The sociology of scientific validity: How professional networks shape judgement in peer review

Teplitskiy, Misha; Acuña, Daniel E.; Elamrani-Raoult, Aida; Körding, Konrad P.; Evans, James A.

doi:10.1016/j.respol.2018.06.014

Cited by 75 publications

(59 citation statements)

References 75 publications

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“…Even though celebrated as being one of the hallmarks of science, the editorial process is also regularly criticized. Commentators blame it for being inconsistent (Peters & Ceci, 1982), essentially flawed (Smith, 2006), biased (Teplitskiy, Acuna, Elamrani-Raoult, Körding, & Evans, 2018), andparticularly relevant in these times of crisis -slow (Nguyen et al, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pandemic Publishing: Medical journals drastically speed up their publication process for Covid-19

Horbach

2020

Preprint

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In times of public crises, including the current Covid-19 pandemic, rapid dissemination of relevant scientific knowledge is of paramount importance. The duration of scholarly journals' publication process is one of the main factors hindering quick delivery of new information. While proper editorial assessment and peer review obviously require some time, turnaround times for medical journals can be up to several months, which is undesirable in the era of a crisis. Following initiatives of medical journals and scholarly publishers to accelerate their publication process, this study assesses whether medical journals have indeed managed to speed up their publication process for Covid-19 related articles. It studies the duration of 14 medical journals' publication process both during and prior to the current pandemic. Assessing a total of 669 articles, the study concludes that medical journals have indeed drastically accelerated the publication process for Covid-19 related articles since the outbreak of the pandemic. Compared to articles published in the same journals before the pandemic, turnaround times have decreased on average by 49%. The largest decrease in number of days between submission and publication of articles was due to a decrease in the number of days required for peer review.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pandemic Publishing: Medical journals drastically speed up their publication process for Covid-19

Horbach

2020

Preprint

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“…what is dubbed cognitive particularism [40], whereby scholars harbor preferences for work and 48 ideas similar to their own [41]. Evidence of this process has been reported in peer review in the 49 reciprocity (i.e., correspondences between patterns of recommendations received by authors and 50 patterns of recommendations given by reviewers in the same social group) between authors and 51 reviewers of the same race and gender [42] (see also [43,44]).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Author-Reviewer Homophily in Peer Review

Murray

Siler

Larivière

et al. 2018

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The fairness of scholarly peer review has been challenged by evidence of disparities in publication outcomes based on author demographic characteristics. To assess this, we conducted an exploratory analysis of peer review outcomes of 23,876 initial submissions and 7,192 full submissions that were submitted to the biosciences journal eLife between 2012 and 2017. Women and authors from nations outside of North America and Europe were underrepresented both as gatekeepers (editors and peer reviewers) and authors. We found evidence of a homophilic relationship between the demographics of the gatekeepers and authors and the outcome of peer review; that is, there were higher rates of acceptance in the case of gender and country homophily. The acceptance rate for manuscripts with male last authors was seven percent, or 3.5 percentage points, greater than for female last authors (95% CI = [0.5, 6.4]); this gender inequity was greatest, at nine percent or about 4.8 percentage points (95% CI = [0.3, 9.1]), when the team of reviewers was all male; this difference was smaller and not significantly different for mixed-gender reviewer teams. Homogeny between countries of the gatekeeper and the corresponding author was also associated with higher acceptance rates for many countries. To test for the persistence of these effects after controlling for potentially confounding variables, we conducted a logistic regression including document and author metadata. Disparities in acceptance rates associated with gender and country of affiliation and the homophilic associations remained. We conclude with a discussion of mechanisms that could contribute to this effect, directions for future research, and policy implications. Code and anonymized data have been made available at https://github.com/murrayds/elife-analysis 1/61 Submitted to PLOS Biology Author summaryPeer review, the primary method by which scientific work is evaluated, is ideally a fair and equitable process in which scientific work is judged solely on its own merit. However, the integrity of peer review has been called into question based on evidence that outcomes often differ between male and female authors, and for authors in different countries. We investigated such disparities at the biosciences journal eLife by analyzing the demographics of authors and gatekeepers (editors and peer reviewers), and peer review outcomes of all submissions between 2012 and 2017. Outcomes were more favorable for male authors and those affiliated with institutions in North America and Europe; these groups were also over-represented among gatekeepers. There was evidence that peer review outcomes were influenced by homophily-a preference of gatekeepers for manuscripts from authors with shared characteristics. We discuss mechanisms that could contribute to this effect, directions for future research, and policy implications. 2/61Submitted to PLOS Biology 1 Peer review is foundational to the development, gatekeeping, and dissemination of research, 2 while also underpinning the professional hiera...

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“…A tendency to associate and collaborate with people who are similar to oneself may manifest as bias, for example, in gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status (Walker, Barros, Conejo, et al, 2015). A tendency towards group-think may limit genuinely novel proposals (Grayson, 2002) or bias reviews in favour of those from the same 'school of thought' (Teplitskiy, Acuna, Elamrani-Raoult, Körding, & Evans, 2018). The incentives for competition and personal advancement can motivate unethical reviewer behaviour, such as trying to scoop research results or direction or by giving adverse reviews.…”

Section: Fairnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

What does better peer review look like? Underlying principles and recommendations for better practice

et al. 2019

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We conducted a literature review of best practice in peer review. Following this research, we identified five principles for better peer review: Content Integrity, Content Ethics, Fairness, Usefulness, and Timeliness. For each of these principles, we have developed a set of recommendations to improve peer review standards. In this article, we describe the role of peer review and how our five principles support that goal. This article is intended to continue the conversation about improving peer review standards and provide guidance to journal teams looking to improve their standards. It is accompanied by a detailed checklist, which could be used by journal teams to assess their current peer review standards.

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The sociology of scientific validity: How professional networks shape judgement in peer review

Cited by 75 publications

References 75 publications

Pandemic Publishing: Medical journals drastically speed up their publication process for Covid-19

Pandemic Publishing: Medical journals drastically speed up their publication process for Covid-19

Author-Reviewer Homophily in Peer Review

What does better peer review look like? Underlying principles and recommendations for better practice

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