The need for post-publication peer review in plant science publishing

The discussion among scientists about the quality of a published paper should be a constant, dynamic process, even beyond the act of publication. A published paper should not be the final step in the halflife of a scientific manuscript and critical analysis, post-publication, through postpublication peer review (PPPR), should be part of a new and dynamic process that should be embraced by scientists, editors, and publishers alike (Hunter, 2012) as one form of ensuring scientific and academic integrity (Teixeira da Silva, 2013a). Traditional scientific publishing relies primarily on a three-step process: (1) submit; (2) peer review and edit; (3) publish. However, each of these steps has clear documented problems. The first problem related to step 1 involves the intrinsic honesty of the scientist and is the basis upon which the success of all ensuing publishing steps depend. Issues such as appropriate authorship, correct data representation and its faithful representation without manipulation all form part of the first requirement. The fact that this base of honesty has been breached in many instances has forced publishers to insist on increasingly complex signed declarations upon submission of a paper pertaining to the originality of data, the single nature of submission, and conflicts of interest (COIs). Up until submission, trust and honesty lie in the hands of scientists and authors. Apart from such signed declarations, it is rare for publishers to run detailed background checks on authorship, affiliations, or COIs prior to peer review primarily because such aspects are difficult and time-consuming to investigate or verify, especially with a global authorship. More recently, publishers tend to run detailed checks on plagiarism or duplication as a result of more data-bases and stronger web-search engines, but this may fail to reveal duplicate submissions. Therefore, although there has been an increase in the level of verification by publishers in the first step, it is still far from being a fail-safe system. The moment a publisher receives a manuscript for peer review, responsibility is transferred from the scientist to the editors and the publisher (Teixeira da Silva, 2013b). Unlike step one, in which trust was earned (from the author) by the publisher, in step 2, trust is now earned (from the publisher) by the author and the scientific community. Assuming that the author has been honest in step 1, the author would expect some basic responsibilities by the publisher, but practically speaking most likely by the editor-in-chief (EIC) and/or editor board and peer reviewers. Such responsibilities would primarily include: (a) an unbiased peer review (Chase, 2013) of the paper within a reasonable amount of time which should ideally involve a doubleblind review in which the identity of the authors is unknown to peer reviewers and vice versa to avoid potential COIs; (b) the ability to protect personal information during the peer review; (c) the ability to implement quality control (QC) related to various issues (data, language, structure, literature representation) and to ensure that all peer and editorial requirements made of authors are met. Regarding the third and last aspect, misrepresentation of the literature, or lack of a strict control of the published literature on the part of authors and editors, has led to the establishment of a new concept, snub publishing (Teixeira da Silva, 2013b). A first-ever case study in the plant sciences involving a PPPR of the Anthurium tissue culture literature deserves particular attention since it reveals how the loss of honesty and/or QC can result in the “academic corruption” of the literature, thus weakening the trust in its findings (Teixeira da Silva, 2013c, in press). Finally, once the peer review has been completed, and the paper has been accepted for publication, the responsibilities of the editors, EIC, or publisher do not end there. Accurate representation of the final data set, orderly and structured display of tables and figures lie exclusively in the hands of the publisher, even when authors have been sent a proof. Debate regarding the costs of publishing, intellectual property, and open access (OA) vs. traditional publishing, although important, is marginal to the responsibilities focused on in this paper. However, central to the success of PPPR would be the unfettered access of the public and scientists to a published work for critical analysis. Without in fact considering issues such as metrics or the debate of the impact factor, which add “noise” to the de facto quality of a scientific paper, only two key aspects count when discussing the quality of a paper: (a) the originality of the data set and study; (b) the ability of the author–editor–peer triad to detect and correct as many errors as possible to ensure academic integrity. Understandably, different levels of research and of QC by peer reviewers, editors, or publishers from different cultures may lead to multiple interpretations of issues related to publishing quality and/or ethics such as authorship, self-plagiarism, or duplication. However, reliability of and responsibility associated with the traditional three-step publishing process can be eroded or lost. How