[3dem] sharing em maps during peer-review process

[Edward Egelman]

I agree strongly with Sjors, and think that more openness and more data 
availability can only strengthen science. It was not too long ago where 
some people refused to make reconstruction volumes available AFTER 
publication, since there was no journal policy dictating submission to a 
repository. As for double-blind reviewing, in a recent NSMB there is an 
editorial about the new double blind submission possibility. They 
provide a link to a rather equivocal editorial evaluation of the system 
that appeared in one of the first Nature journals to institute this, 
Nature Nanotechnology:

http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/v9/n11/full/nnano.2014.265.html

In that editorial, they state:

"However, the/American Economic Review/dropped double-blind review in 
2011, citing the role of search engines in limiting their capacity to 
maintain author anonymity as a major reason for the decision."

In our field (as opposed to economics) it would be even harder to have 
anonymous authors, as one needs to describe the microscope and camera, 
cite previous publications, etc. One could not say "the protein was 
prepared as previously described" and give a citation.
They also state that although 80% of respondents to some survey 
supported double-blind, less than 20% of submitted manuscripts chose 
that option (what they actually state is that is that the monthly 
percentage has never risen above 20% for the each of the two journals, 
so this is the maximum of something that is fluctuating and the overall 
percentage may be 10% or less!).
Regards,
Ed

On 5/2/15 7:10 AM, Sjors Scheres wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> I think moving towards more openness will be a good thing. As a reviewer
> it is often hard to assess the quality of a map from 2D still pictures
> alone, and having a look at the map will surely help to assess its
> quality. Trust already is at the foundation of the review process. Whether
> the reviewer also gets access to the map and the model does not change
> much in that respect.
>
> Reversed anonymity in the review process as suggested by Matthijn is
> problematic because the identity of the authors is usually very easy to
> distill from the paper itself. A useful comment on this (in the context of
> double-blind review) is in Nature this week. Going the other way, with
> open identities of both authors and reviewers, is attractive in some ways,
> but also has its difficulties. I personally tend to tick the option to
> reveal my identity as a reviewer in eLife, and have also had my papers
> reviewed by people who revealed their identity. Last year I wrote one
> negative review for a journal that did not have this option, and later
> revealed myself to one of the authors and had an open, face-to-face
> discussion with the intention to be helpful. However, revealing one's
> identity as a reviewer also has a potential danger of bias towards being
> less critical (perhaps especially for less established reviewers?), or the
> danger of a culture where positive reviews are expected to be 'paid back'
> later. Again, I think trust is the key word, and recognizing the
> difficulties of every option is a good start.
>
> Perhaps I'm naive, but I think most of us are in this for the fun of it,
> and to ultimately change the world for the better. More openness will
> probably help in speeding up the scientific process. In that context I
> also agree with Grant that discussing options like (bio)-arxiv may be
> useful.
>
> Sjors
>
>> dear colleagues,
>>
>> i would be interested in experiences / suggestions / views of others in
>> the
>> field on  the following issue that may be of interest to many of us:
>> the editor of our manuscript forwarded the request of a peer-reviewer to
>> access the cryo-em map of our beloved complex. this has never happened to
>> us, but to our surprise the editor did not consider the request to be
>> unusual.
>> of course, we share the point that the map would be of great help in
>> judging the interpretation of the data. however, we also feel very
>> uncomfortable sending the condensed result of lengthy research to an
>> anonymous colleague, who could theoretically make considerable misuse of
>> it. nevertheless, the policy of the journal seems to let us little
>> choice: "Supporting
>> data must be made available to editors and peer-reviewers at the time of
>> submission for the purposes of evaluating the manuscript. Peer-reviewers
>> may be asked to comment on the terms of access to materials, methods
>> and/or
>> data sets".
>> in any case we would be curious whether others indeed got similar requests
>> and how they dealt with it. a good solution for (paranoid?) people like us
>> could be a good web-based viewer that lets others view our map, but i
>> would
>> not know of such a tool.
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> Friedrich
>>
>> --
>> Dr. Friedrich Foerster
>> Max-Planck Institut fuer Biochemie
>> Am Klopferspitz 18
>> D-82152 Martinsried
>>
>> Tel: +49 89 8578 2632
>> Fax: +49 89 8578 2641
>>
>> www.biochem.mpg.de/foerster
>> _______________________________________________
>> 3dem mailing list
>> 3dem at ncmir.ucsd.edu
>> https://mail.ncmir.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/3dem
>>
>

-- 
Edward H. Egelman, Ph.D.
Professor
Dept. of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics
University of Virginia

President
Biophysical Society

phone: 434-924-8210
fax: 434-924-5069
egelman at virginia.edu
http://www.people.virginia.edu/~ehe2n

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.ncmir.ucsd.edu/pipermail/3dem/attachments/20150502/821a9585/attachment-0001.html>