（漢英對(duì)照）
The politics of publication
PETER A. LAWRENCE
Peter Lawrence is at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge CB2 2QH, UK. e-mail: pal@mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk. He has edited the journal Development since 1976, served on the editorial board of Cell and EMBO J., authored many papers and reviewed many more.
Authors, reviewers and editors must act to protect the quality of research.
Listen. All over the world scientists are fretting. It is night in London and Deborah Dormouse is unable to sleep. She can't decide whether, after four weeks of anxious waiting, it would be counterproductive to call a Nature editor about her manuscript. In the sunlight in Sydney, Wayne Wombat is furious that his student's article was rejected by Science and is taking revenge on similar work he is reviewing for Cell. In San Diego, Melissa Mariposa reads that her article submitted to Current Biology will be reconsidered, but only if it is cut in half. Against her better judgement, she steels herself to throw out some key data and oversimplify the conclusions — her postdoc needs this journal on his CV or he will lose a point in the Spanish league, and that job in Madrid will go instead to Mar Maradona.
The decision about publication of a paper is the result of interaction between authors, editors and reviewers. Scientists are increasingly desperate to publish in a few top journals and are wasting time and energy manipulating their manuscripts and courting editors. As a result, the objective presentation of work, the accessibility of articles and the quality of research itself are being compromised.
One main cause
These trends are fuelled by the increasing pressure in biomedical science to publish in the leading journals. Even our language reflects this obsession — we say that Jim Jargon did well as a graduate student because he published a "Cell paper", illustrating that we now consider the journal to be more important than the scientific message. If we publish in a top journal we have arrived, if we don't we haven't.
Why has this happened? It is partly because, rather than assessing the research itself, those who distribute the money and positions now evaluate scientists by performance indicators (it is much easier to tot up some figures than to think seriously about what a person has achieved). Managers are stealing power from scientists and building an accountability culture that "aims at ever more perfect administrative control of institutional and professional life"1. The result is an "audit society"2, in which each indicator is invested with a specious accuracy and becomes an end in itself.
Evaluations of scientists depend on numbers of papers, positions in lists of authors, and journals' impact factors. In Japan, Spain and elsewhere, such assessments have reached formulaic precision. But bureaucrats are not wholly responsible for these changes — we scientists have enthusiastically colluded. What began as someone else's measure has become our (own) goal. Although there are good reasons for publishing papers where they are more likely to be read, when we give the journal priority over the science we turn ourselves into philistines in our own world.
Some scientists realize this, but why have most taken up the journal chase so enthusiastically? It has to do with both psychology and careerism. Young researchers see a paper in a good journal as their initiation into the scientific élite. The established seek publication in leading journals to certify their high opinion of themselves. All are learning that building capital in the hard currency of the audit society can be safer and easier than founding a reputation on discoveries. Another factor is that contemporary society has a craze for publicity, to which scientists are not immune. Many are gratified to find themselves or their work reported (accurately or not) in the media, and leading journals provide a route through press releases. El País, for example, usually features articles about any work by Spanish scientists published in Nature, Cell or Science.
Consequences
There are consequences for authors, editors and reviewers.
Authors have to decide when and how to write up their work. The ideal time is when a piece of research is finished and can carry a convincing message, but in reality it is often submitted at the earliest possible moment (two papers count for twice as much as one, never mind if the second paper mainly corrects errors in the first). Findings are sliced as thin as salami and submitted to different journals to produce more papers.
Work must be rushed out to minimize the danger of being scooped — top journals will not consider a paper if a similar result has appeared in a competing journal, even if the experiments have taken years and there is only a week or two of disparity. Yet it can be advantageous if rival papers are submitted at the same time, as each author can use the other paper to tempt editors into concluding that the topic is a hot one. This practice has led to many dangerous liaisons between competing groups. It is no wonder that agonizing over presentation as well as the timing of submission keeps many scientists awake at night.
Authors need to decide how to get their paper into a top journal. Can the results be hyped to make them look more topical? Are there some trendy stock phrases that can be used3? Would oversimplification add to the appeal? Could a lofty take-home message be made to fit? Can even a tenuous link to a human disease be found? (Mention of a human disease boosts the number of subsequent references to the paper and can make it more attractive to a journal.) Can the results be squeezed into a shorter format than they require? For example, can they be submitted as a brief Letter to Nature — even though a longer paper in a more specialized journal would be of greater service to readers? Letters to Nature and Reports in Science are often presented in such a compressed form with such minuscule figures that they can be hard to decipher. Supplementary online material may alleviate this problem, although readers of print editions may not find it convenient to look at, and people have concerns about the length of its electronic shelf-life.
