Citation
This
H.
2020.
L'analyse critique des
manuscrits et les conseils d'amélioration donnés aux auteurs,
Notes académiques de l'Académie
d'agriculture de France / Academic Notes from the French Academy of
Agriculture (N3AF), 9(2),
1-14.
https://doi.org/10.58630/pubac.not.a582827.
Correspondance
:
Groupe
de gastronomie moléculaire, AgroParisTech, 16 rue Claude Bernard,
Paris
France
herve.this@inrae.fr
Abstract
The
development of digital systems of information and the increase of the
number of manuscripts submitted to scientific journals have been
triggering major changes in scientific publishing, in particular
about what is called ''peer
review''. In this article, the circumstances that generated
the old organisation of scientific publishing are recalled, the
individual and collective interests of various features of the system
are analyzed, and the principles that can lead to a modernization of
the publication process are discussed. Changes in terminology, as
well as of editorial practices, are proposed.
Keywords
scientific
publishing, manuscript, journal, access, free, peer review
Introduction
For
several years now, digital information processing techniques have
been revolutionising scientific and technological publishing. In
particular, researchers and their supervisory bodies have taken note
of the reduction in the workload of private publishers to whom
journals were entrusted, at a time when a movement was developing in
favour of free access to publications (Inra, 2016). These changes
have been widely discussed by scientists and institutions such as
INRAE (Inra, 2016), the Académie des sciences (Bach and Jérome,
2014) and the Académie d'agriculture de France (N3AF, 2016; This,
2016).
More
recently, various methods of publishing scientific work have been
proposed, notably in the articles which are the subject of this
review and which are discussed, with particular emphasis on the last
one (Kleber et al., 2020).
Peer
review?
Let
us begin by examining the basis of the system that is still widely
used today, associated with the terms 'peer review', 'peer
expertise', 'peer evaluation' or 'peer validation', depending on
countries (Bach and Jérome, 2014; Naegelen, 2016). First of all, it
should be noted that these expressions are not all the same as 'peer
review', which would rather be 'report by peers', but above all it
should be noted that these designations, as well as the current
common practice that accompanies them, are neither universal nor
fixed. Less than a century ago (in 1936 to be precise), Albert
Einstein (1879-1955) withdrew a manuscript from an American journal
to which he had submitted it, because the journal had asked for an
evaluation of his text (by a young researcher). He wrote to the
journal: "We (Mr Rosen and I) had sent you our manuscript for
publication and had not authorized you to show it to specialists
before it is printed. I see no reason to address the -in any case
erroneous- comments of your anonymous expert. On the basis of this
incident I prefer to publish the paper elsewhere"
(Kennefick, 2005). In fact, an author who produces a text assumes
responsibility for it, and the reports requested by journals can
amount to undue censorship.
Before
analysing this very general practice of modern scientific journals,
let us discuss the terms of the expression that designates it. On the
one hand, with regard to the second member (the 'peers'), we
understand that there can be hesitation and abuse in claiming to be
Einstein's 'peer', for example, at least if the term is taken in its
original sense (TLFi, 2019a). Furthermore, even if value does not
wait for the number of years, the evaluation of a manuscript sent by
a seasoned scientist can be shocking when it is done by a young
scientist who is still imperfectly trained, even if the publisher who
requested the report is capable of filtering the comments and
arbitrating in the event of disagreement. However, the current influx
of manuscripts in high-impact factor journals (Vesper, 2018) is
leading publishers to solicit all those they identify in a field
close to that of the manuscript, which can lead to inconsistencies:
from experience, I know of at least two "quality"
international scientific journals (according to the "impact
factor", considered good or excellent by scientific
institutions) which have sent manuscripts for evaluation to very
young colleagues in my group (PhD students at the start of their
thesis, who, moreover, have asked me to help them with the report).
In short, perhaps we should abandon the term "peers" when
referring to the procedure we are discussing here, and simply speak
of "rapporteurs" when a report is requested by a member of
the editorial board of a publication.
