{"id":644,"date":"2013-10-02T15:43:39","date_gmt":"2013-10-02T18:43:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.scielo.org\/en\/?p=644"},"modified":"2016-01-15T15:39:49","modified_gmt":"2016-01-15T17:39:49","slug":"interview-with-janet-seggie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.scielo.org\/en\/2013\/10\/02\/interview-with-janet-seggie\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Janet Seggie"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Janet<\/a>

Janet Seggie<\/p><\/div>\n

What does the future of peer review looks like? Since the main platform of scholarly publishing has changed from printed to on line, researchers have been challenged to adapt to a faster, more demanding and interactive way to assess the quality and originality of papers submitted to publication. Janet Seggie, Editor-in-Chief of Health and Medical Publishing Group and Editor of the South African Medical Journal, will address the trends in peer review worldwide and in South Africa, which SciELO national collection has recently achieved certification.<\/p>\n

Janet Seggie, graduated Bachelor of Science, MD, Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (London), qualified MBChB (Birm) in 1972 and Specialized in Internal Medicine and Nephrology. Consultant Physician and Professor of Medicine, and Assistant Dean: Undergraduate Education, at Groote Schuur Hospital\/Faculty of Health Sciences: University of Cape Town, until retirement in 2012. Served as a Member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Continuing Medical Education (CME) and, as requested, as reviewer for Medical Education and Medical Teacher and the South African Medical Journal.<\/p>\n

Upon retiring from clinical practice, assumed the role of Editor-in-Chief of Health and Medical Publishing Group and Editor of the South African Medical Journal.<\/p>\n

1. The peer review process is a specialized and valuable work that is discarded after a paper is accepted for publication. There have been recently published studies showing that all actors in the publishing process would benefit from an open peer review, i.e. publishing reviewers comments along with the paper. What is your opinion about that?<\/p>\n

Certainly authors seem to prefer open peer review but one has to question whether this might be sustainable in a small country such as South Africa where the SA journals rely perforce principally on a relatively small population of academics affiliated to a small number of academic institutions (viz. 8 medical schools in the case of the SAMJ). My view is that while some colleagues might have no objection, others would prefer to remain anonymous regarding publishing reviewers comments along with the paper.<\/b><\/p>\n

This is not to say that one does not support the \u201copen\u201d process. The BMJ has provided the evidence that this is sustainable, indeed, preferable and have the undertaken the research to confirm that the quality of review does not suffer and may in fact be enhanced.<\/b><\/p>\n

Post-publication review \u2013 which is what, I think, is intimated, within this question – \u00a0would, in the words of Richard Horton, facilitate \u201cmake continuous but constructive <\/b>criticism of research a new norm of\u00a0 science\u201d (Horton 2011).<\/b><\/p>\n

2. Some authors advocate that peer review might prevent \u2013 or delay \u2013 the publication of relevant work. Do you believe that post-published review or \u201ctrial by twitter\u201d may actually work?<\/p>\n

The problem with the realm of peer review is that it is poorly researched. <\/b><\/p>\n

What post-publication peer review does promise is the establishment of a virtual <\/i>journal club encouraging colleagues within a specific field of science to converse with one another and permit the constructive criticism (to which Horton alludes \u2013 see above) to take place. <\/b><\/p>\n

Journallab.com\u00a0<\/b>appears to offer something of the kind and would mitigate the flaws in pre-publication peer review by:<\/b>
\n\"journal_lab\"<\/p>\n