JOURNAL RESPONSE-TIME - A CASE FOR MULTIPLE SUBMISSION - COMMENTARY

The reliability of peer review of scientific documents and the evaluat ive criteria scientists use to judge the work of their peers are criti cally reexamined with special attention to the consistently low levels of reliability that have been reported. Referees of grant proposals a gree much more about what is unworthy of support than about what does have scientific value. In the case of manuscript submissions this seem s to depend on whether a discipline (or subfield) is general and diffu se (e.g., cross-disciplinary physics, general fields of medicine, cult ural anthropology, social psychology) or specific and focused (e.g., n uclear physics, medical specialty areas, physical anthropology, and be havioral neuroscience). In the former there is also much more agreemen t on rejection than acceptance, but in the latter both the wide differ ential in manuscript rejection rates and the high correlation between referee recommendations and editorial decisions suggests that reviewer s and editors agree more on acceptance than on rejection. Several sugg estions are made for improving the reliability and quality of peer rev iew. Further research is needed, especially in the physical sciences.