Increasingly, such a high premium is put on presentation that the leader of a group (who has not done the experiments) writes the paper reporting work done by a junior scientist (who has). The team leader is more experienced and more able to present the work in the best possible light — and for this, a lack of knowledge of the details can be advantageous! The student or postdoc is released to go back to the bench, increasing productivity. However, she or he does not get taught how to write up results4.
Editors. It is no surprise that editors of élite journals receive many submissions. For example, Nature now receives around 9,000 manuscripts a year (double that of 10 years ago) and has to reject about 95% of biomedical papers. Development, a quality specialist journal, now rejects roughly 70%, compared with 50% in 1990. In leading journals there are too many submissions to send most out for peer review, so the editor's decision has become, quantitatively, much more important than the judgement of reviewers. Consequently, editors are courted by authors who resort to tactics such as charm offensives during "presubmission enquiries", networking at conferences and wheedling telephone calls — or pulling rank, using contacts, threatening and bullying. Group leaders can justify spending time and ingenuity on these stratagems — editors can be swayed and the rewards for success are high. Furthermore, impact factors and finance have joined forces to build up competition between top journals (Cell Press was recently sold for a great deal of money). One result is that editors are sent out to woo star scientists for their trendiest papers. These forces all combine to create an antiscientific culture in which pushiness and political skills are rewarded too much, and imaginative approaches, high-quality results and logical argument, too little.
Even experienced editors are on uncertain ground — sifting through a mass of diverse papers objectively and hurriedly is almost impossible. The advent of the Medline search and other Internet-based services has helped them, but it is still difficult to see clearly into the dark corners of specialization. Understandably insecure, editors play safe and favour the fashionable, familiar and expected over the flaky and unexpected — or original. Inevitably, mistakes are made. The original paper by Michael Berridge and Robin Irvine on phosphoinositol and signalling, which became the second most quoted article throughout the 1980s, was originally turned down by Nature. The authors fought back and it was accepted5. But when Berridge synthesized the information and added new ideas in another paper, it was rejected again by Nature, eventually published by the Biochemical Journal6 and became the fifth most quoted paper of the 1980s7.
Reviewers are, of course, authors wearing a different hat. There can be conflicts — for example, does the reviewer favour the work of a competitor and thereby endanger his or her student's career? Such opposing interests can explain why two reviewers of similar expertise sometimes present vastly different opinions about the same paper. It does not help that top journals are increasingly giving reviewers an extra task. Apart from the traditional technical and scientific assessments, where objective criteria are paramount, reviewers are now being asked to judge whether a manuscript constitutes a "Science" paper — is it sufficiently exciting to interest the "general reader"? This participation in editorial decisions gives reviewers opportunities to punish authors they do not like, settle old scores and hold up competitors. From many years of editing experience, I am persuaded that a minority of reviewers take advantage of these opportunities. Some bounce the same paper from more than one journal, making it more difficult for a less politically adept scientist to present his or her work, especially if it goes against the current grain. Objectivity is also threatened by a tacit understanding between some leading scientists: they invite each other onto committees, to conferences, nominate each other for prizes and awards, and support publication of each other's papers.
Another relatively recent phenomenon is the practice of sending papers to three reviewers. Although this is partly to ensure that at least two reviews are received, I think it is also so that the advice received cannot be a tie. Decision by vote can encourage rejected authors to make empty appeals, praising favourable reviewers, denigrating negative ones and asking for new reviewers — in the hope of getting another plus. Rejection is easier to accept if there is a thoughtful reason for it from which one can learn.
Hard-pressed editors take power from authors and hand it to reviewers in other ways. Reviewers often ask for changes and new experiments, even though they may be rather ignorant of the details and may have formed an opinion of the paper in half an hour. Nevertheless, the easiest and most commonly chosen course for the editor is to ask the authors to "satisfy" all of the reviewers, then send the revised manuscript for reassessment. If authors have well-founded disagreements with a reviewer, they find themselves in a dilemma: do they invest time in experiments they do not believe will help, do controls that few other informed people would find important, or even draw conclusions that are not theirs? If they do not, reviewer X may not be appeased and the editor would be unswayable. In former days, these authors could have solved their problems by sending their papers elsewhere, but now that the journal itself has become so important to their careers, they feel forced to comply. In this situation the reviewers can become more like censors than assessors. I have seen many examples of this and, sometimes, months of research time have been misspent, even to the extent that an author can be scooped in the interim.