What
are these reviewers asked to do, anyway? The word "evaluation",
in one of the expressions we are discussing here, is questionable,
because the objective is not to know whether an article is bad, fair,
good or excellent, but to lead to the publication of quality
articles. To this end, the reviewers must above all identify
shortcomings or opportunities for improvement, so that the reports,
forwarded to the authors, lead them to prepare manuscripts that are
as irreproachable as possible from a scientific and literary point of
view, from the conceptual discussion of the results to the spelling
mistakes. Ultimately, authors should be responsible for their texts,
with the publisher reserving the right to accompany certain
publications with "Comments" or "Letters to the
Editor", which would discuss points of disagreement,
particularly in the interpretation of results.
Do
journals need these reports? Can they stop at Einstein's personal
point of view? This would be to forget that the publication of a
scientific article is part of a collective effort, that scientists
are most often paid by institutions, and that, as a result, they must
place their work 'in relation' to the community. It would also be
naïve to believe that all scientists are honest and perfectly
conscientious, that all those who submit manuscripts have always
properly examined previous work, that their validations are always
sufficient, and that their work is literarily faultless. Moreover,
even if we retain Einstein's point of view, it takes a powerful mind
to assume sole responsibility for its scientific output, and no one
loses anything in any case by having their manuscript read before
publication, in order to benefit from advice on how to improve the
text. Less experienced authors, on the other hand, have every
interest in benefiting from the expertise of the 'reviewers' and the
'journal' that accepts their manuscript for publication.
The
reason why we have placed the words "rewiewers" and
"jounral" in inverted commas is as follows: we shall see
later that the first term is historically justified, but we shall
observe without delay that the word "journal" no longer
applies to modern, digital, online publication systems (TLFi, 2019b);
it would be more accurate to consider "scientific publications",
terms that we shall retain for the remainder of this text.
Finally,
it can be seen that, especially in recent decades, publishers of
scientific publications have found it reassuring and helpful to call
on the services of referees, not only to ensure the quality of their
publications, but also to help them filter through the excessive
number of submissions they receive. However, before discussing
possible changes to the system for scientific publications, in the
light of the developments that have led to the current system, it
should be noted that it is constructive critical review, not
evaluation, that the scientific community needs, and we understand
the value of a positive process for improving manuscripts, with a
view to publishing good quality articles. So it's not a question of
"evaluation", but of critical analysis, or help with
publication, or constructive examination. Since the reviewers' job is
not to pass an examination, we propose the expression "critical
analysis of manuscripts", which we will use in the remainder of
this text.
The
evolution of the system
With
these terminological discussions out of the way, an examination of
the history of scientific publishing provides a better understanding
of the current situation, as well as possible developments in the
system.
Ray
Spier (2002) finds the origin of the system of reports in medicine:
in the 9th century, Shap bin Ali Al Rawhi published a Physician's
Ethics, in which he proposed that practitioners should keep notes
of their consultations, in order to justify their practice if
necessary (Al Kazi, 1997; Ajlouni and Al-Khalidi, 1997).
Then,
after the Renaissance, when a greater number of individuals engaged
in the practice of 'natural philosophy', according to a methodology
that was gradually made explicit thanks to Francis Bacon, Galileo and
others (Bacon, 1620; Galileo, 1640), scientists (the term did not yet
exist, as will be shown below) communicated directly with each other,
either orally or by post. For their correspondence, they were
responsible for copying their manuscripts for distribution, or having
them printed at their own expense. Marin Mersenne (1588-1648), in
France (Taussig, 2010), and Henry Oldenburg (1619-1677), in England
(Boas Hall, 1965), put scientists in touch with each other, but it
was undoubtedly the Journal des Sçavans, created by Denis de
Sallo (1629 -1669) in 1665 (Rémond, 2015), and then the
Philosophical Transactions, later the same year, that were the
first institutional scientific publications. Oldenburg, in
particular, was secretary of the Royal Society of London, and the
journal enabled him to simplify his correspondence (Cocheris, 1860).
