Dienstag, 17. Mai 2011

Any jackass can trash a manuscript...

It seems I'm not the only one getting hilarious reviews from time to time. The Journal of Molecular Biology of the Cell (MBoC) has published an editorial that speaks from my heart, titled "Any jackass can trash a manuscript, but it takes good scholarship to create one (how MBoC promotes civil and constructive peer review)".

In my opinion, one of the most important points in the article is that the relentless bashing which has become a recurring feature of many reviews will, inevitably, hurt the entire research field, because it destroys the scientific community in that field.

As I said before, I think that an open peer review process with identifiable reviewers will foster constructive criticism in the reviews. The reviewers will become visible and their contribution to the community acknowledged. The whole process will become more transparent, which is a prerequisite for a functioning scientific community.