Preventing the Matthew principle in science publishing

During the pandemic, interactions with students had to be from a distance. This got me to think about biases in assessments. In one of the courses, students had to reflect on a technically difficult “Omics” paper, answering questions and giving critical feedback. As individual student-teacher interactions had to be quite minimal, I ended up with a bunch of documents with “faceless” names. In the process of marking different student’s valiant efforts I noticed that, unsurprisingly, names still automatically conjured up faces, as names contain information regarding gender and ethnicity. Of course, I try to combat conscious prejudice. But “ay, there’s the rub”: only a fool would deny unconscious prejudices. I am far from the first to notice that all kinds of (un)conscious biases pervade our (digital) work environment. Some can be more easily circumvented than others. In the case of my exams, a simple intermediary program removing all personal information and generating a random number, would do the trick. Could such an intake system also be of use in publishing, as is currently being tried out by some publishing start-ups (or should I say “upstarts”? ). Oneobjectionmight be that there are real benefits to how the system currently operates. Aren’t the “top” researchers better known for a reason? Overall, they produce higher quality work, so they should have easier access towidely read journals. Also, lesser known scientists making grandiose claims: should these indeed not be looked at more critically? Thus, it is reasoned, the identity of the people and the institute responsible for the paper just gives another valid criterion to base assessment on. On the other hand, high quality work should be able to stand on its own, and grandiose claims should always bemetwith skepticism, irrespective of the identity of the claimant. But maybe we should first ask: is there even a real problem? I am afraid the answer is a qualified yes. Most scientists I have talked with (even the ones it benefits) detect a strong Matthew principle operating in science. Especially junior researchers from lesser known groups should have a better chance of publishing in high impact journals. The higher your scientific status, the easier it becomes to get published in the top journals, giving you a crucial advantage in quickly getting your message out, influencing the future direction of science as well as your careerwithin it. Thiswill lead toboth “overrated” and “underrated” articles. The first outcome I consider no big deal, but the second I consider really detrimental to scientific progress. Let me illustrate from indirect personal experience. In the nineties I was working on my PhD, often using BlueNativeGel Electrophoresis (BNE) to characterizemitochondrial respiratory chain complexes, a technique pioneered by Schägger and von Jagow. [1] Using the same technique in a different research project, I often shared the lab late at night with Leo Nijtmans, who under the supervision of Coby van den Bogert, was doing something I considered revolutionary. He studied the assembly of complex IV, cytochrome-c oxidase, in the presence of inhibitors of eithermitochondrial or cytosolic protein synthesis, by metabolic labelling of a human leukemia cell line, followed by BNE, classical SDS-PAGE, and Western blot analysis. This allowed the first ever identification of assembly intermediates of complex IV. [2] His supervisor who was still building her own research group at the time, became gravely ill and sadly died before the paperwas published. Leo and I noticed the tremendous difficulty in getting the paper accepted and, in the end, he had to “settle” for the European Journal of Biochemistry (now the FEBS Journal), which did not have the impact factor we thought the paper deserved. A current Google Scholar citations number approaching 300 (! ) rather supports our initial assessment, I would say. Leo would go on to research and describe (in great detail) the biogenesis of the, even more complicated, first respiratory complex, NADH dehydrogenase. [3] Alas, after contributing a lot to our understanding of the biogenesis of mitochondrial respiration complexes, Leo also died, much too early, in 2018. I sometimes wonder if he would have had an even greater impact if article selection and acceptance would have beenmore unbiased when he started out. So, how can we level the playing field? I think the problem is most pronounced with the absolute top-tier journals, so their editorial staffs and reviewers might indeed benefit from procedures and training to root out the detrimental effects of the Matthew principle. Then again, there are some pretty good journals out there that seem to be less afflicted. By submitting to these we could initiate a process of extending, instead of just levelling, the playing field.