Browse
Submit Data
Databases
API
Help

Dataset Information

17 Views

0 Connections

0 Citations

0 Reanalyses

0 Downloads

Omics score: 0

Personal attributes of authors and reviewers, social bias and the outcomes of peer review: a case study.

ABSTRACT: Peer review is the "gold standard" for evaluating journal and conference papers, research proposals, on-going projects and university departments. However, it is widely believed that current systems are expensive, conservative and prone to various forms of bias. One form of bias identified in the literature is "social bias" linked to the personal attributes of authors and reviewers. To quantify the importance of this form of bias in modern peer review, we analyze three datasets providing information on the attributes of authors and reviewers and review outcomes: one from Frontiers - an open access publishing house with a novel interactive review process, and two from Spanish and international computer science conferences, which use traditional peer review. We use a random intercept model in which review outcome is the dependent variable, author and reviewer attributes are the independent variables and bias is defined by the interaction between author and reviewer attributes. We find no evidence of bias in terms of gender, or the language or prestige of author and reviewer institutions in any of the three datasets, but some weak evidence of regional bias in all three. Reviewer gender and the language and prestige of reviewer institutions appear to have little effect on review outcomes, but author gender, and the characteristics of author institutions have moderate to large effects. The methodology used cannot determine whether these are due to objective differences in scientific merit or entrenched biases shared by all reviewers.

SUBMITTER: Walker R

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4648219 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Json Xml

Similar Datasets

Survey on open peer review: Attitudes and experience amongst editors, authors and reviewers.

Project description:Open peer review (OPR) is a cornerstone of the emergent Open Science agenda. Yet to date no large-scale survey of attitudes towards OPR amongst academic editors, authors, reviewers and publishers has been undertaken. This paper presents the findings of an online survey, conducted for the OpenAIRE2020 project during September and October 2016, that sought to bridge this information gap in order to aid the development of appropriate OPR approaches by providing evidence about attitudes towards and levels of experience with OPR. The results of this cross-disciplinary survey, which received 3,062 full responses, show the majority (60.3%) of respondents to be believe that OPR as a general concept should be mainstream scholarly practice (although attitudes to individual traits varied, and open identities peer review was not generally favoured). Respondents were also in favour of other areas of Open Science, like Open Access (88.2%) and Open Data (80.3%). Among respondents we observed high levels of experience with OPR, with three out of four (76.2%) reporting having taken part in an OPR process as author, reviewer or editor. There were also high levels of support for most of the traits of OPR, particularly open interaction, open reports and final-version commenting. Respondents were against opening reviewer identities to authors, however, with more than half believing it would make peer review worse. Overall satisfaction with the peer review system used by scholarly journals seems to strongly vary across disciplines. Taken together, these findings are very encouraging for OPR's prospects for moving mainstream but indicate that due care must be taken to avoid a "one-size fits all" solution and to tailor such systems to differing (especially disciplinary) contexts. OPR is an evolving phenomenon and hence future studies are to be encouraged, especially to further explore differences between disciplines and monitor the evolution of attitudes.

| S-EPMC5728564 | biostudies-literature

Which peer reviewers voluntarily reveal their identity to authors? Insights into the consequences of open-identities peer review.

Project description:Identifying reviewers is argued to improve the quality and fairness of peer review, but is generally disfavoured by reviewers. To gain some insight into the factors that influence when reviewers are willing to have their identity revealed, I examined which reviewers voluntarily reveal their identities to authors at the journal Functional Ecology, at which reviewer identities are confidential unless reviewers sign their comments to authors. I found that 5.6% of reviewers signed their comments to authors. This proportion increased slightly over time, from 4.4% in 2003-2005 to 6.7% in 2013-2015. Male reviewers were 1.8 times more likely to sign their comments to authors than were female reviewers, and this difference persisted over time. Few reviewers signed all of their reviews; reviewers were more likely to sign their reviews when their rating of the manuscript was more positive, and papers that had at least one signed review were more likely to be invited for revision. Signed reviews were, on average, longer and recommended more references to authors. My analyses cannot distinguish cause and effect for the patterns observed, but my results suggest that 'open-identities' review, in which reviewers are not permitted to be anonymous, will probably reduce the degree to which reviewers are critical in their assessment of manuscripts and will differentially affect recruitment of male and female reviewers, negatively affecting the diversity of reviewers recruited by journals.

| S-EPMC8548798 | biostudies-literature

Can editors save peer review from peer reviewers?

