We're all familiar with complaints about peer review. Some think it's biased – editors (especially from ‘those’ journals) seem to have too much power to decide what gets published. It can be opaque – the reasons why a manuscript is accepted or rejected aren't always clear (to either the authors or the readers). It often takes too long – both to get through the process at an individual journal and because you often have to submit to multiple journals to get a paper published. And referees may demand unnecessary and unwarranted experiments that add little value but take large amounts of time and resources.
At Development, we're very aware of these criticisms. Indeed, as Academic Editors we are all active research scientists and we deal with these issues as authors of our own papers. We are unashamedly proud of our review process at Development – we believe in scientific rigour and in publishing papers that uphold high experimental standards that serve as references for the field for many years to come. We're often told that ‘you can trust a Development paper’ and that ‘Development papers stand the test of time’. We are determined to keep it this way. However, we recognise that there's a flip side to this: we also hear that it can be hard to get a paper into Development.
Over the years, we've introduced various changes and innovations to address some of these problems. To improve the transparency of the peer review and editorial decision making, we publish (with author approval) a ‘Peer review history’ file with papers. This includes decision letters, referee reports and author point-by-point responses, along with a timeline of the submission and revision process, and the name of the handling editor. We hope these provide additional insight into the published papers and the peer review process that led to the decision to publish.
To reduce review times and prevent serial re-review, Development is an affiliate of Review Commons. This is a journal agnostic peer review service that facilitates high quality peer review uncoupled to journal submission. Authors can then submit the manuscript, peer review reports and the authors’ response to one of Review Commons’ affiliate journals, which – in addition to Development – also include our sister titles Journal of Cell Science, Disease Models & Mechanisms and Biology Open. This expedites editorial consideration, reduces serial re-review and streamlines the publication process. Recently, we've taken our relationship with Review Commons to the next level, with some of our editors coordinating peer review of initial submissions to the platform (see https://www.reviewcommons.org/blog/development-and-journal-of-cell-science-expand-collaboration-with-review-commons-a-new-trial-to-support-efficient-peer-review/ for details). We hope to continue to support Review Commons as it grows, providing authors with the choice of whether to submit directly to Development, or to gather formal feedback before choosing their target journal – hopefully still Development!
At Development, we will also consider papers with reviewer reports from other journals. For papers submitted with reports from another journal, we ask for the full reports from all reviewers and the name of the journal. When possible, we decide on the likely suitability of the paper for Development based on these previous reviews. To do this we might need to seek expert advice, for example from an Editorial Board member, but the availability of the referees’ comments from the previous submission accelerates the decision making. We also encourage you to let us know if there any public peer reviews available on a preprinted version of your manuscript. If a submission to Development is rejected after peer review, we're also happy to provide the referee identities (with their permission) and reports to potential downstream journals to facilitate rapid publication elsewhere.
What else can we do to help? We ask referees which experiments or analyses they consider essential to support the conclusions of the paper and to distinguish these from suggestions and optional nice-to-haves. We encourage cross-commenting between referees so that differences in opinion can be resolved and that consensus is reached on the strengths and weaknesses of a study. In our editorial decision letters, we try to make clear what is necessary in a revised manuscript and what would be nice but not essential. If you don't get that guidance, or if it would be helpful to have further input, we are happy to discuss revision plans with authors – please just get in touch. It is worth noting that when we invite authors to submit a revision following peer review, around 95% of the revisions are published and, except in exceptional circumstances, we only allow one round of major revisions. This should provide some reassurance that we do our best to make clear and candid decisions, and that if we ask you to revise your paper it is because we want to publish it.
Despite these efforts, we still hear the complaint that referees demand experiments that go beyond what is reasonable to expect and what is necessary to support the conclusions of the paper. As editors we agree that referees frequently seem to demand too much. In many cases, it won't be necessary to comply with every point made by each referee. Indeed, in many cases, referees are making suggestions and constructive comments, rather than listing requests that must be fulfilled.
As a next step, we now encourage authors to include a ‘Limitations’ section in the Discussion as it offers a way to be upfront about weak points or caveats in a study (see https://journals.biologists.com/dev/pages/manuscript-prep#3.2. section 3.2.6). Authors can add this section at initial submission or revision stage. In addition to technical limitations with the approach taken in the study, this section can be used to respond to issues raised by the referees during initial review – particularly where the authors are either unable to, or have chosen not to, address concerns experimentally. We ask referees to comment on this section during the re-review, but not to request additional experiments based on it – unless they relate directly to concerns raised in the initial round of review. We hope that the use of a Limitations section will give authors the opportunity to define the scope and extent of their work while focusing revisions on experiments essential to support their conclusions.
Finally, we'd like to stress that you don't need a full length, in-depth article to publish in Development. Our Research Reports are intended to allow authors to publish a central finding of broad interest, without necessarily providing the same extended analysis as a Research Article. They are short papers (around 3000 words and a maximum of four figures) that preserve the rigour of full articles but with a sharper focus. This condensed structure suits complete stories that warrant rapid communication; examples are available at https://journals.biologists.com/collection/10772/Highlights-from-our-Research-Reports-section. By offering Research Reports, we provide a path for publishing important findings that can be communicated effectively in a shorter format than a standard Research Article.
Our aim is to make the publishing and the peer-review process a little more constructive and a little less frustrating while maintaining scientific rigour. As a journal and as editors, our goal is to publish strong research and help you make it as clear and as compelling as possible. As always, we welcome your thoughts and feedback.
