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This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:fanpu2019, by Wang Shanqin

The original title: "Let the magazine editor do this?" Nobel laureates say they can't do it. "

Peer Review (peer review) system is one of the key links in modern academic research. Through the peer review process, reviewers determine the originality, correctness and importance of the paper, and determine whether it is worth publishing in the corresponding magazine. However, peer review also has a variety of disadvantages. So can peer review be abandoned? Is there any better system that can replace the peer review system?

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Peer Review (peer review) system is one of the key links in modern scientific research. The core task of peer review is to help magazine editors determine the originality, validity and significance of the paper, and determine whether it is worth publishing in the corresponding magazine. In many cases, reviewers will also put forward a lot of specific suggestions for improvement and even point out the grammatical errors of the paper, which will obviously improve the quality of a considerable number of papers.

Peer review: the institutional review system or disguised review system that infuriated Einstein by praising Poincare has long been in place. More than a hundred years ago, in 1889, King Oscar II,Oscar Fredrik,1829 II of Sweden (Oscar II,Oscar Fredrik,1829-1907) offered a reward for articles on a whim when he was approaching his 60th birthday and wanted people to prove the stability of the solar system with celestial mechanics. In order to ensure the reliability of the paper, the person in charge of the competition invited the mathematical authority at that time, known as the "father of modern analysis" Karl Weierstra é s (1815-1897) as the judge.

The prize was awarded to Henri Poincar é (1854-1912), then the most talented young mathematician in the world and later known as "the last all-round mathematician of mankind". Although Poincare later discovered that the paper was flawed and spent more than the prize money to reprint the rewritten paper, the award made Poincare famous.

A picture of Poincare in 1887. Photo: Eug è ne Pirou in the 20th century, the manuscript review system was gradually adopted by academic magazines, but in the process it caused displeasure and even resistance among some scientists who were not used to the change: in 1936, Einstein (Albert Einstein,1879-1955) and his collaborators received a review opinion that negated his point of view after they were submitted to the Physics Review (Physical Review). Einstein was so angry that Einstein turned the table. Write a letter and submit it to another magazine.

Part of the reason Einstein was so angry was that just a year earlier, when he and his co-author's paper, the famous "EPR" paper on quantum entanglement, was submitted to the same magazine, it was published without review. In Einstein's opinion, who but Bohr (Niels Bohr,1885-1962) was qualified to argue with him? Not to mention anonymous reviewers.

In 1925, Einstein and Bohr were at their home in Leiden, the Netherlands, in Paul Ehrenfest,1880-1933. Source: Paul Ehrenfest, but Einstein failed, because later the reviewer conveyed his opinion to him through Einstein's new assistant. Einstein, who was no longer above, listened to it this time and hurriedly changed the conclusion that "gravitational waves do not exist" to "gravitational waves exist" when the paper was about to enter the printing process. Einstein may not have known until his death that the professor Howard Robertson,1903-1961 who thanked him in his revised paper was the anonymous reviewer (but perhaps clear in his heart). The elegant Robertson did not reveal the secret to anyone for the rest of his life. It was not until March 2005, when the editorial department of Physics Review found the manuscript review records of that year, that people knew that the reviewer who abused Einstein was Robertson.

Robertson. Photo: https://history.aip.org/ phn / 11605024.html now that peer review has been adopted by almost all academic magazines, reviewers have become a group of people who love and hate-there is a saying in the scientific community: publish or perish (publish or die). The inability to publish a paper means the end of his academic career, and it is the reviewer who decides whether to publish it or not.

From the submission of the paper to the acceptance of the paper, it is a process of going through five hurdles and being chopped by six generals. He who is not cut to death wins a round of victory. Photo Source: Nick Kim, Massey University, Wellington many scholars themselves are abused by reviewers as authors, and abuse others as reviewers. Objectively, the situation of mutual abuse is absolutely inevitable-A's contribution was reviewed by B, and then B's contribution was reviewed by A, although there is a good chance that the two have no idea who is reviewing their own paper.

In the process of peer review, reviewers may put forward correct views so that valuable papers are accepted by magazines and worthless papers are rejected; they may also put forward wrong views and allow worthless or even erroneous papers to be accepted by magazines. Let valuable papers be rejected.

Therefore, there has always been a dispute over the rationality of the manuscript review system. Recently, some people have criticized the peer review system, thinking that the peer review system should be abolished.

If the peer review system is abolished, it will be the magazine's editorial department that will decide whether a paper can be hired. So, do the editors of the editorial department have the ability to review manuscripts?

There is.

Editor's end: the Nobel laureate personally abused you. Many magazine editors work part-time by experts in the magazine's field. Such an editor is certainly capable of being a reviewer. Before the manuscript reviewer system was widely adopted, the editors of many magazines were reviewers. The earlier the age, the more common it is for editors to act as reviewers.

