The Pope, provenance, and peer review
Authors: Kamran Abbasi
Journal: Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (2013)

We know the Pope is Catholic but what is his provenance? As an Argentinian born of Italian parents, is he a man of the New World, a son of the Old World, or a mixture of both? What exactly are we dealing with here? We do know, however, whatever his provenance, a billion or so Catholics will have faith in his decision making, the same faith that any religion inspires in its followers. Faith is also a central pillar of peer review, a solace for editors, authors, and readers.

But the evidence on peer review is clear and disturbing: it is a poor method of selecting which articles to publish in any scientific journal. Although peer review does improve articles that a journal's editorial team decides to publish—the primary reason it is used by JRSM—it is a subjective instrument for decision making. Still, the words ‘peer reviewed’ are a reassuring endorsement for any journal, similar to the promise of 100% beef that is stamped on a packet of supermarket burgers.

Authors and readers misinterpret peer review as a guarantee of quality. Editors bask in the importance it lends to their journals but are just as quick to use it as cover for mistakes. Institutions view it as a confirmation of academic merit. Publishers see pounds and dollars. Peer review, a process which isn't much good, inspires faith about its value to match any religion.

When it first emerged, open access publishing was considered blasphemy, an unsustainable ideal devised by the devil. Open access is still mired in publishing politics but only a foolish analysis would conclude that it isn't thriving. The next great transformation is likely to be journals that dispense with pre-publication peer review. These journals already exist in the world of physical science, where the priority is to disseminate new ideas quickly in an active research field. The data must be shared; peer review can wait.

Such journals are beginning to appear in the world of medicine. That doesn't mean the end of peer-review, just as open-access publishing hasn't dealt a death to traditional publishing. Authors will have more choice, better options to disseminate their findings quickly to a wide audience.

Provenance isn't a matter of faith; it is a statement of facts. Readers may be uninterested in the detailed peer review history of an article, but they often wonder, without much chance of ever discovering it, about the provenance of an article. What is its origin? Whose idea was it? Did the journal commission it or was it submitted? Was it indeed peer reviewed—for what it's worth?

This is where journal publishing deviates from Papal pronouncements. The provenance of the Pope should matter less than his decision making. When it comes to medical journals, however, the provenance of an article, how it originated, is more helpful in interpreting the message than the recommendations of the peer reviewer.

JRSM and its companion open-access journal, JRSM Short Reports, will now follow other leading medical journals and introduce a provenance statement to explain to readers how an article came to be published. Was the article commissioned or submitted? If commissioned, whose original idea was it? Was the article sent for peer review? JRSM and JRSM Short Reports already name the peer reviewer and will continue to do so. Adding a provenance statement is a simple addition but a necessary one for any medical journal that has faith in the benefits of transparent scientific debate.