Project description:Peer review is the gold standard for scientific communication, but its ability to guarantee the quality of published research remains difficult to verify. Recent modeling studies suggest that peer review is sensitive to reviewer misbehavior, and it has been claimed that referees who sabotage work they perceive as competition may severely undermine the quality of publications. Here we examine which aspects of suboptimal reviewing practices most strongly impact quality, and test different mitigating strategies that editors may employ to counter them. We find that the biggest hazard to the quality of published literature is not selfish rejection of high-quality manuscripts but indifferent acceptance of low-quality ones. Bypassing or blacklisting bad reviewers and consulting additional reviewers to settle disagreements can reduce but not eliminate the impact. The other editorial strategies we tested do not significantly improve quality, but pairing manuscripts to reviewers unlikely to selfishly reject them and allowing revision of rejected manuscripts minimize rejection of above-average manuscripts. In its current form, peer review offers few incentives for impartial reviewing efforts. Editors can help, but structural changes are more likely to have a stronger impact.

| S-EPMC5633172 | biostudies-other

Conflicts of interest policies for authors, peer reviewers, and editors of bioethics journals.

Project description:BACKGROUND:In biomedical research, there have been numerous scandals highlighting conflicts of interest (COIs) leading to significant bias in judgment and questionable practices. Academic institutions, journals, and funding agencies have developed and enforced policies to mitigate issues related to COI, especially surrounding financial interests. After a case of editorial COI in a prominent bioethics journal, there is concern that the same level of oversight regarding COIs in the biomedical sciences may not apply to the field of bioethics. In this study, we examined the availability and comprehensiveness of COI policies for authors, peer reviewers, and editors of bioethics journals. METHODS:After developing a codebook, we analyzed the content of online COI policies of 63 bioethics journals, along with policy information provided by journal editors that was not publicly available. RESULTS:Just over half of the bioethics journals had COI policies for authors (57%), and only 25% for peer reviewers and 19% for editors. There was significant variation among policies regarding definitions, the types of COIs described, the management mechanisms, and the consequences for noncompliance. Definitions and descriptions centered on financial COIs, followed by personal and professional relationships. Almost all COI policies required disclosure of interests for authors as the primary management mechanism. Very few journals outlined consequences for noncompliance with COI policies or provided additional resources. CONCLUSION:Compared to other studies of biomedical journals, a much lower percentage of bioethics journals have COI policies and these vary substantially in content. The bioethics publishing community needs to develop robust policies for authors, peer reviewers, and editors and these should be made publicly available to enhance academic and public trust in bioethics scholarship.

| S-EPMC6310149 | biostudies-literature

Authors response to reviewers comments

Project description: Not available

| S-BSST791 | biostudies-other

A scoping review on biomedical journal peer review guides for reviewers.

Project description:BackgroundPeer review is widely used in academic fields to assess a manuscript's significance and to improve its quality for publication. This scoping review will assess existing peer review guidelines and/or checklists intended for reviewers of biomedical journals and provide an overview on the review guidelines.MethodsPubMed, Embase, and Allied and Complementary Medicine (AMED) databases were searched for review guidelines from the date of inception until February 19, 2021. There was no date restriction nor article type restriction. In addition to the database search, websites of journal publishers and non-publishers were additionally hand-searched.ResultsOf 14,633 database publication records and 24 website records, 65 publications and 14 websites met inclusion criteria for the review (78 records in total). From the included records, a total of 1,811 checklist items were identified. The items related to Methods, Results, and Discussion were found to be the highly discussed in reviewer guidelines.ConclusionThis review identified existing literature on peer review guidelines and provided an overview of the current state of peer review guides. Review guidelines were varying by journals and publishers. This calls for more research to determine the need to use uniform review standards for transparent and standardized peer review.Protocol registrationThe protocol for this study has been registered at Research Registry (www.researchregistry.com): reviewregistry881.

| S-EPMC8136639 | biostudies-literature

The 10-D assessment and evidence-based medicine tool for authors and peer reviewers in clinical pharmacology .

