Peer review is a generic term that is used to describe a process of self-regulation by a profession or a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals with the related field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards, improve performance, and provide credibility.

Terminology

The process and content of peer review may vary substantially depending on the profession and the purpose of the review. The key elements Peer and Review define and describe the term.

Peer

1. Someone “of equal standing with another … especially belonging to the same societal group…or [having the same] status” ^[1]
2. “A noble with a hereditary title, i.e., a peerage, and in times past, with certain rights and privileges not enjoyed by commoners.” ^[2]

Review

1. A critical inspection or examination
2. A second or repeated viewing of past events, circumstances or facts.^[3]

Peer review can be categorized by the type of activity and by the field or profession in which the activity occurs. The following terms could be used to make these distinctions, but generally those in any given field just rely on the generic term. Even when qualifiers are applied, they may be used inconsistently. For example, Clinical peer review has been used to refer specifically to Physician peer review,^[4] to the peer evaluation of clinical teaching skills for both physicians and nurses,^[5][6] to scientific peer review of journal articles, and to the secondary rating of the clinical value of articles in peer reviewed journals.^[7] Similarly, Medical peer review has been used by the American Medical Association (AMA) to refer not only to the process of improving quality and safety in healthcare organizations ^[8], but also to process by which adverse actions involving clinical privileges or professional society membership may be pursued.^[9] Thus, the terminology has poor standardization and specificity, particularly as a database search term.

Professional peer review

Professional peer review focuses on professional performance, with a view to improving quality, upholding standards, or providing certification. Professional peer review activity is widespread in the field of health care, where it may be termed Clinical peer review or Medical peer review. Further, since peer review activity is commonly segmented by clinical discipline, there is also Physician peer review, Nursing peer review, Dentistry peer review,^[10] etc. Many other professional fields have some level of peer review process: Accounting,^[11] Law,^[12][13] Engineering (e.g., Software peer review, Technical peer review), Aviation, and even Forest Fire Management.^[14]. In academia, peer review is common in decisions related to faculty advancement and tenure. Peer review is used in education to achieve certain learning objectives, particularly as a tool to reach higher order processes in the affective and cognitive domains as defined by Bloom’s Taxonomy. This may take a variety of forms, including closely mimicking the scholarly peer review processes used in science and medicine.^[15]

Scholarly peer review

Scholarly peer review (also known as refereeing) is the process of subjecting an author's scholarly Scholarly method or scholarship — is the body of principles and practices used by scholars to make their claims about the world as valid and trustworthy as possible, and to make them known to the scholarly public work, research, or ideas In the most narrow sense, an idea is just whatever is before the mind when one thinks. Very often, ideas are construed as representational images; i.e. images of some object. In other contexts, ideas are taken to be concepts, although abstract concepts do not necessarily appear as images. Many philosophers consider ideas to be a fundamental to the scrutiny of others who are experts An expert ( Audio (help·info)) is someone widely recognized as a reliable source of technique or skill whose faculty for judging or deciding rightly, justly, or wisely is accorded authority and status by their peers or the public in a specific well-distinguished domain. An expert, more generally, is a person with extensive knowledge or ability in the same field, before a paper describing this work is published in a journal. Peer review requires a community of experts in a given (and often narrowly defined) field, who are qualified and able to perform impartial review. Impartial review, especially of work in less narrowly defined or inter-disciplinary fields, may be difficult to accomplish; and the significance (good or bad) of an idea may never be widely appreciated among its contemporaries. Although generally considered essential to academic quality, and used in most important scientific publications, peer review has been criticized Peer review is a generic term that is used to describe a process of self-regulation by a profession or a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals with the related field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards, improve performance, and provide credibility as ineffective, slow, and misunderstood (see anonymous peer review Anonymous peer review, also called blind review, is a system of prepublication peer review of scientific articles or papers for journals or academic conferences by reviewers who are known to the journal editor or conference organizer but whose names are not given to the article's author. The reviewers do not know the author's identity, as any and open peer review).

Pragmatically, peer review refers to the work done during the screening of submitted manuscripts A manuscript or handwrit is a recording of information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way. The term may also be used for information that is hand-recorded in other ways than writing, for example inscriptions that are chiselled upon a hard and funding applications. This process encourages authors An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work to meet the accepted standards Social norms are the behavioral expectations and cues within a society or group. This sociological term has been defined as "the rules that a group uses for appropriate and inappropriate values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. These rules may be explicit or implicit. Failure to follow the rules can result in severe punishments, including of their discipline and prevents the dissemination of irrelevant findings, unwarranted claims, unacceptable interpretations, and personal views. Publications that have not undergone peer review are likely to be regarded with suspicion by scholars and professionals.

Justification

It is difficult for authors and researchers, whether individually or in a team, to spot every mistake or flaw in a complicated piece of work. This is not necessarily a reflection on those concerned, but because with a new and perhaps eclectic subject, an opportunity for improvement may be more obvious to someone with special expertise or who simply looks at it with a fresh eye. Therefore, showing work to others increases the probability that weaknesses will be identified and improved. For both grant-funding and publication in a scholarly journal, it is also normally a requirement that the subject is both novel and substantial.^{[dubious – discuss]}

Furthermore, the decision whether or not to publish a scholarly article, or what should be modified before publication, lies with the editor of the journal to which the manuscript has been submitted. Similarly, the decision whether or not to fund a proposed project rests with an official of the funding agency. These individuals usually refer to the opinion of one or more reviewers in making their decision. This is primarily for three reasons:

• Workload. A small group of editors/assessors cannot devote sufficient time to each of the many articles submitted to many journals.
• Diversity of opinion. Were the editor/assessor to judge all submitted material themselves, approved material would solely reflect their opinion.
• Limited expertise. An editor/assessor cannot be expected to be sufficiently expert in all areas covered by a single journal or funding agency to adequately judge all submitted material.

