The Wildlife Society publications' commitment to reducing bias and increasing accountability in the peer-review process

Abstract

We held an Associate Editor Community Forum (14 Mar 2025; 23 participants) to hear from Michael Willis, an expert on review models, about the evidence for and against DA reviews. Our AEs then suggested a range of actions TWS journals might take to overcome established biases in the peer review process, increase transparency and integrity, and help ensure that our publications remain a leading resource for wildlife conservation and management. Generally, we received engaged and insightful feedback, detected ambivalence towards wholesale changes in our peer review process, and made note of several recommendations for incremental changes that might achieve meaningful impact with relatively little time costs to our authors, reviewers, editors, and staff. To help gauge support for the various alternatives raised, including DA review, fully open review, and incremental actions, we conducted a poll of our AEs, Editors, and editorial staff (n = 34 responses; ~46% response rate). We report on those survey results here.

When asked if TWS journals should move to DA review, the results were equivocal, with 38% of respondents remaining on the fence (neither agreeing nor disagreeing), 32% being in favor (somewhat or strongly agreeing), and 30% being against (somewhat or strongly disagreeing). We observed moderate support for a suggested incremental alternative—specifically for keeping author names and affiliations anonymous when sending invitations to potential reviewers (to potentially minimize positive association bias when choosing to review) but revealing author names after requests are accepted (to ensure no conflicts of interest)—with 62% in favor, 24% on the fence, and 15% against. In contrast, there was a clear desire not to move to a fully open review model (73% against, 9% in favor).

With respect to other proposed incremental changes, we observed support for Editors redacting or editing clearly biased reviews (91% in favor) and requiring the Editorial Board to complete training on how to recognize and guard against implicit bias (70% in favor, 15% against). Support was also observed for continuing to diversify our board of AEs (80% in favor). The balance tipped towards encouraging (not requiring) reviewers to complete training on recognizing and guarding against implicit bias (53% in favor, 33% against, 15% on the fence)—with dissenters emphasizing the risk of disenfranchising an already overburdened pool of reviewers (a nontrivial consideration).

Two other proposed changes also received more support than not. The first involved requiring a statement of author contributions as a means of ensuring fair credit (i.e., providing more information for promotion considerations than simple authorship order)—with 66% being in favor, 26% on the fence, and 9% against. The second involved encouraging (not requiring) reviewers to sign their names to reviews to increase accountability while giving the option to not sign reviews that cause them professional concern—with 53% of respondents being in favor, 29% on the fence, and 18% against.

Lastly, we asked 2 questions about the desire to better align our journals with FAIR principles for the stewardship of scientific data (Wilkinson et al. 2016). First, the idea of requiring (to the extent possible) the sharing of data and code received broad support (83% in favor, 6% opposed). Of course, we would need to exercise “creative flexibility” (in the words of one respondent) to keep sensitive data private to protect vulnerable species or private landowner interests, to effectively manage long-term data, for legal concerns, or for other reasons. While one respondent indicated that code should be required during the review process, when this was discussed in our Community Forum, an AE expressed concern over the burden of asking reviewers to also review code (but we note that making code available to reviewers is different from requiring that code be reviewed). Lastly, we asked whether they supported greater specificity in our currently required Data Availability statement. Although we currently have a policy of Expects Data Sharing, most authors state only “data available on request.” During our Community Forum, several AEs considered that answer to be insufficient without some explanation of why data are being held privately. The question of whether to require more details on why data are not shared at the time of publication received a strong degree of support, with 77% of respondents in favor, 14% on the fence, and 9% against.

Armed with these results, we have decided to take a semi-experimental assessment of DA review by requiring DA review for the Wildlife Society Bulletin while maintaining our single-anonymous review model for The Journal of Wildlife Management and Wildlife Monographs. We will conduct this test for a period of 3 years, comparing before and after data within the Bulletin and Journal. Data points will include duration of different phases of the review process and number of rounds of peer review per article, the proportion of reviewers who decline offers to review, desk rejection rates and relative acceptance rates following peer review, and the fate of submitted manuscripts. We will analyze those data with respect to the country and gender of the first author. During this time, we may briefly survey authors submitting manuscripts to the Bulletin on the degree to which the DA model influenced their decision to submit and the degree to which they found the process burdensome.

As of April 2025, the Wildlife Society Bulletin transitioned to a DA review process in concert with the roll-out of Wiley's new manuscript processing service (Research Exchange). This decision was made at this time in part because it is easier to roll back to a single-anonymous review than to transition to DA review after moving to Research Exchange. Over the next 3 years, we will be tracking data on the costs and benefits of this decision.

Although we do not collect demographic information on authors that could be tied to review bias (e.g., gender identity, stage in career, languages spoken, socioeconomic background), we will investigate methods of assessing if our actions affect meaningful improvements in the equal treatment of manuscripts given the data available (e.g., manuscript success by geographic region or inferred gender of author name). Several of these actions are already being acted upon and those that require updated guidelines and revised communications for authors and reviewers will be rolled out in concert with the shift of our journals to Research Exchange for review, scheduled for late summer or fall 2025. As always, we value your feedback on these actions and other recommendations to help sustain the status of TWS publications as leaders in the field of wildlife conservation and management.