Science's Quality-Control Process Gets a Makeover
Data underlying science’s quality control process is revealing worrying trends — and suggestions are pouring in on how to address the concerns.
Send us a link
A Process Guide
A worksheet compiled from the advice of a number of journalsand publications. The aim of the worksheet is to give less-experiencedpeer reviewers a concrete workflow of questions and tasks to follow whenthey first peer-review.
Fake News Comes to Academia
How three scholars gulled academic journals to publish hoax papers on ‘grievance studies.’
Mass Resignation Guts Board of Prestigious Cochrane Collaboration
Governing board of the evidence-based medicine group may now be dissolved entirely.
Eight Ways to Tackle Diversity and Inclusion in Peer Review
We continue our Peer Review Week celebrations with a roundup of articles about bias, diversity, and inclusion in peer review, by Alice Meadows, including eight lessons we can all learn from them.
Global State of Peer Review
The Global State of Peer Review is one of the largest ever studies into the practice of scholarly peer review around the world focusing on four questions: 1. Who is doing the review? 2. How efficient is the peer review process? 3. What do we know about peer review quality? 4. What does the future hold?
Peer Reviewers Unmasked: Largest Global Survey Reveals Trends
Scientists in emerging economies respond fastest to peer review invitations but are invited least.
Transparency, Credit, and Peer Review
Support for publication of reviewer reports has been mounting as part of a greater effort to inform the discussion on peer review practice.
Publish Peer Reviews
Biomedical funders and ASAPbio call on journals to sign a pledge to make reviewers’ anonymous comments part of the official scientific record.
Gender and International Diversity Improves Equity in Peer Review
Gender and International Diversity Improves Equity in Peer Review
The acceptance rate for eLife manuscripts with male last authors was significantly higher than for female last authors, and this gender inequity was greatest when the team of reviewers was all male; mixed-gender gatekeeper teams lead to more equitable peer review outcomes.
Open Letter on the Publication of Peer Review Reports
Open letter signed by many journals supporting the idea that publishing peer review reports would benefit the research community by increasing transparency of the assessment process.
Publish Peer Reviews
Jessica K. Polka and colleagues call on journals to sign a pledge to make reviewers’ anonymous comments part of the official scientific record.
Reputation or Peer Review? the Role of Outliers
We present an agent-based model of paper publication and consumption that allows to study the effect of two different evaluation mechanisms, peer review and reputation, on the quality of the manuscripts accessed by a scientific community.
Publons' ECR Reviewers' Choice Awards
Publons’ ECR Reviewer Choice Award celebrates early-career researchers' exceptional contribution to peer review, recognizing an individual who has been influential in the realm of peer review or has significantly contributed to improving the system.
Citizen Science Can Make Systematic Reviews Faster and More Efficient
Citizen Science Can Make Systematic Reviews Faster and More Efficient
Citizen science: crowdsourcing for systematic reviews looks at how people can contribute their expertise to scientific studies using new online platforms - even if they don’t think of themselves as researchers or scientists.
Peer Review of Health Research Funding Proposals: A Systematic Map and Systematic Review of Innovations for Effectiveness and Efficiency
Peer Review of Health Research Funding Proposals: A Systematic Map and Systematic Review of Innovations for Effectiveness and Efficiency
Virtual peer review using videoconferencing or teleconferencing appears promising for reducing costs by avoiding the need for reviewers to travel, but again any consequences for quality have not been adequately assessed.
Meritocratic Publishing: Open Access and Tackling Discrimination in Academia
The problem with peer review is that, despite its rigor, it suffers from bias because reviewers are competing for the same recognition and resources.
Peer Review Has Some Problems - but the Science Community Is Working on It
Key areas of focus for tweaking peer review include making journal editors more directive in the process, rewarding reviewers, and improving accountability of editors, reviewers and authors.
10 Considerations for Open Peer Review
Article covers basic principles and summarise best practices, indicating how to use Open Peer Review to achieve best value and mutual benefits for all stakeholders and the wider research community.
Scholarly Publishing Is Broken. Here’s How to Fix It
Imagine using version control to track the process of research in real time. Peer review becomes a community-governed process, where the quality of engagement becomes the hallmark of individual reputations. All research outputs can be published and credited with not an 'impact factor' in sight.
Peer Review is Not Scientific
How a process designed to ensure scientific rigor is tainted by randomness, bias, and arbitrary delays.
Peer Review: eLife Trials a New Approach
eLife authors are being invited to take part in a trial in which they decide how to respond to the issues raised during peer review.
A New Twist on Peer Review
eLife is conducting a trial in which authors will decide how to respond to the issues raised during peer review.
Some Science Journals That Claim to Peer Review Papers Do Not Do So
Some Science Journals That Claim to Peer Review Papers Do Not Do So
One estimate puts the number of papers in questionable journals at 400'000.
Editors of Major Political Science Journals Demonstrate No Systematic Bias Against Female Authors
Editors of Major Political Science Journals Demonstrate No Systematic Bias Against Female Authors
Study says editors of major political science journals demonstrate no systematic bias against female authors. Yet women authors remain underrepresented in the field. Why?
Signing My Peer Review - Unintended Consequences and Gender
Roughly two years ago, I began to sign every peer review I did for journals. It resulted directly from a review on an article that I received that had glaring issues and made me wonder "Would they have been this sloppy if they had to attribute their name to this work?"
Introducing Metadata for Peer Review
The new exposure of peer review information through its public API provides opportunities for discoverability, analysis, and integration of tools.
No Race or Gender Bias in a Randomized Experiment of NIH R01 Grant Reviews
No Race or Gender Bias in a Randomized Experiment of NIH R01 Grant Reviews
A randomized experiment of NIH R01 grant reviews finds no evidence that White male PIs receive evaluations that are any better than those of PIs from the other social categories.
What Motivates Reviewers? An Experiment in Economics
Shorter deadlines, email reminders, and cash incentives can speed up the peer review process and minimize unintended effects, a recent study suggests. Can it work for other disciplines?
Effectiveness of Anonymization in Double-Blind Review
In a controlled experiment with two disjoint program committees, the ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM'17) found that reviewers with author information were 1.76x more likely to recommend acceptance of papers from famous authors, and 1.67x more likely to recommend acceptance of papers from top institutions.
×