Thus it is normal for manuscripts and grant proposals to be sent to one or more external reviewers for comment.

Reviewers are typically anonymous Anonymity is derived from the Greek word ἀνωνυμία, anonymia, meaning "without a name" or "namelessness". In colloquial use, anonymous typically refers to a person, and often means that the personal identity, or personally identifiable information of that person is not known and independent Independence is a condition of a nation, country, or state in which its residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory, to help foster unvarnished criticism, and to discourage cronyism CERD · CEDAW · CDE · ILO C111 · ILO C100 · ILO C169 · Protocol No. 12 ECHR in funding and publication decisions. However, US government guidelines governing peer review for federal regulatory agencies require that reviewer's identity be disclosed under some circumstances. Anonymity may be unilateral or reciprocal (single- or double-blinded reviewing).

Since reviewers are normally selected from experts in the fields discussed in the article, the process of peer review is considered critical to establishing a reliable body of research and knowledge. Scholars reading the published articles can only be expert in a limited area; they rely, to some degree, on the peer-review process to provide reliable and credible research that they can build upon for subsequent or related research. As a result, significant scandal ensues when an author is found to have falsified the research included in an article, as many other scholars, and the field of study itself, may have relied upon the original research (see Peer review failures Peer review is a generic term that is used to describe a process of self-regulation by a profession or a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals with the related field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards, improve performance, and provide credibility below).

Procedure

In the case of proposed publications, an editor sends advance copies of an author's work or ideas In the most narrow sense, an idea is just whatever is before the mind when one thinks. Very often, ideas are construed as representational images; i.e. images of some object. In other contexts, ideas are taken to be concepts, although abstract concepts do not necessarily appear as images. Many philosophers consider ideas to be a fundamental to researchers or scholars who are experts An expert ( Audio (help·info)) is someone widely recognized as a reliable source of technique or skill whose faculty for judging or deciding rightly, justly, or wisely is accorded authority and status by their peers or the public in a specific well-distinguished domain. An expert, more generally, is a person with extensive knowledge or ability in the field (known as "referees" or "reviewers"), nowadays normally by e-mail or through a web-based manuscript processing system. Usually, there are two or three referees for a given article.

These referees each return an evaluation of the work to the editor, noting weaknesses or problems along with suggestions for improvement. Typically, most of the referees' comments are eventually seen by the author; scientific journals In academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research. There are thousands of scientific journals in publication, and many more have been published at various points in the past . Most journals are highly specialized, although some of the oldest observe this convention universally. The editor, usually familiar with the field of the manuscript (although typically not in as much depth as the referees, who are specialists), then evaluates the referees' comments, her or his own opinion of the manuscript, and the context of the scope of the journal or level of the book and readership, before passing a decision back to the author(s), usually with the referees' comments.

Referees' evaluations usually include an explicit recommendation of what to do with the manuscript or proposal, often chosen from options provided by the journal or funding agency. Most recommendations are along the lines of the following:

• to unconditionally accept the manuscript or proposal,
• to accept it in the event that its authors improve it in certain ways,
• to reject it, but encourage revision and invite resubmission,
• to reject it outright.

During this process, the role of the referees is advisory, and the editor is typically under no formal obligation to accept the opinions of the referees. Furthermore, in scientific publication, the referees do not act as a group, do not communicate with each other, and typically are not aware of each others identities or evaluations. There is usually no requirement that the referees achieve consensus Consensus is defined in English as, firstly - general agreement and, secondly - group solidarity of belief or sentiment. It has its origin in a Latin word meaning literally to feel together. Thus the group dynamics are substantially different from that of a jury A jury is a sworn body of people convened to render an impartial verdict officially submitted to them by a court, or to set a penalty or judgment. Modern juries tend to be found in courts to judge whether an accused person is not guilty or guilty of a crime. (There is no such verdict as 'innocent').

In situations where the referees disagree substantially about the quality of a work, there are a number of strategies for reaching a decision. When an editor receives very positive and very negative reviews for the same manuscript, the editor often will solicit one or more additional reviews as a tie-breaker. As another strategy in the case of ties, editors may invite authors to reply to a referee's criticisms Criticism is the judgement of the merits and faults of the actions or work of another individual. Criticism can mean merely to evaluate without necessarily finding fault; however, usually the word implies the expression of disapproval and permit a compelling rebuttal to break the tie. If an editor does not feel confident to weigh the persuasiveness of a rebuttal, the editor may solicit a response from the referee who made the original criticism. In rare instances, an editor will convey communications back and forth between authors and a referee, in effect allowing them to debate a point. Even in these cases, however, editors do not allow referees to confer with each other, though the reviewer may see earlier comments submitted by other reviewers. The goal of the process is explicitly not to reach consensus or to persuade anyone to change their opinions. Some medical journals, however (usually following the open access In academic publishing, open access is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions access to literature and articles that have traditionally been published in scholarly journals. In e-learning, open access is free-to-use learning objects and resources. Open access is essentially the same thing as what in model), have begun posting on the Internet the pre-publication history of each individual article, from the original submission to reviewers' reports, authors' comments, and revised manuscripts.

