Peer review

“ But like democracy, peer review is a principle that requires specific arrangements in order to be effective. If funders want to retain the status of peer reviewing as the fairest method of distributing funds to researchers, they must embrace transparency more actively. ”

“ With scientific knowledge production being increasingly enabled through peer review, and this knowledge often playing part in societal dynamics, procedural robustness and distributive efficiency of public research funding may lose their bite. ”

“ Moreover, peer review involves scientists submitting a manuscript to a scientific journal in the field, journal editors soliciting critical reviews from other experts in the field and deciding whether [*745] the scientist has followed proper research procedures, employed up-to-date methods, considered and cited relevant literature and generally, whether the researcher has employed sound science. ”

“ Assessing the outcomes of public scholarship in the humanities presents challenges, whether that scholarship is done through old or new media. Traditional assessment of scholarship is by peer review. Who are the peers in publicly engaged scholarship? Can community partners participate in tenure and promotion documentation and review? Are distinguished scholars who have never done publicly engaged work really “peers” when it comes to reviewing such work by their colleagues? ”

“ It reduces the labour time in finding excellent research and makes the effort of hiring panels viable. However, if good research is determined by the academic community and through peer review, how does the publisher or journal brand correspond to that determination? Especially in smaller fields, the same reviewers often work for different journals and publishers, so the choice of where a piece was submitted could potentially have no bearing upon the reviewer pool. Under what circumstances do quality and prestige, therefore, diverge? ”

“ Who, for instance, can predict the future emergence of figures culturally neglected within their time? As with many forms of peer review, the scholarly monograph world is inclined towards a conservative model that privileges normative scholarship: work that will sell at the time of publication. ”

“ So far, we have followed the apparent logic of the funders and have made concrete proposals to improve the implementation of transparency from an incremental perspective. However, what if we look at it from the radical perspective, assuming that transparency of knowledge would become the third pillar of legitimacy of peer reviewing? Even though there is little empirical evidence, we would expect at least two major changes. One concerns the role peer reviewing plays in the organization of scientific research. ”

“ It is a way for scientists to write up their empirical research and to share the work with fellow experts in the field, opening up the hypotheses to study, testing, and criticism. (1:66–69 (Miller) ) . In fact, defense expert Professor Behe recognizes the importance of the peer review process and has written that science must "publish or perish." (22:19–25 (Behe) ) . Peer review helps to ensure that research papers are scientifically accurately, meet the standards of the scientific method, and are relevant to other scientists in the field. ”

“ The critical comments that should come with peer review must be an invitation to get the most out of scholarly endeavors. This applies to all scholars, but may be particularly helpful for those in the beginning of their careers. We are committed to making peer review a means of intellectual development. We want to do more. The editorial board will organise yearly an ‘emerging scholars workshop’, on the basis of broadly advertised call for papers. ”

“ Too often a journal’s decision to publish a paper is dominated by what the Editor/s think is interesting and will gain greater readership – both of which are subjective judgments and lead to decisions which are frustrating and delay the publication of your work. PLOS ONE will rigorously peer-review your submissions and publish all papers that are judged to be technically sound. ”

“ Peer review has a long-standing precedent in the sciences and humanities, dating back to the 18th century, but it was only relatively recently adopted as a methodology for making grants to disenfranchised communities. ”

“ Open journaling, which manage the process of publishing peer-reviewed journals online, allowing authors to track submissions through the review process, which creates a sense of openness and transparency uncommon in traditional, peer-reviewed publications. ”

“ Notwithstanding section 5543, the Secretary shall—
(A) establish a peer-review process to assist in the review of State plans; and (B) appoint individuals to the peer-review process who are representative of parents, teachers, State educational agencies, and local educational agencies, and who are familiar with educational standards, assessments, accountability, the needs of low-performing schools, and other educational needs of students, and ensure that 75 percent of such appointees are practitioners. ”

“ In one of these (model 4) , older people have increased odds (b = 1.37, p = 0.019) of valuing society journals in publication decisions and in another (model 10) men have reduced odds (b = 0.40, p = 0.001) of finding cost important for publication decisions (i.e., women are more likely to find cost important in publication decisions) . In another model (model 2) , it is not demographic characteristics, but faculty behavior (the number of peer-reviewed publications per year) that results in increased odds of faculty valuing journal readership (b = 1.68, p = 0.003) . ”

“ But you will find him in the weeklies, and rampant in the technical journals.
The academic reviewer is besotted by facts, or their absence. The most precious part of the review to him is the last paragraph in which he points out misspellings, bad punctuation, and inaccuracies generally. Like a hound dog in a corn field, he never sees his books as a whole, but snouts and burrows along the trail he is following. If he knows the psychology of primitive man, primitive psychology he will find and criticize, even in a book on the making of gardens. ”

“ A Review is, or is supposed to be, an embodiment of this important element; exercising itself always with reference to the leading interests of the age, holding a middle place between the buzz of the newspapers and the mature judgment of the historian, less subject to the influences of passion or party than the former, and held to less strict account for severe attention to justice than the latter. Our current literary ideas and forms are of English growth. The violence of party spirit, the universal interest in politics, have in England made the great Reviews into political organs. ”

“ I reasoned again, however, that perhaps my lack of discrimination was due to my not being accustomed to seeing peers—that possibly the delicate distinctions and values that make up a peer would be perfectly evident to a person born, so to speak, under the shadow of the aristocracy. ”

