PERSONAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST IN THE PUBLISHING ENTERPRISE: FOCUS ON JOURNAL EDITORS

Editors play a central role and form an essential link in the publication process. Consequently, they hold considerable influence as to how the literature is molded, and what eventually gets published. In addition to their standard editorial responsibilities, holding that amount of power, editors have extremely high responsibilities to declare any conflicts of interest (COIs) internal to, and external to, the peer review process, particularly those involving personal relationships and networks. This is because they also exist in the peer community, can be high-profile public figures, and form a very unique and restricted – in terms of size, membership and exclusivity – set of individuals. Consequently, editors need to declare their COIs openly, transparently, and publicly on their editor board profiles, and as part of their curriculum vitae. Without such declarations, the greater risk is that editors might have unregulated freedom to enforce their own individual or group biases, through hidden relationships and networks, including the possibility of hiding instances of favoritism, cronyism and nepotism. In the worst-case scenario, this might reflect editorial corruption. Hidden COIs in authors, which tend to be the focus of the academic publishing establishment, including in codes of conduct and ethical guidelines such as those by COPE and the ICMJE, tend to down-play editorial COIs, or restrict them to scrutiny during the peer review process. This opinion piece examines whether there is a systemic problem with under-reported editorial COIs, particularly personal and non-financial COIs, that extend beyond the peer review process and their editorial positions. Greater awareness, debate, and education of this issue are needed.

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Reference Conundrum: The Broad Definition of Peer-Review

10.31229/osf.io/6c3dt ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Cody Fullerton

Keyword(s):

Peer Review ◽

Gold Standard ◽

Review Process ◽

Peer Review Process ◽

Academic Publishing ◽

Inaccurate Information ◽

The Core ◽

Literature Reviews ◽

Reference Interactions ◽

Definition Of

For years, the gold-standard in academic publishing has been the peer-review process, and for the most part, peer-review remains a safeguard to authors publishing intentionally biased, misleading, and inaccurate information. Its purpose is to hold researchers accountable to the publishing standards of that field, including proper methodology, accurate literature reviews, etc. This presentation will establish the core tenants of peer-review, discuss if certain types of publications should be able to qualify as such, offer possible solutions, and discuss how this affects a librarian's reference interactions.

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The hurdles of academic publishing from the perspective of journal editors: a case study

Scientometrics ◽

10.1007/s11192-020-03619-x ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 125 (1) ◽

pp. 115-133 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Maciej J. Mrowinski ◽

Agata Fronczak ◽

Piotr Fronczak ◽

Olgica Nedic ◽

Aleksandar Dekanski

Keyword(s):

Peer Review ◽

Review Process ◽

Peer Review Process ◽

Chemical Society ◽

Academic Publishing ◽

Editorial Process ◽

Journal Editors ◽

Insight Into

Abstract In this paper, we provide insight into the editorial process as seen from the perspective of journal editors. We study a dataset obtained from the Journal of the Serbian Chemical Society, which contains information about submitted and rejected manuscripts, in order to find differences between local (Serbian) and external (non-Serbian) submissions. We show that external submissions (mainly from India, Iran and China) constitute the majority of all submissions, while local submissions are in the minority. Most of submissions are rejected for technical reasons (e.g. wrong manuscript formatting or problems with images) and many users resubmit the same paper without making necessary corrections. Manuscripts with just one author are less likely to pass the technical check, which can be attributed to missing metadata. Articles from local authors are better prepared and require fewer resubmissions on average before they are accepted for peer review. The peer review process for local submissions takes less time than for external papers and local submissions are more likely to be accepted for publication. Also, while there are more men than women among external users, this trend is reversed for local users. In the combined group of local and external users, articles submitted by women are more likely to be published than articles submitted by men.

