Skip to main content
Advertisement

Main menu

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Accepted manuscripts
    • Issue in progress
    • Latest complete issue
    • Issue archive
    • Archive by article type
    • Special issues
    • Subject collections
    • Alerts
  • About us
    • About Development
    • About the Node
    • Editors and Board
    • Editor biographies
    • Travelling Fellowships
    • Grants and funding
    • Workshops and Meetings
    • The Company of Biologists
    • Journal news
  • For authors
    • Submit a manuscript
    • Aims and scope
    • Presubmission enquiries
    • Article types
    • Manuscript preparation
    • Cover suggestions
    • Editorial process
    • Promoting your paper
    • Open Access
    • Biology Open transfer
  • Journal info
    • Journal policies
    • Rights and permissions
    • Media policies
    • Reviewer guide
    • Alerts
  • Contacts
    • Contacts
    • Subscriptions
    • Feedback
  • COB
    • About The Company of Biologists
    • Development
    • Journal of Cell Science
    • Journal of Experimental Biology
    • Disease Models & Mechanisms
    • Biology Open

User menu

  • Log in

Search

  • Advanced search
Development
  • COB
    • About The Company of Biologists
    • Development
    • Journal of Cell Science
    • Journal of Experimental Biology
    • Disease Models & Mechanisms
    • Biology Open

supporting biologistsinspiring biology

Development

  • Log in
Advanced search

RSS  Twitter  Facebook  YouTube

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Accepted manuscripts
    • Issue in progress
    • Latest complete issue
    • Issue archive
    • Archive by article type
    • Special issues
    • Subject collections
    • Alerts
  • About us
    • About Development
    • About the Node
    • Editors and Board
    • Editor biographies
    • Travelling Fellowships
    • Grants and funding
    • Workshops and Meetings
    • The Company of Biologists
    • Journal news
  • For authors
    • Submit a manuscript
    • Aims and scope
    • Presubmission enquiries
    • Article types
    • Manuscript preparation
    • Cover suggestions
    • Editorial process
    • Promoting your paper
    • Open Access
    • Biology Open transfer
  • Journal info
    • Journal policies
    • Rights and permissions
    • Media policies
    • Reviewer guide
    • Alerts
  • Contacts
    • Contacts
    • Subscriptions
    • Feedback
EDITORIAL
Introducing cross-referee commenting in peer review
Olivier Pourquié, Katherine Brown
Development 2016 143: 3035-3036; doi: 10.1242/dev.143198
Olivier Pourquié
Harvard Medical School, Department of Genetics, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Department of Pathology, HIM118, 4 Blackfan Circle, Boston, MA 02115, USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Olivier Pourquié
  • For correspondence: pourquie@genetics.med.harvard.edukatherine.brown@biologists.com
Katherine Brown
The Company of Biologists, Bidder Building, Station Road, Histon, Cambridge CB24 9LF, UK
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Katherine Brown
  • For correspondence: pourquie@genetics.med.harvard.edukatherine.brown@biologists.com
  • Article
  • Info & metrics
  • PDF
Loading

At Development, we are always trying to improve our processes and service – for authors and readers. In April 2015, we made some changes to our peer review process, which aimed at encouraging a more constructive approach to peer review. As we wrote in the Editorial announcing these changes, ‘there can be a tendency for a review to read like a “shopping list” of potential experiments … Instead, we believe that referees should focus on two key questions: how important is the work for the community, and how well do the data support the conclusions? … In other words, what are the necessary revisions, not the “nice-to-have”s?’ (Pourquié and Brown, 2015). Our new system has been in place for over a year now, and we have seen a change in the tone and nature of referee reports: in general, referees have embraced our new guidelines and we feel that this has had a positive effect – both in helping editors to take a decision, and in providing more streamlined feedback for authors. However, and as we recognised at the time, ‘…these changes are conservative compared with some of the more radical approaches in peer review that have been implemented and trialled elsewhere’ (Pourquié and Brown, 2015). At the beginning of 2016, and while reviewing various aspects of the Company's journals’ peer review processes and online functionalities, we therefore conducted a community survey to gauge your opinions on how we should further improve. Over 300 of you completed the survey (over 800 across all our journals), and we are very grateful for your detailed responses.

