Reviewing articles as a way of professional evaluation of scientific texts: organizational and ethical aspects
-
Author(s)Svitlana FiialkaLink to ORCID Index: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1855-7574
,
Olga TrishchukLink to ORCID Index: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4009-8749ResearcherID: https://publons.com/researcher/1930800/olga-trishchuk/
,
Nadija FigolLink to ORCID Index: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3893-2669
-
DOIhttp://dx.doi.org/10.21511/kpm.04(1).2020.03
-
Article InfoVolume 4 2020, Issue #1, pp. 26-36
- Cited by
- 851 Views
-
183 Downloads
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
The purpose of the paper is to summarize the organizational and ethical aspects, problems and prospects of peer reviewing. To do this, from September 2019 to January 2020, a survey of Ukrainian scientists registered in Facebook groups “Ukrainian Scientific Journals”, “Ukrainian Scientists Worldwide”, “Pseudoscience News in Ukraine”, “Higher Education and Science of Ukraine: Decay or Blossom?” and others was conducted. In total, 390 researchers from different disciplines participated in the survey. The results of the survey are following: 8.7% of respondents prefer open peer review, 43.1% – single-blind, 37.7% – double blind, 9.2% – triple blind, 1.3% used to sign a review prepared by the author. 75.6% of respondents had conflicts of interest during peer reviewing. 8.2 % of reviewers never reject articles regardless of their quality. Because usually only editors and authors see reviews, it can lead to the following issues: reviewers can be rude or biased; authors may not adequately respond to grounded criticism; editors may disregard the position of the author or reviewer, and journals may charge for publishing articles without proper peer review.
- Keywords
-
JEL Classification (Paper profile tab)Y50, I29, О34
-
References62
-
Tables0
-
Figures6
-
- Figure 1. Distribution of answers to the question “What model of review did you work on?”
- Figure 2. Distribution of answers to the question “What model of review do you prefer?”, %
- Figure 3. Distribution of answers to the question “What is your main motivation to be a reviewer?”
- Figure 4. Distribution of answers to the question “For what reasons do you reject articles?”
- Figure 5. Distribution of answers to the question “Do you check the facts in scientific articles?”
- Figure 6. Distribution of answers to the question “How impartial are your assessments?”
-
- Academic Virtue and Plagiarism. (2020). Facebook Groups.
- Bannister, F., & Janssen, M. (2018). The art of scholarly reviewing: Principles and practices. Government Information Quarterly, 36(1), 1-4.
- Blank, R. (1991) The effects of double-blind versus single-blind reviewing: Experimental evidence from the American economic review. The American Economic Review, 81(5), 1041-1067.
- Booth, C. (1982). Medical communication: the old and the new. British Medical Journal, 285, 105-108.
- Bornmann, L., & Daniel, H.-D. (2010). Do author-suggested reviewers rate submissions more favorably than editor-suggested reviewers? A study on Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. PLoS One, 5(10), e13345.
- Breuning, M., Backstrom, J., Brannon, J., Gross, B., & Widmeier, M. (2015). Reviewer Fatigue? Why Scholars Decline to Review their Peers’ Work. PS: Political Science & Politics, 48(04), 595-600.
- Chung, K., Shauver, M., Malay, S., Zhong, L., Weinstein, A., & Rohrich, R. (2015). Is double-blinded peer review necessary? The effect of blinding on review quality. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, 136(6), 1369-1377.
- Crane, D. (1967). The Gatekeepers of Science: Some Factors Affecting the Selection of Articles for Scientific Journals. The American Sociologist, 2(4), 195-201.
- Curtin, P., Russial, J., & Tefertiller, A. (2017). Reviewers’ Perceptions of the Peer Review Process in Journalism and Mass Communication. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 95(1), 278-299.
- D’Andrea, R., & O’Dwyer, J. (2017). Can editors save peer review from peer reviewers? PLOS ONE, 12(10), e0186111.
- da Silva, J., & Dobránszki, J. (2015). The role of the anonymous voice in post-publication peer review versus traditional peer review. KOME: An International Journal of Pure Communication Inquiry, 3(2), 90-94.
- Das, A. (2016). “Peer review” for scientific manuscripts: Emerging issues, potential threats, and possible remedies. Medical Journal Armed Forces India, 72(2), 172-174.
- DeVoss, C. (2017). Artificial intelligence applications in scientific publishing. In What might peer review look like in 2030? (pp. 4-7). Figshare.
