Re-evaluation of solutions to the problem of unprofessionalism in peer review

Our recent paper (https://doi.org/10.1186/s41073-020-00096-x) reported that 43% of reviewer comment sets (n=1491) shared with authors contained at least one unprofessional comment or an incomplete, inaccurate ofunsubstantiated critique (IIUC). Publication of this work sparked an online (i.e., Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, andReddit) conversation surrounding professionalism in peer review. We collected and analyzed these social mediacomments as they offered real-time responses to our work and provided insight into the views held bycommenters and potential peer-reviewers that would be difficult to quantify using existing empirical tools (96comments from July 24th to September 3rd, 2020). Overall, 75% of comments were positive, of which 59% weresupportive and 16% shared similar personal experiences. However, a subset of negative comments emerged (22%of comments were negative and 6% were an unsubstantiated critique of the methodology), that provided potentialinsight into the reasons underlying unprofessional comments were made during the peer-review process. Thesecomments were classified into three main themes: (1) forced niceness will adversely impact the peer-review processand allow for publication of poor-quality science (5% of online comments); (2) dismissing comments as notoffensive to another person because they were not deemed personally offensive to the reader (6%); and (3) authorsbrought unprofessional comments upon themselves as they submitted substandard work (5%). Here, we argueagainst these themes as justifications for directing unprofessional comments towards authors during the peerreview process. We argue that it is possible to be both critical and professional, and that no author deserves to bethe recipient of demeaningad hominemattacks regardless of supposed provocation. Suggesting otherwise onlyserves to propagate a toxic culture within peer review. While we previously postulated that establishing a peer-reviewer code of conduct could help improve the peer-review system, we now posit that priority should be givento repairing the negative cultural zeitgeist that exists in peer-review.