Peer-to-peer

Doug Lederman reports in Inside Higher Ed on competition in US agricultural research. "The notion that competition produces better science is an underlying principle of the American research enterprise — with the possible exception, historically, of agriculture. Just 10 percent of the more than $2.6 billion that the federal government spends annually on agriculture research is awarded through peer review, with the rest flowing to scientists at the U.S. Agriculture Department or to researchers at land-grant colleges through formulas that have gone largely unchanged for decades."
Mr Lederman describes the current Senate hearings, and various attempts, including that of the Create-21 group, to increase the proportion of funding given to competitive research programmes.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 09, 2007
Categories: Quality & value | Permalink | Comments (0)

At Nautilus, the blog for authors, I've posted about competing interest statements in scientific papers. I've asked there what scientists think of this practice as authors. But what about when the scientists are peer-reviewers? Does it make a difference to you, when you are reviewing a paper, to know that the author has taken out a patent on the discovery or has shares in a spinoff company? Do peer-reviewers judge the scientific results independently of these declarations, or does it make a difference to the level of scrutiny they apply to the work? The Nature journal editors would like to hear about the reviewers' perspective, via your comments to this post.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 19, 2006
Categories: Ethics, Quality & value | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tom Jefferson

A look at alternatives to the peer review system suggests it might be the best bet.

Peer review is used as a quality-control mechanism for biomedical literature (ref. 1). Journals with a formal peer-review system are generally higher profile than those without, and peer review is often a pre-condition for journal indexing in biomedical databases such as PubMed. Variants of the current system or complete alternatives have scarcely been explored, as yet. Two years ago, I and my colleagues carried out an exploratory review of complete and partial alternatives to the current editorial peer-review system, both in and outside biomedical sciences. Here I update and summarise our findings.

Continue reading "Quality and value: Models of quality control for scientific research" »

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 29, 2006
Categories: Peer review debate, Quality & value | Permalink | Comments (1)

Charles G. Jennings

What you can’t measure, you can’t manage: the need for quantitative indicators in peer review

Given its importance in steering the global research enterprise, peer review seems under-studied. There is a growing literature on the subject, some of which is highlighted at the quadrennial Peer Review Congress, but for the most part we are still only seeing snapshots. A more systematic approach is needed if we are to understand peer review as it is currently practiced, or to evaluate the pros and cons of any alternative approaches.

Continue reading "Quality and value: The true purpose of peer review?" »

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 29, 2006
Categories: Peer review debate, Quality & value | Permalink | Comments (0)

Trish Groves

A recipe for good peer review

Improving peer review depends on making its human aspects more humane. Journals need to ask the right reviewers to review the right articles, help them to do it quickly and thoroughly, make them feel happy to sign their reports, thank them, tell them how they did, and encourage wide recognition of what’s too often a thankless task.

Continue reading "Quality and value: How can we get the best out of peer review?" »

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 20, 2006
Categories: Peer review debate, Quality & value | Permalink | Comments (0)

David Ozonoff

Researchers need reviewers to check their stats.

Statistical methods are widely used in many areas of natural science, especially in my field of research, epidemiology. Although statistical procedures are often viewed as a black art, or as a black box, they are not limited to specialists. With today’s computing power and software, researchers can and do use computationally intensive methods of great complexity, often leading to the use of techniques that are more sophisticated and powerful than necessary. Many researchers have trouble interpreting the results, or interpret them incorrectly. Clearly, this is a matter for peer review.

Continue reading "Quality and value: Statistics in peer review" »

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 14, 2006
Categories: Peer review debate, Quality & value | Permalink | Comments (4)

Joan E. Sieber

Improving the peer-review process relies on understanding its context and culture.

Peer review gets a bad rap these days, and there is much talk that something should be done about it. Scientific societies need to know more about the alleged problems before they try to fix the peer-review process. These problems are often cast as ethical ones: unintended bad consequences of well-meaning editorial processes.

Continue reading "Quality and value: How can we research peer review?" »

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 05, 2006
Categories: Peer review debate, Quality & value | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (2)