- Donmoyer, R. (1996). Educational Research in an Era of Paradigm Proliferation: What’s a Journal Editor to Do? Educational Researcher, 25(2), 19-25.
- Education. Science. Technology. Innovations. (2020). Facebook Groups.
- Fox, C. (2017). Difficulty of recruiting reviewers predicts review scores and editorial decisions at six journals of ecology and evolution. Scientometrics, 113, 465-477.
- Fox, C., Burns, C., Muncy, A., & Meyer, J. (2017). Author-suggested reviewers: Gender differences and influences on the peer review process at an ecology journal. Functional Ecology, 31(1), 270-280.
- García, J., Rodriguez-Sánchez, R., & Fdez-Valdivia, J. (2017). The Game Between a Biased Reviewer and His Editor. Science and Engineering Ethics, 25(1), 265-283.
- Greenstein, L., & Biglieri, E. (2009). Some reflections on scholarly reviewing. IEEE Communications Magazine, 47(4), 36-39.
- Haffar, S., Bazerbachi, F., & Murad, M. (2019). Peer Review Bias: A Critical Review. Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 94(4), 670-676.
- Helton, M., & Balistreri, W. (2011). Peering into peer-review. The Journal of Pediatrics, 159(1), 150-152.
- Higher School and Science of Ukraine: Disintegration or Blossoming? (2020). Facebook Groups.
- Jubb, M. (2016). Peer review: The current landscape and future trends. Learned Publishing, 29(1), 13-21.
- Knobloch-Westerwick, S., Glynn, C., & Huge, M. (2013) The Matilda Effect in Science Communication: An Experiment on Gender Bias in Publication Quality Perceptions and Collaboration Interest. Science Communication, 35(5), 603-625.
- Kohli, A. (2011). From the Editor: Reflections on the Review Process. Journal of Marketing, 75(6), 1-4.
- Kovanis, M., Porcher, R., Ravaud, P., & Trinquart, L. (2016). The global burden of journal peer review in the biomedical literature: Strong imbalance in the collective enterprise. PLoS ONE, 11(11), e0166387.
- Krinsky, G. (1999). How to avoid “unblinding” the peer review process. American Journal of Roentgenology, 172(6),1474.
- Kurdi, M. (2015). Scholarly peer reviewing: The art, its joys and woes. Indian Journal of Anaesthesia, 59(8), 465-470.
- Liang, Y. (2018). Should authors suggest reviewers? A comparative study of the performance of author-suggested and editor-selected reviewers at a biological journal. Learned Publishing, 31(3), 216-221.
- Linssen, R. (2001). Being a journal editor. Hospital Medicine, 62(4), 235-236.
- Mack, C. (2015). The Editorial Review Process. Journal of Micro/Nanolithography, MEMS, and MOEMS, 14(3), 030101.
- Merton, R. (1968). The Matthew effect in science. Science, 159(3810), 56-63.
- Moore, J., Neilson, E., & Siegel, V. (2011). Effect of recommendations from reviewers suggested or excluded by authors. Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, 22(9), 1598-1602.
- O’Connor, E., Cousar, M., Lentini, J., Castillo, M., Halm, K., & Zeffiro, T. (2017). Efficacy of double-blind peer review in an imaging subspecialty journal. American Journal of Neuroradiology, 38(2), 230-235.
- Pseudoscience News in Ukraine. (2020). Facebook Groups.
- Publons. (2018). Global State of Peer Review.
- Pubmed. (1990). Guarding the guardians: research on editorial peer review: selected proceedings from the First International Congress on Peer Review in Biomedical Publication. May 10-12, 1989, Chicago, Ill.
- Resnik, D., & Elmore, S. (2018). Conflict of Interest in Journal Peer Review. Toxicologic Pathology, 46(2), 112-114.
- Resnik, D., Gutierrez-Ford, C., & Peddada, S. (2008). Perception of ethical problems with scientific journal peer review: An exploratory study. Science and Engineering Ethics, 14, 305-310.
- Rivara, F., Cummings, P., Ringold, S., Bergman, A., Joffe, A., & Christakis, D. (2007). A comparison of reviewers selected by editors and reviewers suggested by authors. The Journal of Pediatrics, 151(2), 202-205.
- Rowland, F. (2002). The peer-review process. Learned Publishing, 15(4), 247-258.
- Sanford, C. (1991). Augmenting the gatekeeper’s role: a decision support system for a journal editor. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 34(3), 140-146.
