Leprosy Mailing List – December 12 , 2023
Ref.: (LML) Rapid online preprints with open peer review
From: Joel Almeida, Mumbai, India
Dear Pieter and colleagues,
Major funding organizations including Gates Foundation, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Wellcome have emphasized their support for rapid online preprints with open peer review. Reviewers are not anonymous, nor are their comments private.
https://elifesciences.org/for-the-press/e5423e39/funders-support-use-of-reviewed-preprints-in-research-assessment
This approach makes scientific publishing more like a conversation between knowledgeable people. It helps to boost science because it reduces delays while reviewers are automatically encouraged to maintain reasonable standards of analysis and accuracy, while avoiding questionable conduct. Such improved approaches help separate fact from fiction. Facts are useful for improved outcomes among patients, persons affected, and populations affected.
Otherwise we would be stuck in the old peer review model that can sometimes resemble an echo chamber. The same old errors are repeated with increasing confidence (e.g. misrepresenting non-infectious patients as dangerous to contacts, condoning under-treatment of LL patients, confusing reduction in treatment duration with reduction in transmission etc)
The improved approach to scientific publishing is not only being practiced, but also it is gaining ground with the backing of major funders.
In HD (leprosy) there has been widespread epidemiological stagnation but with a few exemplary districts achieving rapid decline in transmission. Facts matter if we are to break out of stagnation and match the achievements of the exemplary districts. LML has a wide and knowledgeable readership. It has played, and can continue to play, an important role in separating facts from fiction.
On LML, a contribution is exposed to the scrutiny of hundreds of the world's most knowledgeable and sceptical experts. Any contrary opinions can be compared to the original contribution in terms of scientific reliability, evidence, logic and inference. Nobody from anywhere is treated as greater or lesser than anyone else. What matters here is the scientific merit of the views and evidence presented. That is why so many crucial improvements gained momentum on LML (e.g. widening clinical diagnosis beyond skin patches, joining the global community's usage of DALYs, defining elimination as interruption of transmission, pushing for improved diagnosis and treatment of LL HD, advocating multiple drugs instead of single drug use, advocating greater respect for able colleagues & effective practices in endemic countries etc.)
LML is a model that could benefit other disease control efforts too. Rapid, open, non-secretive, non-exclusive, non-partisan and therefore more scientifically reliable than many other approaches.
Best,
Joel Almeida
LML - S Deepak, B Naafs, S Noto and P Schreuder
LML blog link: http://leprosymailinglist.blogspot.it/
Contact: Dr Pieter Schreuder << editorlml@gmail.com
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