Traditionally, reviewers would remain anonymous to the authors, but this standard is slowly changing. In some academic fields, most journals now offer the reviewer the option of remaining anonymous or not, or a referee may opt to sign a review, thereby relinquishing anonymity. Published papers sometimes contain, in the acknowledgments section, thanks to anonymous or named referees who helped improve the paper.

Some university presses undertake peer review of books. After positive review by two or three independent referees, a university press sends the manuscript to the press's editorial board, a committee of faculty members, for final approval.^[16] Such a review process is a requirement for full membership of the Association of American University Presses.^[17]

In some disciplines there exist refereed venues (such as conferences An academic conference is a conference for researchers to present and discuss their work. Together with academic or scientific journals, conferences provide an important channel for exchange of information between researchers and workshops). To be admitted to speak, scholars and scientists must submit papers (generally short, often 15 pages or less) in advance. These papers are reviewed by a "program committee" (the equivalent of an editorial board), which generally requests inputs from referees. The hard deadlines set by the conferences tend to limit the options to either accepting or rejecting the paper.

Recruiting referees

At a journal or book publisher, the task of picking reviewers typically falls to an editor Editing is the process of selecting and preparing language, images, sound, video, or film through processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications in various media. A person who edits is called an editor. In a sense, the editing process originates with the idea for the work itself and continues in the relationship.^[18] When a manuscript arrives, an editor solicits reviews from scholars Scholarly method or scholarship — is the body of principles and practices used by scholars to make their claims about the world as valid and trustworthy as possible, and to make them known to the scholarly public or other experts who may or may not have already expressed a willingness to referee for that journal Open access journals are scholarly journals that are available to the reader without financial or other barrier other than access to the internet itself. Some are subsidized, and some require payment on behalf of the author. Subsidized journals are financed by an academic institution or a government information center or book division. Granting agencies typically recruit a panel or committee A committee is a type of small deliberative assembly that is usually intended to remain subordinate to another, larger deliberative assembly—which when organized so that action on committee requires a vote by all its entitled members, is called the "Committee of the Whole". Committees often serve several different functions: of reviewers in advance of the arrival of applications.

Typically referees are not selected from among the authors' close colleagues Colleagues are those explicitly united in a common purpose and respecting each other's abilities to work toward that purpose. A colleague is an associate in a profession or in a civil or ecclesiastical office, students, or friends. Referees are supposed to inform the editor of any conflict of interests that might arise. Journals or individual editors often invite a manuscript's authors to name people whom they consider qualified to referee their work. Indeed, for a number of journals this is a requirement of submission. Authors are sometimes also invited to name natural candidates who should be disqualified, in which case they may be asked to provide justification (typically expressed in terms of conflict of interest). In some disciplines, scholars listed in an "acknowledgments" section are not allowed to serve as referees (hence the occasional practice of using this section to disqualify potentially negative reviewers^{[citation needed]}).

Editors solicit author input in selecting referees because academic Academia, Acadème, or the Academy are collective terms for the community of students and scholars engaged in higher education and research writing typically is very specialized. Editors often oversee many specialties, and can not be experts in all of them. But after an editor selects referees from the pool of candidates, the editor typically is obliged not to disclose the referees' identities to the authors, and in scientific journals, to each other. Policies on such matters differ among academic disciplines.

Recruiting referees A referee has authority to make decisions about play in many sports. Officials in various sports are known by a variety of titles, including referee, umpire, judge, linesman, commissaire, timekeeper or touch judge is a political art, because referees, and often editors, are usually not paid, and reviewing takes time away from the referee's main activities, such as his or her own research. To the would-be recruiter's advantage, most potential referees are authors An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work themselves, or at least readers, who know that the publication system requires that experts An expert ( Audio (help·info)) is someone widely recognized as a reliable source of technique or skill whose faculty for judging or deciding rightly, justly, or wisely is accorded authority and status by their peers or the public in a specific well-distinguished domain. An expert, more generally, is a person with extensive knowledge or ability donate their time. Referees also have the opportunity to prevent work that does not meet the standards of the field from being published, which is a position of some responsibility. Editors are at a special advantage in recruiting a scholar Scholarly method or scholarship — is the body of principles and practices used by scholars to make their claims about the world as valid and trustworthy as possible, and to make them known to the scholarly public when they have overseen the publication of his or her work, or if the scholar is one who hopes to submit manuscripts to that editor's publication in the future. Granting agencies, similarly, tend to seek referees among their present or former grantees. Serving as a referee can even be a condition of a grant, or professional association membership.

Another difficulty that peer review organizers face is that, with respect to some manuscripts or proposals, there may be few scholars who truly qualify as experts. Such a circumstance often frustrates the goals of reviewer anonymity and the avoidance of conflicts of interest. It also increases the chances that an organizer will not be able to recruit true experts – people who have themselves done work similar to that under review, and who can read between the lines. Low-prestige or local journals and granting agencies that award little money are especially handicapped with regard to recruiting experts.

Finally, anonymity Anonymity is derived from the Greek word ἀνωνυμία, anonymia, meaning "without a name" or "namelessness". In colloquial use, anonymous typically refers to a person, and often means that the personal identity, or personally identifiable information of that person is not known adds to the difficulty in finding reviewers in another way. In scientific circles, credentials Examples of credentials include academic diplomas, academic degrees, certifications, security clearances, identification documents, badges, passwords, user names, keys, powers of attorney, and so on. Sometimes publications, such as scientific papers or books, may be viewed as similar to credentials by some people, especially if the publication was and reputation Reputation is the opinion of the group of entities toward a person, a group of people, or an organization on a certain criterion. It is an important factor in many fields, such as education, business, online communities or social status are important, and while being a referee for a prestigious journal is considered an honor, the anonymity restrictions make it impossible to publicly state that one was a referee for a particular article. However, credentials and reputation are principally established by publications, not by refereeing; and in some fields refereeing may not be anonymous.

