scholarly journals Rewarding the quantity of peer review could harm biomedical research

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-205
Author(s):  
Aceil Al-Khatib ◽  
Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva
Keyword(s):  
Peer Review ◽  
Biomedical Research ◽  
Poor Quality ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Present Evidence ◽  
Perverse Incentive ◽  
Review Reports ◽  
Biomedical Publications

Voluntary peer review is generally provided by researchers as a duty or service to their disciplines. They commit their expertise, knowledge and time freely without expecting rewards or compensation. Peer review can be perceived as a reciprocal mission that aims to safeguard the quality of publications by helping authors improve their manuscripts. While voluntary peer review adds value to research, rewarding the quantity or the volume of peer review is likely to lure academics into providing poor quality peer review. Consequently, the quantity of peer review may increase, but at the expense of quality, which may lead to unintended consequences and might negatively affect the quality of biomedical publications. This paper aims to present evidence that while voluntary peer review may aid researchers, pressurized peer review may create a perverse incentive that negatively affects the integrity of the biomedical research record. We closely examine one of the proposed models for rewarding peer review based on the quantity of peer review reports. This article also argues that peer review should remain a voluntary mission, and should not be prompted by the need to attain tenure or promotion.

scholarly journals Development of ARCADIA: a tool for assessing the quality of peer-review reports in biomedical research

BMJ Open ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. e035604
Author(s):  
Cecilia Superchi ◽  
Darko Hren ◽  
David Blanco ◽  
Roser Rius ◽  
Alessandro Recchioni ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Peer Review ◽  
Biomedical Research ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Peer Review Process ◽  
Final Version ◽  
Report Quality ◽  
Study Results ◽  
Review Reports ◽  
Definition Of

ObjectiveTo develop a tool to assess the quality of peer-review reports in biomedical research.MethodsWe conducted an online survey intended for biomedical editors and authors. The survey aimed to (1) determine if participants endorse the proposed definition of peer-review report quality; (2) identify the most important items to include in the final version of the tool and (3) identify any missing items. Participants rated on a 5-point scale whether an item should be included in the tool and they were also invited to comment on the importance and wording of each item. Principal component analysis was performed to examine items redundancy and a general inductive approach was used for qualitative data analysis.ResultsA total of 446 biomedical editors and authors participated in the survey. Participants were mainly male (65.9%), middle-aged (mean=50.3, SD=13) and with PhD degrees (56.4%). The majority of participants (84%) agreed on the definition of peer-review report quality we proposed. The 20 initial items included in the survey questionnaire were generally highly rated with a mean score ranging from 3.38 (SD=1.13) to 4.60 (SD=0.69) (scale 1–5). Participants suggested 13 items that were not included in the initial list of items. A steering committee composed of five members with different expertise discussed the selection of items to include in the final version of the tool. The final checklist includes 14 items encompassed in five domains (Importance of the study, Robustness of the study methods, Interpretation and discussion of the study results, Reporting and transparency of the manuscript, Characteristics of peer reviewer’s comments).ConclusionAssessment of Review reports with a Checklist Available to eDItors and Authors tool could be used regularly by editors to evaluate the reviewers’ work, and also as an outcome when evaluating interventions to improve the peer-review process.

scholarly journals Peering into peer review: Good quality reviews of research articles require neither writing too much nor taking too long

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paula CABEZAS Del FIERRO ◽  
Omar SABAJ MERUANE ◽  
Germán VARAS ESPINOZA ◽  
Valeria GONZÁLEZ HERRERA
Keyword(s):  
Peer Review ◽  
Review Process ◽  
Average Length ◽  
Peer Review Process ◽  
Research Articles ◽  
Review Time ◽  
Feedback Quality ◽  
Review Reports ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract The value of scientific knowledge is highly dependent on the quality of the process used to produce it, namely, the quality of the peer-review process. This process is a pivotal part of science as it works both to legitimize and improve the work of the scientific community. In this context, the present study investigated the relationship between review time, length, and feedback quality of review reports in the peer-review process of research articles. For this purpose, the review time of 313 referee reports from three Chilean international journals were recorded. Feedback quality was determined estimating the rate of direct requests by the total number of comments in each report. Number of words was used to describe the average length in the sample. Results showed that average time and length have little variation across review reports, irrespective of their quality. Low quality reports tended to take longer to reach the editor, so neither time nor length were related to feedback quality. This suggests that referees mostly describe, criticize, or praise the content of the article instead of making useful and direct comments to help authors improve their manuscripts.

