The remedy for the fact that some reviewers act unethically is not withholding coordinates and structure factors, but a more active role for the authors to denounce these possible violations and more effective investigations by the journals whose reviewers are suspected by the authors of committing these violations. I have witnessed authors being hesitant to complain about possible violations and journals not always taking complaints seriously enough.
Mark J van Raaij Laboratorio M-4 Dpto de Estructura de Macromoleculas Centro Nacional de Biotecnologia - CSIC c/Darwin 3 E-28049 Madrid, Spain tel. (+34) 91 585 4616 http://www.cnb.csic.es/~mjvanraaij On 3 Apr 2012, at 16:45, Bosch, Juergen wrote: > Hi Fred, > > I'll go public on this one. This happened to me. I will not reveal who > reviewed my paper and which paper it was only that your naive assumption > might not always be correct. I have learned my lesson and exclude people with > overlapping interests (even though they actually might be the best critical > reviewers for your work). Unfortunately you don't really have control if the > journal still decides to pick those excluded reviewers. > As a suggestion to people out there, make sure to not encrypt your comments > as pdf and PW protect them - that's how I found out about the identity of the > reviewer - as it couldn't be changed by the journal. > > I agree though that it shouldn't happen and I hope it only happens in very > few cases. > > Jürgen > > > On Apr 3, 2012, at 9:10 AM, Dyda wrote: >> >> I think the argument that this may give a competitive advantage >> to the referee who him or herself maybe working on the same thing >> should be mute, as I thought article refereeing was supposed to >> be a confidential process. Breaching this would be a serious >> ethical violation. In my experience, before agreeing to review, >> we see the abstract, I was always thought that I was supposed to >> decline if there is a potential conflict with my own work. >> Perhaps naively, but I always assumed that everyone acts like this. >> > > ...................... > Jürgen Bosch > Johns Hopkins University > Bloomberg School of Public Health > Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology > Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute > 615 North Wolfe Street, W8708 > Baltimore, MD 21205 > Office: +1-410-614-4742 > Lab: +1-410-614-4894 > Fax: +1-410-955-2926 > http://web.mac.com/bosch_lab/ > > > >