- Sayan, S. (2016). Serving as a referee for your own paper: A dream come true or…? Review of Social Economy, 74(1), 75-82.
- Schroter, S., Tite, L., Hutchings, A., & Black, N. (2006). Differences in review quality and recommendations for publication between reviewers suggested by authors or by editors. JAMA, 295(3), 314-317.
- Scientific Conferences and Publications. (2020). Facebook Groups.
- Teixeira da Silva, J., Al-Khatib, A., Katavic, V., & Bornemann-Cimenti, H. (2018). Establishing sensible and practical guidelines for desk rejections. Science and Engineering Ethics, 24(4), 1347-136.
- Tennant, J. (2018). The state of the art in peer review. FEMS Microbiology Letters, 365(19).
- Thompson, D. (1993). Understanding financial conflicts of interest. The New England Journal of Medicine, 329, 573-576.
- Thurner, S., & Hanel, R. (2011). Peer-review in a world with rational scientists: Toward selection of the average. European Physical Journal, 84(4), 707-711.
- Tomkins, A., Zhang, M., & Heavlin, W. D. (2017). Reviewer bias in single- versus double-blind peer review. PNAS, 114(48), 12708-12713.
- Ukrainian Scientific Journals. (2020). Facebook Groups.
- Ukrainian Scientists Worldwide. (2020). Facebook Groups.
- van Rooyen, S., Black, N., & Godlee, F. (1999). Development of the review quality instrument (RQI) for assessing peer reviews of manuscripts. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 52(7), 625-629.
- van Rooyen, S., Godlee, F., Smith, R., Evans, S., & Black, N. (1998). The effect of blinding and unmasking on the quality of peer review: a randomized trial. Journal of the American Medical Association, 280, 234-237.
- Vesper, I. (2018). Peer reviewers unmasked: largest global survey reveals trends. Nature.
- Villar, R. (2019). Does peer review have a future? Journal of Hip Preservation Surgery, 6(1), 1-2.
- Wager, E., Parkin, E., & Tamber, P. (2006). Are reviewers suggested by authors as good as those chosen by editors? Results of a rater-blinded, retrospective study. BMC Medicine, 4, 13.
- Walker, R., & Rocha da Silva, P. (2015). Emerging trends in peer review. A survey. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 9, 1-18.
- Ware, M. (2011). Peer review: Recent experience and future directions. New Review of Information Networking, 16(1), 23-53.
- Wiffen, P. (2018). Could you be a peer reviewer? European Journal of Hospital Pharmacy, 25(2), 65-65.
- Willis, M. (2016). Why do peer reviewers decline to review manuscripts? A study of reviewer invitation responses. Learned Publishing, 29, 5-7.
- Zuckerman, H., & Merton, R. (1971). Patterns of evaluation in science: Institutionalisation, structure and functions of the referee system. Minerva, 9, 66-100.
-
Involving Ukrainian early career scientists in publishing practices and their attitudes to scholarly communication
Svitlana Fiialka
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.21511/kpm.05(1).2021.04
Knowledge and Performance Management Volume 5, 2021 Issue #1 pp. 38-49 Views: 463 Downloads: 78 TO CITE АНОТАЦІЯThis paper highlights the authorship, co-authorship, and peer review experience of Ukrainian early career scientists to see their attitudes to scholarly communication. A questionnaire was distributed through Facebook groups and university networks all over Ukraine. Results from 630 respondents demonstrated contradictory tendencies of Ukrainian early scientists’ publication activity. Most respondents try to gain recognition, adhere to high standards, and improve their writing skills. Meanwhile, there is a problem of low motivation, violations of academic integrity, detachment from the international scientific community, etc. 5.6% of respondents admitted that they wrote articles where they substituted the results without conducting experiments, deliberately distorted the results of research, and forged experimental data. Above a half of the respondents (52.9%) have experience of reviewing and consider it to improve their authorship skills, engage in scientific dialogue, cope with new methods and theories, etc. But 95.0% of reviewers had problems, for example obviously poor-quality articles for review (47.5%), a request for a review when the article does not match the reviewer’s qualifications (32.5%), no access to data to check dubious results (15.0%), lack of instructions for reviewers (10.0%), ignoring significant remarks by authors (7.5%). The survey showed a significant predominance of co-authored articles. Among the main motives for publishing co-authored articles, respondents highlighted the following: saving time, intellectual development, co-payment of publications, access to expensive equipment, the chance of being quoted, and cooperation.