The most famous person who participated in reviewing the manuscript as an editor was Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar,1910-1995, the Nobel Prize winner in physics in 1983, hereinafter referred to as Chandra.

Chandra Seka. Photo: Public Domain Chandra was responsible editor of the Astrophysical Journal (The Astrophysical Journal,ApJ) from 1952 to 1971. He had been an assistant editor of the magazine before 1952. When he was an assistant editor, he often served as a reviewer for some papers. [note 1]

After serving as the responsible editor of ApJ, the magazine has a relatively perfect peer review system. But Chandra, as an editor, still reviews the manuscripts first, sifting through papers that can be accepted without review, which account for about 10% of the total. Next, he will review the remaining 10-15% of the manuscripts (the authors of these papers will be abused by future Nobel prizes), and the rest will be sent to his selected reviewers for review.

Why can't Chandra review all manuscripts? Is it because of his lack of professional ability?

Apparently not.

Chandra's research topics in his life include white dwarf and stellar structure theory (1929-1939), stellar dynamics (1939-1943), radiation transfer, illuminance and polarization theory of sunshining sky, atmospheric theory of planets and stars, hydrogen negative ion quantum theory (1943-1950), hydrodynamics and magnetohydrodynamic stability (1952-1961), equilibrium and stability of ellipsoid equilibrium (1961-1968), General relativity and relativistic astrophysics (1962-1971), black hole mathematical theory (1971-1983) [2], and collision gravitational wave theory (1983-1995). [3] if it hadn't been for a heart attack that took his life, he could have continued his research. Every time he completes a field of research, he writes a monograph as a summary, and then moves on to the next field of research.

Although Chandra is so knowledgeable and makes outstanding contributions in every field, he is still unable to review all the manuscripts on his own. Because the workload is too heavy. In Chandra's first year as editor, the magazine published six issues with 950 pages; in 1970, it published 24 issues with 12000 pages. [1] at that time, Chandra was not only an editor, but also engaged in scientific research and teaching tasks at the University of Chicago. He really can't get him to read all the manuscripts carefully and give detailed opinions on manuscript review in a very limited time. Therefore, he can only submit most of the papers he receives to the reviewers for review.

The heavy workload of manuscript review is one of the reasons why many magazines have to find reviewers to review manuscripts. In addition, the vast majority of magazine editors cannot review papers in many fields like Chandra, and even if the knowledge of all the editors in the entire editorial department is superimposed, it is difficult to cover all the contributions.

Therefore, choosing experts in relevant fields as reviewers is of course the most reliable solution. It was possible to abolish the peer review system and let the editor be the reviewer one or two hundred years ago, but absolutely not now. What's more, letting the editor be the reviewer is essentially the implementation of the peer review system.

So, is it possible to publish all the manuscripts without even reviewing the editors? If this plan is implemented, the magazine will quickly become a junk magazine full of erroneous papers. This is a scheme that even academia dared not adopt hundreds of years ago.

Therefore, all academic articles cannot escape the fate of being reviewed. the only difference is that editors review as reviewers or experts outside the editorial department.

Why are reviewers willing to review manuscripts for free? Almost all the reviewers hired by the magazine work for free. Why is such free labor done?

The reason is simple: the reviewers themselves have contributed to relevant magazines or other high-level magazines and have published at least some of the papers after the review / help of other reviewers. Now that they have benefited from the peer review system, they are generally embarrassed to refuse the task of reviewing manuscripts assigned by the editorial department.

There are also some more conscious reviewers who feel that such scientific service is an obligation, a responsibility, or even an honor. In some cases, magazine editors look for reviewers who have never published in the magazine but have published in a higher-level magazine. In this case, scholars who are willing to accept the task are purely moral.

Therefore, it is obviously wrong to say that "the reviewer is not paid for spending so much money every year". Even if only in terms of interest, most reviewers themselves benefit from the peer review system and are naturally willing to give back and maintain the system. Especially for those magazines that have published their own papers, they will not refuse for no reason.

If most of the experts appointed by the magazine as reviewers only want others to review their own manuscripts and are unwilling to review their own manuscripts, the efficiency of publishing articles in the magazine will be rapidly reduced or even paralyzed. the interests of all those who contribute to the magazine, including those who are qualified to be reviewers but do not want to be, will be lost.

Therefore, reviewers do not review manuscripts for money. Most people work as reviewers for free, in essence, in order to be able to review their manuscripts for free. This is essentially a system of peer review and mutual assistance led by the editorial department.

