Javier, in the case you present, the editor handling the review process should be held accountable for his/her lack of oversight. Clearly, personal attacks are not permitted in an academic review process. I would suggest contacting the Editor in Chief of the journal and asking that your particular review process be examined and disciplinary action taken against the incompetent editor. There are new journals that only permit open refereeing where a referee cannot hide in anonymity but is obliged to leave their name and their review (as well your rebuttal) open to the public. The European Geosciences Union has journals of this type.

I believe that the whole process of academic publishing and peer review needs urgent reform. One of the original ideas behind ResearchGate was to provide open peer review for authors not from one, two, or even three possibly very biased or even malicious persons, but instead from many reviews from the whole community. The problem is that most of the directors of scientific institutions are old people who were taught to believe that a scientific work can only have merit if it is published in a high impact journal. We give our work and lots of money to these journals only to boost our ego of having published in a "prestigious" journal but in fact it means very little since the work was reviewed by only one, two, or three often incompetent and often malicious reviewers.

Javier - I fully agree. Respect and integrity is key for reviewers to maintain. My advice to reviewers is to remain balanced, objective and critically 'constructive'. Most manuscripts have both positives and negatives to report. I find that a good idea is to start with positive overall feedback, followed by recommended improvements - and ending with a positive statement. Some refer to it as a 'positive sandwich' approach. Of course, every now and then, such as around 6 months ago - I come across a submitted manuscript which, was not a poorly constructed study, but I felt that it was 'unsafe' - especially for public consumption. There wasn't much positive I could say - other than I did not think that it was suitable to be published in the public domain. I asked the editor to confirm it wasn't 'just me' - and they sent it for a further expert review - which confirmed my review.

Javier Miranda. I'm sorry to hear about your experience - and I think that the reviewer behaved not just unpleasantly but unethically. Some of the journals I have provided reviews for have supplied information about what they consider to be appropriate / ethical behaviour on the part of reviewers - much of which is just common sense and common courtesy, though with an overlay of academic integrity.

Certainly, there should not be ad hominem criticism. As you indicate: Play the ball, not the man.

If the editors of the journal are respectable people, they will recognise an unfair review and appraise it for what it is. Furthermore, I hope you can respond to the reviewer's comments in a way that is "mature" and appropriate.

Yes I agree with you. The reviewers should not give comments in harsh unpleasant words.

The fact that a researcher submitted his work for review is an acknowledgment of his respect for his colleagues. He deserves a professional and civilized analysis of his work. He deserves nothing less. I'm pretty sure that the true meaning of "constructive criticism" or "constructive dissection" of a research work still rings true among majority of reviewers.

Javier, I fully agree with you. I would suggest to write to the editor of the Journal underlying the unprofessional and offensive behavior. Asking for a "not biased review" and complying about the behavior of the editor him/herself chi should have not forward the bad comments to you. This is part of the job they should do for the journal.

Dear Gianluca, I fully agree with you.

Caro Gianluca, sono pienamente d'accordo con te.

Leonardo

Ethics are easily defined or created by agreement about what is an ethical behavior and what is not.

Ethics comes from community agreement. But enforcement comes from specific communities. This generally occurs in stages. It is likely that some papers already have ethical guidelines for reviewers. It is also likely that different guidelines are different. However, I suspect most published guidelines are written to protect the publication, not the researcher.

The Nature journal has a lot of published recommendations about reviewing and at least one specifically about your situation. https://www.nature.com/articles/nmeth.2686

I suggest you begin by checking the guidelines of the paper your research was submitted to. If none exist, or are not to a good standard, you might reply to the journal while referencing the Nature documents or others.

I totally agree with your point. Of course, I believe that the editor-in-chief of the journal should provide the referees and the authors with due regard to the principles of scientific ethics in the refereeing of the article if the ethical ethics of the referee arises. In similar cases, I felt that the referees failed to adhere to the principles of scientific ethics and did not sufficiently respect the author's personality. However, some magazines may not pay enough attention to their workload.

Javier Miranda - The primary role of peer-reviewer is to present a report covering areas of strengths and weaknesses in the submitted manuscript. The critical analysis should be handled by the peer-reviewers and presented in a way that is ethical, professional and educational. We always have to remember that the authors are our colleagues, and we should appreciate their efforts and work. An author may be a PhD student who has been working on the project for 3-4 days. Therefore, peer reviewers should show their critical skills and highlight strengths and weaknesses. However, they should be professional and able to provide balanced and constructive feedback.

