Archive by category | Quality and value

Researchers like the peer-review system

The Publishing Research Consortium publishes a study this month (January 2008) in whch more than 3,000 senior authors, reviewers and editors were asked about the peer-review system. The conclusions are that researchers want to “improve, not change, the system of peer review for journal articles”. According to the report, a summary of which is available (1.7 MB; PDF), more than 93 per cent of respondents believe that peer review is necessary, and more than 85 per cent say that it helps to improve scientific communications and increases the overall quality of published papers.  Read more

Developing peer-review standards

In an interesting exercise in how a journal can develop criteria for peer-review in a fast-moving, area of considerable intrinsic uncertaintly, the editors of Nature Reports Stem Cells posted an article last month that asked how one could declare human cells pluripotent, when the most robust tests are neither ethical nor feasible, calling on the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) to set standards. Now, in a post on The Niche blog, Defining pluripotency in human cells, the editors post some of the responses from researchers in the field. Here is one perspective, from Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University:  … Read more

Grand unification or in miniature?

In his Nature Network summary of a recent publishing meeting, Yiorgos Apidianakis describes his opinion that a peer-review “score” is a more desirable (and efficient) indicator of scientific excellence than the currently used impact factor of the journal that publishes the work. Charles G. Jennings’s wrote, as part of Nature’s peer-review debate, “It is common to bemoan the over-reliance on quantitative markers such as impact factors for assessing scientists’ abilities (and indeed there is much to bemoan), but until committee members have time to read every paper on every applicant’s CV, they will have to rely at least in part on proxy indicators.” Dr Apidianakis believes that an ideal indicator would be a score from a unified peer-reviewing system, or a central agency “that will thoroughly, rigorously and objectively evaluate any given work to be published, using again specialized scientists as reviewers.  Read more

How not to mix politics and science

In a blaze of colour on the 11 November ‘op-ed’ (invited opinion) page of The New York Times, some scientists proclaimed that, based on analysis of brain-imaging data from just a handful of swing voters, they had divined what the rest of the undecided masses truly think about the upcoming US presidential elections. Apparently just asking them was simply not good enough.  Read more

Nature’s special peer-review for strong claims

In an Editorial in today’s Nature (450, 457-458; 2007), Replicator review, the journal describes its publication of “what we expect to be the final word on whether nuclear transfer can work in a primate — ”https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v450/n7169/full/nature06357.html”>a paper by J. A. Byrne et al. showing not only that it is possible to clone primate embryos by somatic-cell nuclear transfer but also that precious embryonic stem cells can be derived from the embryos. If embryonic stem cells live up to their promise, the technology could be used to derive patient-tailored stem cells.”  … Read more

Blogging about peer-reviewed research

Bloggers for peer-reviewed research reporting, or BPR3, was conceived by scientists and others who write informally about research on the Internet as a simple way to denote that a blog post or website article is discussing peer-reviewed work. Their mission statement: “Bloggers for Peer-Reviewed Research Reporting strives to identify serious academic blog posts about peer-reviewed research by offering an icon and an aggregation site where others can look to find the best academic blogging on the Net.”  … Read more

Open forums and pseudoscience

The Nature Precedings forum on Nature Network is featuring a stimulating and thoughtful discussion about how to handle pseudoscience postings. Santosh Patnaik writes: “Though Nature Precedings screens submissions for pseudo-scientific content, it is possible for such a submission to get through. An example might be ”https://precedings.nature.com/documents/579/version/1″>this article on Nature Precedings: this website suggests that the authors are supporting “creationism/intelligent design.” This leads one to wonder how pseudo-science is identified, and what the policy is towards accepted articles that are later identified as pseudo-scientific.”  … Read more

True costs of peer-review

Mark Chillingworth, the Editor of Information Week Review, writes in the October issue that there are debates on how to improve peer review, alludes to a recent PRISM statement about the need to protect it, but that “nowhere is there anyone laying out the true costs of peer review”. He suggests that these costs need to be calculated as part of any informed way forward to maximize the benefits of the system.  Read more

Prospect of the super-editor

Pedro Beltrao of Public Rambling writes a stimulating post exploring whether the editor could be a “value unit” for authors and their publications, independent of the journal. He asks:“could there be freelance editors? Could the editors be separated from the publisher? Imagine [if] I read a paper from a pre-print server, ask some people to peer-review (why would they?) and sell our evaluation to a journal.  Read more