A comment on the AAM track.

LETTER

I am one of those mBio editors who feel uncomfortable with the American Academy of Microbiology (AAM) track (1), and in fact, I never did use it in my (few) submissions to the journal. My major reason for not electing the AAM track is that asking for reviews from known peers would undoubtedly put undue stress on them, eventually leading them either to downsize the nature and/or extent of their critiques or, sometimes, to do just the opposite, i.e., be excessively critical to show impartiality. In both cases, the reviewing outcome is going to be unfair.

It should be noted that particularly in specialized fields where authoritative peer reviewers are relatively few, peers are not only known and often have met but can have a friendship with the author. Although friends are supposed to be those who, by definition, tell you what they really think, it is my experience of more than 40 years of experimental research and publications that friendship and truth do rarely match in competitive science.

This being said, I agree upon the change introduced in the AAM track, i.e., disclosing the reviewers’ identity. As stated (1), this change could contribute to transparency and decrease the number of AAM track submissions, which I think is a good thing for the future of mBio.