In the first part of the survey, we asked you to rank possible improvements or changes to the way we do peer review in order of importance (see Box 1). Perhaps unsurprisingly, you ranked the two statements that relate to speed of publication as the top two priorities. While our own research and author surveys suggest that our speeds are reasonably competitive compared with other journals, there are always improvements to be made and we are actively looking at ways in which we can accelerate the process. We also recognise that multiple rounds of review and revision can be frustrating for the author, so we do try to avoid these wherever possible – while still ensuring the highest standards of peer review. Moreover, such efforts are rarely made in vain: we make a strong commitment to papers at first decision, accepting over 95% of manuscripts where we invite a revision.

Box 1. Peer review

Our January survey asked:

‘Unbiased, independent peer review is at the heart of our publishing decisions but there is always room for improvement and we are open to experimentation and change based on the needs of our community. Please rank the following in order of importance to you.’

Your responses ranked the statements in the order below – from most to least important.

  1. Improve speed from submission to first decision

  2. Reduce number of rounds of review and revision

  3. Collaborative peer review trial (inter-referee discussion before a decision is made)

  4. Name of the Editor who handled the paper published with the article

  5. Double-blind peer review trial (author identity withheld from referees)

  6. Network for transferring referee reports between journals in related fields

  7. Post the peer review reports alongside the published articles

  8. ‘Open’ peer review trial (referee identity known to authors but not made public)

  9. Post-publication commenting

Speed aside, you ranked ‘collaborative peer review trial’ as the most important potential innovation – in fact, you rated this almost as important as reducing the number of rounds of review. This chimed with regular feedback we receive from the community, who, as authors, have found such models of peer review helpful. The idea is that, once all the reports on a paper have been returned, the editor shares these among the referees, asking for further feedback that might clarify the decision. This can help to resolve differences between referees, identify unnecessary or unreasonable requests, or – conversely – highlight valid concerns raised by one referee but overlooked by the others. Many journals, Development included, have been doing this informally with a subset of difficult cases for many years and it can prove invaluable in helping editors to make the right decision on a paper.

Given your enthusiasm for such a model, we have carefully assessed a number of potential models, including those already in place at other journals. These range from ‘cross-referee commenting’ as implemented by The EMBO Journal (Pulverer, 2010) and others, to the more active discussions embraced by eLife (Schekman et al., 2013). Bearing in mind the need to balance gathering additional feedback against the consequent effects on speed to decision, as well as the fact that some papers will benefit from further input more than others, we believe that a cross-referee commenting model is most appropriate for Development.

For all research papers submitted after mid-September, the full set of referee reports (minus any confidential comments) will be shared among all the referees. These may be accompanied by specific requests for feedback from the Editor. Referees will then be given two working days to respond before the Editor takes a decision – thus minimising any impact on speed (although the Editor may choose to wait for input in cases where the decision is particularly difficult or borderline). We anticipate that in many cases, feedback will either not be received or will not alter the Editor's decision. For a minority of papers, however, we believe that this process will significantly aid decision-making and help the authors to move forwards with the paper – whether the decision is positive or negative. And, because it is not always possible to predict what will come out of such a process, we think it important to implement this as standard across all papers. We know that our referees already do a great job in helping authors to improve the papers we review, and we are hugely grateful for their efforts. We hope they (you!) will engage in this new development, and that authors will find it helpful. We will also continue to review other possible improvements to how we handle papers – bearing in mind your feedback from the survey.

