Our academic publication system is based on publishers (journals), authors and reviewers. Authors and reviewers are scientists that receive public and private funding to conduct research and publish that research in the form of manuscripts in scientific journals.
Reviewers contribute to the scientific enterprise by volunteering their time for peer review, which they provide free of charge to for profit publishers. Publishers, in turn, coordinate the peer review process and host accepted articles on their websites (few publishers maintain a broad array of printed journals anymore). They also charge authors or organizations open access fees in the thousands of dollars to make this publicly funded research publicly available. Many established journals have package deals with University libraries so that open access fees can be waived and many of these journals offer generous rebates on fees. Still, the amount of money Universities have to pay to publishers is high and can represent a significant portion of their library budgets.
In recent years, journals with open access fees that provide minimal service to authors, take advantage of peer reviewer’s time and often ignore their feedback to reject manuscripts with major flaws has increased significantly. These types of journals are typically categorized as as predatory. These journals make no contribution to scientific progress, do a disservice to authors and reviewers and there should not exist. They can however, because academic authors have to publish.
For decades, metrics of academic achievements have included journal impact factors (JIFs). JIFs are a measure of the frequency with which the average article in a journal has been cited in a particular year and are considered an indicator of a journal’s importance and rank. They are also highly flawed. While many funding agencies, Universities and other organizations begin to abandon JIFs, they remain a major driver and motivation for authors to publish in specific journals. As scientists, we pride ourselves in having published in Nature or Science, without realizing that we are supporting a highly biased and non-equitable system that primarily exists for the benefits of the publishers. Some scientists commit academic misconduct and jeopardize the scientific progress to land their research in high impact journals.
Do journals deliver? Some do many don’t. Extensive surveys PeerPremier conducted with researchers strongly support what others have publicized and warned about. Reviewer’s fatigue, academic misconduct, long waiting times for reviews, inconsistent and biased assessments of submitted articles, editorial indecision are just a few of many problems that have ballooned in journals in recent decades.
At PeerPremier, we believe that transparent, equitable and thorough peer review is the basis for a healthy, sustainable and productive scientific progress. By separating the peer review from journals and publishers, we believe that predatory journals can be weakened and we can enhance the dissemination of scientific findings to the public. We also believe that paying reviewers for their contribution enhances the quality of the peer review and is compatible with current practices. Learn more about our process and submit your work to PeerPremier, if you are interested in being part of the solution.
“I can tell you that we are all exhausted from what has become an extremely inefficient, subjective, arbitrary, conflict-laden and not always competent publication process. I have gone through publications that involved 8 reviewers where a paper ended up getting rejected with a single reviewer objecting and 7 in favor of publication after almost 2 years of editorial indecision. I don’t want to do this anymore. It takes the fun out of science for me.” [Anonymous reviewer]
“Being able to publish in high impact factor journals largely depends on how well a researcher is connected in the field. The quality or true impact to the field of a paper is largely irrelevant in deciding which journal will take the paper. I will ignore impact factors or risk being complicit in perpetuating a perverse trend to reward narcissistic traits to the detriment of real progress.” [Anonymous reviewer]