Zachary Neal, Editor-in-Chief
Evidence & Policy is piloting a new portable peer review policy aimed at reducing inefficiencies in the publication process, and lessening some of the burdens placed on reviewers and authors by the cycle of repeated submissions to different journals. The official policy is available in the journal’s Author Instructions, but this blog post provides some additional background details and rationale for adopting this policy.
What is portable peer review?
When a manuscript is submitted to a peer reviewed scholarly journal, it is sent to one or more experts for external peer review. If the manuscript is rejected following peer review, and the author chooses to submit the manuscript to a different journal (perhaps after making revisions), the process usually starts over from scratch.
Starting the peer review process over from scratch is inefficient. The inefficiency arises from the fact that the editor and reviewers at the new journal do not know the history of the manuscript. Specifically, when evaluating the manuscript, they cannot consider the comments of the editor(s) or reviewer(s) at prior journals, and are unaware of any improvements that have been made to the manuscript.
Portable peer review aims to reduce inefficiency by allowing editors to consider the history of a manuscript during the review process.
Journals sometimes call this process “streamlined peer review” or “expedited peer review.” However, at Evidence and Policy, we call this process “portable peer review” because the peer reviews obtained from one journal are ‘transported’ to Evidence and Policy, where they become part of the review process. Although portable peer review may speed up the process of peer review by providing the editors with additional information, there is no guarantee that the process will be streamlined or expedited compared to manuscripts that do not provide this additional information. That is, the portable peer review process does not involve “cutting corners” or reducing the rigour of the manuscript evaluation process. All manuscripts submitted to Evidence and Policy are evaluated using, and held to the same standards of, scientific rigour.
How do I take advantage of portable peer review?
A manuscript is eligible to be considered for portable peer review if it has been rejected from another journal following external peer review. If your manuscript is eligible and you want it to be considered for portable peer review, in addition to the manuscript itself, you will also submit three additional items:
- When submitting your manuscript through the Editorial Manager portal, on the “Enter Comments” screen indicate that you would like your submission considered for portable peer review.
- A PDF copy of the prior journal’s rejection decision and the peer reviews that informed this decision. This will typically be a copy of an email generated by a manuscript handling system communicating the journal’s decision. This document must contain the journal’s name, the editor’s decision, and the reviewers’ comments.
- An anonymous letter describing how the current manuscript has been revised to address the prior reviewers’ comments, or provides a rationale for not making such revisions. This letter will be similar to the ‘response to reviewers’ letter an author would typically provide when re-submitting a manuscript following a ‘revise and resubmit’ decision.
What happens during portable peer review?
When a manuscript is considered for portable peer review, the editors will review the manuscript as well as the accompanying information (e.g., prior reviews, summary of revisions). Following this internal review, the editors may:
- Accept the manuscript with no further revisions
- Request additional revisions to the manuscript
- Invite one or more external peer reviewers
- Reject the manuscript
Notably, the possible options for a manuscript undergoing portable peer review are the same as any other manuscript. The difference is that under portable peer review the editors have more information when determining which of these options is most appropriate. A few hypothetical examples illustrate how the portable peer review process could unfold:
- The manuscript has been rejected from a top-tier journal on the grounds that, although it is scientifically rigourous, its findings are not sufficiently “significant” or “impactful” to warrant publication in that journal. In such a case, the editors may consider accepting the manuscript based solely on the prior review process and their own internal review.
- The manuscript has previously been rejected, however the authors have made substantial revisions that the editors believe have addressed the reviewers’ earlier concerns. In such a case, the editors may invite a single external review, perhaps a rapid review from an editorial board member, before making an editorial decision on the manuscript.
- The manuscript was previously rejected for reasons that the authors could not satisfactorily address in a revision (e.g., problems with the sample). In such a case, the editors may reject the manuscript without external peer review.
Why is Evidence and Policy offering portable peer review?
We hope that portable peer review will offer benefits to several different audiences. For authors, portable peer review allows the extensive work that authors have invested in prior iterations of the manuscript to be considered during the review process. For reviewers, portable peer review may reduce the number of reviewers that must be invited to evaluate a manuscript, or the number of rounds of review that are needed before reaching a final editorial decision. For the field, portable peer review has the potential of speeding up the process of science communication, thereby facilitating the use of evidence to inform policy.
Questions about portable peer review?
If you have questions or concerns about portable peer review at Evidence and Policy, please contact editor Dr. Zachary Neal at zpneal@msu.edu.
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