This is off course a valid point. A desperate graduate student faking a structure risks his or hers career and reputation, while an anonymous referee, "borrowing" someone else's results gets away without any risk of being caught. Besides making the name of the reviewer public, I see other options:
1) submit the coordinates and structure factors to the pdb to get a priority date as has been suggested before. Many journals require anyways a pdb code before acceptance of the paper. One could even publish this priority date in the paper in the footnote where the pdb code is mentioned. 2) require from referees a conflict-of-interest-statement that they, or close colleagues are not working on the same or a very similar structure. If an author gets the impression that he may have been scooped by a less-ethical referee, he could ask the journal to verify that the referees of his rejected paper were not involved in the accelerated publication. If it turns out that a referee has made a false statement this would clearly constitute fraud and a reason for repercussions. Herman -----Original Message----- From: CCP4 bulletin board [mailto:CCP4BB@JISCMAIL.AC.UK] On Behalf Of Jobichen Chacko Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2012 2:12 PM To: CCP4BB@JISCMAIL.AC.UK Subject: Re: [ccp4bb] Off-topic: Supplying PDB file to reviewers Dear All, Here comes the problem of blind reveiw, the authors are always at the receving end to share all there data, results and now the full cordinates to an unknown person, just trusting the journal editor. Why don't the journals think about making the name of the reviewer also public. Eventhough the persons advocated giving the cordinates, there were cases of holding the paper for reveiw for few months and finally rejecting it, while a very close article appeared as accelerated publn within few weeks of rejection of the original paper. Refer to the previous discussion on fake structure. Again it depends on how close you are towards the acceptance. Also hesitation to give away your cordiantes without any guarantee of publishing it in that journal cannot be considered as a big sin, especially if someone's graduation is depend on a single paper. Jobi On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 6:34 AM, Marc Kvansakul <m.kvansa...@latrobe.edu.au> wrote: > Dear CCP4BBlers, > > I was wondering how common it is that reviewers request to have a copy > of the PDB coordinate file for the review purpose. I have just been > asked to supply this by an editor after several weeks of review, after > one of the reviewers requested a copy. > > Not having ever been asked to do this before I feel just a tad > uncomfortable about handing this over... > > Your opinions would be greatly appreciated. > > Best wishes > > Marc > > Dr. Marc Kvansakul > Laboratory Head, NHMRC CDA Fellow > Dept. of Biochemistry| La Trobe University | Bundoora Rm 218, Phys Sci > Bld 4, Kingsbury Drive, Melbourne, 3086, Australia > T: 03 9479 2263 | F: 03 9479 2467 | E: m.kvansa...@latrobe.edu.au | >