Is there a better system than peer review? Of course, there are many defects in the peer review system. For example, manuscripts reviewers will also turn a blind eye to allow some good papers to be rejected, some poor papers to be accepted, and fake papers to muddle through; some reviewers will deliberately release water when they see the manuscripts of people who have a good relationship with them. some people will deliberately make things difficult when they see a manuscript that has a bad relationship with them. Especially in some areas, the situation of fake papers to muddle through is particularly serious.

However, after abandoning the peer review system, whether we let the editor review the manuscript (essentially the peer review system, only by the editor part-time), or give up all the review process so that the manuscript can be published directly, most of these cases will become much more serious. Only injustices caused by personal grievances are likely to be improved, but the situation in which personal grievances affect manuscript review is actually a small probability.

Moreover, the reviewer can not decide the fate of the paper at any time. In some cases, high-level editors themselves can save valuable or groundbreaking results that have been rejected by reviewers.

One of the most famous examples of this is the 1958 paper written by Eugene Newman Parker,1927-2022 to prove the existence of the solar wind: it was rejected by two ApJ reviewers, but Chandra himself examined it carefully and confirmed that there was no error in mathematical derivation, so he accepted it and made it published (see "his name is worth $1.5 billion: the legendary Life of a Young Genius").

Parker, 1977. Photo Source: https://news.uchicago.edu/ story / eugene-parker-legendary-figure-solar-science-and-namesake-parker-solar-probe-1927-2022 in more cases, if the author disagrees with the reviewer's decision or opinion, he can protest or even change the manuscript to the editorial department, which will combine his or her own opinions with the reviewer to decide whether to agree to change the reviewer.

It is not uncommon for the same paper to get diametrically opposed decisions from different reviewers in different magazines. For this reason, some magazines will let two or more reviewers review the same paper and try to get a fair and reliable verdict. If two or three reviewers are wrong at the same time, even if the editor ends up, it will be hard to recover-the story of Chandra and Parker is hard to copy because such masters are hard to copy.

We can only say that the peer review system is not a perfect system, but it is the least bad system.

We can only hope that the peer review system will continue to be improved, but at present we cannot find a system that can replace the peer review system.

Psychological Construction after the rejection of contribution

Finally, talk about the psychological construction after the paper was rejected. It is undoubtedly a matter of anxiety that the manuscript has been rejected by the reviewer or even the editor. But sometimes, when a manuscript is rejected, it is not just heartache.

Chandra encountered a tragedy "caused" by opinions on manuscript review. A young astronomer named Little Werdel often submitted some ancient papers to ApJ, which was often rejected by reviewers. On one occasion, little Werdel submitted a long paper, which was finally rejected by the reviewer after several battles with the reviewer.

One morning a few days later, Chandra received a phone call. He asked sadly and angrily, "I'm little Werdel's father, little Werdel." are you the editor? " Chandra said, "I am." The other said, "you know what? you killed my son! my son came back from Europe today and received a letter from you rejecting his paper. He was so angry that he drove and left. He died in a car accident. So, you're responsible!" [1]

Chandra expressed great regret and sorrow over the death of little Werdel. Then the other party asked the editorial department to publish his son's paper as is. Chandra did not agree, but asked the other party to send his son's manuscript, and then, with the help of a reviewer, Chandra screened out 5-6 pages of content that could be published from 60 pages, published it, and added editor's notes. He also sent a proof of the paper to little Werdel, and the other party wrote back to apologize for some of his previous remarks. [1]

This tells us a truth: don't drive, cross the road or engage in other dangerous things immediately after receiving a rejection letter, because grief can really distract people and lead to tragedy.

Of course, the manuscript is accepted by the reviewer, and do not engage in these activities immediately after receiving the acceptance letter, because excessive excitement can also lead to distraction, which increases the risk of extreme joy and sadness.

Brief introduction of the author: doctor of Astrophysics. To date, 25 papers have been published in the Astrophysical Journal (ApJ), of which 12 are first authors or correspondent authors, and 4 co-authors have been published in the monthly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS). He has been tortured by various reviewers (some papers have been praised by reviewers), but he has not lost confidence in himself and the peer review system, and sincerely thanks all the reviewers for their comments.

Annotation

[note 1] ApJ introduced the reviewer system a long time ago. On December 12, 1930, when Chandra first submitted his manuscript to ApJ, ApJ handed over the paper to the reviewer for review, who recommended it for publication.

reference

Kameshwal C Wali, he Miaofu, Fu Chengqi, the Lonely Road to Science: the Biography of Chandra Seka, Shanghai Science, Technology and Education Press, 2006

[2] Chandrasekhar, S. On Stars, Their Evolution and Their Stability this is a speech from the acceptance of the Nobel Prize in 1983. Its single print contains an autobiographical summary, and its summary ends in 1983.

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