I agree with Herbert that a pre-print setup is one way to establish priority and get useful comments for an author. 
And I know this has been discussed before, but another way is to remove the anonymous aspect of the review, as this would achieve the same as the community pre-print distribution (at least in many ways). 
I would be happy to give my name when reviewing, as I feel it is my job to improve the paper, and I can still face my colleagues after the exercise. 
cheers, tom


Tom Peat
Biophysics Group
CSIRO, CMSE
343 Royal Parade
Parkville, VIC, 3052
+613 9662 7304
+614 57 539 419
[log in to unmask]
________________________________________
From: CCP4 bulletin board [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Herbert J. Bernstein [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, April 04, 2012 4:33 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ccp4bb] very informative - Trends in Data Fabrication

Dear Colleagues,

   One thing that would help is avoiding misappropriated priority of
research
results would be to join the math and physics community in their robust
use of open-access
preprints in arXiv.  Such public preprints establish reliable timelines
for research credit
and help to ensure timely access to new results by the entire community.
Fully peer-reviewed publications in "real" journals are still desirable,
but to make
this work, our journals would have to be willing to accept papers for
which such
a preprint system has been used.  To understand the complexity of the issue,
see

http://nanoscale.blogspot.com/2008/01/arxiv-and-publishing.html

I believe the IUCr is willing to accept papers that are posted on a
preprint server (somebody
correct me if I am wrong).

   It works for the math and physics community.  Perhaps it would work
for the
crystallographic community.


On 4/3/12 1:28 PM, Mark J van Raaij wrote:
> In fact, I would put it even stronger, if we know a referee is being dishonest, it is our duty to make sure he is removed from science, blacklisted from the journal etc.
>
> 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 19:13, Maria Sola i Vilarrubias wrote:
>
>
>> Mark,
>>
>> I know some stories (which of course I'll not post here)  from the Crystallography field and from other fields where reviewers profit from the fact that suddenly they have new, interpreted data which fits very well with their own results. Stories like to block a manuscript or ask for more results for the reviewer to be able to submit its own paper (with "new" ideas) in time, or copy a structure from the figures, or ask for experiments that only the reviewer can do so he/she is included in the paper, or submit as fast as possible in another journal with an extremely short delay of acceptance (e.g. 10 days,  without revision?, talking to the editorial board?) things like this. Well, it is not question of making a full list, here!. The whole problem comes from publishing first, from competition.
>>
>> The hope with fraud with X-ray data is that it seems to be detectable, thanks to valuable people that develop methods to detect it. But it is very difficult to demonstrate that your work, ideas or results have been copied. How do you defend from this? And how after giving to them the valuable PDB?
>>
>> Finally, how many crystallographers are in the world? 5000?  The concept of ethics can change from one place to another and, more than this, there is the fact that the reviewer is anonymous.
>>
>> I try to respond to my reviewers the best I can and I really trust their criteria, sometimes a bit too much, indeed. I think they all have done a very nice job. But some of the stories from above happened to me or close to me and I feel really insecure with the idea of sending a manuscript, the X-ray data and the PDB, altogether, to a reviewer shielded by anonymity. It's too risky: with an easy molecular replacement someone can solve a difficult structure and publish it first. And then the only thing left to the "bad reviewer" is to change the author's list! (and for the "true" author what is left is to feel like an idiot).
>>
>> In my humble opinion, we must be strict but not kill ourselves. Trust authors as we trust reviewers. Otherwise, the whole effort might be useless.
>>
>> Maria
>>
>> Dep. Structural Biology
>> IBMB-CSIC
>> Baldiri Reixach 10-12
>> 08028 BARCELONA
>> Spain
>> Tel: (+34) 93 403 4950
>> Fax: (+34) 93 403 4979
>> e-mail: [log in to unmask]
>>
>> On 3 April 2012 16:58, Mark J van Raaij<[log in to unmask]>  wrote:
>> 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/
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>>
>