The process of peer review does not end after a paper completes the peer review process. After being put to press, and after 'the ink is dry', the process of peer review continues as publications are read. Readers will often send letters to the editor of a journal, or correspond with the editor via an on-line journal club. In this way, all 'peers' may offer review and critique of published literature.

Different styles of review

Peer review can be rigorous, in terms of the skill brought to bear, without being highly stringent. An agency may be flush with money to give away, for example, or a journal may have few impressive manuscripts to choose from, so there may be little incentive for selection. Conversely, when either funds or publication space is limited, peer review may be used to select an extremely small number of proposals or manuscripts.

Often the decision of what counts as "good enough" falls entirely to the editor or organizer of the review. In other cases, referees will each be asked to make the call, with only general guidance from the coordinator on what stringency to apply.

Very general journals such as Science Science is the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is considered one of the world's most prestigious scientific journals. The peer-reviewed journal, first published in 1880 is circulated weekly and has a print subscriber base of around 130,000. Because institutional subscriptions and online access serve and Nature Nature is a prominent British scientific journal, first published on 4 November 1869. It is the world's most highly cited interdisciplinary science journal. Most scientific journals are now highly specialized, and Nature is among the few journals that still publish original research articles across a wide range of scientific fields. There are many have extremely stringent standards for publication, and will reject papers that report good quality scientific work if editors feel the work is not a breakthrough in the field. Such journals generally have a two-tier reviewing system. In the first stage, members of the editorial board verify that the paper's findings — if correct — would be ground-breaking enough to warrant publication in Science or Nature. Most papers are rejected at this stage. Papers that do pass this 'pre-reviewing' are sent out for in-depth review to outside referees. Even after all reviewers recommend publication and all reviewer criticisms/suggestions for changes have been met, papers may still be returned to the authors for shortening to meet the journal's length limits. With the advent of electronic journal editions, overflow material may be stored in the journal's online Electronic Supporting Information archive.

A similar emphasis on novelty exists in general area journals such as the Journal of the American Chemical Society The Journal of the American Chemical Society , is a peer-reviewed scientific journal, published since 1879 by the American Chemical Society. The journal has absorbed two other publications in its history, the Journal of Analytical and Applied Chemistry in July 1893, and the American Chemical Journal in January 1914. A weekly publication, it (JACS). However, these journals generally send out all papers (except blatantly inappropriate ones) for peer reviewing to multiple reviewers. The reviewers are specifically queried not just on the scientific quality and correctness, but also on whether the findings are of interest to the general area readership (chemists of all disciplines, in the case of JACS) or only to a specialist subgroup. In the latter case, the recommendation is usually for publication in a more specialized journal. The editor may offer to authors the option of having the manuscript and reviews forwarded to such a journal with the same publishers (perhaps, in the example given, the Journal of Organic Chemistry); if the reviewer reports warrant such a decision, the editor of such a journal may accept the forwarded manuscript without further reviewing.

Specialized scientific journals such as the aforementioned chemistry journals, Astrophysical Journal The Astrophysical Journal is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering astronomy and astrophysics. It was founded in 1895 by the American astronomers George Ellery Hale and James Edward Keeler. It publishes three 500-page issues per month, and the Physical Review Physical Review is an American scientific journal founded in 1893 by Edward Nichols. It publishes original research and scientific and literature reviews on all aspects of physics. It is published by the American Physical Society. The journal is in its third series, and is split in several sub-journals each covering a particular field of physics series use peer review primarily to filter out obvious mistakes and incompetence, as well as plagiarism, overly derivative work, and straightforward applications of known methods. Different publication rates reflect these different criteria: Nature publishes about 5 percent of received papers, while Astrophysical Journal publishes about 70 percent. Some open access In academic publishing, open access is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions access to literature and articles that have traditionally been published in scholarly journals. In e-learning, open access is free-to-use learning objects and resources. Open access is essentially the same thing as what in journals such as Biology Direct have the policy of making the reviewers' reports public by publishing the reports together with the manuscripts.

Screening by peers may be more or less laissez-faire In economics, laissez-faire (English pronunciation: /ˌlɛseɪˈfɛər/ , French: [lɛsefɛʁ] ( listen)) means allowing industry to be free from state intervention, especially restrictions in the form of tariffs and government monopolies depending on the discipline. Physicists Categories: Lists of scientists | Physics lists | Physicists, for example, tend to think that decisions about the worthiness of an article are best left to the marketplace. Yet even within such a culture peer review serves to ensure high standards in what is published. Outright errors are detected and authors receive both edits and suggestions.

To preserve the integrity of the peer-review process, submitting authors may not be informed of who reviews their papers; sometimes, they might not even know the identity of the associate editor who is responsible for the paper. In many cases, alternatively called "masked" or "double-masked" review (or "blind" or "double-blind" review), the identity of the authors is concealed from the reviewers, lest the knowledge of authorship bias their review; in such cases, however, the associate editor responsible for the paper does know who the author is. Sometimes the scenario where the reviewers do know who the authors are is called "single-masked" to distinguish it from the "double-masked" process. In double-masked review, the authors are required to remove any reference that may point to them as the authors of the paper.

