Pattern of Peer Review in Dermatology Domain: An Analysis of Reviewers' Profile from publons.com.

Sir,

Peer review is the cornerstone of a scientific journal. When an author sends manuscript to a journal, the editors first evaluate the manuscript. If it seems interesting, the editor sends it to the peer reviewers. These reviewers invest their time to understand the paper, provide suggestions regarding each section of the manuscript, and finally, convey the decision to the editor. This prepublication peer review helps to improve the quality of the manuscript and reputation of the journal.

After publication of the manuscript, it is exposed to the readers worldwide in an age of open access publication. These readers are also peers and can review the article. This is known as postpublication peer review.[1] Postpublication peer review can point out some lacuna that was not detected by prepublication peer review. In addition, an updated and better methodology for the study can be discussed. Hence, this would help the authors and readers for their future studies.[2]

Many of the open access journals provide a platform for postpublication peer review by allowing “comments” on online articles (available for this journal too). However, the use of that section is rare. PubMed Commons, a platform to add comments on published literature, was introduced in 2013. Unfortunately, it could get approximately 6000 comments against 28,000,000 published articles. With this experience of low input, PubMed Commons has been discontinued.[3]

With this background, we aimed to analyze the pattern of prepublication and postpublication peer review of expert Indian reviewers in dermatology domain. Due to blinding, it is very difficult to trace the reviewers and collect data from them. publons.com, a website maintained by Clarivate Analytics, provides platform for peer reviewers to get credit for both pre- and postpublication peer reviews.[4] It has a database of more than 2 million reviewers worldwide. We searched the profile of Indian peer reviewers in dermatology domain and recorded the following data from each profile: number of journals reviewed for, number of prepublication peer review, and number of postpublication peer review. The study protocol is shown in Figure 1. A total of 24 profiles were included in the study; data were analyzed by descriptive statistics, and the result is shown in Table 1. Surprisingly, among 24 profiles, no one did a postpublication peer review.

Figure 1

Procedure of data collection from publons.com

Table 1

Descriptive statistics for pattern of peer review (n=24), the digits indicate numbers

	Journal reviewed for	Prepublication peer review	Postpublication peer review
Mean	4.42	19.67	0
SD	3.63	29.33	0
Range (minimum–maximum)	1–14	1–116	0
95% CI (lower–upper)	2.88–5.95	7.28–32.05	0

SD: Standard deviation, CI: Confidence interval

In Indian medical education system, little is taught about peer reviewing. However, to become a competent expert in a research field, capabilities of critically reviewing an article are an essential skill.[5] It increases the analytic capabilities and helps to write flawless manuscript in future. Prepublication peer review request comes to limited expert reviewers known or discoverable to the journal editors. This limits the participation of young researchers in prepublication peer review. In contrast, anyone can do a postpublication peer review. Hence, this would help new researchers a lot. The basics of the peer-reviewing skills can always be learned from expert seniors. However, an online course has been developed by publons.com, which can be accessed by anyone from the website and it is free! It teaches the basic skills for peer review. Despite opting for the training, postpublication peer review should be promoted to build a pool of future peer reviewer.

Financial support and sponsorship

Nil.

Conflicts of interest

Both the authors are user of Publons. The first author received training and graduated from Publons Academy.