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Evolution in the Correction of the Literature: Preprints, Manuscript Versioning, Error Amendment, and Retract and Replace

10.20944/preprints201708.0029.v2 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Jaime Teixeira da Silva

Keyword(s):

Peer Review ◽

Research Group ◽

Review Process ◽

Peer Review Process ◽

Value Systems ◽

Academic Publishing ◽

Academic Literature ◽

Risks And Benefits ◽

Transformative Process ◽

Published Paper

Academic publishing is undergoing a highly transformative process, and many rules and value systems that were in place for years are being challenged in unprecedented forms leading to the evolution of novel ways of dealing with new pressures. One of the most important aspects of an integrated and valid academic literature is the ability to screen publications for errors during peer review to weed out mistakes, fraud and inconsistencies, such that the final published product represents a product that has value, intellectually, and otherwise. It is difficult to claim the existence of perfect manuscripts. The level of errors that exist in a manuscript will depend on the rigor of the research group and of the peer review process that was used to screen that paper. When errors slip into a final published paper, either through honest error or misconduct, and are not detected during peer review and editorial screening, but are spotted during post-publication peer review, an opportunity is created to set the record straight, and to correct it. To date, the most common forms of correcting the literature have been errata, corrigenda, expressions of concern, and retractions. Despite this range of corrective measures, which represent artificially created corrals around pockets of imperfect literature, certain cases do not quite fit this mold, and new suggested measures for correcting the literature have been proposed, including manuscript versioning, amendments, partial retractions and retract and replace. In this commentary, a discussion of the evolving correction of the literature is provided, as are perspectives of the risks and benefits of such new measures to improve it.

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Support for Good Peer Review in OJS-based Journals

Ravnetrykk ◽

10.7557/15.5499 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Aysa Ekanger ◽

Solveig Enoksen

Keyword(s):

Peer Review ◽

Review Process ◽

Peer Review Process ◽

Open Access Publishing ◽

The Arctic ◽

Academic Publishing ◽

Institutional Service ◽

Set Up ◽

Work Done

How can a library publishing service with limited resources help editorial teams of peer-reviewed journals in their work? This paper focuses on the technical aspects of the peer review workflow that, if set up and adhered to properly, can contribute to improving the standard of the peer review process – and to some degree also the quality of peer review. The discussion is based on the work done at Septentrio Academic Publishing, the institutional service provider for open access publishing at UiT The Arctic University of Norway.

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Medical Journal Peer Review: Process and Bias

January 2018 - Pain Physician ◽

10.36076/ppj/2015.18.e1 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 18;1 (1;1) ◽

pp. E1-E14 ◽

Cited By ~ 11

Author(s):

Laxmaiah Manchikanti

Keyword(s):

Peer Review ◽

Review Process ◽

Conflicts Of Interest ◽

Peer Review Process ◽

Scientific Misconduct ◽

Scientific Progress ◽

Health Care Research ◽

Scientific Publications ◽

Current Increase ◽

Subject Specialization

Scientific peer review is pivotal in health care research in that it facilitates the evaluation of findings for competence, significance, and originality by qualified experts. While the origins of peer review can be traced to the societies of the eighteenth century, it became an institutionalized part of the scholarly process in the latter half of the twentieth century. This was a response to the growth of research and greater subject specialization. With the current increase in the number of specialty journals, the peer review process continues to evolve to meet the needs of patients, clinicians, and policy makers. The peer review process itself faces challenges. Unblinded peer review might suffer from positive or negative bias towards certain authors, specialties, and institutions. Peer review can also suffer when editors and/or reviewers might be unable to understand the contents of the submitted manuscript. This can result in an inability to detect major flaws, or revelations of major flaws after acceptance of publication by the editors. Other concerns include potentially long delays in publication and challenges uncovering plagiarism, duplication, corruption and scientific misconduct. Conversely, a multitude of these challenges have led to claims of scientific misconduct and an erosion of faith. These challenges have invited criticism of the peer review process itself. However, despite its imperfections, the peer review process enjoys widespread support in the scientific community. Peer review bias is one of the major focuses of today’s scientific assessment of the literature. Various types of peer review bias include content-based bias, confirmation bias, bias due to conservatism, bias against interdisciplinary research, publication bias, and the bias of conflicts of interest. Consequently, peer review would benefit from various changes and improvements with appropriate training of reviewers to provide quality reviews to maintain the quality and integrity of research without bias. Thus, an appropriate, transparent peer review is not only ideal, but necessary for the future to facilitate scientific progress. Key words: Scientific research, peer review process, scientific publications, peer review bias, blinded peer review, scientific misconduct.

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