6,766 research outputs found
Peer Review for Journals: Evidence on Quality Control, Fairness, and Innovation
No full textI reviewed the published empirical evidence concerning journal peer review, which consisted of 68 papers, all but three published since 1975. Peer review improves quality, but its use to screen papers has met with limited success. Current procedures to assure quality and fairness seem to discourage scientific advancement, especially important innovations, because findings that conflict with current beliefs are often judged to have defects. Editors can use procedures to encourage the publication of papers with innovative findings such as invited papers, early-acceptance procedures, author nominations of reviewers, results-blind reviews, structured rating sheets, open peer review, and, in particular, electronic publication. Some journals are currently using these procedures. The basic principle behind the proposals is to change the decision from whether to publish a paper to how to publish itpeer review, journals, publications
Reviewing the reviewers
No full textIn this article, the author reflects on his 12 years' experience of the academic refereeing process. In doing so, he aims to provide some encouragement to more junior academics faced with harsh and disheartening reviews, and perhaps to ask some reviewers to consider their approach to the review process. At its best, and done in a constructive manner, the review process can be a valuable learning experience for the author, with the finished product much improved as a result of constructive, informed criticism. However, on occasions reviews are marred by uninformed and/or unfair criticism, sometimes reflecting the reviewer's narrowness, or mode of thinking. Faced with such risks, authors must remain resilient and believe in the value of their contribution
Do author-suggested reviewers rate submissions more favorably than editor-suggested reviewers? A study on atmospheric chemistry and physics.
No full textBackgroundRatings in journal peer review can be affected by sources of bias. The bias variable investigated here was the information on whether authors had suggested a possible reviewer for their manuscript, and whether the editor had taken up that suggestion or had chosen a reviewer that had not been suggested by the authors. Studies have shown that author-suggested reviewers rate manuscripts more favorably than editor-suggested reviewers do.Methodology/principal findingsReviewers' ratings on three evaluation criteria and the reviewers' final publication recommendations were available for 552 manuscripts (in total 1145 reviews) that were submitted to Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, an interactive open access journal using public peer review (authors' and reviewers' comments are publicly exchanged). Public peer review is supposed to bring a new openness to the reviewing process that will enhance its objectivity. In the statistical analysis the quality of a manuscript was controlled for to prevent favorable reviewers' ratings from being attributable to quality instead of to the bias variable.Conclusions/significanceOur results agree with those from other studies that editor-suggested reviewers rated manuscripts between 30% and 42% less favorably than author-suggested reviewers. Against this backdrop journal editors should consider either doing without the use of author-suggested reviewers or, if they are used, bringing in more than one editor-suggested reviewer for the review process (so that the review by author-suggested reviewers can be put in perspective)
Editor's Choice - 2017 ESC Guidelines on the Diagnosis and Treatment of Peripheral Arterial Diseases, in collaboration with the European Society for Vascular Surgery (ESVS).
No full textCorrigendum to “European Society for Vascular Surgery (ESVS) 2022 Clinical Practice Guidelines on the Management of Chronic Venous Disease of the Lower Limbs. [Eur J Vasc Endovasc Surg (2022) 63, 184-267]”, (S1078588421009795), (10.1016/j.ejvs.2021.12.024)
No full textPublisher Copyright: © 2022 The Author(s)The authors regret there was a mistake in Figure 6 and 13. In Figure 6, it should read ‘Compression’ for oedema, to include inelastic compression as well (green box); in Figure 13, the pressure at the ankle should read ‘≤ 40 mm Hg’, for small and recent onset ulcer (yellow box):[Formula presented][Formula presented] The authors would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused.publishersversionpublishe
Expertise modeling for matching papers with reviewers
No full textAn essential part of an expert-finding task, such as matching reviewers to submitted papers, is the ability to model the expertise of a person based on documents. We evaluate several measures of the association between an author in an existing collection of research papers and a previously unseen document. We compare two language model based approaches with a novel topic model, Author-Persona-Topic (APT). In this model, each author can write under one or more “personas,” which are represented as independent distributions over hidden topics. Examples of previous papers written by prospective reviewers are gathered from the Rexa database, which extracts and disambiguates author mentions from documents gathered from the web. We evaluate the models using a reviewer matching task based on human relevance judgments determining how well the expertise of proposed reviewers matches a submission. We find that the APT topic model outperforms the other models. 1
Data from: Author-suggested reviewers: gender differences and influences on the peer review process at an ecology journal
No full textPeer review is the primary method by which journals evaluate the quality and importance of scientific papers. To help editors find suitable reviewers, many journals allow or require authors to suggest names of preferred and nonpreferred reviewers. Though authors should know best who is qualified to review their papers, they also have a strong incentive to suggest reviewers that they expect to review their paper positively.
In this study, we examine the reviewers that are suggested as preferred and nonpreferred by authors, the use of these author suggestions by editors, and the influence of author suggestions on the peer review process and outcomes at the journal Functional Ecology. In particular, we examined how gender of the participants (author, editor and reviewer) influences the role of preferred reviewers in the peer review process.
Even when not required by the journal, most authors suggest preferred reviewers, but few suggest nonpreferred reviewers. Most author-preferred reviewers are male, but the proportion of women among author suggestions increased over the 11 years, from a low of 15% in 2004 to a high of 25% in 2014.
Male and female authors did not differ in how likely they were to suggest preferred reviewers, but the proportion of women among author suggestions was higher for female authors (~28%, averaged across years) than for male authors (~21%). Women that were suggested as author-preferred reviewers were more likely to be selected by editors than were men suggested by authors.
There was no evidence that editor gender, seniority or length of service as an editor for Functional Ecology affected the probability that they used author suggestions. Of reviewers invited to review, those that were author-suggested were more likely to respond to the editors' review invitations but were not more likely to agree to review.
Most strikingly, author-preferred reviewers rated papers more positively than did editor-selected reviewers, and papers reviewed by author-preferred reviewers were much more likely to be invited for revision than were papers reviewed by editor-selected reviewers. This difference was not influenced by the gender of the participants in the process.
Suggesting preferred reviewers benefits authors because preferred reviewers rate papers significantly more positively than do editor-selected reviewers, improving the chances that a paper will be published. Journals and journal editors should recognize that preferred reviewers rate manuscripts differently than do editor-selected reviewers, and be aware that this difference can have large effects on editor decisions
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Expertise Modeling for Matching Papers with Reviewers
No full textAn essential part of an expert-finding task, such as matching reviewers to submitted papers, is the ability to model the expertise of a person based on documents. We evaluate several measures of the association between an author in an existing collection of research papers and a previously unseen document. We compare two language model based approaches with a novel topic model, Author-Persona-Topic (APT). In this model, each author can write under one or more "personas," which are represented as independent distributions over hidden topics. Examples of previous papers written by prospective reviewers are gathered from the Rexa database, which extracts and disambiguates author mentions from documents gathered from the web. We evaluate the models using a reviewer matching task based on human relevance judgments determining how well the expertise of proposed reviewers matches a submission. We find that the APT topic model outperforms the other models
Reply to the Reviewers
No full textThis paper is a satire of the response document submitted when a paper needs revisions. It expresses the perspective of a disgruntled author, who, instead of actually discussing the reviewers’ comments, gets sidetracked into complaining about the role of the peer reviewer. Through a discussion of the goals of philosophical research, it defends the claim that philosophers should be allowed to charter their own course and develop theories that appease their intellectual tastes. Yet, peer reviewers often insert their own tastes when reviewing a manuscript. As a result, too many papers end up getting rejected
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