Faster publication times, materials-transfer agreements and threats of legal action to force journals to identify reviewers have added to the pressure. In the case of faster publication times, journals can offer chosen authors fast-track treatment and advanced online publication, helping them to steal a march on competitors. A reviewer can use information and may have time to modify his or her own manuscript and even publish it elsewhere first. Temptation and suspicion have heated up enough to melt the wall of confidentiality that reviewers owe to authors. Still, I believe there is genuine confusion about the level of confidentiality that reviewers should adopt. Is the reviewer obliged not to reveal even the existence of a submitted manuscript to anyone? I think so, but do we all concur? Should a reviewer agree to assess a paper that he or she has already advised another journal to reject? I think not, but this happens frequently.
Cures?
It is no wonder that authors are becoming paranoid. Roughly half of the submission letters I now receive request me not to use certain reviewers, often because of "conflicts of interest". Behind this phrase lurks the fear of misuse of the information in the paper — although admittedly it is sometimes a ploy to avoid the sharp-eyed and critical.
My main purpose here is consciousness raising. But we can all start to improve things by toning down our obsession with the journal. The most effective change by far would be if the organizations that award grants and manage research programmes were to place much less trust in a quantitative audit that reeks of false precision. Such organizations have the big advantage of hindsight — unlike editors and reviewers at the time of submission, they can ask themselves if key papers published by the candidate are illuminating, have proved influential and whether their main results have been confirmed by others.
Authors can help to break up the cult of the journal. One way is to set up mutually supportive alliances, as has been done for the field of cell signalling http://www.signaling-gateway.org). If established authors start to publish selectively in open-access websites and in specialized journals when appropriate, a better example would be set for younger scientists. This would reduce the enormous pressure on the leading journals, which then could again begin to publish more comprehensible papers that tell a complete story, perhaps even bringing the 'general reader' back to life.
I am not suggesting sweeping changes to the review process. For example, I don't think a change to open peer-reviewing (as discussed in ref. 8) will help, mainly because younger reviewers would be intimidated and the political power of the established would be increased. One change which would now be feasible through online submission of two forms of the manuscript, would be to deny the reviewers authors' names. It is crucial that the responsibilities and duties of reviewers are clarified and made more public. For example, they could be better educated about confidentiality by the journal, along the lines of Nature's advice http://www.nature.com/nature/submit/policies/index.html#8).
Professional editors need to be more aware of these dangers. They now have to make difficult decisions that are of vital importance to authors, far beyond the publication or not of a particular paper, as well as meeting rejection rates as high as 95%. They have — perhaps understandably — been relinquishing too many of their responsibilities to reviewers. It does not help that editors may not have had enough experience of research and lack hands-on knowledge, particularly outside one narrow subject area. They need to act now to reinstate authors' rights. Once a decision has been made to publish in principle, they should never simply demand in a blanket sense that authors satisfy reviewers X, Y and Z, but should interpret referees' advice and be willing to accept reasoned discussion about aspects of the referees' criticisms. Editors should then be in a decision to adjudicate among themselves or to seek further opinion from an expert who is given both sides of the argument. Editors should appreciate that, unlike the authors whose names are out there, anonymous reviewers will not be held to account if they make a mistake. It should always be remembered that the proper role of the reviewer is to advise the editor, not to gain control over the author's paper.
Editors should also take a more long-term and broader view about what is of interest, and act positively to encourage new approaches and topics in an affirmative action against fashion.It is fashion that makes looking for new members of signalling pathways into the hottest of current topics, which can lead to unnecessary duplication. Just one example — no less than four independent studies on the same new gene (pygopus), each describing years of careful and hard work by several people, have just been published (see ref. 9 and references therein).
As authors, we have abandoned the attempt to make our experimental papers accessible or comprehensible to the nonspecialist, often writing undiluted mixtures of hype and jargon. This is partly because we are writing in shorthand to fit our papers into a small space, and partly because we are trying to con the editors. But why not write papers that are readable, reduce the number of acronyms and gobbledeegook, and put methodological details in supplementary material on the web?
It is we older, well-established scientists who have to act to change things. We should make these points on committees for grants and jobs, and should not be so desperate to push our papers into the leading journals. We cannot expect younger scientists to endanger their future by making sacrifices for the common good, at least not before we do.
