Hey academics! Ever had a paper rejected? Hell ya. We all have. Then you might want to check out the latest issue of “The Scientist” It features articles on the failings of the peer review process and how some journals are trying to address the issues…
In “I Hate Your Paper”, journalist Jeff Akst outlines three problems (and some solutions): 1. Reviewers are biased by personal motivesResolutions: eliminate anonymous peer review, run open peer review alongside traditional peer review 2. Peer review is too slow, affecting public health, grants and credit for ideas
Resolutions: shorten publication time to a few days, bypass subsequent reviews and publish first drafts 3. Too many papers to review
Resolutions: recycle reviews from journals that have rejected the manuscript, wait for volunteers and reward reviewer efforts If a paper is rejected simply because it doesn’t belong in that journal, aren’t the review still valid? Good point, I say.
How do we accomplish a balance between “expedited publication” and “thorough, competent review”? Hmmm…. http://www.the-scientist.com/2010/8/1/36/1/
Agent Based Model of the Peer Review Process… The peer review process is central to most research disciplines and is used in the selection of papers for publication and research proposals for funding.A new paper by Stefan Thurner and Rudolf Hanel develops an agent-based model of the scientific peer review process, Peer-review in a world with rational scientists: Toward selection of the average.“… we are interested in the effects of rational referees, who might not have any incentive to see high quality work other than their own published or promoted. We find that a small fraction of incorrect (selfish or rational) referees can drastically reduce the quality of the published (accepted) scientific standard. We quantify the fraction for which peer review will no longer select better than pure chance. Decline of quality of accepted scientific work is shown as a function of the fraction of rational and unqualified referees. We show how a simple quality-increasing policy of e.g. a journal can lead to a loss in overall scientific quality, and how mutual support-networks of authors and referees deteriorate the system.”http://ebiquity.umbc.edu/blogger/2010/09/19/an-agent-based-model-of-the-peer-…
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