A Review of Peer Review by Peers

In the good old days of P.G. Wodehouse being a peer usually meant that one had a hereditary peerage, exemplified beautifully by Clarence Threepwood, 9th Earl of Emsworth. Ideally, this enabled you to take full advantage of the country house which came with it, in this case Blandings Castle in Shropshire. The peer kept himself busy by pottering about in the garden, by breeding monumental pigs such as the Empress of Blandings, by sleeping for at least eight hours per day, preferably ten, and, most difficult, by trying to avoid having to go to London, at least on sunny days.[1] These times, as you well know, are gone.

Today a peer is generally defined as one among others of similar background, often, but not always, with a certain expertise above the average. One is encouraged to resort to “one's peers” for help and assistance. In scientific publishing a peer is the person who wrote this brazen review of your diligently assembled manuscript, criticizing the statistics, the control group, the conclusions, and most everything else. For the majority of journals he/she does this in the relative security of anonymity. Editors never fail to emphasize that it is the quality of their “peer review” which makes their respective journal outstanding.

It was, therefore with a curious mind that Yours Truly travelled to Chicago in September to attend the “7th Peer Review Congress” (www.peerreviewcongress.org). This convention has been held every four years since 1989. This year it was directed by Drummond Rennie, a true father figure in medical publishing, supported by the JAMA Network and the British Medical Journal (BMJ) group. The Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeon had a presentation there, trying to answer the question “Do Readers Read What Peer Reviewers Selected?”[2] The short answer is “Not necessarily,” but more about this in much more detail some other time (full publication pending).Today I would like to very briefly acquaint you with the latest developments in the world of “Peer Review,” this mysterious process one of the results of which you are currently looking at.

It was comforting to see that lots of research activities are actively investigating virtually all the intricacies of this much debated operation which is thought to be wildly arbitrary by many, not only the authors of rejected papers. There were sessions on authorship, citation, peer review as such, ethical issues and misconduct, reporting and publication bias, trial registration, data and content sharing or access, quality of trials and their reporting, reporting guidelines, post-publication access as well as dissemination and exchange. Many of the topics discussed in detail are controversial: from what is guardedly described as “prolific authorship” to the (non-)anonymity of reviewers and/or authors to the practical handling of retractions. There were glimpses into the future or at least a distinctly growing part of the present such as the use of social media for distribution and the new metrics associated with that. There were reports of how things work for journals which employ more than a dozen full-time editors and have two-digit impact factors to tales about trying to establish a decent scientific journal in an emerging country. Both extremes have their problems which sometimes are not even much different.

As in most conferences the talks during the breaks or over (excellent) lunch, the networking and the discussions of the poster presentations were extremely important and helpful to benchmark one's doings against those of others, the peers.

After three very busy days in an unusually hot and humid Chicago which were mostly spent in a conference center with a room temperature closer to the freezing point, Yours Truly returned to his journal in a reassured state of mind. The problems which were discovered over the last years in association with editing The Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeon seem to be managed appropriately. There are outstanding ideas out there just waiting to be implemented – so watch this journal. Right now it is developing nicely and there is, and will always be, room for further improvement. For our offspring Reports, celebrating its first birthday, the same holds true.[3] Rigorous peer review in its more positive variety will continue to be the soul of both journals, and both editors promise to keep contributing parts of their respective hearts.

At long last, let's see how Mr. Wodehouse sums up the essence of reviews by a real peer:

“Sunshine pierced the haze that enveloped London. It came down Fleet Street, turned to the right, stopped at the premises of the Mammoth Publishing Company, and, entering through an upper window, beamed pleasantly upon Lord Tilbury, founder and proprietor of that vast factory of popular literature, as he sat reading the batch of weekly papers which his secretary had placed on the desk for his inspection. Among the secrets of this great man's success was the fact that he kept a personal eye on all of the firm's products.”[1]

• References

• 1 Wodehouse PG. Heavy Weather. Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1933 (serving as one example of the Blandings series by this author).
• 2 Tolksdorf MM, Heinemann MK . Do Readers Read What Peer Reviewers Selected?; pp. 41–42. http://www.peerreviewcongress.org/2013/Poster-Session-Abstracts.pdf . Accessed on November 4, 2013.
• 3 Böning A. TCSR – an Open-Access journal for those who are not afraid of peer review. Thorac Cardiovasc Surg Rep 2013; 1: 1