经济学人下载:学术出版 同行评审机制

Science and technology
科学技术

Academic publishing
学术出版

Peer to peer
同行评审机制

Portable reviews look set to speed up the publication of papers
便捷化同行评审将会加快文章的发表

ASK a researcher what annoys him most about scientific publishing, and slowness will come near the top of the list of gripes.
要是问研究员在学术论文发表中什么最令他烦恼，速度慢位居烦恼榜单之首。

It takes nearly six months, on average, for a manuscript to wend its way from submission to publication.
一篇文章从投给出版社到发表，通常需要将近六个月的时间。

Worse, before a paper is accepted by a journal, it is often rejected by one or more others.
更糟糕的是，在论文被一家期刊接受之前，通常会被一家或多家的期刊拒绝。

The reason need not be a fatal flaw in the research; sometimes the work is simply not splashy enough for outlets high up in the pecking order.
原因不一定是研究有致命的错误；有时只是因为研究内容受关注的程度达不到高级期刊的要求。

But in the process, each journal's editors send the paper for peer review—appraisal by experts in the relevant field—in much the way that each prospective purchaser of a house commissions his own survey.
而且，在论文从投稿到出版的过程中，每一期刊的编辑都会对文章做同行评审—由相关领域的专家评估—就像有意购楼者在购楼前要了解楼盘一样。

And, unlike those multiple, parallel surveys, the reviewers do not even get paid for their efforts.
而且，不像那些多重平行的调查，评审专家甚至没有劳动报酬。

Some publishers are at last beginning to twig that this is an awful waste of resources.
一些出版社终于开始意识到同行评审这一做法相当浪费资源。

Last month a number of them, including big ones like the Wellcome Trust, BioMed Central, the Public Library of Science and the European Molecular Biology Organisation,
上个月许多出版社，包括一些大型出版社，譬如维康基金会，生物医学期刊出版中心，科学公共图书馆以及欧洲分子生物学组织，

said they would give authors of papers they reject the option of making referees' reports available to the other publishers.
声明他们将会给予被拒文章的作者选择权，决定是否让文章的评审报告对其他出版社开放。

The practice is not unheard of within publishing groups.
这一做法在出版集团内部不是前所未闻的事。

Genome Biology, BMC's flagship journal, which accepts just one paper in ten, passes 40% of the sound but humdrum sort it spurns to its less prestigious sister publications with reviews attached, says Matthew Cockerill, the group's managing director.
BMC的重点期刊《基因生物学》，文章接收率只有10%，该期刊 40%的比较不错但却单调的被拒文章会转投给比它名气稍小的子期刊，这些文章都附有评审报告，出版中心的总经理马修·柯克里尔说到。

Half of those end up in a BMC journal.
那些文章有一半会发表在BMC旗下的期刊。

But similar arrangements between competing publishers have not caught on.
但类似这样的做法并没有在竞争的出版商之间流行起来。

Other ways to speed up peer review are being tested, too.
其他加快同行评审的办法也正经受考验。

Rubriq, a company in North Carolina, plans to offer fast, independent reports to authors for a fee.
北卡罗来纳州的Rubriq公司，计划通过向作者收费从而提供快速、独立的同行评审报告。

This includes a reality check on just how far up the publication pecking order a paper might be submitted with a reasonable expectation that it will be accepted.
该服务包含一项适应性评估，评估论文应该投给什么样级别的期刊才有可能会被采用。

To reviewers, meanwhile, it is offering payment for the job.
同时，评审员是有报酬的。

The firm is in talks with publishers including BMC and PLoS.
该公司正与包括BMC和 PLoS在内的出版商协商。

Damian Pattinson, the editorial director of PLoS One, the latter group's biggest journal, calls Rubriq's service useful, though he admits that details of how it will work have yet to be sorted out.
PLoS的最大期刊PLoS One的编辑部主任达米安·帕丁森，认为Rubriq公司的服务有用，但他也承认这项服务运作的细节还未列出。

The customers of a Finnish firm, Peerage of Science, are not authors, but journals themselves; 23 have signed up so far.
名为Peerage of Science的一家芬兰公司的顾客不是作者而是期刊；目前有23家期刊与之签约。

Publications in effect outsource the organisation of peer review to the company on the understanding that other clients can look at the results, too.
实际上，出版商把同行评审组织外包给了公司，这样的话，其他客户也可以查看结果。

Then, if the first customer rejects a researcher's offering, those others can choose quickly whether to snap it up instead.
那么，如果第一个期刊顾客拒绝了一位研究员的论文，其他的期刊就可以很快的选择是否要发表这篇论文。

Peerage's fee is paid by whichever journal ultimately publishes the offering in question.
评审人员的酬劳由最终发表这篇论文的期刊支付。

The number of submissions to journals is outpacing reviewers' capacity to deal with them, says Mr Cockerill.
柯克里尔先生说道，现在期刊投稿量使评审员负荷过大。

Mr Pattinson agrees.
帕丁森先生也承认这一点。

PLoS One already churns through 4,000 papers a month, putting its referees under tremendous strain, he says.
他说道，PLoS One 现在一个月有投稿论文4000份，这使得他们的评审员承受着巨大的压力。

With luck, parallel processing of peer review in this manner will reduce the stress on the system, and thus the time frustrated researchers have to wait before their gems see the light of day.
如果一切顺利的话，同行评审的这种并行处理模式将会为评审机制减轻压力，同样，那些在郁闷地等待自己的大作发表的研究员们也可以少等一些时间了。