‘the post-publication phase is the most important phase of peer review’.3 Clearly, what published material ultimately stands the tests of time and, by implication, of peer scientists cannot be predicted with certainty by journals alone. Equally clearly, not all papers in so-called high-quality journals and written by reputable scientists are of superior and not all papers published in other journals or by less-known authors of inferior value. Note, as one example, that landmark work in immunology (the identification of B lymphocytes) was published in Poultry Science4 and that quite a few articles published in Cell, Science and Nature as core journals for so-called hard science had to be retracted for reasons of fraud,5 misconduct and error. Obviously, the formal peer review system can fail to assess the real value of scientific work in the pre-publication phase.
The post-publication phase is thus crucial and it belongs to the readers. They enable ongoing peer review and will, ultimately, help to separate what is valuable for the science and practice of medicine from what is not. To best fulfil our tasks as informal post-publication peer reviewers, we must judge what is written alone and not where it is published and by whom. The latter actually corresponds with what numerous journals do in their formal peer-review process, i.e. to blind the reviewers with regard to information on the authors and their institutional affiliations. With these premises, we should follow Poole's advice to view publication ‘as an open invitation to inspect one's results and to consider one's preliminary interpretation’. If we do so, after publication ‘the number of peer reviewers increases by orders of magnitude’.3
Institute and Policlinic for Occupational and Social Medicine, School of Medicine and Dentistry University of Cologne, Kerpener Straße 62, D-50937 Köln, Lindenthal, Germany
email: tim.erren{at}uni-koeln.de
References
1. International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). Available at: http://www.icmje.org/. Accessed 6 September 2007.
2. Council of Science Editors. Available at: http://www.councilscienceeditors.org/. Accessed 6 September 2007.
3. Poole C. Invited commentary: evolution of epidemiologic evidence on magnetic fields and childhood cancers. Am J Epidemiol (1996) 143:129–32.
4. Chang TS, Glick B, Winter AR. The significance of the bursa of Fabricius of chickens in antibody production. Poultry Sci (1955) 34:1187.
5. Couzin J. Breakthrough of the year. Breakdown of the year: scientific fraud. Science (2006) 314:1853.
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