“Peer Reviewers of Academic Journals... Preprint

Posted by Celia Walter | 24 May, 2012

Who is Responsible for our Professional Literature” by Mary Francis, Reference Instruction Librarian, Dakota St. University
College & Research Libraries Preprint
This article was accepted on May 9. 2012.
It’s scheduled for publication in September 2013.

Scholarly journals provide a record of the research, issues, and concerns of a field. Authors have their names associated with their individual articles while editors are connected with a publication. However, there is another group of individuals who are often left out of the record although their contributions are just as critical in the formation of scholarly journals. This article will take a look at this group of peer reviewers providing demographic data as well as understanding for why individuals take on the duty of peer reviewer.

From post on InfoDOCKE T

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UK Science and Technology Committee inquiry into Peer review

Posted by Celia Walter | 1 Feb, 2011

The Science and Technology Committee in the UK's House of Commons has announced a new inquiry into the operation and effectiveness of Peer Review. The inquiry was launched on 27 January and responses must be submitted by Thursday 10 March 2011. A list of issues that the inquiry will examine and details of how to respond can be found on the inquiry web pages.

From Peter Scott's Library blog

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Peer review highly sensitive to poor refereeing, claim researchers

Posted by Celia Walter | 13 Sep, 2010

Just a small number of bad referees can significantly undermine the ability of the peer-review system to select the best scientific papers. That is according to a pair of complex systems researchers in Austria who have modelled an academic publishing system and showed that human foibles can have a dramatic effect on the quality of published science.

Scholarly peer review is the commonly accepted procedure for assessing the quality of research before it is published in academic journals. It relies on a community of experts within a narrow field of expertise to have both the knowledge and the time to provide comprehensive reviews of academic manuscripts.

While the concept of peer review is widely considered the most appropriate system for regulating scientific publications, it is not without its critics. Some feel that the system's reliance on impartiality and the lack of remuneration for referees mean that in practice the process is not as open as it should be. This may be particularly apparent when referees are asked to review more controversial ideas that could damage their own standing within the community if they give their approval.

Questioning referee competence...

[more]

From:

http://physicsworld.com/

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Scholars Test Web Alternative to Peer Review/ Patricia Cohen. The New York Times, August 23, 2010

Posted by Celia Walter | 1 Sep, 2010

For professors, publishing in elite journals is an unavoidable part of university life. Some humanities scholars have begun to challenge the monopoly that peer review has on admission to career-making journals. They argue that in an era of digital media there is a better way to assess the quality of work. Instead of relying on a few experts selected by leading publications, they advocate using the Internet to expose scholarly thinking to the swift collective judgment of a much broader interested audience.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/24/arts/24peer.html

via CARL e-Alert

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Peer review: a guide on how peer review works

Posted by Celia Walter | 11 Mar, 2010

Peer review: a guide for researchers

This new guide provides researchers with an understanding of how peer review works and highlights some of the issues surround the current debates about the peer review process.

The growth in the size of the research community and of the volumes of research being undertaken in the UK and across the world means that the amount of time and effort put into the peer review system is growing too, and that it is coming under increasing scrutiny. The guide looks at how effective peer review is in selecting the best research proposals, as well as in detecting misconduct and malpractice.

It also looks at how fair the system is, and at the different levels of transparency involved in the process: from completely closed systems, where the identities of reviewers and those whose work is being reviewed are kept hidden from each other, and reports are not revealed, to completely transparent systems where identities and reports are openly revealed.

The burdens on researchers as submitters and reviewers are by far the biggest costs in the peer review system, and the guide outlines some of the measures that are being taken to reduce those burdens, or at least to keep them in check.

The internet has provided new channels through which researchers can communicate their ﬁndings, and through which other researchers can comment on, annotate and evaluate them. These new opportunities bring new challenges as well. The take-up of the opportunities for open comments, ratings and recommender systems has been patchy to date; and we currently lack clear protocols for the review of ﬁndings circulated in multiple formats, including blogs and wikis. The mechanisms for peer review will undoubtedly change in coming years, but the principle will remain central to all those involved in the research community

The guide is available to download from the link below.

http://www.rin.ac.uk/system/files/attachments/Peer-review-guide-FINAL-March10.pdf

Hard copies can also be ordered from catherine.gray@rn.ac.uk

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Google Peer Review and the state of peer review

Posted by Celia Walter | 3 Mar, 2009

Google Peer Review and the state of peer review in general

By David Booker

Peer review is the time-honored way that researchers establish the credibility of their work. Originally that meant well-known researchers would endorse or at least "sign off on" the published works of their peers. Today there are so many credible researchers in such disparate fields of endeavor that it has become increasingly impossible for anyone to know them all or understand their work. In reaction, credibility is currently established by a work’s acceptance for publication or presentation at professional conferences or in reputable journals. The process is lengthy and cumbersome and can be delayed for months as authors wait for reviews or for conference dates to arrive. Additionally, works are often reviewed during a limited pre-publication period by a very small number of individuals in a secretive fashion that promotes hasty and sometimes political decisions. These are extraordinarily talented people who believe they are doing their best to be objective, but the process can often fail.

In a highly publicized, recent case, Hwang et al published fraudulent research on pluripotent stem cells in Science, which was later retracted. For other less publicized cases consult Richard Smith’s book “The Trouble with Medical Journals.” As the former editor of the British Medical Journal, he is in a unique position to report numerous cases of misbehavior by editors, reviewers and authors. A very interesting mathematical simulation of peer review by Neff and Olden, “Is Peer Review a Game of Chance”(pdf) shows that the review process can include a strong “lottery” component, independent of editor and referee integrity and recapitulates the fact that a stringent peer review process will keep out much of the bad science, but also a large amount of the good science. Obviously, a more transparent and open-ended peer review process is needed and that is where the “Social Web” can help.

As it becomes increasingly more practical via the web to evaluate researchers and their work based on the reviews of their actual peers, the need for endorsement by centralized big-name journals begins to diminish. Always reacting to web trends - in this case the rise of "Social Media" - Google has facilitated the launch of a new project called Google Peer Review. I say "facilitated" because Google's only involvement in the open-source endeavor thus far has been to provide hosting services for the project. Google Peer Review was started by a young programmer, Mike Gasher, and has been joined by several other interested individuals. The intention is to do for scientific publishing what the world wide web has done for media publishing by allowing “vetted” reviewers write a review of someone's work and digitally sign them together.

There is a lively discussion underway here and a wiki has also been established. You can learn how to join the project here.

From Centred Librarian

Thanks to Ingrid Thomson for this.

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