scholarly journals Biomedical research in Nigeria: realities and misconceptions

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (7) ◽  
pp. FSO475
Author(s):  
Bashiru Garba ◽  
Bashir Sa'idu
Keyword(s):  
Biomedical Research ◽  
Poor Quality ◽  
Transfer Of Knowledge ◽  
Multinational Organizations ◽  
Poor Countries ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Quality Of Research ◽  
And Training

Investment in biomedical research is believed to drive economic growth and increase human capital, leading to increased productivity and sustainability. Unfortunately, such positive impacts are not palpable among the resource-poor countries. This can be attributed to the poor quality of research findings and the reliability of findings, which often are rarely translated to impactful products or decisions. While the Nigerian governments are making considerable efforts to improve the quality of research through increased funding, as well as sponsorship and training of scholars in technologically advanced institutions. This is in order for the transfer of knowledge to improve the livelihood of its citizens. However, there is still need for the private multinational organizations to support this course.

scholarly journals AI-assisted peer review

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro Checco ◽  
Lorenzo Bracciale ◽  
Pierpaolo Loreti ◽  
Stephen Pinfield ◽  
Giuseppe Bianchi
Keyword(s):  
Peer Review ◽  
Review Process ◽  
Peer Review Process ◽  
Working Hours ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Screening Tools ◽  
Ethical Concerns ◽  
Automated Screening ◽  
Textual Content

AbstractThe scientific literature peer review workflow is under strain because of the constant growth of submission volume. One response to this is to make initial screening of submissions less time intensive. Reducing screening and review time would save millions of working hours and potentially boost academic productivity. Many platforms have already started to use automated screening tools, to prevent plagiarism and failure to respect format requirements. Some tools even attempt to flag the quality of a study or summarise its content, to reduce reviewers’ load. The recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) create the potential for (semi) automated peer review systems, where potentially low-quality or controversial studies could be flagged, and reviewer-document matching could be performed in an automated manner. However, there are ethical concerns, which arise from such approaches, particularly associated with bias and the extent to which AI systems may replicate bias. Our main goal in this study is to discuss the potential, pitfalls, and uncertainties of the use of AI to approximate or assist human decisions in the quality assurance and peer-review process associated with research outputs. We design an AI tool and train it with 3300 papers from three conferences, together with their reviews evaluations. We then test the ability of the AI in predicting the review score of a new, unobserved manuscript, only using its textual content. We show that such techniques can reveal correlations between the decision process and other quality proxy measures, uncovering potential biases of the review process. Finally, we discuss the opportunities, but also the potential unintended consequences of these techniques in terms of algorithmic bias and ethical concerns.

scholarly journals Criteria for Peer Reviewing the Original Articles Submitted to a Biomedical Journal: Intellectual Honesty is the Best Policy.

2004 ◽  
Vol 43 (152) ◽  
pp. 103-110
Author(s):  
Bishnu Hari Paudel
Keyword(s):  
Peer Review ◽  
Biomedical Science ◽  
Quality Review ◽  
Peer Reviewing ◽  
Biomedical Publication ◽  
Timely Review ◽  
Peer Reviewers ◽  
Biomedical Publications ◽  
Review Criteria

