{"id":837,"date":"2017-09-12T09:55:20","date_gmt":"2017-09-12T09:55:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/the-need-for-transparency-in-peer-review-a-case-study\/"},"modified":"2025-01-15T06:38:48","modified_gmt":"2025-01-15T06:38:48","slug":"the-need-for-transparency-in-peer-review-a-case-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/the-need-for-transparency-in-peer-review-a-case-study","title":{"rendered":"The need for transparency in peer review: A case study"},"content":{"rendered":"

Case<\/strong>: An author\u2019s manuscript was rejected after peer review. The author was surprised when he received the peer reviewer comments: while the first two of the three reviewers had given quite positive reviews along with some constructive comments, the third reviewer had had given extremely negative feedback about the manuscript saying that it was of very poor quality and lacked scientific documentation, something that neither of the other two reviewers had pointed out. The third reviewer\u2019s report just had a general summary and had no specific suggestions for improvement. What was even more surprising was that the third reviewer had criticized the author for using a method which was nowhere present in the paper!<\/p>\n

The author decided to use Editage\u2019s pre-publication peer review service<\/a> to get a second opinion on the quality of his manuscript. Editage\u2019s peer review report also corroborated with the first two reviewers\u2019 comments. This confirmed the author\u2019s suspicion that the third reviewer\u2019s comments were unjustified. He then approached Editage Insights for advice.<\/p>\n

Action: <\/strong>We advised the author to appeal against the journal\u2019s decision, pointing out the differences between the first two reviewers\u2019 comments and the third reviewer\u2019s comments. As per our suggestion, the author drew the editor\u2019s attention to the weaknesses of the third reviewer\u2019s report: the fact that there wasn\u2019t a single suggestion for improvement and that he\/she had commented on a method that the author hadn\u2019t used in his study.<\/p>\n

This aroused the editor\u2019s suspicions as well. On investigation, she found that the reviewer apparently had competing interests which he had not disclosed at the time of accepting the reviewer invitation. The reviewer\u2019s current topic of research was very close to the author\u2019s research and the reviewer had wanted to delay the publication of the author\u2019s results by recommending a rejection so that his\/her results could be published first. The editor did not reveal the identity of the reviewer but promised to inform the reviewer\u2019s institution. The editor also told the author that she would be willing to reconsider the manuscript and would send it to some other reviewer for an additional review.<\/p>\n

Summary:<\/strong> The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) provides\u00a0a set of ethical guidelines<\/a>\u00a0to be followed by peer reviewers. According to this document,\u00a0on being approached for peer review, a reviewer should declare any potentially conflicting or competing interests (which may be personal, financial, intellectual, professional, political or religious), and decline to review if asked to review a manuscript that is very similar to one they have in preparation or under consideration at another journal. Reviewers should seek advice from the journal if they are unsure whether something constitutes a conflict of interest<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, some reviewers fail to be transparent and misuse the system to serve their own selfish purposes. Sometimes, when a reviewer receives an invitation to review a competitor\u2019s paper, they may not disclose their competing interest as they want to see the manuscript fail. In case of single-blinded or double blinded reviews, authors may not even be able to contest a review that was improperly conducted. This is extremely unfair on the authors and unethical on the part of the reviewers.<\/p>\n

The consequences of engaging in an unethical review can be severe:<\/p>\n