(Nature, 422, p259. 20 March 2003)
聽(tīng)著：世界各地有很多科學(xué)家都如生活煉獄之中，倍受煎熬。倫敦已是深夜， Deborah Dormouse依然輾轉(zhuǎn)難眠。她已經(jīng)焦急地等待了4周，她不知道如果她打電話給 《自然》雜志的編輯詢問(wèn)她的論文處理情況是否會(huì)產(chǎn)生負(fù)效應(yīng)。在陽(yáng)光燦爛的悉尼， Wayne Wombat正在大發(fā)雷霆，因?yàn)樗膶W(xué)生的論文被《科學(xué)》雜志拒絕了，《細(xì)胞》雜 志正在請(qǐng)他審閱一篇內(nèi)容相似的論文，他要對(duì)之實(shí)施報(bào)復(fù)。在舊金山，Melissa Mariposa閱知她遞交給《當(dāng)代生物學(xué)》的論文必須縮減一半后才能被重新考慮。她不得 不忍痛刪除一些關(guān)鍵數(shù)據(jù)，并且極端簡(jiǎn)化結(jié)果，因?yàn)樗牟┦亢笮枰獙⑦@一期刊列在他 的簡(jiǎn)歷上，否則他就得不到西班牙馬德里的一個(gè)工作。
一篇論文是否能發(fā)表取決于作者、編輯和審稿人之間的相互作用。越來(lái)越多科學(xué)家們 正在孤注一擲地只將論文投遞到少數(shù)幾個(gè)頂尖的期刊，然后又浪費(fèi)時(shí)間和精力去處理論 文，討好編輯。這種做法最終危害了論文發(fā)表的目的、文章的可獲得性和研究質(zhì)量本身。
一個(gè)主要原因
在生物醫(yī)學(xué)科學(xué)領(lǐng)域，日益加大的壓力迫使科學(xué)家們將論文發(fā)表在頂級(jí)期刊上，更是 助長(zhǎng)了這種趨勢(shì)。甚至在我們的日常言語(yǔ)里也反映出對(duì)頂級(jí)期刊的迷戀 - 我們說(shuō)某人 是一位好研究生，是因?yàn)樗凇都?xì)胞》上發(fā)表了一篇論文。這說(shuō)明我們認(rèn)為期刊比科學(xué) 信息本身更重要性。這意味著如果我們?cè)陧敿馄诳?/SPAN>發(fā)表論文，我們的目標(biāo)就達(dá)到了， 否則我們就失敗了。
為什么會(huì)有這樣的事情發(fā)生呢？部分原因是掌握經(jīng)費(fèi)和職位分配大權(quán)的人在
評(píng)價(jià)科學(xué) 家時(shí)不是評(píng)價(jià)研究本身，而是根據(jù)“表現(xiàn)指數(shù)”來(lái)衡量，因?yàn)閷⒁恍?/SPAN>數(shù)字加起來(lái)比嚴(yán)肅 地思考一個(gè)人的成就更容易。管理者正在竊取科學(xué)家們的權(quán)力，他們營(yíng)造出“成績(jī)責(zé)任 制”文化，目的是建立最完善的行政管理體制，有效地控制研究機(jī)構(gòu)和研究人員。結(jié)果， 這使得社會(huì)成為了一個(gè)“審計(jì)社會(huì)”（Audit society）：每一項(xiàng)指標(biāo)都被精確地計(jì)算， 最后指標(biāo)成為目的本身。
在這樣的“審計(jì)社會(huì)”中，發(fā)表論文的數(shù)量、作者在名單中的排序和期刊的影響因子 成為評(píng)價(jià)科學(xué)家的依據(jù)。在日本、西班牙和世界其它地方，這種評(píng)價(jià)方式發(fā)展到成為精 確的公式化行為。但是，不能讓行政管理人員對(duì)此全部負(fù)責(zé)，很多科學(xué)家們熱情地參與 其中。從什么時(shí)候開(kāi)始一些人為的指標(biāo)成為科學(xué)工作的目標(biāo)？盡管有各種堂皇的理由說(shuō)， 將論文發(fā)表在頂尖期刊上會(huì)有更廣泛的閱讀量，但是，當(dāng)我們將期刊的重要性置于科學(xué) 本身之上時(shí)，我們就是將我們?cè)?/SPAN>自己的世界中變成了俗氣和無(wú)教養(yǎng)之輩。 (我們就是將 自己在學(xué)術(shù)界置于平庸之輩。)
