In the trinity review system, researchers will submit a detailed pre-research protocol in the Stage 1 manuscript of the RRs. As in typical RRs, the protocol will be peer-reviewed by several reviewers. This involves assessing the value of the research question, the rationale for the hypothesis, and the validity of the methods for testing the hypothesisFootnote 1 In our proposed trinity review system, an ethics review will be conducted concurrently with the Stage 1 protocol. Some reviewers dedicated to ethical aspects will be assigned to the protocol and review the ethical aspects of the paper. Protocols with ethical problems are returned to the authors, who would revise them according to the reviewer’s comments and the editor’s decision. If there is some necessity in terms of ethical considerations that are not covered in the code, the protocol is reviewed additionally by the author’s institution (e.g., in the medical field, institutional acknowledgement might be necessary if the research uses some invasive methods against humans). When the protocol is accepted through these review processes, a funding review would be initiated. Here, the Stage 1 protocols and funders would be matched in some way. The funders assess whether the Stage 1 protocols are possibly beneficial to them or the public and invest grants in protocols that meet their criteria. In this way, the trinity review system unifies the three different types of peer reviews and makes them run smoothly.
Funding review (or matching) is probably the trickiest part of this system. The funding review would not require any revisions to the manuscript, and thus it would only take place after the protocol has passed scientific and ethics reviews and been accepted in principle. Research funds are provided for protocols, not for individual researchers as in a typical funding review. Two ways of matching protocols and funders are possible. First, funders select and invest in the protocol they are interested in from a list of in-principle accepted protocols that can be browsed only by the funders. Second, funders offer grants; these offerings are listed, and authors apply for those that match their protocols. This is similar to the traditional grant system, but it is qualitatively different because the reviewed manuscripts ensure the importance of the research question, the relevance of the protocol, and research ethics. For both matching ways, authors do not need to write new documents for research grants because in-principle accepted protocols are used as the application form. These methods help researchers to avoid spending time on time-wasting paperwork, and funders can easily assess whether the research is truly suitable for funding. Note that this funding review only provides an opportunity or option to obtain grants. In other cases, authors could choose to skip the funding review. For example, they can cover research expenses in another way (e.g., having another grant outside the trinity review system or using crowdfunding); nevertheless, they still want to receive a combined review from scientific and ethical perspectives (Fig. 1)Footnote 2.
There are some obvious potential difficulties in implementing the trinity review. One might argue that it will increase the workload for journals. The key point is that it requires several ethics reviewers, which could lead to a shortage of reviewers and incentives for them. Next, this trinity review is suitable for disciplines and communities that already have some common rules, guidelines, and formats for ethics reviews; otherwise, the journal will need to prepare them, which will incur additional costs. Furthermore, the trinity review system requires ethics reviewers in addition to academic reviewers. Many journals are already experiencing difficulties in finding reviewers [11]. The addition of ethics reviews could be a burden for them.
There are a number of issues that need to be resolved when introducing the trinity review system. However, this system is necessary to promote more efficient and proper research practices and to financially support researchers, especially ECRs, who work to improve the reproducibility and integrity of research. Here, we point out the benefits that the trinity review system brings to the academic community.
The first benefit is that this system eliminates the redundancy of reviewers as well as authors, and leads to more efficient research practice. As already mentioned, this system combines the Stage 1 manuscript of RRs with ethics review and funding review to eliminate the redundancy of authors preparing multiple paperwork for a single study. In addition, scientific and ethics reviews are conducted simultaneously on the same documents. This system provides academic and ethical peer review of protocols before the study is conducted so that reviewers’ comments can be used to improve the quality of protocols. This also helps to eliminate the redundancy of reviewers.
The second benefit is that this system improves reproducibility and research integrity. This system is based on RRs, and any protocols using this system will be published regardless of the statistical significance of the results. As a result, it could prevent file drawer problems [12] and publication bias [13, 14], questionable research practices or research misconduct, and, as a result, increase reproducibility [8, 15] in the same way as traditional RRs. In addition, papers published through the trinity review system will provide a detailed description of ethical considerations. In this system, an ethics review will be conducted, as well as a scientific review, at Stage 1. Consequently, researchers must describe ethical considerations in greater detail in their protocols. This will help readers determine what specific considerations have been made. Furthermore, since scientific and ethics reviews are conducted simultaneously through the same documents, the authors have no opportunity to arbitrarily modify the original plan regarding ethical considerations without consulting the journal, as per the process of traditional RRs. This will prevent the problem of changing ethical operations after the ethics assessment is completed [16], and hence problematic ethical behaviors will be suppressed.
The third benefit is that this system motivates researchers to use RRs. This system provides the option to obtain research funds. Therefore, not only resource-constrained researchers who are willing to use RRs, but also researchers with limited funding, especially ECRs, can make use of the trinity review system to promote the use of RRs. The trinity review system also benefits researchers who belong to institutes or departments that do not have an institutional review board and independent researchers who do not belong to any research institution [17, 18]. By using this system, they can have an opportunity to review their protocol from an ethical perspective quickly and easily. This can promote citizen science as well as the use of RRs.