Peer review - a process of assessing the quality of manuscripts submitted to a journal – is an establishednorm in biomedical publications. It is viewed as an extension of scientific process. The peer-reviewed researcharticles are considered trustworthy because they are believed to be unbiased and independent. The processof reviewing is a privilege and prestige. It is highly responsible, intellectually honest, and difficult job.Being expert in certain area of biomedical science is a prerequisite for reviewers. Young peer reviewerstrained in epidemiology or statistics produce high-quality review. The International Congresses on PeerReview in Biomedical Publication have shown many unresolved issues related to preparation or handling ofmanuscripts by a journal. Therefore, it is vital to identify authentic peer reviewers to ensure qualitypublication, thus, a set of peer review criteria is proposed for peer reviewing original articles. It is useful inquantifying (scoring) the manuscript quality. The proposed scoring system yields three categories ofmanuscripts: the first category is considered acceptable for publication after minor modification by editorialboard and/or reviewers, the second – requires rewriting and resubmission, and the third – rejected. Thesecriteria are preliminary guidelines, and require timely review. They are expected to sensitise peer reviewers,editors, contributors, and readers to move towards greater honesty and responsibility while working withmanuscripts. In summary, if the criteria are used they will facilitate editorial management of manuscripts,render more justice to authors and biomedical science, and improve publication quality.Key Words: Biomedical publication, peer review, peer review criteria, scoring of manuscripts, categories of manuscripts, journal of Nepal Medical Association.

scholarly journals SUDANESE EXPERIENCE OF HERBAL FORMULAS USED DURING COVID-19 INFECTION

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
AzzaAbdelilah Ahmed Mohamed ◽  
Mai Abdalla Humaida ◽  
Ali Awadallah Saeed
Keyword(s):  
Peer Review ◽  
Virus Disease ◽  
Off Label Use ◽  
Review System ◽  
Diabetes Therapy ◽  
Off Label ◽  
Initial Stage ◽  
Unique System ◽  
Review Reports

Objectives: Corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak is recent worldwide disaster which is considered by the WHO as Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). Method: A quick survey was done in Khartoum state for the commonly utilize herbs and the succeeded formulas, 652 people participated in this survey either they use these herbs for themselves or their relative use it during the symptoms of COVID-19. Results: A 652 people participated in the quick survey for the commonly utilized herbs & the succeeded formulas either they use these herbs for themselves or their relative use it during the symptoms of COVID-19. Other products used as additives include (honey,vinegar,sesame oil, olive oil and salt). Conclusion: Sudanese experience that various traditional herbs, usage and different route of administration can effectively alleviate primary symptoms e.g. fever, cough, fatigue and reduce probability of developing severe Conditions. Peer Review History: Received: 8 September 2020; Revised: 7 October; Accepted: 20 October, Available online: 15 November 2020 UJPR follows the most transparent and toughest ‘Advanced OPEN peer review’ system. The identity of the authors and, reviewers will be known to each other. This transparent process will help to eradicate any possible malicious/purposeful interference by any person (publishing staff, reviewer, editor, author, etc) during peer review. As a result of this unique system, all reviewers will get their due recognition and respect, once their names are published in the papers. We expect that, by publishing peer review reports with published papers, will be helpful to many authors for drafting their article according to the specifications. Auhors will remove any error of their article and they will improve their article(s) according to the previous reports displayed with published article(s). The main purpose of it is ‘to improve the quality of a candidate manuscript’. Our reviewers check the ‘strength and weakness of a manuscript honestly’. There will increase in the perfection, and transparency. Received file Average Peer review marks at initial stage: 5.0/10 Average Peer review marks at publication stage: 7.0/10 Reviewer(s) detail: Dr. Hebatalla Ibrahim Ahmed Abdel Hameed, Al-Azhar University, Faculty of Pharmacy (Girls), Nasr City, Cairo, Egypt [email protected] Dr. Mohamed Derbali, Faculty of Pharmacy, Monastir, Tunisia, [email protected] Comments of reviewer(s): Similar Articles: THE RISKS AND ADVANTAGES OF ANTI-DIABETES THERAPY IN THE POSITIVE COVID-19 PATIENT EUCALYPTUS ESSENTIAL OIL; AN OFF-LABEL USE TO PROTECT THE WORLD FROM COVID-19 PANDEMIC: REVIEW-BASED HYPOTHESES