Project description:Peer reviewers and authors of clinical pharmacology manuscripts need to meet the standards for Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) and Good Publication Practices (GPP), and editors of clinical pharmacology journals have to maintain an overview of the peer review process.The peer review process can be monitored and facilitated using the 10-D assessment, which comprises peer review criteria to determine if: 1. design of the study, 2. diagnoses employed, 3. drug molecules involved, 4. dosages applied, 5. data collected, 6. discussion of the findings, 7. deductions made, 8. documentation, 9. declarations, and 10. dHS (drug hypersensitivity syndrome) risk assessment is in accord with the objectives of the study and meet the requirements of EBM and GPP.The 10-D assessment tool, although easy to apply, requires a high level of clinical pharmacology expertise, especially in the fields of drug disposition, pharmacokinetics, and drug action. Its application will facilitate the peer review of clinical research and clinical trial reports and thus promote safety in drug development and pharmacotherapy and meet the needs of Good Publication Practices. .

| S-EPMC5514613 | biostudies-other

Newcastle-Ottawa Scale: comparing reviewers' to authors' assessments.

Project description:BACKGROUND: Lack of appropriate reporting of methodological details has previously been shown to distort risk of bias assessments in randomized controlled trials. The same might be true for observational studies. The goal of this study was to compare the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS) assessment for risk of bias between reviewers and authors of cohort studies included in a published systematic review on risk factors for severe outcomes in patients infected with influenza. METHODS: Cohort studies included in the systematic review and published between 2008-2011 were included. The corresponding or first authors completed a survey covering all NOS items. Results were compared with the NOS assessment applied by reviewers of the systematic review. Inter-rater reliability was calculated using kappa (K) statistics. RESULTS: Authors of 65/182 (36%) studies completed the survey. The overall NOS score was significantly higher (p < 0.001) in the reviewers' assessment (median = 6; interquartile range [IQR] 6-6) compared with those by authors (median = 5, IQR 4-6). Inter-rater reliability by item ranged from slight (K = 0.15, 95% confidence interval [CI]?=?-0.19, 0.48) to poor (K = -0.06, 95% CI = -0.22, 0.10). Reliability for the overall score was poor (K = -0.004, 95% CI = -0.11, 0.11). CONCLUSIONS: Differences in assessment and low agreement between reviewers and authors suggest the need to contact authors for information not published in studies when applying the NOS in systematic reviews.

| S-EPMC4021422 | biostudies-literature

Prof. Michael F. Drummond: Reporting Guidelines for Health Economic Evaluations: BMJ Guidelines for Authors and Peer Reviewers of Economic Submissions.

Project description: Not available

| S-EPMC9403936 | biostudies-literature

Uncovering Patterns in Reviewers' Feedback to Scene Description Authors.

Project description:Audio descriptions (ADs) can increase access to videos for blind people. Researchers have explored different mechanisms for generating ADs, with some of the most recent studies involving paid novices; to improve the quality of their ADs, novices receive feedback from reviewers. However, reviewer feedback is not instantaneous. To explore the potential for real-time feedback through automation, in this paper, we analyze 1, 120 comments that 40 sighted novices received from a sighted or a blind reviewer. We find that feedback patterns tend to fall under four themes: (i) Quality; commenting on different AD quality variables, (ii) Speech Act; the utterance or speech action that the reviewers used, (iii) Required Action; the recommended action that the authors should do to improve the AD, and (iv) Guidance; the additional help that the reviewers gave to help the authors. We discuss which of these patterns could be automated within the review process as design implications for future AD collaborative authoring systems.

| S-EPMC8855355 | biostudies-literature

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

OmicsDI is an Elixir interoperability service. Learn more ›

Tweets

OmicsDI Databases

PRIDE
PeptideAtlas
MassIVE
JPOST Repository
Physiome Model Repository

EGA
EVA
ENA
LINCS
PAXDB
Cell Collective

MetaboLights
Metabolomics Workbench
MetabolomeExpress
GNPS
BioModels
FAIRDOMHub

ArrayExpress
dbGaP
ExpressionAtlas
GEO
NODE

Information

Databases
Help
API
Contact us
Code on GitHub
Terms of use
Submit Data