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Animal Ethics Biosafety Human Research Ethics Research Integrity

Peer review will only improve if journals’ decisions are audited – Times Higher Education (Arfan Ghani | February 2022)

Posted by Dr Gary Allen in Research Integrity on February 17, 2022
Keywords: Good practice, Institutional responsibilities, Journal, Peer review, Research integrity, Research results

The Linked Original Item was Posted On February 11, 2022

A smiley emoji distorted by ripples.

Establishing a peer review accreditation scheme would also help incentivise higher standards, says Arfan Ghani

The “publish or perish” culture that universities across the world have adopted in recent decades makes entire academic careers dependent on peer review processes. Yet while academics are subjected to exacting assessment based on the supposed quality of the journals in which they publish, very little research has been done on the accuracy and consistency of those journals’ editorial practices.

Peer review will only improve if journals’ decisions are audited – Times Higher Education | Research and academic publishing have been mutated beyond recognition by an obsession with quantity at the expense of quality and the transformation of academia into something akin to a sausage factory. Peer review stands at the cornerstone of supposedly quality research publications. But as this Times Higher Education item discusses, has anyone ever really thought about whether peer review is doing its job? Are junk science, shonky and poor papers and the products of paper-mills being blocked? Are quality and insightful papers being published? Perhaps it is time for a rethink in our approach to research outputs? The same questions could be asked of our research grant processes.

As it stands, the whole process of peer review looks badly flawed. Those who do well out of it will, of course, defend it, but for many others it is a broken system. One issue is the length of time it takes. But more important is the apparent prevalence of unfair and inconsistent outcomes. Any scientist can point to inferior papers that somehow got through a top-tier journal’s review process – and much stronger papers that were mysteriously rejected.

Sometimes the inconsistency between the verdicts of the expert reviewers is so great that the whole process appears ludicrous: one reviewer is happy to accept the manuscript unchanged, while another is unwilling even to offer an opportunity to revise it. Sometimes such malice is motivated by a desire to slow down the publication of a rival’s results – perhaps so that the reviewer can beat them to it.

Sometimes reviewers don’t even take responsibility for their own reviews, passing manuscripts on to their PhD students to review. While, arguably, it is not wrong to ask postgrads to give their feedback, leaving the final judgment to them, without any oversight, is not acceptable.

The question is how to make peer review more consistent, quantifiable and transparent. The scale and gravity of the problem means there is no quick fix, but that does not mean we should not try to improve the system.

Peer review will only improve if journals’ decisions are audited
Establishing a peer review accreditation scheme would also help incentivise higher standards, says Arfan Ghani

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Related Reading

A year after lockdowns began, has research got any kinder? – Nature (Gemma Derrick | June 2021)

(Brazil, et al) Improper publishing incentives in science put under microscope around the world – Chemistry World (Dalmeet Singh Chawla | October 2020)

Fake Science: XMRV, COVID-19, and the Toxic Legacy of Dr. Judy Mikovits (Papers: Stuart J.D. Neil & Edward M. Campbell)

Research ethics courses as a vaccination against a toxic research environment or culture (Papers: Nicole Ling Yeo-Teh & Bor Tang | June 2020)

People will not trust unkind science – Nature (Gail Cardew | February 2020)

Universities must overhaul the toxic working culture for academic researchers – The Guardian (Anton Muscatelli | January 2020)

Australia ‘There is a problem’: Australia’s top scientist Alan Finkel pushes to eradicate bad science – The Conversation (Alan Finkel | September 2019)

Kinder Peer Review – Scientists Are Humans (Dr Rebecca Kirk | November 2018)

‘Publish or Perish’ – The Wicked Problem Threatening Academic Research – The Ethics Centre blog (Virginia Barbour 2016)

1 thought on “Peer review will only improve if journals’ decisions are audited – Times Higher Education (Arfan Ghani | February 2022)”

  1. Edward Jones
    February 21, 2022 at 11:28 pm

    Excellent article and novel suggestions. Needs to be picked up to make it a gold standard.

    Reply

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