Quality of peer review reports submitted to a specialty psychiatry journal

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 ◽  
pp. 102599
Author(s):  
Vikas Menon ◽  
Natarajan Varadharajan ◽  
Samir Kumar Praharaj ◽  
Shahul Ameen
Keyword(s):  
Peer Review ◽  
Review Reports

scholarly journals THE ROLE OF ANTICOAGULANTS AND ANTIPLATELETS IN PROPHYLAXIS AND/OR TREATMENT OF SEVERE SARS-COV-2 INFECTION

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wessam F. El-Hadidy ◽  
Asmaa A. Khalifa
Keyword(s):  
Peer Review ◽  
Strongly Correlated ◽  
Initial Stage ◽  
Port Harcourt ◽  
Unique System ◽  
High Incidence ◽  
Review Reports ◽  
Rivers State

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2(SARAS-COV-2) was reported firstly in China by the end of  2019 then disseminated vigorously worldwide  and in 2020 reported by WHO as pandemic disease. It is associated by many symptoms, however; high incidence of thrombotic events was strongly correlated with SARAS-COV-2. Exploring anticoagulants to be added as thromboprophylaxis for Covid 19 patients become a must. Many options for thromboprophylaxis are available including anticoagulants, antiplatelets and fibrinolytics which were illustrated in this mini review.                       Peer Review History: Received 19 January 2021; Revised 3 February; Accepted 24 February, Available online 15 March 2021 UJPR follows the most transparent and toughest ‘Advanced OPEN peer review’ system. The identity of the authors and, reviewers will be known to each other. This transparent process will help to eradicate any possible malicious/purposeful interference by any person (publishing staff, reviewer, editor, author, etc) during peer review. As a result of this unique system, all reviewers will get their due recognition and respect, once their names are published in the papers. We expect that, by publishing peer review reports with published papers, will be helpful to many authors for drafting their article according to the specifications. Auhors will remove any error of their article and they will improve their article(s) according to the previous reports displayed with published article(s). The main purpose of it is ‘to improve the quality of a candidate manuscript’. Our reviewers check the ‘strength and weakness of a manuscript honestly’. There will increase in the perfection, and transparency.  Received file:                Reviewer's Comments: Average Peer review marks at initial stage: 5.0/10 Average Peer review marks at publication stage: 7.0/10 Reviewer(s) detail: Dr. Cecilia Nwadiuto Amadi, University of Port Harcourt, Port Harcourt Rivers State, Nigeria, [email protected] Dr. A.A. Mgbahurike, University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria, [email protected]   Similar Articles: COVID-19: PHARMACOLOGICAL AND THERAPEUTIC APPROACHES USE OF COLCHICINE TO COUNTERACT THE STRONG HYPERINFLAMMATORY STATE INDUCED BY SARS-COV-2 THE RISKS AND ADVANTAGES OF ANTI-DIABETES THERAPY IN THE POSITIVE COVID-19 PATIENT EUCALYPTUS ESSENTIAL OIL; AN OFF-LABEL USE TO PROTECT THE WORLD FROM COVID-19 PANDEMIC: REVIEW-BASED HYPOTHESES SUDANESE EXPERIENCE OF HERBAL FORMULAS USED DURING COVID-19 INFECTION TRADITIONAL TO RECENT APPROACHES IN HERBAL MEDICINE THERAPY OF COVID-19

scholarly journals Can a paid model for peer review be sustainable when the author can decide whether to pay or not?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. García ◽  
Rosa Rodriguez-Sánchez ◽  
J. Fdez-Valdivia
Keyword(s):  
Peer Review ◽  
Hybrid Mode ◽  
Optimal Price ◽  
Benchmark Scenario ◽  
Journal Editors ◽  
Peer Reviewing ◽  
Peer Reviewers ◽  
Review Reports ◽  
Review Model