Neither of these journals had a system of referees. In France, they
appeared the following year, when King Louis XIV commissioned the
Royal Academy of Sciences to evaluate inventions and discoveries. The
academicians were paid by the State, and the government took account
of their reports, which took precedence over the opinions of the
Censor.
Thanks
to the minutes of the Royal Academy of Sciences, we know the tasks
assigned to the academicians. First and foremost, they had to monitor
scientific and technical developments by reporting on publications
and research carried out in the provinces or in other countries. The
Académie was also, and above all, a place where scientific and
technical research was "validated": any scientist who was
not a member of the Académie could submit his or her discoveries or
inventions, which were validated by a committee made up of two or
three academicians. A favourable report is a form of recognition
designed to encourage scientific vocations and technical innovation;
it may lead to publication, under the patronage of the Académie, in
the Mémoires des savants étrangers or in the Recueil des
machines et inventions approuvé par l'Académie royale des sciences.
This was often a first step towards a scientific career or, for
inventors, an opportunity to obtain an exploitation privilege, the
forerunner of the patent, or to raise funds from patrons (Chabot,
2017).
At
the time, the word "expert" existed in French, but not in
English: it meant the author of reports. In practice, the academics
in charge of the reports were not referred to as experts; they were
"rapporteurs" who were required not only to validate or
reject the work presented, as mentioned above, but also to discuss
both the form (logic of the plan, coherence of the assertions made)
and the substance (recognition of the knowledge, validity of the
experiences described, interest of the work). Once the reports had
been dated and signed, they were forwarded to the Académie for its
"ordinary work". The rapporteurs proposed either that the
dissertation be rejected or approved, and sometimes that it be
printed in academic journals (Mafarette-Dayries, 2000).
In
1699, when the Académie royale des sciences was reformed, Bernard Le
Bovier de Fontenelle (1657-1757) invented a new genre, with the
series of volumes of the Histoire et Mémoires de l'Académie
royale des sciences covering the period from 1699 to 1740, for
publication between 1702 and 1742 (Seguin, 2012); this model was
adopted by his successors, at least until 1786. Each volume of the
Histoire de l'Académie royale des sciences consisted of two
sections, bound into a single volume but recognisable by their
individual pagination. The first part, known as the Histoire,
was written by the Académie's secrétaire perpétuel and ended with
the Éloges des académiciens décédés dans l'année. The
second part was the Memoirs, which contained the works
presented by the academicians or sent by foreign correspondents and
approved by the company.
The
Histoire de l'Académie royale des sciences itself provided an
overview of the activities of scientists during a calendar year,
giving the reader a general overview of the main discoveries made
during that time and providing the memoirs themselves in the second
part (Table 1).
When
an author writes alone, as Denis de Sallo did, he is free and
responsible for his choices, but when a journal publishes the
manuscripts of several authors, it has to make decisions: in 1752,
following criticism of the Philosophical Transactions, the
Royal Society of London set up a committee to decide on publications
and prevent its choices from being seen as arbitrary. However, it was
not until the early 19th century that the first system of rapporteurs
- quite different from that of the Royal Academy of Sciences - was
introduced by English scientific societies (Csiszar, 2016).
Indeed,
after the publication in 1830 of Reflections on the Decline of
Science in England by the mathematician and engineer Charles
Babbage (1791-1871), the Cambridge physicist William Whewell
(1794-1866) persuaded the Royal Society of London to ask for reports
on manuscripts submitted for publication in the Philosophical
Transactions: written by eminent scientists, these reports could
"often be more interesting than the memoirs themselves" and
"be a source of publicity for science" (Whewell, 1831).
At
the time, the Royal Society of London was creating the Proceedings
of the Royal Society, a less expensive monthly than the
Philosophical Transactions, to include papers presented to the
Society, and Whewell was less concerned with 'bad' manuscripts than
with promoting science (it was he who introduced the term scientist).