The second part of the survey focused on how we present the work we publish (see Box 2). Once again, it seems that what matters most to you is not how the paper looks when it comes out, but how quickly it appears. Since mid 2015, we have been posting the author-accepted versions of manuscripts on our Advance Articles page before issue publication, minimising the time between acceptance and appearance of the work online. While there is still some delay (1-2 weeks) before online posting, this is primarily to allow us time to run our standard ethics checks on all papers – helping to ensure the integrity of the work we publish. Articles then typically appear in an issue around 6 weeks after acceptance: this reflects the time required to copy-edit, typeset and prepare the issue, although again we are working on ways of accelerating these processes.

Box 2. Online developments

Our January survey asked:

‘We recently rolled out a new-look website to make it easier for you to find and read content, but new features and functionality are being developed all the time. Which areas do you think should be our focus for 2016 and beyond? Please rank the following in order of importance to you.’

Your responses ranked the statements in the order below – from most to least important.

  1. Improve speed from acceptance to online publication

  2. Easier viewing of figures alongside the relevant text

  3. Easier viewing of supplementary material including movies

  4. Graphical abstracts (diagrammatical summaries of papers)

  5. Publish final versions of articles one by one, gradually building an issue, rather than waiting for an issue to be complete before publication

  6. Easier access to related articles, special issues and subject collections

  7. Better text and datamining services

  8. Annotation of article PDFs e.g. ReadCube

  9. More community web content such as feeds from third-party bloggers

In terms of potential innovations to our online display, you ranked easier viewing of figures and better display of Supplementary Information, including movies, as the most important. This feedback fitted precisely with the top priorities on our own development wish-list. Improving online functionalities is a long-haul project, particularly given the need to work with external partners, to ensure that any new tools integrate seamlessly with our platform and to be confident that they will continue to serve their purpose long-term. However, we are making progress, particularly with Supplementary Information. We are now able to make the Supplementary Information available with the Advance Article version of the manuscript, meaning that readers do not have to wait until issue publication to view the Supplementary Information. We can also announce that we have partnered with Glencoe Software (glencoesoftware.com) for better display of movies. Once in place, this will mean that movies can be viewed directly from within the HTML version of the article. Given that movies are often an integral part of a developmental biology paper, we are delighted that we will finally be able to give them the prominence they deserve. Other innovations to our online display, aimed at better integration of text, figures, movies and data are in the pipeline.

As a journal, we are always looking for ways to improve the way we both handle and present your work. Along with other recent innovations – including co-submission to bioRxiv, integrated data deposition with Dryad, adoption of ORCiD for unambiguous author identification and promotion of the CRediT taxonomy for author contributions – we hope that these announcements will help authors to better disseminate and gain recognition for their research, and help readers to better access and utilise it. As always, we welcome your feedback and suggestions for future improvements.

  • © 2016. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd

References

  1. ↵
    1. Pourquié, O. and
    2. Brown, K.
    (2015). Developing peer review. Development 142, 1389. doi:10.1242/dev.124206
    OpenUrlFREE Full Text
  2. ↵
    1. Pulverer, B.
    (2010). A transparent black box. EMBO J. 29, 3891-3892. doi:10.1038/emboj.2010.307
    OpenUrlFREE Full Text
  3. ↵
    1. Schekman, R.,
    2. Watt, F. and
    3. Weigel, D.
    (2013). Scientific publishing: the eLife approach to peer review. eLife 2, e00799. doi:10.7554/eLife.00799
    OpenUrlAbstract/FREE Full Text
Previous ArticleNext Article
Back to top
Previous ArticleNext Article

This Issue

 Download PDF

Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word on Development.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person you are recommending the page to knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Introducing cross-referee commenting in peer review
(Your Name) has sent you a message from Development
(Your Name) thought you would like to see the Development web site.
Share
Introducing cross-referee commenting in peer review
Olivier Pourquié, Katherine Brown
Development 2016 143: 3035-3036; doi: 10.1242/dev.143198
del.icio.us logo Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo CiteULike logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
Introducing cross-referee commenting in peer review
Olivier Pourquié, Katherine Brown
Development 2016 143: 3035-3036; doi: 10.1242/dev.143198

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
Alerts

Please log in to add an alert for this article.

