Gerwing Travis G, Allen Gerwing Alyssa M, Choi Chi-Yeung, Avery-Gomm Stephanie, Clements Jeff C, Rash Joshua A
Department of Biology, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.
Sidney Museum and Archives, Sidney, British Columbia, Canada.
Res Integr Peer Rev. 2021 Feb 16;6(1):4. doi: 10.1186/s41073-020-00107-x.
Our recent paper ( https://doi.org/10.1186/s41073-020-00096-x ) reported that 43% of reviewer comment sets (n=1491) shared with authors contained at least one unprofessional comment or an incomplete, inaccurate of unsubstantiated critique (IIUC). Publication of this work sparked an online (i.e., Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Reddit) conversation surrounding professionalism in peer review. We collected and analyzed these social media comments as they offered real-time responses to our work and provided insight into the views held by commenters and potential peer-reviewers that would be difficult to quantify using existing empirical tools (96 comments from July 24th to September 3rd, 2020). Overall, 75% of comments were positive, of which 59% were supportive and 16% shared similar personal experiences. However, a subset of negative comments emerged (22% of comments were negative and 6% were an unsubstantiated critique of the methodology), that provided potential insight into the reasons underlying unprofessional comments were made during the peer-review process. These comments were classified into three main themes: (1) forced niceness will adversely impact the peer-review process and allow for publication of poor-quality science (5% of online comments); (2) dismissing comments as not offensive to another person because they were not deemed personally offensive to the reader (6%); and (3) authors brought unprofessional comments upon themselves as they submitted substandard work (5%). Here, we argue against these themes as justifications for directing unprofessional comments towards authors during the peer review process. We argue that it is possible to be both critical and professional, and that no author deserves to be the recipient of demeaning ad hominem attacks regardless of supposed provocation. Suggesting otherwise only serves to propagate a toxic culture within peer review. While we previously postulated that establishing a peer-reviewer code of conduct could help improve the peer-review system, we now posit that priority should be given to repairing the negative cultural zeitgeist that exists in peer-review.
我们最近的论文（https://doi.org/10.1186/s41073-020-00096-x）报告称，与作者共享的审稿人评论集（n = 1491）中，43%至少包含一条不专业的评论或不完整、不准确或未经证实的批评（IIUC）。这项工作的发表引发了一场围绕同行评审专业性的在线（即推特、照片墙、脸书和红迪网）讨论。我们收集并分析了这些社交媒体评论，因为它们对我们的工作提供了实时反馈，并深入了解了评论者和潜在同行评审者的观点，而这些观点使用现有的实证工具很难进行量化（2020年7月24日至9月3日的96条评论）。总体而言，75%的评论是积极的，其中59%表示支持，16%分享了类似的个人经历。然而，出现了一部分负面评论（22%的评论为负面，6%是对方法的无端批评），这些评论为同行评审过程中出现不专业评论的潜在原因提供了见解。这些评论被分为三个主要主题：（1）被迫友善会对同行评审过程产生不利影响，并允许发表质量差的科学成果（5%的在线评论）；（2）因为评论对读者个人而言不被认为具有冒犯性，所以将其视为对他人没有冒犯性而不予理会（6%）；（3）作者提交的工作不合格，从而给自己带来了不专业的评论（5%）。在此，我们反对将这些主题作为在同行评审过程中对作者发表不专业评论的理由。我们认为，既保持批判性又保持专业性是可能的，而且无论有何种假定的挑衅，都没有作者应该成为诋毁性人身攻击的对象。否则，只会助长同行评审中的不良文化。虽然我们之前推测制定同行评审者行为准则有助于改进同行评审系统，但我们现在认为，应优先修复同行评审中存在的负面文化思潮。
