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Fewer Papers to ‘Subvert’ Peer Review in PNAS
As we always suspected, the peer review process for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences can allow the publication of papers that aren’t quite ‘up to scratch,’ no doubt including those that promote climate alarmism. According to this week’s Science magazine, this loophole is about to be closed – well almost:
Science 18 September 2009:
Vol. 325. no. 5947, pp. 1486 – 1487
DOI: 10.1126/science.325_1486b
News of the Week
Scientific Publishing:
PNAS Nixes Special Privileges for (Most) Papers
Sam Kean
Excerpt: The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences will discontinue an option for submitting papers that often put prestigious scientists in an awkward fix with colleagues and, at its worst, editors admit, allowed some scientists to subvert peer review and shoehorn dubious papers into print.
As a house organ, the journal has always had an idiosyncratic submissions process. National Academy members, as elite scientists, could shepherd their own work through peer review with less vetting than at other publications by “contributing” a paper. They could also “communicate” a paper on behalf of colleagues who had not been elected to the academy’s august ranks. In 1995, PNAS began allowing nonmembers to submit directly to the journal without endorsement, but it grandfathered in the two older submission routes.
In practice, “communicating” a colleague’s paper meant that a member lined up referees to review it before PNAS ever saw it. This increased the chance of a favorable reception—and looked suspiciously like cronyism to outsiders. Partly because of that perception, PNAS announced last week that it will end the “communicated by” option (known as Track I) as of 1 July 2010. The move will not affect the privileges of academy members to line up reviews before they submit their own papers to PNAS, however.