Among the methods, they may use - ask questions to authors, rather than become judgemental, ask for more information, or justification, highlight areas of contradictions in the manuscript that needs the authors' attention, suggest ways for improvement, by specific and descriptive but focused. Be constructive in what you state in the peer-review report.

For papers with problems that cannot be fixed, be specific and professional. These papers cannot be amended and will be rejected. However, explain to the authors and the editor the justification for such a decision. Provide evidence from the literature if needed. Always be objective and aware of the journal's guidelines to authors and reviewers.

Samy Azer. You have some good suggestions and advice, but I think you mean that a PhD student might have been working on a project for 3-4 years, not 3-4 days, yes?

What you say seems obvious.

Don't take such tense personally, even though you feel offended.

This person probably didn't have the chance to be educated as you are.

Kind regards,

Erwin

Dear Javier Miranda;

I'm sorry to hear about your experience. I believe that a good ethical behavior leads to a better science community, where everyone is valued and everyone is responsible for the work they do. Reviewers should understand their responsibilities related to confidentiality of the process and ownership of the review papers based on the model of peer review being used.

I don't think anyone deserves to be treated with disrespect. Even more incredible is that this type of situation happens (relatively often) in academic world. I'm sorry for what happened to you.

Javier, in the case you present, the editor handling the review process should be held accountable for his/her lack of oversight. Clearly, personal attacks are not permitted in an academic review process. I would suggest contacting the Editor in Chief of the journal and asking that your particular review process be examined and disciplinary action taken against the incompetent editor. There are new journals that only permit open refereeing where a referee cannot hide in anonymity but is obliged to leave their name and their review (as well your rebuttal) open to the public. The European Geosciences Union has journals of this type.

I believe that the whole process of academic publishing and peer review needs urgent reform. One of the original ideas behind ResearchGate was to provide open peer review for authors not from one, two, or even three possibly very biased or even malicious persons, but instead from many reviews from the whole community. The problem is that most of the directors of scientific institutions are old people who were taught to believe that a scientific work can only have merit if it is published in a high impact journal. We give our work and lots of money to these journals only to boost our ego of having published in a "prestigious" journal but in fact it means very little since the work was reviewed by only one, two, or three often incompetent and often malicious reviewers.

Ethics in peer-review must be the first item to be assured, at the same level as ethics in publication. Non polite reviews should just not be accepted. A non polite review is nearly as bad as a breach of ethics along the text of a submitted paper. The whole scientific community should rise against the loosing of ethics in publications. May be this would lead to a decrease in the rate of publications, but ethics preservation at all levels should be kept ahead of "publication efficiency". It is not simple to do, but it should be done. There is no good science without ethics, at all its levels, including peer-review.

Some journals provide a link on the front page of each of their articles that allows open access to all of the reviews that had been submitted for each particular article.

I think it's a good idea. It not only provides a sense of the trajectory of an article (e.g., Did it need to pass through several drafts until the reviewers were satisfied, and why?), but also, I suspect, makes reviewers more thoughtful and responsible - and probably more courteous - in what they do.

Ah, I've just realised that I have essentially repeated a post from Karo Michaelian a few posts above here. Karo, I hope I don't come across as having plagiarised your idea. I hope I can be seen as supporting what you wrote, which I agree with in totality.

Miguel A. Reis says, correctly, "There is no good science without ethics, at all its levels, including peer-review."

In his original question Javier Miranda referred to an inappropriate (unethical!) "response made by a reviewer to [his] manuscript submitted to an indexed journal". I have recently had more than one similar experiences. This is a shock for us because we expect proper scientific standards to be maintained in scientific discourse! And we are upset when this fails to happen.

My response was, first, to appeal to the Editor using the journal appeal mechanism. When that failed (as expected) I submitted to different journals (which behaved properly).

I think that Editors should take their role more seriously. Their job is to do their best to uphold the integrity of the peer-review process. But note that there exists no fool-proof process: science is a human activity, and we limp from error to error. We do our best, and sigh at our shortcomings.

As evaluators of research papers that option to be published in scientific and indexed journals, we should never give an opinion about the authors, much less in a derogatory tone. Even when the publication of a work is rejected, we must be respectful and formative indicating the failures, errors, omissions and possible manipulations in the data.