BY KATIE GOSS ’23
A study on the peer review process titled “Research Culture: Co-Reviewing and Ghostwriting by Early-Career Researchers in the Peer Review of Manuscripts,” was recently published in eLife Journal. Conducted by Rebeccah Lijek, Sarah Oelker, June Graham, John Knutsen and Gary McDowell, the study found that those who have helped Principal Investigators (PIs) in peer reviewing have not received credit for their work in most cases due to the rules and policies set in place. Lijek is an assistant professor of biology at Mount Holyoke and a senior author on the story.
Though focused in the biomedical sciences, the study also accepted other subject areas such as English and history.
The peer review process consists of a journal asking a PI, someone who runs a lab or is a lead researcher, to review manuscripts of others’ work. PIs review the manuscript, making any changes or comments they have about it and send it back for its editor.
The problem with this process is the fact that PIs often work with others in their lab — usually students — on the review process. These co-reviewers, or ghostwriters, often do not receive credit for their work.
“It’s a poorly kept secret,” Lijek said. “Everybody knows that it’s happening.”
The issue lies within rules and policies set by most journals for peer reviewing. The manuscripts given to PIs are meant to be confidential. However, as they are busy with their own work and also want to teach students how to peer review, PIs allow their students to co-review anyway.
“It’s a great way to teach them how to do peer review and that in and of itself is not problematic,” Lijek said.
According to feedback received in the study, many have said that ghostwriting for peer reviews is the main resource they had for learning how to do the process correctly. The only problem is, under most journals’ current policies, what they are doing is unethical, leading to plagiarism and lack of credit.
Ghostwriters and their advisors could potentially receive career-damaging backlash if they were caught co-reviewing a confidential manuscript. This is also a main reason why a study such as this one has never been done before, as no one wants to be in trouble after speaking up.
Lijek and a colleague of hers, Executive Director of the nonprofit Future of Research Inc. Gary McDowell, attended a conference on innovations in peer review in February 2018. After leading a break out session on the issues with the peer review process, they realized how many people have been involved in peer review without gaining credit in order to learn how to do it.
“There’s a really good thing, which is training in peer review, getting mixed up with a really bad thing, which is plagiarism,” Lijek said.
After the 2018 conference, Lijek, along with Mount Holyoke’s Library, Information and Technology Services (LITS) Science Librarian Sarah Oelker and June Graham ’19 looked through 2,000 scientific literature papers to find if the ghostwriting of peer review had ever been documented in a study. Ironically, though well known in the science community, there had never been a study done on the topic.
Together, McDowell and Lijek then wrote the study, which they advertised on Twitter and other sites in order to attract the participation of young scientists. In Aug. 2018, the month-long study received around 500 anonymous participants. Once they gathered the data and went through all the entries, they ran a preprint of the study — which is not through a journal but resembles a self-publication — in April 2019.
“After the preprint we then sent it to a journal to go through this peer review process,” Lijek said, chuckling at the irony. The study remained under this process until it was officially published on Oct. 31. The journal that peer-reviewed the study was eLife, which has modern and innovative policies on peer reviewing, allowing junior scientists to co-review instead of only allowing PIs.
Now that the study has been officially published, the authors are in the process of writing another, more opinionated study to complement their data.
“One thing I think needs to change is that journal policies need to be more inclusive and recognize the fact that co-review is happening,” Lijek said. “Any policy that says otherwise will just be ignored, because that’s the current state of affairs.”
Lijek emphasized the fact that a majority of current journal policies are only hurting peer reviewing and making it more difficult. Since the manuscripts are being shared among others anyway and it is actually more helpful to do so, all it is preventing at this point is the ability to truthfully credit everyone involved in a manuscript’s publication.
Lijek also mentioned that journals should trust the PIs to pick qualified co-reviewers. In turn, PIs should mentor junior scientists in the ethics of peer review as they go through the process together.
“I want to thank my co-authors, Sarah Oelker and June Graham, who were a big part of this project altogether,” Lijek said. “I would also like to say that I love being here at Mount Holyoke. It’s a place where people’s crazy ideas get supported. This was not my area of expertise, but I felt supported to pursue the things that are important to me … I feel like this is a great place to fight for justice.”
The hope for this study is that journal policies will be changed, not only to support what is already going on, but also to become more modern.
As Lijek put it, “This is not an example of one bad apple doing horrible things. This is an example of an outdated system that needs to have its policies updated to reflect the current status quo.”