一些科學(xué)家已經(jīng)意識(shí)到這個(gè)問(wèn)題，但為什么絕大多數(shù)科學(xué)家還是如此熱衷于期刊的名 望呢？這里有心理和職業(yè)兩個(gè)方面的原因。年輕的科學(xué)家們將在好期刊上發(fā)表一篇好論 文視為進(jìn)軍科學(xué)皇冠的起點(diǎn)。而已有聲望的科學(xué)家則希望在頂尖期刊上發(fā)表論文以證明 自己仍有高見(jiàn)。與在科學(xué)發(fā)現(xiàn)的王國(guó)中樹(shù)立聲望相比，所有的人都逐漸認(rèn)識(shí)到，在當(dāng)今 實(shí)實(shí)在在講求硬通貨的審計(jì)社會(huì)中聚集“資本”更為安全和容易。另外一個(gè)因素是現(xiàn)在 的社會(huì)瘋狂地追求知名度，科學(xué)家們也身不由已。許多科學(xué)家在自己的工作被媒體報(bào)道 （無(wú)論準(zhǔn)確與否）時(shí)會(huì)心存感激，而那些領(lǐng)頭的雜志也通過(guò)新聞發(fā)布來(lái)為此鋪平道路。 比如說(shuō)，西班牙的大報(bào)El Pais就經(jīng)常會(huì)對(duì)西班牙科學(xué)家在Nature，cell和Science上發(fā) 表的任何文章進(jìn)行特別報(bào)道。
后果
這對(duì)于作者、編輯和審稿人的行為帶來(lái)了一系列的后果。
作者必須決定什么時(shí)候、怎么寫他們的研究工作。寫論文的理想的時(shí)刻是在 某一研究工作告一段落，并獲得了可信服的信息之時(shí)。但是，現(xiàn)實(shí)的做法常常是在有可 能出現(xiàn)結(jié)果的最早時(shí)候就開(kāi)始寫作。結(jié)果，科學(xué)發(fā)現(xiàn)就像意大利香腸一樣被切成一片片， 然后再遞交給不同的期刊以發(fā)表更多的論文。
科學(xué)家們必須全力以赴以最快的速度做出工作，以盡量減少論文被拒的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)。頂尖期 刊絕不會(huì)考慮競(jìng)爭(zhēng)對(duì)手已經(jīng)刊登過(guò)的結(jié)果相似的論文，即使這項(xiàng)研究已經(jīng)花費(fèi)數(shù)年時(shí)間 而遞交的時(shí)間只相差一周或二周。當(dāng)然，如果兩篇競(jìng)爭(zhēng)性的文章同時(shí)遞交給期刊也有好 處，每位作者都會(huì)用另外一篇論文來(lái)引起編輯的注意，認(rèn)為他們的研究課題是熱門的。 毫無(wú)疑問(wèn)，論文的遞交和報(bào)告讓許多科學(xué)家們徹夜難眠。
作者需要決定怎樣做才能將他們的論文發(fā)表在頂尖期刊上。研究結(jié)果是否可以被炒作 到足以為話題？是否要將一個(gè)復(fù)雜的問(wèn)題超級(jí)簡(jiǎn)化以吸引人？是否可以在論文中找到一 個(gè)故弄玄虛的信息讓人們立刻記��？是否發(fā)現(xiàn)了與人類疾病有關(guān)的某個(gè)含糊不清的聯(lián)系？ （提及人類疾病往往會(huì)提高以后論文的引用數(shù)量，也使雜志顯得有吸引力。）能否將論 文的長(zhǎng)度壓縮到實(shí)際需求的更短？比如，即使論文應(yīng)該以更長(zhǎng)的形式遞交到更專業(yè)化期 刊上，為讀者提供更多些的服務(wù)。是否可以將它壓縮成更短的形式而遞交到Nature雜志？ Nature上的短文和Science上的報(bào)告部分常常壓縮很大，只有很不顯眼的示意圖，使得 其內(nèi)容難以被讀者***。互聯(lián)網(wǎng)上的補(bǔ)充材料也許可以緩解這一問(wèn)題，但是印刷版的讀 者會(huì)覺(jué)得上網(wǎng)不是那么方便，而它們的電子版的上架時(shí)間也讓人擔(dān)心。
這樣，越來(lái)越多的研究小組負(fù)責(zé)人開(kāi)始親自執(zhí)筆寫論文，他們或許并沒(méi)參與實(shí)驗(yàn)，而 實(shí)驗(yàn)工作主要是由初級(jí)科學(xué)家完成的。但是，研究組長(zhǎng)經(jīng)驗(yàn)豐富，知道如何以最好的方 式展示工作，也許正因如此，對(duì)實(shí)驗(yàn)細(xì)節(jié)的不了解反倒成為有利因素。學(xué)生和博士后又 回到了桌邊努力工作，增加產(chǎn)出。然而，他們卻沒(méi)有學(xué)會(huì)如何寫作研究報(bào)告。