AbstractGiven how hard it is to recruit good reviewers who are aligned with authors in their functions, journal editors could consider the use of better incentives, such as paying reviewers for their time. In order to facilitate a speedy turn-around when a rapid decision is required, the peer-reviewed journal can also offer a review model in which selected peer reviewers are compensated to deliver high-quality and timely peer-review reports. In this paper, we consider a peer-reviewed journal in which the manuscript’s evaluation consists of a necessary peer review component and an optional speedy peer review component. We model and study that journal under two different scenarios to be compared: a paid peer-reviewing scenario that is considered as the benchmark; and a hybrid peer-review scenario where the manuscript’s author can decide whether to pay or not. In the benchmark scenario of paid peer-reviewing, the scholarly journal expects all authors to pay for the peer review and charges separately for the necessary and the optional speedy peer-review components. Alternatively, in a hybrid peer-review scenario, the peer-reviewed journal gives the option to the authors to not pay for the necessary peer review if they are not able to pay. This will determine an altruistic amplification of pay utility. However, the no-pay authors cannot avail of the optional speedy peer review, which determines a restriction-induced no-pay utility reduction. In this paper, we find that under the hybrid setting of compensated peer review where the author can decide whether to pay or not, the optimal price and review quality of the optional speedy peer review are always higher than under the benchmark scenario of paid peer-reviewing, due to the altruistic amplification of pay utility. Our results show that when the advantage of adopting the hybrid mode of compensated peer review is higher due to the higher difference between the altruistic author utility amplification and the restriction-induced no-pay utility reduction, the journal can increase its profitability by increasing the price for the necessary peer review above that in the benchmark scenario of paid peer review. A key insight from our results is the journal’s capability to increase the number of paying authors by giving the option to the authors to not pay for the necessary peer review if they are not able to pay.

scholarly journals EVALUATION OF MULTIFUNCTIONALITY IN COSMETICS

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evren ALGIN YAPAR ◽  
Aslı ŞAHİNER ◽  
Bilge Ahsen KARA ◽  
Sümeyra TUNA YILDIRIM ◽  
Ece HALAT ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Peer Review ◽  
Peer Review System ◽  
Cosmetic Products ◽  
Review System ◽  
Initial Stage ◽  
Unique System ◽  
Cosmetic Ingredients ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Review Reports

In recent years, developments in the field of cosmetic ingredients especially use of natural sources and carriers systems and the manufacturing methods resulted as an improvement in the effect and stability of cosmetics, and thus the performance and component-based multi-functionalities of cosmetic products. Those have partially contributed to the condition-dependent functionality, developments in the field of marketing, monitoring of expectations and their reflection on marketing and the creation of new ideas in the field of claim-driven multi-functionality. Multi-functionality in cosmetic products can be evaluated in four groups. These are performance-based multi-functionality, component-based multi-functionality, conditional multi-functionality and claim-driven multi-functionality. In the first two groups, performance related to formulation and manufacturing comes to the fore, while in the last two, safety becomes important and those are briefly given in this review.                    Peer Review History: Received: 12 May 2021; Revised: 11 June; Accepted: 25 June, Available online: 15 July 2021 Academic Editor: Ahmad Najib, Universitas Muslim Indonesia, Makassar, Indonesia, [email protected] UJPR follows the most transparent and toughest ‘Advanced OPEN peer review’ system. The identity of the authors and, reviewers will be known to each other. This transparent process will help to eradicate any possible malicious/purposeful interference by any person (publishing staff, reviewer, editor, author, etc) during peer review. As a result of this unique system, all reviewers will get their due recognition and respect, once their names are published in the papers. We expect that, by publishing peer review reports with published papers, will be helpful to many authors for drafting their article according to the specifications. Auhors will remove any error of their article and they will improve their article(s) according to the previous reports displayed with published article(s). The main purpose of it is ‘to improve the quality of a candidate manuscript’. Our reviewers check the ‘strength and weakness of a manuscript honestly’. There will increase in the perfection, and transparency.  Received file:                Reviewer's Comments: Average Peer review marks at initial stage: 6.0/10 Average Peer review marks at publication stage: 7.5/10 Reviewer(s) detail: Dr. Govind Vyas, Compliance & Regulatory Officer Inva-Tech Pharmaceuticals LLC, New-Jersey, USA, [email protected] Dr. Mohammad Bayan,  Faculty of Pharmacy, Philadelphia University, P.O. Box: 1 Philadelphia University 19392 Jordan, [email protected] Dr. Sally A. El-Zahaby, Pharos University in Alexandria, Egypt, [email protected]  

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