He volunteered to write the first report with one of his former
Cambridge students, the mathematician and astronomer John William
Lubbock (1803-1865), who was also Treasurer of the Royal Society.
They selected a manuscript entitled On an inequality of Long
Period in the Motions of the Earth and Venus, in which the
astronomer George Biddell Airy (1801-1892) proposed mathematical
methods for calculating the orbits of the Earth and Venus.
However,
Whewell and Lubbock disagreed about the quality of the paper: Whewell
felt that the question studied was essential and the conclusions
remarkable; Lubbock, on the other hand, was critical of Airy's
mathematical presentation, so the joint report was difficult to
prepare. Whewell wrote to Lubbock: "I don't think the job of the
rapporteurs is to criticise particular parts of the paper; it is
rather to show its place", and he proposed, if necessary, to
warn the authors of possible errors. Lubbock, on the other hand,
found it "hard to see how we could ignore important errors".
Airy
was irritated to be asked to improve his text: "The article is
as it is, and I take responsibility for it", he wrote to
Whewell. In the end, Lubbock only agreed to sign the final report
because it was the first of its kind (Lubbock, 1832). The report was
read publicly and printed in the Proceedings, while Airy's
article appeared in the Transactions.
Shortly
afterwards, the Astronomical Society of London and the Geological
Society of London followed suit. It was the geologist George Bellas
Greenough (1778-1855) who introduced the word referee in 1817,
bringing a legal term into science (Despeaux, 2011): at the time, the
word referee meant an individual to whom one referred, particularly
for a decision or judgement.
The
practice of reports became widespread in England and Scotland.
However, according to the President of the Royal Society, Augustus
Frederick, the system of reporters only worked well with people
"elevated by their character and reputation above the influence
of personal feelings of competition or petty jealousy"
(Despeaux, 2011).
In
1833, the reports ceased to be published: they became confidential
and anonymous. Then, in 1836, Whewell came to consider that referees
should be guarantors of the quality of publications. However, as the
Royal Academy of Sciences was well aware, the rejections that
resulted from negative assessments gave rise to criticism: the
execution of Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier (1743-1794) has even been
partly attributed to the animosity that arose from criticism of a
manuscript submitted by Jean-Paul Marat (1743-1793). In 1845, a
London magazine portrayed the referees as "full of jealousy,
hatred, malice, devoid of charity" (Wade, 1845).
In
1892, a movement (based on the text On the Organisation of
Science) proposed standardising the selection and distribution of
scientific articles. Then, at the beginning of the 20th century, the
idea of editors and reporters began to be generalised, in order to
avoid "the spreading of rubbish in the pure stream of science"
(Foster, 1894).
In
1903, the Geological Society of London explicitly questioned the
practice of reporting, which was sometimes severely criticised. At
the time, the rapporteur system was mainly practised in Great Britain
and North America, where rapporteurs were the "backbone of
science" (Ziman, 1968). The different practice in Germany, for
example, explains the reaction of Einstein, who until then had
published in German in the Annalen der Physik, which had an
acceptance rate of 95% (Spicer and Roulet, 2014).
However,
as early as 1920, it was observed that the system of referees, which
was more complex than direct publication under the authors'
responsibility, was an obstacle to scientific progress. Some even
considered that examining manuscripts was an outdated practice,
"which was useful in the past, but which should be overcome"
(Csiszar, 2016). Finally, from the 1960s onwards, the expression
"scientific community" appeared, and the "systems of
rapporteurs" became "peer review" or "peer
evaluation". In 1973, review by scientists became the rule for
the journal Nature (Baldwin, 2015).
The
advent of the Internet turned the system upside down: in 1991, a
digital service (xxx.lanl.gov) was set up to share
"pre-prints" (or "author manuscripts"), i.e.
manuscripts that had not been examined, in order to avoid delaying
the publication of important results (CNRS, 2020). This platform will
be relocated to arXiv.org (Cornell University) at a later
date, and is at the heart of the discussions on the analysis by the
rapporteurs (arXiv.org, 2019).
