Project description:ABSTRACT The staff and editors of Disease Models & Mechanisms (DMM) wish to thank all our peer reviewers for their work in this vital role. We highlight some important changes that have been introduced to improve the peer-review process, for both authors and reviewers. Summary: DMM highlights changes in our peer-review process, and thanks peer reviewers for their involvement in this vital step in scholarly publication.
Project description:CytoJournal, with its continued contribution of scientific cytopathology literature to the public domain under open access (OA) charter, thanks its dedicated peer reviewers for devoting significant efforts, time, and resources during 2011. The abstracts of poster-platform submissions to the 59(th) Annual Scientific Meeting (November 2011) of the American Society of Cytopathology (ASC) in Baltimore, MD, USA, were peer reviewed by the ASC Scientific Program Committee.
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.