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      Post-publication review: Will it hold its ground?

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          Abstract

          Sir, Scientific publication merits a certain level of credibility. Peer review of the manuscripts submitted to the journals is an important step in publication process.[1] It is a process whereby qualified individuals in the relevant field assess the work submitted by a peer. In other words, it is a process whereby an author's scholarly work is put to the scrutiny of others who are experts in the same field. Peer review helps improve the quality of published manuscripts. While peer review is a norm in medical publishing it has its own share of criticism. The debate on relevance of peer review was put into perspective by Rennie et al in a 2003 editorial for JAMA.[2] The editors mentioned that “there seems to be no study too fragmented, no hypothesis too trivial, no literature too biased or too egotistical, no design too warped, no methodology too bungled, no presentation of results too inaccurate, too obscure, and too contradictory, no analysis too self-serving, no argument too circular, no conclusions too trifling or too unjustified, and no grammar and syntax too offensive for a paper to end up in print.” Surprisingly aimed at enhancing the scientific rigorousness, the process itself has never been systematically studied for evidence of its effectiveness. Cochrane Collaboration has reported that ‘little empirical evidence to support the use of editorial peer review as a mechanism to ensure quality of biomedical research……’.[3] Peer review has been criticised for being time consuming. This leads to a delay in publication of the work. Post-publication review has been cited as a possible solution to this delay. In post-publication review the manuscript submitted by the author gets published (usually online) following some preliminary evaluation. However, detailed review is carried out subsequent to publication. This approach helps speedy publication of research findings. It also allows inputs from a wider audience (as opposed to a few peer reviewers in traditional approach). Any reader can instantly publish a peer review on any published paper. If the criticism in the accumulated reviews and the importance of the paper justify it, the authors are given the option to revise their paper. Some acceptance has been reported about this process. Concordance has been reported between the post-publication review rating and traditional prepublication review based Impact Factor (IF) rating. An analysis of 2,500 neurobiology articles revealed a very strong correlation (r=0.93) between average F1000 (Faculty of 1000- a post-publication rating system) rating and the journal's impact factor.[4] It has been argued that post-publication review helps assess an individual article on its own merit rather than that of the journal as a whole. However, this approach has been criticised for different reasons. Not all attempts at post-publication review have met with success. The e-Letters system of The Royal Society has not proven to be particularly popular as “remarkably few people choose to use it”.[5] Editors have even opined that post-publication review would not ‘act as substitute’ for pre publication peer review.[5] It remains to be seen whether post-publication review would add to the quality and efficiency of scientific review process.

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          Editorial peer review for improving the quality of reports of biomedical studies.

          Scientific findings must withstand critical review if they are to be accepted as valid, and editorial peer review (critique, effort to disprove) is an essential element of the scientific process. We review the evidence of the editorial peer-review process of original research studies submitted for paper or electronic publication in biomedical journals. To estimate the effect of processes in editorial peer review. The following databases were searched to June 2004: CINAHL, Ovid, Cochrane Methodology Register, Dissertation abstracts, EMBASE, Evidence Based Medicine Reviews: ACP Journal Club, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, PubMed. We included prospective or retrospective comparative studies with two or more comparison groups, generated by random or other appropriate methods, and reporting original research, regardless of publication status. We hoped to find studies identifying good submissions on the basis of: importance of the topic dealt with, relevance of the topic to the journal, usefulness of the topic, soundness of methods, soundness of ethics, completeness and accuracy of reporting. Because of the diversity of study questions, viewpoints, methods, and outcomes, we carried out a descriptive review of included studies grouping them by broad study question. We included 28 studies. We found no clear-cut evidence of effect of the well-researched practice of reviewer and/or author concealment on the outcome of the quality assessment process (9 studies). Checklists and other standardisation media have some evidence to support their use (2 studies). There is no evidence that referees' training has any effect on the quality of the outcome (1 study). Different methods of communicating with reviewers and means of dissemination do not appear to have an effect on quality (3 studies). On the basis of one study, little can be said about the ability of the peer-review process to detect bias against unconventional drugs. Validity of peer review was tested by only one small study in a specialist area. Editorial peer review appears to make papers more readable and improve the general quality of reporting (2 studies), but the evidence for this has very limited generalisability. At present, little empirical evidence is available to support the use of editorial peer review as a mechanism to ensure quality of biomedical research. However, the methodological problems in studying peer review are many and complex. At present, the absence of evidence on efficacy and effectiveness cannot be interpreted as evidence of their absence. A large, well-funded programme of research on the effects of editorial peer review should be urgently launched.
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            Revolutionizing peer review?

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              Editorial peer review for improving the quality of reports of biomedical studies

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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Lung India
                LI
                Lung India : Official Organ of Indian Chest Society
                Medknow Publications & Media Pvt Ltd (India )
                0970-2113
                0974-598X
                Jan-Mar 2012
                : 29
                : 1
                : 94
                Affiliations
                [1] Department of Psychiatry and De-addiction, Lady Hardinge Medical College and Smt. Sucheta Kriplani Hospital, New Delhi, India E-mail: ypsbalhara@ 123456gmail.com
                Article
                LI-29-94
                10.4103/0970-2113.92383
                3276054
                22345933
                bc55cb15-6b24-423b-b24a-25d398e8657c
                Copyright: © Lung India

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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                Letters to Editor

                Respiratory medicine
                Respiratory medicine

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