Then,
in 2006, the Public Library of Science launched a free journal, PLoS
ONE, which no longer took account of the "importance"
of the work, provided that it was of academic quality; publication
costs were then borne by the authors. In 2007, the EMBO Journal,
the Frontiers series and BMJ Open experimented with a
free journal, publishing the names of the referees and their grades.
Other
innovations are gradually appearing, one of the most recent being
Peers Communities In... (PCI, 2019): this involves creating
communities made up of scientists in the same field who read
manuscripts deposited in "digital archives" such as
arXiv.org or bioRxiv.org and "recommend" them; the system
is free and "transparent", and the - signed - reports and
recommendations can be consulted.
Above
all, the many innovations that have resulted from the widespread use
of digital methods of information processing, with the disappearance
of page layout and printing tasks in particular, have led to the view
that the services of private publishers have become virtually
useless, allowing the scientific community to structure itself to
avoid spending considerable sums (Bach and Jérome, 2014; PCI, 2019).
These developments are encouraged by research institutions, such as
INRAE for the fields covered by the Notes académiques de
l'Académie d'agriculture de France: food, agriculture and the
environment.
More
generally, and without being exhaustive (the list is too long), it
can be observed - particularly by reading the texts that are the
subject of this review - that the proposals are evolving towards a
model where neither authors nor readers pay any more, with an
operational transparency that remains to be improved, but that is
increasing (Klebel et al., 2020). The fact that authors no longer pay
may help to avoid the conflicts of interest mentioned above, while
the fact that readers no longer pay may allow better dissemination of
the knowledge produced by science.
As
a reminder, here are some of the key proposals for understanding the
renovation of scientific publications:
-
l'Appel de Jussieu (Collectif, 2017): this is a document issued by a
group of French scientists who want to develop new publication
models, calling for the formation of an international consortium of
players to federate initiatives. One of the objectives is to move
rapidly towards the open access publication model, without the open
access model delaying the process.
-
the platforms of the French National Environmental Research Agency
(AllEnvi, 2017): here, the main objective is to recognise the
author's manuscript (pre-print) as an acceptable form of scientific
communication, as is the case in certain communities (mathematics,
for example).
-
Inrae's Openscience blog (2018): this is an Inrae charter to promote
open access to publications, including the provision of data, with
the aim of transparency and evidence in support of publications, and
also with a view to facilitating the reuse of data, in order to
accelerate innovation.
-
the Episcience model (2020): this involves both traditional
publications and open archives: the Episciences.org organisation aims
to combine two open access paths: the "golden" path, which
involves running open access journals, and the "green"
path, where articles are submitted for publication by deposit in an
open archive.
-
Peer Community In... (PCI, 2020): already mentioned, these
communities are based on networks of specialists and recommenders who
label manuscripts or texts.
Conclusion
In
all recent discussions on scientific publication, there is a broad
consensus in favour of the idea that published texts should be of
high quality, which obviously requires explicit quality criteria.
Some journals include such criteria in their "advice to authors"
(AAS, 2019; Liumbruno et al., 2013). On the other hand, there is a
list of defects to be corrected (Table 2) (Davies, 1974; Kamat et
al., 2012; Kamat et al., 2014a; Kamat et al., 2014b). Obviously the
list is long, but the bibliography compiled by Liumbruno et al.
(2013) could be completed, in particular with Manske (2006) or
Amrhein (2019).
This
being the case, and even with good manuscripts, the question of the
saturation of the current scientific publication system remains,
which has led the scientific community to look for new publication
methods. Various attempts have been made by different communities,
which have in common that they want to benefit from new possibilities
(IT) and no longer have to bear the costs of the old system
(considered excessive), where the management of journals was often
entrusted, or delegated, to private companies. Various groups, such
as (in France) the Académie des sciences, Inrae, the CNRS and the
Académie d'agriculture de France (Bach and Jérome, 2016; N3AF,
2016; Inra, 2016; CNRS, 2020) have discussed the possibilities and
recommended solutions.
