Peer-review

Peer-review (refereeing).

"Peer" means an equal or a match (as well as a nobleman). "Peer-review" means evaluation or selection done by people with equal knowledge compared to the paper or person being evaluated, i.e. researchers in the same field of knowledge. Peer-review is very much used for editorial purposes, especially in scientific journals and scientific conferences.

There is some research on the function of the peer review process, including psychological and sociological mechanisms. This research has brought problematic tendencies in peer-review processes into focus, and the traditional closed process has come under some pressure. The process is accused of protecting old dogmas because new ideas are suppressed when senior researchers serving as reviewers have to evaluate papers, that may threaten their own authority. There are also many rumors of referees, who, — protected by their anonymity — have given a negative evaluation of a paper, only to publish a similar work shortly after, in which they are credited the discovery. (So, peer-reviewers may not always turn out to be noblemen after all).

Hamermesh (1994) found that referees tend to be higher-quality compared to authors. Except for a few superstar authors, there is no matching of authors and referees by quality. Nearly 80 percent of those asked to referee do so, with a median completion time of less than two months. Except for a few very slow referees and another few who promise but fail to accomplish the task, the slow editorial process is not due to referees' behavior. Paying referees speeds the job, mainly by speeding up those who would barely not qualify for the fee.

In 2006 the journal Nature began to do experiments with open peer reviews compared to traditional closed forms (cf., Campbell, 2006).

Among the innovations in the system is a novel system of peer review introduced by Biology Direct. This will include making the author responsible for obtaining reviewers' reports, via the journal's Editorial Board; making the peer review process open rather than anonymous; and publishing the reviewers' reports along with the articles, thus increasing both the responsibility and the reward of the referees and eliminating sources of abuse in the refereeing process.

Literature:

Biology direct. http://www.biology-direct.com/info/about/ (Visited 2006-06-11).

Campanario, J. M. (1998a). Peer review for journals as it stands today-Part 1. Science Communication , 19(3), 181-211.

Campanario, J. M. (1998b). Peer review for journals as it stands today-Part 2. Science Communication , 19(4), 277-306.

Campbell, P. (2006). Nature Peer Review Trial and Debate. www.nature.com/nature/peerreview/index.html

Chubin, M. & Hackett, E. (1990). Peerless Science: Peer review and US science policy. New York: State University of New York Press.

Cole, S., Cole, J. R. & Simon, G. A. (1981). Chance and consensus in peer review. Science, 214, 881-886.

Garfunkel, J. M.; Ulshen, M. H.; Hamrick, H. J. & Edward E. Lawson, E. E. (1990). Problems Identified by Secondary Review of Accepted Manuscripts. JAMA [The Journal of the American Medical Association], 263, 1369-1371.

Hamermesh, D. S. (1994). Facts and Myths about Refereeing. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 8(1), 153-163.

Horrobin, D. F. (1990). The Philosophical Basis of Peer Review and the Suppression of Innovation. JAMA [The Journal of the American Medical Association], 263(10), 1438-1441.

Peters, D. P. & Ceci, S. J. (1982). Peer-review practices of psychological journals: the fate of published articles, submitted again. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 5, 187-255.

Rennie, D. (1990). Editorial Peer Review in Biomedical Publication: The First International Congress. JAMA [The Journal of the American Medical Association], 263(10), 1317. (Thematic issue: "Guarding the Guardians" about research in editorial "Peer Review").

Weller, A. C. (2001). Editorial Peer Review: Its Strengths and Weaknesses. Medford, NJ: Information Today. (ASIS&T Monograph Series).

Wilson, J. D. (1978). Peer review and publication. Journal of Clinical Investigation , 61(6), 1697-1701.

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (2005). Peer review. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_review (This articles provides, among other things, a long list of interesting links).

Birger Hjørland

Last edited: 08-02-2007

Home