編輯： 頂尖期刊的編輯總會(huì)收到過(guò)多的投稿。比如，《自然》雜志現(xiàn)在一年要 收到9000分左右的稿件，(這個(gè)數(shù)字是10年前的2倍)，因此不得不拒絕約95%的生物醫(yī)學(xué) 方面的論文�！栋l(fā)育生物學(xué)》是一本高質(zhì)量的專業(yè)期刊，它的拒稿率基本上是70%，而 在1990年，這一數(shù)字是50%。頂級(jí)的期刊收到太多的稿件，沒(méi)有辦法將它們都送給同行 進(jìn)行評(píng)審，因此，編輯手中的權(quán)力變得比審稿人的判斷重要得多。結(jié)果，作者們開(kāi)始用 各種手段拉攏、奉承、甚至威脅編輯。小組組長(zhǎng)能夠證明花費(fèi)時(shí)間和才智在這些策略上 是值得的，因?yàn)榫庉媯儠?huì)因此動(dòng)搖，而成功的回報(bào)非常之高。影響因子和經(jīng)濟(jì)的合力作 用在頂級(jí)期刊間建立起競(jìng)爭(zhēng)（Cell雜志最近就以極高價(jià)格被轉(zhuǎn)手）。這樣的一個(gè)結(jié)果就 是編輯甚至?xí)肭竺餍强茖W(xué)家為期刊寫最流行的論文。所有這些力量綜合在一起創(chuàng)造了 一種反科學(xué)的文化，出風(fēng)頭和***手腕會(huì)受到更高的回報(bào)，而富有想象力的方法、高質(zhì) 量的研究結(jié)果和理性的爭(zhēng)論卻變得無(wú)足輕重。
即使是經(jīng)驗(yàn)豐富的編輯也難于作出準(zhǔn)確判斷：要在一大堆各色論文中進(jìn)行客觀、快速 的篩選基本上是不可能的。以英特網(wǎng)為基礎(chǔ)的服務(wù)能夠?yàn)榫庉嬏峁┮?/SPAN>些幫助，但是，在 專業(yè)化的黑暗角落中看清實(shí)質(zhì)問(wèn)題仍然是困難重重。為了安全、穩(wěn)妥起見(jiàn)，編輯們更喜 歡那些流行的、熟悉的和意料之中的結(jié)果，而不是那些看起來(lái)古怪的、意料之外的、或 者是原創(chuàng)性的結(jié)果。錯(cuò)誤因此出現(xiàn)。Michael Berridge和 Robin Irvine一篇有關(guān)磷酸 肌苷和信號(hào)的原始性論文，在20世紀(jì)80年代成為引用率第二高的論文，但最初《自然》 雜志拒絕了這篇論文。作者奮起反抗，最終被接受。但是，當(dāng)Berridge將一些信息綜合 起來(lái)，再加上一些新觀點(diǎn)形成另一篇論文時(shí)，他再次遭到《自然》雜志的拒絕，盡管最后這篇論文在《生物化學(xué)》雜志上發(fā)表，在80年代引用率最高的論文中排名第5位。
審稿人：審稿人當(dāng)然也是論文作者，只是戴上了不同的帽子。沖突因此不可避免， 比如，審稿人會(huì)支持競(jìng)爭(zhēng)者的工作而讓自己學(xué)生的職業(yè)處于危險(xiǎn)境之中嗎？這種利益的 沖突可以解釋為什么同一領(lǐng)域的兩位審稿人對(duì)同一篇文的評(píng)價(jià)有天壤之差。使得事情 更糟的是，頂尖期刊的編輯還會(huì)給審稿人額外的任務(wù)。在傳統(tǒng)的科學(xué)和技術(shù)的評(píng)價(jià)中， 客觀標(biāo)準(zhǔn)是至高無(wú)上的，除此之外，審稿人現(xiàn)在被要求對(duì)一篇論文是否算得上是一篇可 以發(fā)表在“《科學(xué)》”期刊的論文，即是否是讓“大多數(shù)讀者有興趣”的論文作出判斷。 讓審稿人參與到編輯決策過(guò)程中的做法，給審稿人有機(jī)會(huì)去損害他們所不喜歡的作者、 了結(jié)宿怨、拖延競(jìng)爭(zhēng)對(duì)手的工作。從我多年的編輯經(jīng)歷來(lái)看，的確有少數(shù)的審稿人把握了這種機(jī)會(huì)。還有一些審稿人讓論文在好幾個(gè)期刊之間轉(zhuǎn)來(lái)，讓那些缺乏***手腕的科 學(xué)家發(fā)表工作尤為困難，尤其是在研究結(jié)果與現(xiàn)有知識(shí)不同時(shí)。一些占主導(dǎo)地位的科學(xué) 家們彼此間達(dá)成默契：他們互相邀請(qǐng)對(duì)方加入委員會(huì)，在會(huì)議上相互提名對(duì)方獲獎(jiǎng)，支 持對(duì)方論文的發(fā)表等，科學(xué)的客觀性因此受到了威脅。
