About The Peer-Review Process And When To Expect The Press Embargo To Be Lifted [Ketchum Study]

With all the recent rumors swirling around about the peer-review process and press embargo, we decided to reach out to a person close to the matter.

Sally Ramey is the Public Relations person behind Dr. Melba Ketchum's Bigfoot DNA study. She was kind enough to direct us to her notes where she describes the processes that must take place before a press embargo gets lifted.

According to Sally, most journals publish on Fridays and most embargos lift on Thursday afternoons. She also suggests that when the press embargo gets lifted, most media outlets generally break the news around Thursdays at 1:30PM EST. Another wave of news will follow about half an hour to an hour after the initial news release.

"All I can tell you is to watch NBC's Web site at 2 p.m. on every Thursday until it happens. They seem to be quicker on the update button," Sally tells us.

"ABC is next."

Here's what Sally wrote in her notes about the peer-review process:

Lots of people have recently been wondering about the process of publishing scientific papers. Here is the basic process, based on my experience doing PR in higher ed:

The researcher prepares a paper about their findings and submits it to a scientific journal for peer-review, which can take MONTHS. The paper is reviewed by a team of scientists with expertise in the discipline(s) involved in the researcher's work. They decide if the research was conducted according to standards and practices accepted by the scientific community, and review the findings to see if they pass muster. It's like a professor checking your work in college. If the review team has questions, they can ask the researcher to provide more info, run more tests, get someone else to run tests that replicate the work, etc. This can delay publication but it is sometimes necessary. ONLY after the review team is satisfied is the paper accepted for publication. Publication in a peer-reviewed journal is the scientific community's "stamp of approval" that the work is valid.

The journal must then figure out when to publish the paper. Some journals work weeks/months in advance, adding further delay. Some work faster, meaning that the paper might run within a few weeks. At some point, the researcher is notified that they have a "pub date." In my experience, you often only know about three weeks out when your paper will publish. Once there is a pub date, the researcher (typically university-based) works with their campus PR folks and the journal editorial and PR staff to be sure that images are prepared for publication, news releases are written and reviewed, and everyone is prepared for the announcement.

If the news is HUGE, the researcher will be interviewed by the science media, under a strict embargo, the week before the pub date. Most journals publish on Fridays and most embargos lift on Thursday afternoons. The science media, journal PR folks and university PR folks all post their stories and news releases upon the lifting of the embargo. This is why big science news seems to be posted everywhere at once. - it actually is.

If the story is HUGE HUGE HUGE, any news conference would be held when the embargo lifts, unless the journal allows it to happen early due to scheduling conflicts - the journal drives the schedule - no one else. And NO ONE can publicly discuss the paper, its pub date, what journal is involved, the findings or other contents in advance of the embargo or the journal will not publish the paper. This preserves the credibility and sanctity of the peer-review process. Hope this info is helpful.