Sign in to email alerts with your email address

Article navigation

  • Top
  • Article
    • References
  • Info & metrics
  • PDF

Related articles

Cited by...

More in this TOC section

  • A new Editor-in-Chief for Development
  • Introducing preLights: preprint highlights, selected by the biological community
  • And one last thing
Show more EDITORIAL

Similar articles

Other journals from The Company of Biologists

Journal of Cell Science

Journal of Experimental Biology

Disease Models & Mechanisms

Biology Open

Advertisement

Spotlight – In vivo imaging: shining a light on stem cells in the living animal

Phong Dang Nguyen and Peter David Currie highlight how recent advances in imaging technologies have enabled stem cells to be visualised in real time within intact organ systems, revealing novel aspects of their behaviour, especially in response to injury.


Review – The ontogeny, activation and function of the epicardium during heart development and regeneration

In a historical and current Review of comparative studies, Filipa C. Simões and Paul R. Riley, provide insight into the epicardium during heart development and regeneration: origins, formation, cell fate, signalling activity, interaction with the local environment and therapeutic potential.


A new Editor-in-Chief for Development

http://dev.biologists.org/sites/default/files/Snippet/0318_News.jpg

“I'm very keen that Development continues to innovate and support our community.”

We're delighted to announce the appointment of James Briscoe, Group Leader at The Francis Crick Institute, London, as our new Editor-in-Chief. Read our interview with James to find out his career and research interests, the importance of interdisciplinary thinking in developmental biology, and his views on the current state and future opportunities in scientific publishing. Also, check out the Editorial from Sarah Bray, Kate Storey and Katherine Brown to learn more about the announcement, and about our recent community consultation.


On the Node – The people behind the papers

Volvocine algae provide a useful and fascinating model to study how the eukaryote transition from isogamy to anisogamy, and ultimately to oogamy occurred. A new Research Article explores the genetics of the process in Volvox and some of its relatives. The Node caught up with first author Sa Geng and his PI James Umen to hear the story behind the work.


From stem cells to human development ­– meeting reporter competition

In September, Development is hosting our next meeting focusing on human developmental biology. We are excited to announce a competition for a reporter to cover the meeting for the Node. The winner will get free registration to the meeting, and it’s a fantastic opportunity to practice your science communication skills - find out more here.


Santa Cruz Developmental Biology Meeting

Development is a proud sponsor of the upcoming Santa Cruz Developmental Biology Meeting, which takes place 11-15 August 2018 at the University of California, Santa Cruz . Registration for this meeting is now open!


Articles of interest in our sister journals

Dynamics of cortical domains in early Drosophila development
Anja Schmidt, Jörg Grosshans. J Cell Sci 2018 131: jcs212795

Matrix elasticity regulates mesenchymal stem cell chemotaxis
Neha Saxena, Pankaj Mogha, Silalipi Dash, Abhijit Majumder, Sameer Jadhav, Shamik Sen. J Cell Sci 2018 131: jcs211391

Articles

  • Accepted manuscripts
  • Issue in progress
  • Latest complete issue
  • Issue archive
  • Archive by article type
  • Special issues
  • Subject collections
  • Alerts

About us

  • About Development
  • About the Node
  • Editors and board
  • Editor biographies
  • Travelling Fellowships
  • Grants and funding
  • Workshops and Meetings
  • The Company of Biologists

For authors

  • Submit a manuscript
  • Aims and scope
  • Presubmission enquiries
  • Article types
  • Manuscript preparation
  • Figure preparation
  • Cover suggestions
  • Editorial process
  • Promoting your paper
  • Open Access
  • Biology Open transfer

Journal info

  • Journal policies
  • Rights and permissions
  • Media policies
  • Reviewer guide
  • Alerts

Contact

  • Contact Development
  • Subscriptions
  • Advertising
  • Feedback

 Twitter   YouTube   LinkedIn

© 2018   The Company of Biologists Ltd   Registered Charity 277992