In
the current discussions, some people are still afraid of exchanges
with rapporteurs, and the excessive importance of the latter
(Sarabipour, 2019), often because they continue to think in terms of
"evaluation", but the proposal for critical review and
advice to authors, with the aim of publishing texts when they are of
sufficient quality, helps to dispel this fear. Moreover, the presence
of these critical analyses certainly leads some authors to seek
greater quality in their manuscripts than if they were assured of
immediate, automatic publication.
In
any case, Davies (1974) clearly explains the reasons why double
anonymity (authors do not know who the referees are and vice versa)
seems to be the rule, although this does not mean that anonymity
cannot be lifted if the referees agree. The members of the editorial
committees, on the other hand, must do a better job of identifying
abuses by the referees, and of arbitrating.
Finally,
while some have proposed open critical analysis, on the assumption
that this would be the best way of avoiding malicious comments,
putting an end to plagiarism, preventing reviewers from sticking
solely to their analysis and encouraging honest and open scrutiny,
the response has been that the analysis would be distorted, since
politeness and fear of reprisals may lead reviewers to play down
their criticisms.
Disputes
over precedence, which have been raised in many discussions on the
critical analysis of manuscripts, are at the origin of open archives,
but it should be noted that the Académie des Sciences' system of
sealed envelopes has existed for a very long time: the digital
equivalent of this system is sufficient to establish precedence.
What's more, just as publications now ask reviewers to avoid
conflicts of interest that would lead to excessively complacent
critical analyses (Elsevier, 2019), it is not difficult to propose
that competition should be explicitly indicated (Rodman, 1970). Such
a system would also have the added advantage of reducing the
criticism sometimes levelled by authors at publications, concerning
delays that would handicap them in international competition.
In reality, the experience of editorial boards shows that, often, authors demand rapid reactions while they themselves are slow to make the requested changes. On the other hand, scientific publishing knows well that, despite numerous rereadings, imperfections remain in the published texts: this is a reason not to publish hastily, especially if a manuscript deposit system is put in place.
Despite innovations, it is undoubtedly illusory to believe that we will be able to completely avoid the publication of bad articles, but the scientific community has every interest in the greatest vigilance regarding the analysis of manuscripts, and this is in By making editorial committees more active, there is a chance of improving the system. This improvement seems to involve better recognition of the work of the rapporteurs.
Finally, we see that our scientific communities have everything to gain from using digital methods to develop scientific publications. The work of critical analysis and advice given to authors, carried out in double anonymity, from officially submitted manuscripts, is more necessary than ever, and funding recovered from expensive subscriptions would benefit from being directed towards the development of renovated methods so that these analyzes are carried out under better conditions, reducing the work of rapporteurs who must be better recognized by research institutions.
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Edité
par
Nadine
Vivier, présidente de l'Académie d'agriculture de France.
Rapporteurs
Claude
Debru est philosophe des sciences, professeur émérite à l'Ecole
normale supérieure, membre de l'Académie des sciences,
et membre de l'Académie d'agriculture de France.
Alain
Pavé, biométricien, professeur émérite à l’Université Claude
Bernard Lyon 1, membre de l’Académie des technologies et membre
correspondant de l’Académie d'agriculture de France.
Rubrique
Cet
article a été publié dans la rubrique « Notes de lecture » des
Notes académiques de l'Académie d'agriculture de
France.
Reçu
9
décembre 2019
Accepté
6
mars 2020
Publié
16
mars 2020
Hervé
This est physico-chimiste
dans l'UMR 0782 SayFood, directeur
de l’Inrae-AgroParisTech
International Centre for
Molecular and Physical Gastronomy,
professeur consultant à AgroParisTech, membre de l'Académie
d'agriculture de France, membre
correspondant de l'Académie royale des sciences, arts et lettres de
Belgique et de l'Académie de Stanislas, membre de l'Académie
d'Alsace, sciences, lettres et arts.
