Written evidence submitted by BioMed Central
(PR 74)
The advent of the internet radically changed the
way many scientific publishers operate. BioMed Central, which
was launched in 2000 as the first publisher of peer-reviewed open
access biomedical journals, was one of the pioneers to embrace
the potential of the internet, by allowing everyone completely
free and full access via the web to all scientific research articles
as soon as they are published, and by using online technology
for manuscript submissions, peer-review and production system
right from the start.
PEER-REVIEW
MODELS
All research articles published in BioMed Central's
journals have undergone a thorough peer-review process that relies
on expert editorial boards and peer reviewers just as traditional
(non-OA) publishers do. The vast majority of the more than 210
journals use the traditional model most commonly used in biomedical
publishing: two or more independent experts (scientists or clinicians)
are invited to provide an assessment of the scientific soundness
of the experiments and the interpretation of the results, and
to comment on the extent of the advance or new insights gained.
The editor responsible for overseeing the assessment of the manuscript
makes a decision on the basis of the referees' and the editorial
board's advice.
For most journals, the referees' reports are passed
on to the authors in anonymous format, unless the referee elects
to sign the report. In contrast, the medical journals within the
BMC series (http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/authors/bmcseries#journallist)
operate an "open peer review system", thereby making
the process more transparent: peer reviewers agree to reveal their
identity to the authors and, if the study is published, the pre-publication
history, including the referees' reports and previous versions
of the manuscript, is published alongside the article (see http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/9/8/prepub,
for example).
BMC Biology, the flagship
biology journal of the BMC series, is running an experiment with
peer review, allowing authors to opt out of re-review by expert
referees in cases where a submitted paper has been revised to
meet criticisms of the original version. The experiment is in
response to frequent complaints by authors that publication of
papers is needlessly delayed by unreasonable demands on the part
of referees, especially in the more selective journals. Under
the experimental policy, which allows authors to decide whether
they wish referees to see their paper again after revision, more
responsibility for ensuring the validity of the paper rests on
the authors, and on the editors who must decide whether the authors'
response to the criticisms is reasonable. The interests of readers
are protected by a policy of inviting published commentary from
an expert who is given access to the referees' reports and the
authors' response if the case of re-review opt-out. This policy
also has the important effect of lessening the burden on expert
reviewers a scarce resource (see below).
A more extensive and radical experiment was started
with Biology Direct, which developed its own unique peer-review
model: Authors need to convince three Editorial Board members
to assume responsibility for reviewing the manuscript. The Editorial
Board members skim-read the manuscript in order to form an overall
opinion and decide whether they wish to have their name associated
with the publication of this article. If they agree, they provide
formal comments and criticisms of the study; their comments and
names are published along-side the paper, which is published regardless
of the severity of the criticisms, unless the authors withdraw
following the formal peer review.
OPEN ACCESS
Peer review is a largely but not perfectly effective
system for ensuring that published research is soundly based.
Providing full access to the findings and insights reported in
the literature is paramount not only to advancing biomedical and
translational research, but to ensuring the broadest possible
forum for debate, and thereby enhancing the value of the information
that informs public debate. By removing subscription barriers,
open access publishing allows researchers to reach a much larger
group of readers, including those in developing countries, and
promote interdisciplinary research and debate. Open access mandates
such as those imposed by the UK government's research councils
and the European Research Council, that make it compulsory for
scientists funded by them to deposit their articles in archives
such as PubMed Central and UK PubMed Central, are essential first
steps for disseminating scientific information more widely and
making it much more visible.
UK PubMed Central is a very important resource by
facilitating access to peer-reviewed biomedical and health research
in the UK, and it needs to continue to grow and be developed in
order to fully represent the research generated here. The continuing
support from the UK government funding organizations are vital,
so local services, improved and interactive content, and tools
can be developed.
