The Transparency of Quantitative Empirical Legal Research (2018–2020)

Scientists are increasingly concerned with making their work easy to verify and build upon. Associated practices include sharing data, materials, and analytic scripts, and preregistering protocols. This has been referred to as a “credibility revolution”. The credibility of empirical legal research has been questioned in the past due to its distinctive peer review system and because the legal background of its researchers means that many often are not trained in study design or statistics. Still, there has been no systematic study of transparency and credibility-related characteristics of published empirical legal research. To fill this gap and provide an estimate of current practices that can be tracked as the field evolves, we assessed 300 empirical articles from highly ranked law journals including both faculty-edited journals and student-edited journals. We found high levels of article accessibility (86% could be accessed without a subscription, 95% CI = [82%, 90%]), especially among student-edited journals (100% accessibility). Few articles stated that a study’s data are available, (19%, 95% CI = [15%, 23%]), and only about half of those datasets are reportedly available without contacting the author. Preregistration (3%, 95% CI = [1%, 5%]) and availability of analytic scripts (6%, 95% = [4%, 9%]) were very uncommon. We suggest that empirical legal researchers and the journals that publish their work cultivate norms and practices to encourage research credibility.

A billion-dollar donation: estimating the cost of researchers’ time spent on peer review

Background The amount and value of researchers’ peer review work is critical for academia and journal publishing. However, this labor is under-recognized, its magnitude is unknown, and alternative ways of organizing peer review labor are rarely considered. Methods Using publicly available data, we provide an estimate of researchers’ time and the salary-based contribution to the journal peer review system. Results We found that the total time reviewers globally worked on peer reviews was over 100 million hours in 2020, equivalent to over 15 thousand years. The estimated monetary value of the time US-based reviewers spent on reviews was over 1.5 billion USD in 2020. For China-based reviewers, the estimate is over 600 million USD, and for UK-based, close to 400 million USD. Conclusions By design, our results are very likely to be under-estimates as they reflect only a portion of the total number of journals worldwide. The numbers highlight the enormous amount of work and time that researchers provide to the publication system, and the importance of considering alternative ways of structuring, and paying for, peer review. We foster this process by discussing some alternative models that aim to boost the benefits of peer review, thus improving its cost-benefit ratio.

Peer Review Practices in Scientific Journals and Developmental Scholarship in South Africa: A Peer Reviewer Perspective

The development of science starts with investment in human capital development. Thus far arguments are that it is innovation and development of science which can assure the country of good economic, political and social development. A continuous investment in the youth in academia is a necessity to foster and continue the requirement and continuity of the development of science in academia to advance the society developmentally. This article is conceptual in approach and uses secondary literature to argue that the goal to pursue developmental scholarship, does not only lie with incapacity to mentor, but also lie with the complex peer review system which should enable the emerging researchers with an opportunity to enter the publication space. Therefore, the methodological perspective of the article is purely qualitative and based on scientific materials explored to answer the research question raised in the article. This article concludes that the goal of achieving the next generation of researchers in both academia and practice shall require a system which is highly developmental through a well-developed system of mentoring within the academic environment. Received: 19 August 2021 / Accepted: 6 October 2021 / Published: 5 November 2021

IMPROVING THE PEER REVIEW PROCESS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

SUMMARY: The peer review process has been regarded as an essential part of accepting or rejecting a paper for publication since 1752 when the process was started by The Royal Society of London in the publication entitled “Philosophical Transactions”. In developing countries, one of the primary reasons for submitting pieces for publication is to support promotion in universities. In fact, the argument can be made that the only reason for publishing in developing countries is for faculty promotion. Despite the peer review process being standard practice for scientic journals, many of the research publications on COVID-19 were not subjected to the peer review system. In fact, numerous publications were pre-prints and papers shared by researchers online which were not peer reviewed, yet they were accepted and published by scientic journals in developing nations. When authors start to lose condence in the peer review process of a journal, they are not likely to submit their research work to such journals and this can lead to a diminished impact and reputation of such journals. Additionally, the selection of the assessors by the Editor-in -Chief is usually from the academic space of the editor and from the colleagues of the editor that usually share the editor's view. Contrary to what some editors in the developing countries believe, medical and academic administrative positions do not necessarily result in expertise in the peer review process. An editor can easily identify a poor assessment of an article, from the vitriolic feed-back of the author to the editor about an assessor when a paper is not recommended for publication. This paper provides evidence of and outlines the possible reasons that the peer review process is substandard in developing countries.

Peer review declaration

All conference organisers/editors are required to declare details about their peer review. Therefore, please provide the following information: • Type of peer review: Single-blind / Double-blind / Triple-blind / Open / Other Single-blind peer review • Describe criteria used by Reviewers when accepting/declining papers. Was there the opportunity to resubmit articles after revisions? The reviewers provide their constructive & detailed comments and suggestions on the manuscripts via the conference peer review system. The Authors were asked to revise their original manuscripts in alignment with the reviewers’ comments and suggestions for publication. An opportunity will be given to the authors to resubmit their manuscripts after revisions. • Conference submission management system: http://www.academicconf.com/Identity/Account/Login?confName=cmse2021 • Number of submissions received: 185 (include abstracts and full papers) • Number of submissions sent for review: 85 (full papers) • Number of submissions accepted: 34 (full papers) • Acceptance Rate (Number of Submissions Accepted / Number of Submissions Received X 100): 40.0% • Average number of reviews per paper: 2 • Total number of reviewers involved: About 160 • Any additional info on review process (ie plagiarism check system): The conference uses iThenticate to check plagiarism. All papers were checked once submitted and were checked again before they are sent to the Publisher for publication. • Contact person for queries: Guest editor: Dr. Alexander Khotsianovsky [email protected] Managing Editor of Strength of Materials Pisarenko Institute of Problems of Strength of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Ukraine

How Blind is Double Blind Review?

The peer-review system as a critical tool in academic processes is regarded to be essential. It is not used only to evaluate the manuscripts submitted to the journals but also in tenure decisions, academic promotions, and grant applications. However, during the last few decades, the system has also become a subject of academic research and criticized from various aspects. Many scholars studied the process and presented biases emerging due to the characteristics of the authors and reviewers. In this paper, the journals published by the faculties of economics and administrative sciences and the faculties of political sciences and indexed by TR Dizin are studied. It is observed that the language of the article, number, title, gender, and institutional affiliation of the authors do not influence the acceptance period. However, there is a difference between the average acceptance periods of the journals, which are quite similar. Moreover, being a faculty member of the publisher provides a significantly shorter acceptance period on average. The reason for such differentiation may be either the existence of a considerable extent of bias at the editorial stages of the process or the communication of the editors with the reviewers in a way that influences the process.

EVALUATION OF MULTIFUNCTIONALITY IN COSMETICS

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]

The Pioneering Role of Sci in Post Publication Public Peer Review (P4R)

Scientists observe, discover, justify and eventually share their findings with the scientific community. Dissemination is an integral aspect of scientific discovery, since discoveries which go unnoticed have no or little impact on science. Today, peer review is part of this process of scientific dissemination as it contributes proactively to the quality of a scientific article. As the numbers of scientific journals and scientific articles published therein are increasing steadily, processes such as the single-blind or double-blind peer review are facing a near collapse situation. In fact, these traditional forms of reviewing have reached their limits and, because of this, are also increasingly considered as unfair, sloppy, superficial and even biased. In this manuscript, we propose forms of post-publication public peer review (P4R) as valuable alternatives to the traditional blind peer review system. We describe how the journal Sci has explored such an approach and provide first empirical evidence of the benefits and also challenges, such a P4R approach faces.