More than 500 editors, researchers, and publishers gathered in Chicago in September 2013 to discuss the latest research aimed at examining and improving the process of scientific publication. As with previous congresses, the goals of the Seventh International Congress on Peer Review and Biomedical Publication were to put scientific publication under the same scrutiny that editors impose on science itself and to improve the quality and credibility of biomedical peer review and scientific publication. More than 500 participants from 32 countries attended and engaged in lively discussion of over 100 plenary-session poster presentations of new research. Under the direction of Congress Director Drummond Rennie (JAMA and University of California, San Francisco, and past president of CSE), original research was presented on many timely topics: authorship, editorial and peer review, ethical issues, misconduct, citations, conflict of interest, publication bias, data and content sharing and access, quality and registration of clinical trials, reporting guidelines, and postpublication access, dissemination, and exchange.

The abstracts presented demonstrated numerous kinds of advances in the scientific-publication enterprise and many areas for improvement and further evaluation. Topics included research that is reported incompletely, without proper validation, or without adequate disclosures or that may be exaggerated or “spun” by authors and published in journals by editors, many of whom may be “hobby editors” (ie, experts in their area of science who edit a journal but do not have extensive publishing experience). In addition, provocative keynote addresses were delivered by John Ioannidis, professor at Stanford University School of Medicine (“Replication and Reproducible Research: Utopia or Reality?”), and Phil Campbell, editor of Nature (“Challenges in Editorial Selection Posed by Current Science”).

The complete program is available on the Peer Review Congress Web site: www.peerreviewcongress.org. Links to abstracts of the research presented and articles as they are published are available on the site, as will be announcements about plans for the Eighth Peer Review Congress, to be held in 2017.

ANNETTE FLANAGIN is executive managing editor and vice president for editorial operations of JAMA and was The JAMA Network Congress coordinator for the Peer Review Congress in Chicago, Illinois.