The National Center for Biotechnology Information
(NCBI), which hosts PubMed Central, has developed a number of
tools that are not just valuable for users but also for improving
the services publishers can offer to authors. For example, the
BioMed Central's online peer-review system makes use of a peer
reviewer suggestion tool that is built on technology from the
NCBI. This tool helps editors identify potential peer reviewers
with expertise in particular research areas on the basis of their
previous publications. Making this and other tools more sophisticated
and user-friendly will be important for improving peer-review
services and ensuring that high standards of peer review are maintained
while the research output grows and with it the pressure on the
research community to provide expert advice to their colleagues
during the peer-review process. It is important for UK research
that UK PubMed Central takes a lead in such developments.
The value of peer-reviewed research depends critically
on the expertise and sagacity of the peer reviewers, and inevitably
draws on limited resources of capable and experienced experts.
Online tools for identifying appropriate peer reviewers will become
increasingly important. Such tools are already important for enabling
journals to focus referees' responses effectively on key issues
without making the process more cumbersome for the referee. Another
important way of using scarce refereeing resources effectively,
and minimizing the delays to publication of research, is sharing
of referees' reports between journals with different publication
criteria so that manuscripts submitted to one journal can be published
without additional review by another, more suitable one (see below).
As with other publishers, rejection rates vary greatly
between BioMed Central's journals: Some journals, such as BMC
Biology and BMC Medicine, have a high rejection rate
as they are highly selective and aim to publish only articles
of sufficient interest or importance to justify drawing them to
the attention of a broad readership of biologists or medical researchers,
respectively. Other journals, including the BMC series journals,
are more inclusive and have a moderate rejection rate, whereas
BMC Research Notes publishes all sound research that could
be of use to researchers within a given field, including negative
results and updates on previous studies.
Some manuscripts are rejected because of serious
flaws in their results and/or their interpretation, and they can
not be published at all unless the authors can correct the flaws.
Other manuscripts may be scientifically sound but deemed by the
peer reviewers and/or editors to be of insufficient interest to
the readership of the journal. In order to avoid lengthy re-refereeing
of these manuscripts for other journals, which would delay publication
for the authors and generate additional work for the "peer
reviewer community", BioMed Central operates a journal cascade
whereby authors are offered publication in a journal with a lower
interest and "threshold" level. Manuscript files and
referees' reports can be readily transferred from one journal
to another within the online submission systems.
ONLINE TOOLS
AND ADDITIONAL
DATA
The availability of large datasets, such as those
generated by the Human Genome Project and many other genomic and
post-genomic projects since, and the associated development of
bioinformatic tools enabling the analysis of such datasets, has
made it clear that biomedical science can no longer function efficiently
without unrestricted and open access to scientific data. While
genomicists and bioinformaticians have long realised the need
for, and advantages of, sharing their data in order to exploit
their full potential, other communities are following suit, for
example, by developing new standards of reporting clinical data
and by calling for more transparency and access to more clinical
data where possible, while taking into account crucial ethical
concerns.
It is increasingly not only the peer-reviewed article
itself but the associated data that are important for ensuring
that all research efforts have maximum impact and spawn future
studies in associated areas. It is for this reason that BioMed
Central was set up to exploit the possibilities provided by the
online environment and offer authors the opportunity to publish
additional data files linked from their articles, including large
raw datasets, movies and data formats that can be read directly
by other software packages so as to allow readers to manipulate
and further analyse the data. Also for this reason, editorial
policies at BioMed Central have a strong emphasis on data deposition
and encourage or insist on adherence to data formats agreed in
the community, where appropriate.
Capturing the vast amount of data that is continuously
generated and ensuring consistent data deposition according to
agreed formats and nomenclatures will be crucial to enabling smooth
meta-analyses of datasets from different databases. The creation
of a central dataset archive, possibly associated with UK PubMed
Central, would greatly facilitate this process and be extremely
beneficial to UK scientific research.
ABOUT BIOMED
CENTRAL
BioMed Central (http://www.biomedcentral.com/) is
an STM (Science, Technology and Medicine) publisher which has
pioneered the open access publishing model. All peer-reviewed
research articles published by BioMed Central are made immediately
and freely accessible online, and are licensed to allow redistribution
and reuse. BioMed Central is part of Springer Science+Business
Media, a leading global publisher in the STM sector
BioMed Central
10 March 2011
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