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The effect of publishing peer review reports on referee behavior in five scholarly journals.

ABSTRACT: To increase transparency in science, some scholarly journals are publishing peer review reports. But it is unclear how this practice affects the peer review process. Here, we examine the effect of publishing peer review reports on referee behavior in five scholarly journals involved in a pilot study at Elsevier. By considering 9,220 submissions and 18,525 reviews from 2010 to 2017, we measured changes both before and during the pilot and found that publishing reports did not significantly compromise referees' willingness to review, recommendations, or turn-around times. Younger and non-academic scholars were more willing to accept to review and provided more positive and objective recommendations. Male referees tended to write more constructive reports during the pilot. Only 8.1% of referees agreed to reveal their identity in the published report. These findings suggest that open peer review does not compromise the process, at least when referees are able to protect their anonymity.

SUBMITTER: Bravo G

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6338763 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The effect of publishing peer review reports on referee behavior in five scholarly journals.

Bravo Giangiacomo G Grimaldo Francisco F López-Iñesta Emilia E Mehmani Bahar B Squazzoni Flaminio F

Nature communications 20190118 1

To increase transparency in science, some scholarly journals are publishing peer review reports. But it is unclear how this practice affects the peer review process. Here, we examine the effect of publishing peer review reports on referee behavior in five scholarly journals involved in a pilot study at Elsevier. By considering 9,220 submissions and 18,525 reviews from 2010 to 2017, we measured changes both before and during the pilot and found that publishing reports did not significantly compro ...[more]

PMID: 30659186

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Project description:MotivationReproducing the results from a scientific paper can be challenging due to the absence of data and the computational tools required for their analysis. In addition, details relating to the procedures used to obtain the published results can be difficult to discern due to the use of natural language when reporting how experiments have been performed. The Investigation/Study/Assay (ISA), Nanopublications (NP), and Research Objects (RO) models are conceptual data modelling frameworks that can structure such information from scientific papers. Computational workflow platforms can also be used to reproduce analyses of data in a principled manner. We assessed the extent by which ISA, NP, and RO models, together with the Galaxy workflow system, can capture the experimental processes and reproduce the findings of a previously published paper reporting on the development of SOAPdenovo2, a de novo genome assembler.ResultsExecutable workflows were developed using Galaxy, which reproduced results that were consistent with the published findings. A structured representation of the information in the SOAPdenovo2 paper was produced by combining the use of ISA, NP, and RO models. By structuring the information in the published paper using these data and scientific workflow modelling frameworks, it was possible to explicitly declare elements of experimental design, variables, and findings. The models served as guides in the curation of scientific information and this led to the identification of inconsistencies in the original published paper, thereby allowing its authors to publish corrections in the form of an errata.AvailabilitySOAPdenovo2 scripts, data, and results are available through the GigaScience Database: http://dx.doi.org/10.5524/100044; the workflows are available from GigaGalaxy: http://galaxy.cbiit.cuhk.edu.hk; and the representations using the ISA, NP, and RO models are available through the SOAPdenovo2 case study website http://isa-tools.github.io/soapdenovo2/.Contactphilippe.rocca-serra@oerc.ox.ac.uk and susanna-assunta.sansone@oerc.ox.ac.uk.

Project description:The field of law has retained its distinctiveness regarding peer review to this day, and reviews are often conducted without following standardized rules and principles. External and independent evaluation of submissions has recently become adopted by European law journals, and peer review procedures are still poorly defined, investigated, and attuned to the legal science publishing landscape. The aim of our study was to gain a better insight into current editorial policies on peer review in law journals by exploring editorial documents (instructions, guidelines, policies) issued by 119 Croatian, Italian, and Spanish law journals. We relied on automatic content analysis of 135 publicly available documents collected from the journal websites to analyze the basic features of the peer review processes, manuscript evaluation criteria, and related ethical issues using WordStat8. Differences in covered topics between the countries were compared using the chi-square test. Our findings reveal that most law journals have adopted a traditional approach, in which the editorial board manages mostly anonymized peer review (104, 77%) engaging independent/external reviewers (65, 48%). Submissions are evaluated according to their originality and relevance (113, 84%), quality of writing and presentation (94, 70%), comprehensiveness of literature references (93, 69%), and adequacy of methods (57, 42%). The main ethical issues related to peer review addressed by these journals are reviewer's competing interests (42, 31%), plagiarism (35, 26%), and biases (30, 22%). We observed statistically significant differences between countries in mentioning key concepts such as "Peer review ethics", "Reviewer", "Transparency of identities", "Publication type", and "Research misconduct". Spanish journals favor reviewers' "Independence" and "Competence" and "Anonymized" peer review process. Also, some manuscript types popular in one country are rarely mentioned in other countries. Even though peer review is equally conventional in all three countries, high transparency in Croatian law journals, respect for research integrity in Spanish ones, and diversity and inclusion in Italian are promising indicators of future development.

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The effect of publishing peer review reports on referee behavior in five scholarly journals.

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The effect of publishing peer review reports on referee behavior in five scholarly journals.

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