最近另外一個(gè)相關(guān)的現(xiàn)象是將論文送給三位審稿人評(píng)審。盡管這樣做部分是為了保證 至少會(huì)收到兩份評(píng)審意見(jiàn)，但我認(rèn)為這樣做主要是為了保證不至于得到平局。投票做出 的決定鼓勵(lì)被拒絕的作者做空洞的申訴，贊揚(yáng)支持他們的審稿人，詆毀持負(fù)面意見(jiàn)的審 稿人，并要求新的審稿人，以期得到新的支持。
重壓之下，編輯將作者的權(quán)力以另一種方式交給評(píng)審人。即使審稿人可能忽略了相當(dāng) 的細(xì)節(jié)，并且可能是在半個(gè)小時(shí)內(nèi)形成對(duì)一篇論文的意見(jiàn)，但他們通�？傄笞髡哌M(jìn)行 修改或做新的實(shí)驗(yàn)。然而，對(duì)編輯來(lái)說(shuō)最容易和最常見(jiàn)的選擇就是讓作者滿足所有的審 稿人，再將修改后的論文送給他們重新評(píng)審。如果作者有充足的理由不同意審稿人的意 見(jiàn)，那么他就會(huì)處于兩難境地：他們要么是花時(shí)間做他們認(rèn)為很可能是無(wú)益的實(shí)驗(yàn)，或 者得出并不是他們自己的結(jié)果所支持的結(jié)論。如果他們不這樣做，那么不知名的審稿人 的不滿沒(méi)有得到平息，編輯將堅(jiān)持原來(lái)的觀點(diǎn)。以前，這些作者會(huì)將他們的論文到處發(fā) 送，但是現(xiàn)在期刊變得如此重要足以影響他們的職業(yè)生涯，他們不得不屈從。在這種情 形下，審稿人更像是一位檢查官而不是評(píng)價(jià)人。這種情況我見(jiàn)得太多，有時(shí)，研究人員< 會(huì)因此浪費(fèi)數(shù)月的研究時(shí)間，而其間還有可能被別人搶先發(fā)表了論文。
更快的發(fā)表時(shí)間、材料交換的協(xié)議，以及被威脅告上法庭迫使期刊公開(kāi)審稿人的名字， 各種壓力在不斷增加。因此出現(xiàn)為了更快的出版時(shí)間，一些期刊為某些特選的作者提供 綠色通道，提前在網(wǎng)上發(fā)表論文，幫助他們?cè)跁r(shí)間的競(jìng)爭(zhēng)中搶先一步，擊敗競(jìng)爭(zhēng)對(duì)手。 而一些審稿人可能利用他所審論文的信息，拖延別人的時(shí)間來(lái)修改自己的論文，甚至在 別處搶先發(fā)表自己的論文。誘惑和懷疑堆積起來(lái)，融化了審稿人本來(lái)就應(yīng)該使論文作者 對(duì)之加以信任的厚墻。我相信審稿人對(duì)自己應(yīng)該采取的保密程度的理解存在真正的混亂。 審稿人是否應(yīng)該遵從不向任何人透露一份稿件存在的保密原則？我認(rèn)為應(yīng)該，但我們是 否都遵從了呢？審稿人是否應(yīng)該同意審閱一份自己已經(jīng)建議另一份期刊拒收的稿件的要 求呢？我認(rèn)為他不應(yīng)該同意，但這種事情卻時(shí)常發(fā)生。
對(duì)癥下藥
毫不奇怪，作者正變得越來(lái)越敏感而多疑。在我所收到的論文中，大約有一半的作者 要求不要將論文送交某審稿人，主要原因是“利益沖突”。但潛詞卻是擔(dān)心論文中的信 息被誤用，實(shí)際上他們也承認(rèn)有時(shí)是為了避開(kāi)嚴(yán)厲的眼睛和批評(píng)。
我此處的主要目的是提高大家對(duì)現(xiàn)狀的認(rèn)識(shí)。不過(guò)，我們可以開(kāi)始共同努力來(lái)改進(jìn)局 面，緩和對(duì)期刊的迷信。而最有效的變化是管理機(jī)構(gòu)在決定經(jīng)費(fèi)和項(xiàng)目時(shí)不要再相信那 些充滿錯(cuò)誤的審計(jì)數(shù)據(jù)。與收到稿件的編輯和審稿人相比，這些機(jī)構(gòu)具有事后諸葛亮更 全面認(rèn)識(shí)事情的機(jī)會(huì)。他們可以自問(wèn)，項(xiàng)目候選人所發(fā)表的關(guān)鍵性論文是否具有科學(xué)上 的啟發(fā)性？是否被證明具有影響力，其主要結(jié)果是否已被其他人證實(shí)？
