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Pain Physician 2015Scientific peer review is pivotal in health care research in that it facilitates the evaluation of findings for competence, significance, and originality by qualified... (Review)
Review
Scientific peer review is pivotal in health care research in that it facilitates the evaluation of findings for competence, significance, and originality by qualified experts. While the origins of peer review can be traced to the societies of the eighteenth century, it became an institutionalized part of the scholarly process in the latter half of the twentieth century. This was a response to the growth of research and greater subject specialization. With the current increase in the number of specialty journals, the peer review process continues to evolve to meet the needs of patients, clinicians, and policy makers. The peer review process itself faces challenges. Unblinded peer review might suffer from positive or negative bias towards certain authors, specialties, and institutions. Peer review can also suffer when editors and/or reviewers might be unable to understand the contents of the submitted manuscript. This can result in an inability to detect major flaws, or revelations of major flaws after acceptance of publication by the editors. Other concerns include potentially long delays in publication and challenges uncovering plagiarism, duplication, corruption and scientific misconduct. Conversely, a multitude of these challenges have led to claims of scientific misconduct and an erosion of faith. These challenges have invited criticism of the peer review process itself. However, despite its imperfections, the peer review process enjoys widespread support in the scientific community. Peer review bias is one of the major focuses of today's scientific assessment of the literature. Various types of peer review bias include content-based bias, confirmation bias, bias due to conservatism, bias against interdisciplinary research, publication bias, and the bias of conflicts of interest. Consequently, peer review would benefit from various changes and improvements with appropriate training of reviewers to provide quality reviews to maintain the quality and integrity of research without bias. Thus, an appropriate, transparent peer review is not only ideal, but necessary for the future to facilitate scientific progress.
Topics: Bias; Conflict of Interest; Humans; Peer Review; Periodicals as Topic
PubMed: 25675064
DOI: No ID Found -
Intensive Care Medicine Jul 2022
Topics: Humans; Peer Group; Peer Review; Social Media
PubMed: 35652919
DOI: 10.1007/s00134-022-06747-5 -
Journal of Korean Medical Science Jan 2019Inappropriate authorship and other fraudulent publication strategies are pervasive. Here, I deal with contribution disclosures, authorship disputes versus plagiarism... (Review)
Review
Inappropriate authorship and other fraudulent publication strategies are pervasive. Here, I deal with contribution disclosures, authorship disputes versus plagiarism among collaborators, kin co-authorship, gender bias, authorship trade, and fake peer review (FPR). In contrast to underserved authorship and other ubiquitous malpractices, authorship trade and FPR appear to concentrate in some Asian countries that exhibit a mixed academic pattern of rapid growth and poor ethics. It seems that strong pressures to publish coupled with the incessantly growing number of publications entail a lower quality of published science in part attributable to a poor, compromised or even absent (in predatory journals) peer review. In this regard, the commitment of Publons to strengthen this fundamental process and ultimately ensure the quality and integrity of the published articles is laudable. Because the many recommendations for adherence to authorship guidelines and rules of honest and transparent research reporting have been rather ineffective, strong deterrents should be established to end manipulated peer review, undeserved authorship, and related fakeries.
Topics: Authorship; Peer Review; Publishing; Scientific Misconduct
PubMed: 30636943
DOI: 10.3346/jkms.2019.34.e6 -
Journal of Korean Medical Science Nov 2018Integrity of authorship and peer review practices are important considerations for ethical publishing. Criteria for authorship, as delineated in the guidelines by the... (Review)
Review
Integrity of authorship and peer review practices are important considerations for ethical publishing. Criteria for authorship, as delineated in the guidelines by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), have undergone evolution over the decades, and now require fulfillment of four criteria, including the need to be able to take responsibility for all aspects of the manuscript in question. Although such updated authorship criteria were published nearly five years ago, still, many major medical and specialist journals have yet to revise their author instructions to conform to this. Inappropriate authorship practices may include gift, guest or ghost authorship. Existing literature suggests that such practices are still widely prevalent, especially in non-English speaking countries. Another emerging problem is that of peer review fraud, mostly by authors, but also rarely by handling editors. There is literature to suggest that a proportion of such fake peer review may be driven by the support of some unscrupulous external editing agencies. Such inappropriate practices with authorship malpractices or disagreement, or peer review fraud, have resulted in more than 600 retractions each, as identified on the retractions database of Retractionwatch.com. There is a need to generate greater awareness, especially in authors from non-English speaking regions of the world, about inappropriate authorship and unethical practices in peer review. Also, support of any external editing agency should be clearly disclosed by authors at the time of submission of a manuscript.
