Should Original Medical Research Be Posted On The Internet?

Ronald LaPorte, Ph.D. Professor of Epidemiology, University of Pittsburgh       YES Ready or not, we are entering the age of the Internet as the primary site for publishing biomedical research. It foreshadows the demise of the medical journals in the next few years and an end to their stranglehold on the flow of scientific information.   The traditional peer review process, with 12- to 16-month gaps between submission and publication, will be replaced with a much faster, more open, and more democratic system.   Medical scientists will post findings on home pages. At the same time, so-called intelligent agents will scour the Internet for research of the greatest relevance and interest, and to filter out lower-quality articles.   Today the journals have studies reviewed by as few as two authorities. With the Internet, all will have a chance to comment. Also, researchers will be able to post all their data for scrutiny, rather than a few charts selected by the journal. Dozens or even hundreds of reviewers will be more able to make comments and to detect and correct errors.   For the same reason, fraudulent research is more likely to be filtered out on the Internet than by journal review.   Findings may be posted on an ongoing basis, allowing unprecedented currency. Researchers will retain rights to data instead of assigning copyrights to journals.   Other Internet features could add to the process, such as using chat rooms to discuss the research. Some researchers may well use videos to explain their work.   We can learn from the physicists, who have moved courageously beyond print into electronic publication. Users who subscribe get a daily listing of new titles and abstracts. Theres’s no peer review. The system runs smoothly, at virtually no cost.

Frank Davidoff, M.D. Editor, Annals of Internal Medicine       NO Physicists have found it workable and reasonable to post research directly on the Internet for peer review. But physics has no immediate impact on public health.   The closer one gets to the bedside, the less appropriate it becomes to post undigested data for all to see. Research affecting clinical medicine needs more structured review.   Medical research abounds in traps and blind alleys. Much material sent to medical editors is bizarre and distorted. Sometimes the problems are glaring, and we reject the paper immediately. Other problems are more subtle, and it takes much thought and experience to dissect them.   The peer-review process slows down the release of clinical information. It can result in the suppression, at least for a time, of important innovative ideas. But medical editors strive to protect the quality of the information we present to our readers. Its’s what our readers expect. On balance, the process succeeds.   Bypassing traditional peer review via the Internet could accelerate the process, but probably at the cost of propagating much useless and incorrect data. Moreover, there may be greater temptation to publish fraudulent data and even less of a likelihood of detecting it. Good ideas will flourish and bad ones won’t. But direct Internet publishing will make the process messier.   All this notwithstanding, the Medical Journal of Australia is running a promising experiment in which selected papers are placed on its home page with the reviews and the authors’s comments. Others can then add their comments.   Once revisions are made and the paper is published, the comments are removed. This could prove to be a useful approach to extend peer review and make it more “democratic” without abandoning benefits of the traditional process.