While the anonymity of reviewers is almost universally preserved, double-masked review (where authors are also anonymous to reviewers) is still relatively rarely employed.

Critics of the double-masked process point out that, despite the extra editorial effort to ensure anonymity, the process often fails to do so, since certain approaches, methods, writing styles, notations, etc., may point to a certain group of people in a research stream, and even to a particular person.^[19][20] Proponents of double-masked review argue that it performs at least as well as the traditional one and that it generates a better perception of fairness and equality in global scientific funding and publishing.^[21]

Proponents of the double-masked process argue that if the reviewers of a paper are unknown to each other, the associate editor responsible for the paper can easily verify the objectivity of the reviews. Single-masked review is thus strongly dependent upon the goodwill of the participants.

A conflict of interest A conflict of interest occurs when an individual or organization is involved in multiple interests, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation for an act in the other arises when a reviewer and author have a disproportionate amount of respect (or disrespect) for each other. As an alternative to single-masked and double-masked review, authors and reviewers are encouraged to declare their conflicts of interest when the names of authors and sometimes reviewers are known to the other. When conflicts are reported, the conflicting reviewer is prohibited from reviewing and discussing the manuscript. The incentive for reviewers to declare their conflicts of interest is a matter of professional ethics and individual integrity. While their reviews are not public, these reviews are a matter of record and the reviewer's credibility depends upon how they represent themselves among their peers. Some software engineering journals, such as the IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering The IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering is a monthly journal published by the IEEE Computer Society. It contains peer-reviewed articles and other contributions in the area of software engineering by computer scientists, covering theoretical results and empirical studies. It is widely considered to be the leading journal in this field, use non-blind reviews with reporting to editors of conflicts of interest by both authors and reviewers.

A more rigorous standard of accountability is known as an audit. Because reviewers are not paid, they cannot be expected to put as much time and effort into a review as an audit requires. Most journals (and grant agencies like NSF) have a policy that authors must archive Scientific data archiving refers to the long-term storage of scientific data and methods. The various scientific journals have differing policies regarding how much of their data and methods scientists are required to store in a public archive, and what is actually archived varies widely between different disciplines. Similarly, the major grant- their data and methods in the event another researcher wishes to replicate or audit the research after publication^{[citation needed]}. Unfortunately, the archiving policies are often ignored by researchers.

Criticism

One of the most common complaints about the peer review process is that it is slow, and that it typically takes several months or even several years in some fields for a submitted paper to appear in print^{[citation needed]}. In practice, much of the communication about new results in some fields such as astronomy Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the Earth's atmosphere (such as the cosmic background radiation). It is concerned with the evolution, physics, chemistry, meteorology, and motion of celestial objects, as well as the formation and development of the universe and economics Economics is the social science that is concerned with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek οἰκονομία from οἶκος (oikos, "house") + νόμος (nomos, "custom" or "law"), hence "rules of the house(hold)". Current no longer takes place through peer-reviewed papers, but rather through preprints A preprint is a draft of a scientific paper that has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal submitted onto electronic servers such as arXiv.org The arXiv is an archive for electronic preprints of scientific papers in the fields of mathematics, physics, computer science, quantitative biology and statistics which can be accessed via the Internet. In many fields of mathematics and physics, almost all scientific papers are placed on the arXiv. As of 3 October 2008)[update], arXiv.org passed^{[citation needed]}. However, such preprints are often also submitted to refereed journals, and in many cases have, at the time of electronic submission, already passed through the peer review process and been accepted for publication.^{[citation needed]}

While passing the peer review process is often considered in the scientific community The scientific community consists of the total body of scientists, its relationships and interactions. It is normally divided into "sub-communities" each working on a particular field within science. Objectivity is expected to be achieved by the scientific method. Peer review, through discussion and debate within journals and conferences, to be a certification of validity^{[citation needed]}, it is not without its problems. Drummond Rennie, deputy editor of Journal of the American Medical Association is an organizer of the International Congress on Peer Review and Biomedical Publication, which has been held every four years since 1986.^[22] He remarks,

There seems to be no study too fragmented, no hypothesis too trivial, no literature too biased or too egotistical, no design too warped, no methodology too bungled, no presentation of results too inaccurate, too obscure, and too contradictory, no analysis too self-serving, no argument too circular, no conclusions too trifling or too unjustified, and no grammar and syntax too offensive for a paper to end up in print.

Richard Horton, editor of the British medical journal The Lancet, has said that

The mistake, of course, is to have thought that peer review was any more than a crude means of discovering the acceptability — not the validity — of a new finding. Editors and scientists alike insist on the pivotal importance of peer review. We portray peer review to the public as a quasi-sacred process that helps to make science our most objective truth teller. But we know that the system of peer review is biased, unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, easily fixed, often insulting, usually ignorant, occasionally foolish, and frequently wrong.

