THE EVALUATION OF MEDICAL-RESEARCH

The peer review process for manuscripts submitted for publication to s cientific journals and for the evaluation of grant research proposals is unsatisfactory in several respects. We examine here some of the pro blems related with evaluation of scientific merit. Some criteria for r ejection are proposed, i.e. a poor preparation of the manuscript, a la ck of a distinct hypothesis, a disagreement between hypothesis and met hodology, and a deficient methodology. Other important criteria causes of rejection would be lack of originality of the hypothesis, scarce r elevance of the work, and inconsistency in the results. Conversely, in teresting work are rejected for invalid objections such as ''less than optimal design'', ''lack of experience of the group'' and some concep tual objections which are controversial. In order to improve the peer review process, we propose a larger role of editorial committees in fi nal editorial decisions, an improved mechanism for selection of review ers, and more explicit criteria for causes of rejection for reviewers and authors.