Given how long this article is and that the relevant bit comes towards the end it might help to have a brief precis of the suggestions Trebino makes.
1. All data and parameters associated with any open publication should be available to anyone interested in it.
2. Anyone knowingly publishing a paper that clearly contradicts the work of another group should be required, also as a condition for publication, to attempt to discuss the matter with that group well before publication.
3. Journal editors should be more aware of referee conflicts of interest. Reviewers should be required to stipulate any conflict of interest in reviewing a paper, even if it’s simply that they don’t like the authors.
4. No journal editor should be allowed to edit a Comment on a paper that he allowed to be published.
5. Comments should not be required to be so short as to prevent them from making sense.
6. Crazy rules that allow logically offensive situations, like the one that called for rejecting a Comment because the Reply is unpublishable, should be deleted immediately. And Comments and Replies need not, and should not, be published together.
7. Reviewers who competently review a Comment should also review the Reply. They’re the best qualified, as they’re already familiar with the work.
8. Reviewers (of any paper) should themselves be reviewable. Currently, reviewers can say whatever they like, and there is no check on them.
9. While removing unethical reviewers would help, improving reviews of ethical ones is also important. Currently there is no compensation of any sort for reviewers and hence no encouragement to do a good job. I believe that reviewers should be paid for their services.
10. Finally, let’s face it: some journal editors are simply too arrogant or burned out and have lost sight of the goal, which is to publish only truth. Perhaps they could be required to sign a semi-annual statement that they ascribe to this key value as a condition of taking and keeping the job.
11. setting up a competent scientific misconduct commission (I believe that one already exists for medical research), to which one could take misconduct cases in all areas of science.
12. Require scientific ethics courses in grad school.
My view ...
1. As I said already I agree with this one.
2. I think this is a fairly unsupportable position, you could contradict the work of dozens of labs if you overturn a popular line of research. All Trebino seems to want to do here is to shift the onus from the position he was in to that of the other party, which might serve to retard criticism just as effectively.
3. Not liking someone isn't a conflict of interest. The better way around this , if it is required, would be to double blind the review so the reviewers not know who the authors are.
4 and 7 I'll take together. This seems like a pretty contradictory pair, if the reviewers of the comment are best qualified to review the reply then why is the editor of the original article disqualified. This should at least be consistent and require a new set of reviewers for each article.
5. This obviously makes sense, but you reach a point where a simple comment is clearly not the appropriate type of response.
6. This seems reasonable to some extent. I would go for a statement in the journal to that effect. I don't agree with the timing issue. Things are already bad enough with people failing to pick up comments and retractions, putting comments and replies together like this minimises this problem.
8. This is just thin skinned, authors can say what they like in their response to a reviewer and what they say reflects on them in the same way what the reviewer writes reflects on
them. If the editor can't appropriately judge the reviewer's comments then the problem is the editor.
9. I don't agree with this, nor do I see how it would improve things.
10. Now he's just getting personal. Also I'm not sure how he magically expects editors to be able to determine what constitutes the truth.
11. This is mostly dealt with at an institutional level although there are already bodies such as the Office of Research Integrity in the US.
12. I agree with this one, but I don't think it would necessarily solve the problem, I doubt that in most cases the people indulging in unethical behaviour don't know it.
TTFN,
WK