^[23]

Allegations of bias and suppression

The interposition of editors and reviewers between authors and readers always raises the possibility that the intermediators may serve as gatekeepers.^[24] Some sociologists of science argue that peer review makes the ability to publish susceptible to control by elites and to personal jealousy.^[25] The peer review process may suppress dissent against "mainstream" theories.^[26][27][28] Reviewers tend to be especially critical of conclusions that contradict their own views, and lenient towards those that accord with them. At the same time, established scientists are more likely than less established ones to be sought out as referees, particularly by high-prestige journals or publishers. As a result, it has been argued^{[by whom?]}, ideas that harmonize with the established experts' are more likely to see print and to appear in premier journals than are iconoclastic or revolutionary ones, which accords with Thomas Kuhn's well-known observations regarding scientific revolutions.^[29]

Others^[who?] have pointed out that there is a very large number of scientific journals in which one can publish, making total control of information difficult^{[citation needed]}. In addition, the decision-making process of peer review, in which each referee gives their opinion separately and without consultation with the other referees, is intended to mitigate some of these problems^{[citation needed]}. Some have suggested that:

"... peer review does not thwart new ideas. Journal editors and the 'scientific establishment' are not hostile to new discoveries. Science thrives on discovery and scientific journals compete to publish new breakthroughs."^[30]

Peer review failures

Peer review failures occur when a peer-reviewed article contains obvious fundamental errors that undermine at least one of its main conclusions. Many journals have no procedure to deal with peer review failures beyond publishing letters to the editor.^[31]

Peer review in scientific journals assumes that the article reviewed has been honestly written, and the process is not designed to detect fraud. The reviewers usually do not have full access to the data from which the paper has been written and some elements have to be taken on trust. It is not usually practical for the reviewer to reproduce the author's work. Publication of incorrect results does not in itself indicate a peer review failure.^{[citation needed]}

Dynamic and open peer review

It has been suggested that traditional anonymous peer review lacks accountability, can lead to abuse by reviewers, and may be biased and inconsistent,^[32] alongside other flaws.^[33][34] In response to these criticisms, other systems of peer review with various degrees of "openness" have been suggested.

Starting in the 1990s, several scientific journals (including the high impact journal Nature in 2006) started experiments with hybrid peer review processes, often allowing open peer reviews in parallel to the traditional model. The initial evidence of the effect of open peer review upon the quality of reviews, the tone and the time spent on reviewing was mixed, although it does seem that under open peer review, more of those who are invited to review decline to do so.^[35][36]

Throughout the 2000s first academic journals based solely on the concept of open peer review were launched (see e.g. Philica). An extension of peer review beyond the date of publication is Open Peer Commentary, whereby expert commentaries are solicited on published articles, and the authors are encouraged to respond.

Peer review of government policy

The technique of peer review is also used to improve government policy. In particular, the European Union uses it as a tool in the 'Open Method of Co-ordination' of policies in the fields of employment and social inclusion.

A program of peer reviews in active labour market policy^[37] started in 1999, and was followed in 2004 by one in social inclusion.^[38] Each program sponsors about eight peer review meetings in each year, in which a 'host country' lays a given policy or initiative open to examination by half a dozen other countries and relevant European-level NGOs. These usually meet over two days and include visits to local sites where the policy can be seen in operation. The meeting is preceded by the compilation of an expert report on which participating 'peer countries' submit comments. The results are published on the web.

History

The first recorded scientific peer review process was at The Royal Society in 1665 by the founding editor of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Henry Oldenburg.^[39][40]

The first peer-reviewed publication may have been the Medical Essays and Observations published by the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1731. The present-day peer review system evolved from this 18th century process.^[41]

A professional peer review process is found in the Ethics of the Physician written by Ishaq bin Ali al-Rahwi (854–931) of al-Raha, Syria. His work, as well as later Arabic medical manuals, state that a visiting physician must always make duplicate notes of a patient's condition on every visit. When the patient was cured or had died, the notes of the physician were examined by a local medical council of other physicians, who would review the practicing physician's notes to decide whether his/her performance have met the required standards of medical care. If their reviews were negative, the practicing physician could face a lawsuit from a maltreated patient.^[42]

Peer review has been a touchstone of modern scientific method only since the middle of the 20th century, the only exception being medicine. Before then, its application was lax in other scientific fields. For example, Albert Einstein's revolutionary "Annus Mirabilis" papers in the 1905 issue of Annalen der Physik were not peer-reviewed by anyone other than the journal's editor in chief, Max Planck (the father of quantum theory), and its co-editor, Wilhelm Wien. Although clearly peers (both won Nobel prizes in physics), a formal panel of reviewers was not sought, as is done for many scientific journals today. Established authors and editors were given more latitude in their journalistic discretion, back then. In a recent editorial in Nature, it was stated that "in journals in those days, the burden of proof was generally on the opponents rather than the proponents of new ideas."^[43]

See also

• Academic conference
• Academic journal
• Abstract management
• Adversarial review
• Journal club
• JournalReview.org
• Objectivity (philosophy)
• Open Peer Commentary
• Physician peer review
• Publication bias
• Scholarly method
• Sham peer review
• Sokal affair
• Software peer review
• Sternberg peer review controversy
• Technical peer review