作者也有助于打破對(duì)期刊的頂禮膜拜。方法之一就是建立互相支持的聯(lián)盟，比如在細(xì) 胞信號(hào)傳導(dǎo)領(lǐng)域所作的那樣http://www.signaling-gateway.org）。如果已有建樹(shù)的 科學(xué)家推動(dòng)將論文恰當(dāng)?shù)匕l(fā)表開(kāi)放式網(wǎng)站上或?qū)I(yè)化的期刊上（而不是像Nature 或Science這樣的非專業(yè)期刊上），就將為年輕的科學(xué)家們樹(shù)立一個(gè)好榜樣。這樣也會(huì) 減輕頂級(jí)期刊面臨的巨大壓力，從而使得這些期刊能夠開(kāi)始發(fā)表更完整的論文，方便讀 者閱讀理解，從而也真正挽回“一般讀者”。
我并不建議大刀闊斧地改革審稿過(guò)程。比如，我并不認(rèn)為開(kāi)放的評(píng)審會(huì)有什么幫助， 主要原因是年輕的審稿人會(huì)受到威脅，而已有建樹(shù)的科學(xué)家的影響力會(huì)更為增強(qiáng)。一個(gè) 可行的措施是在網(wǎng)上遞交兩份論文，使得審稿人不知道作者的名字。但關(guān)鍵問(wèn)題是要明 確審稿人的責(zé)任和義務(wù)，并公諸于眾。
專業(yè)的編輯更要明白這些危險(xiǎn)。他們不得不艱難地做出對(duì)作者至關(guān)重要的決定，在拒 稿率高達(dá)95%的情況下，做出這種決定尤為不易�？梢岳斫獾氖�，也許編輯們已經(jīng)將許 多本來(lái)屬于他們的責(zé)任推給了審稿人。編輯們也許沒(méi)有足夠?qū)?/SPAN>業(yè)研究背景、并缺乏第一 手知識(shí)，特別是某一狹窄領(lǐng)域的知識(shí)，但這種推委于審稿人的做法是無(wú)濟(jì)于事的。編輯 們應(yīng)該立即行動(dòng)起來(lái)，重新確立作者的權(quán)利。一旦決定發(fā)表一篇論文，編輯絕不能簡(jiǎn)單 地要求作者滿足X、Y、Z審稿人的意見(jiàn)，而是解釋審稿人的建議，并樂(lè)意接受理性的批 評(píng)和討論。編輯們應(yīng)該在自己之間做出決定，或者在給予雙方意見(jiàn)的前提下尋找進(jìn)一步 的專家意見(jiàn)。編輯應(yīng)該充分意識(shí)到，與署名的作者不同的是，匿名的審稿人不會(huì)為自己 的錯(cuò)誤負(fù)責(zé)。編輯應(yīng)該始終牢記的是：審稿人的作用是向編輯提出建議，而不是獲得作 者論文的任何控制權(quán)。
在關(guān)于學(xué)術(shù)重要性的問(wèn)題上，編輯們應(yīng)該具有更為長(zhǎng)期和寬闊的眼界，并且通過(guò)對(duì)與 潮流不一致的研究?jī)?nèi)容的肯定性行為，來(lái)積極正面地鼓勵(lì)新穎的方法和課題。潮流導(dǎo)致 尋求新的細(xì)胞信號(hào)傳導(dǎo)成為目前最流行的研究論題，這會(huì)造成了不必要的重復(fù)性工作。 一個(gè)不幸的例子是，最近發(fā)表的四篇獨(dú)立研究論文，就是關(guān)于一個(gè)相同的新基因 （pygopus基因）的重復(fù)工作，每一篇論文都紀(jì)錄了多人在數(shù)年里的細(xì)致和艱苦的工作。
作為作者，我們放棄了讓非專業(yè)人士也能閱讀和接觸我們論文的努力，文章中夾雜著 泡沫和術(shù)語(yǔ)。部分原因是我們以速記的方法記錄我們的工作，讓論文可以放入狹小的版 面。但是，為什么不讓文章更有可讀性，減少首字母的縮寫和浮夸的語(yǔ)言，將詳細(xì)的方 法和補(bǔ)充材料放到網(wǎng)上呢？
現(xiàn)在是我們這些年紀(jì)大的、已有建樹(shù)的科學(xué)家們行動(dòng)起來(lái)改變現(xiàn)狀的時(shí)候。在有關(guān)經(jīng) 費(fèi)和工作職位的委員會(huì)上，我們應(yīng)該確立重要的原則，不要再如此絕望地一味迫使論文 發(fā)表在頂級(jí)期刊上。我們不應(yīng)該期望年輕的科學(xué)家們?yōu)榱丝?/SPAN>學(xué)界共同的利益而冒著失去 個(gè)人前途的危險(xiǎn)去呼吁變革，至少我們不應(yīng)該讓他們?cè)谖覀冎盃奚约骸?/SPAN>