Peer review: from recognition to improved practices

Abstract

Scientific publishing has experienced profound changes in recent years, such as the advent of open-access journals, the increasing use of preprint archives or post-publication blogs, to name a few. One pillar still remains: peer review as a key ingredient that, in most cases, contributes to clarity and quality, often detecting errors and misinterpretations. Unfortunately, peer review is poorly recognized and good reviewers are rather a 'rare avis'. Even worse, this necessary task in science is generally overlooked in curricula and post-graduate education. Some considerations should help us all to ameliorate greatly our understanding and duties.

Publons joins Clarivate Analytics: what would be the future?

“…Like many other aspects, the peer review process has been considered the cornerstone to improve the scholarly publishing process [4,5]. Peer review, by definition, is the process involving the critical analysis (done by experts who are not part of the editorial staff) of manuscripts submitted to the journal (or published as individual chapters or monographs) [6]. The concept of peer review dates back to the 17th century and is accepted by the scientific community as the gold standard [6,7].…”

“…Peer review, by definition, is the process involving the critical analysis (done by experts who are not part of the editorial staff) of manuscripts submitted to the journal (or published as individual chapters or monographs) [6]. The concept of peer review dates back to the 17th century and is accepted by the scientific community as the gold standard [6,7]. It is generally a voluntary service provided by researchers and academics to the journals where reviewers play an important role, i.e., guiding the substance and direction of a journal [4,7].…”

Discriminating Between Legitimate and Predatory Open Access Journals: Report from the International Federation for Emergency Medicine Research Committee

“…Publication of research without proper scientific review is a detriment to society,1 can lead to unsafe/non-beneficial clinical practice, and in some cases may reward the conduct of unethical/unscientific conduct such as plagiarism, falsified data, and image manipulation 2–3. Predatory journals are motivated by financial gain, and are corrupting the communication of science 4.…”

Publish and perish in the hands of predatory journals

“…Strategies to avoid similar episodes may include checking the tradition and history of prospective journals both on the web and among other fellows, and carefully judging the journal´s general policy concerning peer review and pre-print (Callaway and Powell 2016, Cintas 2016, Annesley et al 2017). …”