Analysis and news


a such negative impact – but some are clearly doing a much better job than others.


The survey yielded responders from a global audience, mostly from the academic sector – and I am quite sure that many would be of no surprise. Common challenges, in addition to the definitions given earlier include: • Quality of peer review (language/ references adjusted to peer reviewer style not journal style, meaningless and non-constructive feedback, negative review due to controversial content with no constructive criticism, lack of attention to detail by the reviewer giving feedback on something already discussed in the paper, recommended readings all by one person undermining the reviewer’s anonymity, content critiqued for being too academic by an academic publisher, and quality reviews from real experts (not peripheral) within quick time scales);


• Quality of work (surprise at poorer quality papers from renowned authors, incomplete papers that need more work before being submitted and sent for peer review, assumption that English will be poor if not based in Europe or the US, and expectation that reviewers will edit grammatical errors);


• Rejection (paper rejected because reviewer doing similar work, rejected for minor typos, and rejected as peer reviewer is jealous and a competitive author)


• Time (time taken to review, finding time to revise paper, unrealistic timelines, and patience required for non-Western authors to help them surface the underlying good research);


• Peer review recruitment (finding the best qualified people when asked to suggest reviewers by the publisher, continued engagement of quality peer reviewers, questionable practices by editors in how they recruit reviewers, inadequate quality reviewers, expecting chapter authors to review for other chapters in the same edited volume, continuing to keep peer reviewers engaged, work given to reviewers out of scope of their expertise, and blocking out the time of committed reviewers); and


• Industry pressures (reviewers passing work off as their own, continuing to support publishers as they lose money to open access publication and their profit models change, lack of trust in what gets published in open access, predatory publishers operating on a ‘pay to play’ model, competing bells and whistles to ensure that what is published is worthwhile research from respectable


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peer-reviewed sources, publishing only in institution-recognised journals, not being able/allowed to publish negative results, having to publish papers as part of course completion e.g. degree programmes, jealousy from competitive authors, and authors under immense pressure to publish by institution).


These are real-life examples from a community of editors, librarians, peer reviewers and authors, and I’ll add the caveat that this was only a small survey to inform this editorial piece. What are we doing to address these challenges? We can, of course, look at revising existing processes and have better quality control measures, but what developments does the community want to see? Here’s what the respondents said:


• More rewards and recognition for peer reviewers;


• Employers recognising the peer reviewer contribution and applying towards a promotion;


• Wider adoption of peer review practices like transparent/open and double blind peer review;


• Authenticated peer reviewers – e.g. ‘fit for purpose’ assessment and email address verified;


• Constructive criticism; • Faster time to publication – social sciences of note;


• Improved quality control and processes; • More support and training for reviewers and editors to recognise and correct biases, and build papers with enough consistency to allow fast thorough peer review of suitably structured and novel work;


• Systems to help identify rogue behaviour and eradicate it;


• Authors struggling to publish good work helped with better ways to do this; and


• Using a system that manages the whole process from submission to publication. The industry is already taking steps to help address these developments and working on solutions that will better serve the system – but, with predatory journals on the increase, is this having an impact on peer review? One editor I spoke to said that they are regularly invited by predatory journals to submit papers by next week (literally), serve on their editorial boards, and edit issues. We’ve still got some way to go and it will always need improvement, but many publishers already have fantastic resources to support and train authors and peer reviewers. I just don’t think people know what information they have available freely at their fingertips. I’ve started to build my own central URL repository of these resources, and always welcome any


additions – what’s the point of reinventing the wheel when someone has already done a brilliant job?


F1000 has an open peer review platform


that I’ve used and found it works well – just because I knew the reviewers, didn’t mean they were biased! It’s highly likely you will know them from your field of expertise, or at least by reputation. Thieme piloted crowdsourcing peer


review (intelligent crowd review) with their Synlett journal, and yielded really interesting results – more than 100 qualified reviewers commented on one paper in 72 hours. Several other publishers are now trialling this approach – this innovative way of peer review will present its own challenges, but hopefully we’ll work together to learn from past


“We’ve still got some way to go and it will always need improvement”


mistakes and build a more robust, fair workflow. Wiley is another example of a publisher training and supporting their editors at their editor annual conference. Of course, it doesn’t all fall on the shoulders of the publishers and editorial boards to improve peer review, but to the community as a whole. Authors should feel encouraged to report if they feel a peer reviewer or editor is acting unethically, or to note non-preferred reviewers if identifiable with their manuscript submission. If reviews aren’t constructive, make sure this is fed back – certainly some editors I have spoken to actively reject reviews and get another for the author if it is not constructive. Some of these challenges are not going


to be addressed overnight, but I’d like to see more intensive research done in this area, encompassing a whole range of publishers/service providers and the author and peer review communities, concluded with a clear strategy and recommendations. What trends are we seeing, how common are these challenges, what is being done to reduce or even eradicate these issues, and how can we collaborate through our learned experiences to support this community? Let’s celebrate our community by


supporting them further in what they do, and start addressing some of these issues before they become significant problems – if they aren’t already.


Lou Peck is the founder of publishing and marketing consultancy The International Bunch


April/May 2019 Research Information 41


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