Blogger Michael Eisen at It Is Not Junk blog noted that the current peer review system is plagued with problems, including domination by a few gate-keeper journals, overly lengthy, conservative and intrusive reviews, and failure to ensure that high-quality science gets published, but fraudulent or otherwise "flawed" science does not. He advocates that pre-review system in which an assigned editor, who would make a first assessment as to the suitability for publication, and if it passes the screen, it then gets sent to peer reviewers, who assess the technical validity of the paper and the intended audience. S. Pelech doubts that with over a million scientific publications appearing annually from thousands of scientific journals world-wide, that "a handful of journals are considered the "gatekeepers of success in science." He also finds the concept that a scientific paper should be pre-reviewed by a full-time journal editor disturbing as individuals in these positions often have much less actual research experience and are probably less informed about advancements in specialized fields. Read More...

Tags: Peer Review

Blogger Alan Marnett at Benchfly stated that it's time to start thinking about the "impending death of scientific journals" and just what kind of "fast-paced, technologically savvy" system might suitably replace them. He suggested not to obliterate the scientific journal itself, but to change the way it is constructed and presented, using modern technologies and solicitation of feedback could come from a large online community. In a Benchfly poll, 31 percent of respondents indicated that they think journals will no longer be the primary mode for scientific publication in the next 10 years. S. Pelech reveals that Kinexus Bioinformatics Corporation plans to to launch Kinetica Online, as an open-access, meta-website dedicated to supporting cell signaling research. He also suggests that for laboratories in academic settings, it should become feasible for the universities to host open-access websites that allows for the dissemination of results from their faculties. Read More...

Tags: Publication, Scientific journals

Elizabeth Blackburn at the University of California, San Francisco started a company that will measure telomere shortness to predict risk for conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's, certain cancers, and even for mortality. S. Pelech outlines the problems associated with interpretation of what a shortened telomer means and suggests that it would be naive to relate telomere length to one's current health status. It would make a lot more sense to focus on better immediate acute biomarkers of pathology such as stress protein levels and protein phosphorylation. Read More...

Tags: Teleomeres, Elizabeth Blackburn