Topics: Authorship; Biomedical Research; Databases, Factual; Disclosure; Editorial Policies; Ethics, Research; Fraud; Humans; Medical Writing; Peer Review; Publications; Publishing
PubMed: 30416407
DOI: 10.3346/jkms.2018.33.e287 -
Genetics Mar 2015
Topics: Journal Impact Factor; Peer Review
PubMed: 25740911
DOI: 10.1534/genetics.115.174771 -
Genome Biology May 2020
Topics: Access to Information; Peer Review, Research
PubMed: 32362286
DOI: 10.1186/s13059-020-02004-4 -
The Journal of Headache and Pain 2015The quality of The Journal of Headache and Pain depends on the qualified and regular collaboration of renowned scientists, who devoted their time to constructively...
The quality of The Journal of Headache and Pain depends on the qualified and regular collaboration of renowned scientists, who devoted their time to constructively review the submitted articles.We are indebted to the following experts who reviewed papers that completed the peer-reviewing process within 2014.
Topics: Humans; Peer Review, Research
PubMed: 25916328
DOI: 10.1186/s10194-015-0499-3 -
MBio Oct 2023Peer review is considered by many to be a fundamental component of scientific publishing. In this context, open peer review (OPR) has gained popularity in recent years...
Peer review is considered by many to be a fundamental component of scientific publishing. In this context, open peer review (OPR) has gained popularity in recent years as a tool to increase transparency, rigor, and inclusivity in research. But how does OPR really affect the review process? How does OPR impact specific groups, such as early career researchers? This editorial explores and discusses these aspects as well as some suggested actions for journals.
Topics: Humans; Peer Review; Publishing; Research Personnel; Peer Review, Research
PubMed: 37811986
DOI: 10.1128/mbio.01948-23 -
Science and Engineering Ethics Mar 2021The primary goal of the peer review of research grant proposals is to evaluate their quality for the funding agency. An important secondary goal is to provide...
The primary goal of the peer review of research grant proposals is to evaluate their quality for the funding agency. An important secondary goal is to provide constructive feedback to applicants for their resubmissions. However, little is known about whether review feedback achieves this goal. In this paper, we present a multi-methods analysis of responses from grant applicants regarding their perceptions of the effectiveness and appropriateness of peer review feedback they received from grant submissions. Overall, 56-60% of applicants determined the feedback to be appropriate (fair, well-written, and well-informed), although their judgments were more favorable if their recent application was funded. Importantly, independent of funding success, women found the feedback better written than men, and more white applicants found the feedback to be fair than non-white applicants. Also, perceptions of a variety of biases were specifically reported in respondents' feedback. Less than 40% of applicants found the feedback to be very useful in informing their research and improving grantsmanship and future submissions. Further, negative perceptions of the appropriateness of review feedback were positively correlated with more negative perceptions of feedback usefulness. Importantly, respondents suggested that highly competitive funding pay-lines and poor inter-panel reliability limited the usefulness of review feedback. Overall, these results suggest that more effort is needed to ensure that appropriate and useful feedback is provided to all applicants, bolstering the equity of the review process and likely improving the quality of resubmitted proposals.
Topics: Bias; Feedback; Female; Financing, Organized; Humans; Male; Peer Review; Peer Review, Research; Reproducibility of Results
PubMed: 33733708
DOI: 10.1007/s11948-021-00295-9 -
Anesthesiology Oct 2021
Topics: Anesthesiology; COVID-19; Humans; Leadership; Peer Review; Periodicals as Topic
PubMed: 34499113
DOI: 10.1097/ALN.0000000000003958