References

1. ^ "Peer – Definition". Merriam-Webster Dictionary. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/peer.
2. ^ wiktionary:peer
3. ^ http://www.thefreedictionary.com/review
4. ^ Dans PE (1993). "Clinical peer review: burnishing a tarnished image". Ann. Intern. Med. 118 (7): 566–8. PMID 8442628. http://www.annals.org/content/118/7/566.full.pdf+html.
5. ^ [1]
6. ^ Ludwick R, Dieckman BC, Herdtner S, Dugan M, Roche M (November–December 1998). "Documenting the scholarship of clinical teaching through peer review". Nurse Educ. 23 (6): 17–20. doi:10.1097/00006223-199811000-00008. PMID 9934106.
7. ^ Haynes RB, Cotoi C, Holland J, et al. (2006). "Second-order peer review of the medical literature for clinical practitioners". JAMA 295 (15): 1801–8. doi:10.1001/jama.295.15.1801. PMID 16622142.
8. ^ http://www.ama-assn.org/ama1/pub/upload/mm/21/omss-bylaws-4thedition-final.pdf (page 131)
9. ^ http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/physician-resources/legal-topics/medical-peer-review.shtml
10. ^ Milgrom P, Weinstein P, Ratener P, Read WA, Morrison K (1978). "Dental Examinations for Quality Control: Peer Review versus Self-Assessment". Am. J. Public Health. 68 (4): 394–401. doi:10.2105/AJPH.68.4.394. PMID 645987.
11. ^ "AICPA Peer Review Program". http://www.aicpa.org/MEMBERS/div/practmon/index.htm.
12. ^ "Peer Review". UK Legal Services Commission. http://www.legalservices.gov.uk/civil/how/mq_peerreview.asp.
13. ^ "Evaluate a Lawyer with Exclusive Martindale-Hubbell® Peer Review Ratings™ Service on Martindale.com®". http://www.martindale.com/xp/legal/About_Martindale/Products_and_Services/Peer_Review_Ratings/ratings.xml.
14. ^ http://www.fs.fed.us/fire/doctrine/mgmt/briefing_papers/peer_review_panels.pdf
15. ^ Sims, G. K. 1989. Peer review in the classroom. Journal of Agronomic Education 18:105–108.
16. ^ Arnold, Gordon B. (2003). "University presses". in James W. Guthrie. Encyclopedia of Education. 7 (2nd ed.). New York: Macmillan Reference USA. p. 2601. ISBN 0-02-865601-6.
17. ^ "AAUP Membership Benefits and Eligibility". Association of American University Presses. http://aaupnet.org/membership/. Retrieved 2008-02-02.
18. ^ Lawrence O'Gorman (January 2008). "The (Frustrating) State of Peer Review". IAPR Newsletter 30 (1): 3–5. http://iapr.org/docs/newsletter-2008-01.pdf.
19. ^ Action Potential: Double-blind peer review?
20. ^ "Editorial: Working double-blind". Nature 451 (7179): 605–6. February 2008. doi:10.1038/451605b. PMID 18256621. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v451/n7179/full/451605b.html.
21. ^ Mainguy G, Motamedi MR, Mietchen D (September 2005). "Peer review—the newcomers' perspective". PLoS Biol. 3 (9): e326. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0030326. PMID 16149851.
22. ^ Rennie D, Flanagin A, Smith R, Smith J (March 19, 2003). "Fifth International Congress on Peer Review and Biomedical Publication: Call for Research". JAMA 289 (11): 1438. doi:10.1001/jama.289.11.1438. http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/289/11/1438.
23. ^ Horton, Richard (2000). "Genetically modified food: consternation, confusion, and crack-up". MJA 172 (4): 148–9. PMID 10772580. http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/172_04_210200/horton/horton.html.
24. ^ Bradley, (1981)
25. ^ "British scientists exclude 'maverick' colleagues, says report" (2004) EurekAlert Public release date: 16 August 2004
26. ^ Brian Martin, "Suppression Stories" (1997) in Fund for Intellectual Dissent ISBN 0-646-30349-X
27. ^ See also Juan Miguel Campanario, "Rejecting Nobel class articles and resisting Nobel class discoveries", cited in Nature, 16 October 2003, Vol 425, Issue 6959, p.645
28. ^ Campanario, Juan Miguel; Martin, Brian (Fall 2004). "Challenging dominant physics paradigms". Journal of Scientific Exploration 18 (3): 421–38. http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/04jse.html.
29. ^ See also: Sophie Petit-Zeman, "Trial by peers comes up short" (2003) The Guardian, Thursday January 16, 2003
30. ^ Ayala FJ (1994). "On the scientific methods, its practice and pitfalls". History and Philosophy of Life Sciences 16: 205–40.
31. ^ Afifi, M. "Reviewing the “Letter-to-editor” section in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 2000–2004". Bulletin of the World Health Organization. http://www.who.int/bulletin/bulletin_board/84/letters/en/index.html.
32. ^ Rothwell, P. M. (2000). "Reproducibility of peer review in clinical neuroscience: Is agreement between reviewers any greater than would be expected by chance alone?". Brain 123 (9): 1964. doi:10.1093/brain/123.9.1964. http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/123/9/1964.
33. ^ The Peer Review Process
34. ^ Alison McCook (February 2006). "Is Peer Review Broken?". The Scientist. http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/23061/.
35. ^ Van Rooyen, S; Godlee, F; Evans, S; Black, N; Smith, R (1999). "Effect of open peer review on quality of reviews and on reviewers' recommendations: a randomised trial". BMJ 318 (7175): 23. PMID 9872878. PMC 27670. http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/318/7175/23.
36. ^ Elizabeth Walsh, Maeve Rooney, Louis Appleby, Greg Wilkinson (2000). "Open peer review: a randomised controlled trial". The British Journal of Psychiatry 176 (1): 47–51. doi:10.1192/bjp.176.1.47. PMID 10789326.
37. ^ Manila Housting: Home Page
38. ^ Peer Review and Assessment in Social Inclusion — Evaluations par les pairs
39. ^ On Being a Scientist National Academies Press
40. ^ The Origin of the Scientific Journal and the Process of Peer Review House of Commons Select Committee Report
41. ^ Benos, Dale J. et al. (2007). "The Ups and Downs of Peer Review". Advances in Physiology Education 31 (2): 145–152. doi:10.1152/advan.00104.2006. PMID 17562902. "p. 145 – Scientific peer review has been defined as the evaluation of research findings for competence, significance, and originality by qualified experts. These peers act as sentinels on the road of scientific discovery and publication.".
42. ^ Spier, Ray (2002). "The history of the peer-review process". Trends in Biotechnology 20 (8): 357–8. doi:10.1016/S0167-7799(02)01985-6. PMID 12127284.
43. ^ "Coping with peer rejection". Nature 425 (6959): 645. 16 October 2003. doi:10.1038/425645a. PMID 14562060.