“ Scholars sneer at and would fain dispense with them altogether; and the public, grown lazy and helpless by this constant use of props and stays, can now scarce brace itself even to get through a magazine article, but reads in the daily paper laid beside the breakfast-plate a short notice of the last number of the long-established and popular review, and there upon passes its judgment and is content. ”

“ Put plainly, our work suggests that faculty are guided by a perception that their peers are more driven by journal prestige, journal metrics (i.e., JIF and journal citations) , and money (i.e., merit pay) than they are, while they themselves value readership and open access of a journal more.
The idea that respondents generally perceive themselves in a more favorable light than their peers (e.g., less driven by prestige or money) , elicits multiple self-bias concepts prevalent in social psychology, including illusory superiority [19] . ”

“ I never could understand why reviews were instituted; works of merit do not require to be reviewed, they can speak for themselves, and require no praising; works of no merit at all will die of themselves, they require no killing. The Review to which I was attached was, as has been already intimated, established on an entirely new plan; it professed to review all new publications, which certainly no Review had ever professed to do before, other Reviews never pretending to review more than one-tenth of the current literature of the day. ”

“ I have resisted, with undeviating firmness, every attempt to encroach upon me, every solicitation of publisher, author, friend, or friend's friend, and turned not a jot aside for power or delight. In consequence of this integrity of purpose, the Review has long possessed a degree of influence, not only in this, but in other countries hitherto unknown; and I have the satisfaction, at this late hour, of seeing it in its most palmy state. No number has sold better than the sixtieth. ”

“ When they had finished writing the dictionary, they joined the army of the unemployed, and became reviewers. I am acquainted with one reviewer who has been everything, almost, under the sun—a husband, a father, and a householder; he has been successively a socialist, an aesthete, a Churchman, and a Roman Catholic. He is an eager student of the universe, a prodigiously energetic journalist, a lively and a humorous writer, a person of marked talent. ”

“ Coldly, palpably real is the next critic of my acquaintance, the academic reviewer. He does not write for the newspapers, for he despises them, and they are rather scornful of his style, which is usually lumbering, and his idea that 1921 is the proper time in which to review the books of 1920. ”

“ The first of these is through trust in nominal journal or publisher brand; the problems of prestige to which much of Chapter 2 was dedicated. The second way in which journal or publisher quality is crudely measured and the one that surely most affects scholars’ perceptions lies in the duplication of labour when reading an article or book; a type of second review in which academics bring their own evaluative skills to bear on already published work. During this constant re-evaluation, the blame for poor quality is often put down either to the author or to the journal/press brand. ”

“ A sharp, sententious, cavalier, dogmatical tone is therefore necessary, even in self-defence, to the office of a reviewer. If you do not deliver your oracles without hesitation, how are the world to receive them on trust and without 216inquiry? People read to have something to talk about, and ‘to seem to know that which they do not.’ Consequently, there cannot be too much dialectics and debateable matter, too much pomp and paradox in a review. To elevate and surprise is the great rule for producing a dramatic or a critical effect. ”

“ A few of such peers (for they are very few) might say, "We had rather not have our peerage if we are to buy it at the price of yielding". But a life peer who had fought his way up to the peers, would never think so. Young men who are born to rank may risk it, not middle-aged or old men who have earned their rank. ”

“ The material for pavements is mostly decided upon by non-professional municipal authorities, and upon these an enlightened public opinion must exert a beneficial influence. A condensed review of the subject, in the light of history, technical science, hygiene, and finance, will help excite reflection, and to mature rational views, and will furnish a timely contribution to the literature of the day. ”

“ Words of reproach these are by which we may well fancy that the poet has been incited to action in periods of laxity, but which it is impossible to conceive of in the form of a Peer Gynt self-accusation. How in the world could poor Peer have given himself a watchword? How could he reproach himself with not having proclaimed it? Let us now see what topics and ideals are especially uppermost in the consciousness of the age. ”

“ Thirdly, a sound and calm judgment, which will subject all inferences and generalisations, both one’s own and other people’s, to a searching review, and weigh in delicate scales their validity. These two last-mentioned qualifications taken together make up what we call the critical faculty, i.e. the power of dealing with evidence as tending to establish or discredit statements of fact, and those general conclusions which are built on the grouping of facts. Neither acuteness alone nor the judicial balance alone is enough to make the critic. ”

“ All the followers of science are fully persuaded that the processes of investigation, if only pushed far enough, will give one certain solution to every question to which they can be applied.... Different minds may set out with the most antagonistic views, but the progress of investigation carries them by a force outside of themselves to one and the same conclusion.... This great law is embodied in the conception of truth and reality. That opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. ”

“ I heard a successful young journalist say the other day to a very conscientious young reviewer. "Good work won't get you anything. Play politics, office politics all the while." Doubtless sound advice, this, for any gainful employment.
Now about that prime department of the press called the business office. Many people firmly believe that all book reviews—and dramatic criticisms and editorials—are bought by "the interests." One of the principal librarians of New York holds this view of reviews. I never knew a reviewer who was bound to tell anything but the truth as he saw it. ”

“ The idea that there are as many books as that in the whole world, to say nothing of one library, strikes him as it would if Miss V. should tell him that she is the rightful Queen of England.)
Miss V.: "Can't you tell me about the book,—what it was about, I mean?"
The confidential man (beginning to [226] lose his patience, at last) : "About? Why, it was about a lot of things!"
Miss V.: "Was it fiction—a novel?"
The confidential man: "Huh?"
Miss V.: "Was it a story? or a book of travels—"
(The confidential man gazes at her with oystery eyes. Suddenly he becomes more animated.) ”