General references and further reading

• Ann C. Weller (2001) Editorial Peer Review: its Strengths and Weaknesses Medford, NJ: American Society for Information Science and Technology ISBN 1573871001 (extensive bibliography).
• James V. Bradley (1981) "Pernicious Publication Practices", Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society 18: 31–34 .
• Jaap de Vries (2001) "Peer Review: The Holy Cow of Science", in A Century of Science Publishing, E.H. Frederiksson ed., IOS Press ISBN 1586031481 .

External links

General discussions and links

• Nature peer review debate June 2006
• Fifth International Congress on Peer Review and Biomedical Publication
• Discussion forum about the peer review system
• "A Difficult Balance: Editorial Peer Review in Medicine" (Bibliography, hosted by Eugene Garfield)

Specific articles

• Dayton, Andrew I (2006). "Beyond Open Access: Open Discourse, the next great equalizer". Retrovirology 3 (1): 55. doi:10.1186/1742-4690-3-55. http://www.retrovirology.com/content/3/1/55.
• The Maharishi Caper: Or How to Hoodwink Top Medical Journals, The Newsletter of the National Association of Science Writers
• Jefferson, T; Wager, E; Davidoff, F (2002). "Measuring the quality of peer review". JAMA 287 (21): 2786–90. doi:10.1001/jama.287.21.2786. PMID 12038912. http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/287/21/2786.
• Gitanjali, B (2001). "Peer review – process, perspectives and the path ahead". J Postgrad Med 47 (3): 210–4. PMID 11832629. http://www.jpgmonline.com/article.asp?issn=0022-3859;year=2001;volume=47;issue=3;spage=210;epage=4;aulast=Gitanjali.
• Something Rotten at the Core of Science? (Analysis of US court decision of criteria for scientific evidence)
• Osmond, DH (1983). "Malice's Wonderland: Research Funding and Peer Review". J. Neurobiol. 14 (2): 95–112. doi:10.1002/neu.480140202. PMID 6842193. http://post.queensu.ca/~forsdyke/peerrev1.htm.
• Rothwell, P. M. (September 2000). "Is agreement between reviewers any greater than would be expected by chance alone?". Brain 123 (9): 1964–9. doi:10.1093/brain/123.9.1964. http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/123/9/1964.
• Horrobin DF (March 1990). "The philosophical basis of peer review and the suppression of innovation". JAMA 263 (10): 1438–41. doi:10.1001/jama.263.10.1438. PMID 2304222. comment: "Peer review and the philosophy of science". JAMA 264 (24): 3143. December 1990. doi:10.1001/jama.264.24.3143b. PMID 2078249.
• "Suppressing Dissent in Science". Lancet 357 (9257). 3 March 2001. http://www.thegreatboycott.net/Dissent_in_Science.html.
• Hampering the progress of science by peer review and by the 'selective' funding system (Science Tribune – Article – December 1996 )
• Suppression of Dissent in Science (Research in Social Problems and Public Policy V. 7)
• Refereed Journals: Do They Insure Quality or Enforce Orthodoxy? Frank J. Tipler, and discussion board.
• Quinn, G; Fee, E; Larsen, PS; Shumway, SE; Gili, JM; Kiørboe, T; Hagerman, L; Beninger, P et al. (2000). "The peer-review system: time for re-assessment?". Marine Ecology Progress Series 192: 305–13. doi:10.3354/meps192305. http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/meps/v192/p305-313/.
• Riisgård, HU (2003). "Misuse of the peer-review system: time for countermeasures?". Marine Ecology Progress Series 258: 297–309. doi:10.3354/meps258297. http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/meps/v258/p297-309/.
• Bourne PE; Korngreen A (September 2006). "Ten Simple Rules for Reviewers". PLoS Computational Biology 2 (9): e110. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.0020110. PMID 17009861. General guidelines for reviewing.
• Stevan Harnad:
  • 1998: The Invisible Hand of Peer Review Nature version; Exploit Interactive version
  • Harnad, Stevan (1997). "Learned Inquiry and the Net: The Role of Peer Review, Peer Commentary and Copyright". Learned Publishing 11 (4): 283–292. doi:10.1087/09531519850146229. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/2633/.
  • Newby, Gregory B.; Peek, Robin P., ed (1996). "Implementing Peer Review on the Net: Scientific Quality Control in Scholarly Electronic Journals". Scholarly publishing: the electronic frontier. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. pp. 103–118. ISBN 0-262-16157-5. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/2900/.
  • Harnad, S. (1985). "Rational disagreement in peer review". Science, Technology and Human Values 10: 55–62. doi:10.1177/016224398501000307. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/3397/.
  • "Creative disagreement". The Sciences 19: 18–20. 1979. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/3387/.
  • 1978 Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) editorial
• The Task of the Referee
• A web-based survey on the practice of peer-review in political science: The Political Science Peer-Review Survey
• Finding Peer-reviewed or Refereed Journals Cal Poly Library Services
• Peer Review: Reform or Revolution?
• Peer Review. A guide for researchers (Research Information Network)

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