{"id":74835,"date":"2024-11-13T03:06:05","date_gmt":"2024-11-13T08:06:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/world.edu\/?p=74835"},"modified":"2024-11-13T14:45:04","modified_gmt":"2024-11-13T19:45:04","slug":"perils-of-peer-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/perils-of-peer-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Perils of Peer Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nPeer review, like many things, sounds great in theory. When you submit a paper for publication, qualified experts objectively review your paper, comment on its suitability for publication and give you feedback that you can use to improve it. However,\u00a0in reality<\/a>, the\u00a0problems<\/a>\u00a0with peer review go far beyond getting a reviewer who just doesn\u2019t get your research and provides comments that are not scholarly or appropriate.<\/p>\n

Peer review can be\u00a0manipulated<\/a>, corrupted or outright faked. When dodgy reviewers get caught, authors can also suffer, so it\u2019s important to understand what can go wrong so that you can avoid bad reviewers and where they hang out.<\/p>\n

Coercive Citation<\/strong><\/p>\n

We know that citation is one of the ways that we show research impact. But what if we didn\u2019t need to passively wait for people to read our papers and cite them? What if we could just tell people to cite our work and they would dutifully reference it in their papers, helping nudge our citation metrics and give us an edge in that next grant application?<\/p>\n

That is essentially the problem with reviewers who engage in\u00a0coercive<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0manipulated citation<\/a>. When asked to review a manuscript, reviewers will ask the authors to cite their own papers in their comments whether their own papers are\u00a0relevant or not<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The relevance and appropriateness of the citations is key. For example, if I am reviewing a paper that claimed the literature hadn\u2019t addressed something that I had published on, I could legitimately suggest a citation to myself. But if I were simply asking for references to be added to boost my metrics then that is an abuse of the trust that the editors and authors have placed in me to give them scholarly advice and commentary.<\/p>\n

Some researchers take this a step further and engage in\u00a0citation rings or cartels<\/a>. Instead of suggesting their own papers for citation, they suggest the papers of friends. Those friends, in turn, abuse their positions to direct citations for mutual benefit.<\/p>\n

Individual reviewers can help address this by ensuring that any suggested citations are accompanied by an explanation for why they are relevant and, potentially, declaring the conflict of interest to the editor if they are suggesting their own papers for citation. Similarly, journals and editors should be aware of coercive citation and use journal policies and data analytics to prevent inappropriate citation.<\/p>\n

Conflicted Peer Review<\/strong><\/p>\n

But what about your own papers? It\u2019s nice to be cited, but a strong track record is probably more important for jobs, grants and promotions. This is where researchers can begin manipulating the peer review process in more detail.<\/p>\n

One way is to exploit journals with weak or inadequate editorial processes to engage in conflicted peer review. This is where researchers conduct peer reviews of their friends\u2019 papers. The most obvious conflicts of interest include working at the same institution or having published together within 3-5 years (different publishers\/institutions have different guidelines).<\/p>\n

Unscrupulous researchers will suggest close friends and colleagues as reviewers. However, researchers with integrity should be careful to always declare any conflicts of interest when they are invited to review a paper by a colleague or someone with whom they have a previous personal, professional or financial relationship. The editor can then make the call whether they would like to proceed with the review request.<\/p>\n

Manipulation, Impersonation and Faked Review<\/strong><\/p>\n

The\u00a0manipulation of the peer review process<\/a>\u00a0can also be quite involved. This may involve suggesting reviewers who are, in one way or another, in league with the authors.<\/p>\n

Similarly to conflicted peer review, the authors may suggest a peer reviewer who is a friend or collaborator in their network. They can also provide an email address for a reviewer that they control, posing as another researcher or as a fictional expert, before completing a favourable review of their own work. The fake reviewer email address will often be non-institutional (e.g., Gmail, Outlook or a custom domain) but institutional email accounts can also be used, especially when the\u00a0local-part<\/a>\u00a0is not a name (e.g., student5871[at]university.edu.au).<\/p>\n

Guest Editorship<\/strong><\/p>\n

Guest editorship is a\u00a0well-recognised weak link<\/a>\u00a0in the publishing system that can tie other forms of manipulation together. By pitching and editing a special issue, unscrupulous researchers can obtain an elevated level of influence over paper selection and, depending on the publisher, the peer review process. This allows the guest editor to coerce citations from authors and to\u00a0facilitate conflicted, manipulated or fake peer review<\/a>\u00a0of papers for colleagues.<\/p>\n

Some journals also provide guest editors with incentives, such as discounts or waivers on publication fees, which guest editors can use as leverage or tokens of exchange within their networks. For example, a guest editor can request authorship from collaborators to enable their submission with discounted or waived publication fees. In future, those collaborators might return the favour when they guest edit special issues (whether the favours are financial or referential).<\/p>\n

What Can Be Done?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Peer review and publication is an important part of contemporary scholarship and publishers and journals are responsible for upholding the integrity of their processes. However, researchers who publish papers that were subject to compromised peer review can\u00a0face retraction<\/a>\u00a0whether or not they participated in corrupting the process. Therefore, researchers should carefully consider the outlets they submit to and avoid, where possible, outlets that rely heavily on guest editors or ask authors to suggest reviewers.<\/p>\n

Robust and critical review can be painful to read, but it\u2019s important to seek out good peer review because the alternative can be far more perilous than\u00a0\u201cReviewer 2\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Author Bio:<\/strong> Shaun Khoo is a project manager at UNSW Sydney<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Peer review, like many things, sounds great in theory. When you submit a paper for publication, qualified experts objectively review your paper, comment on its suitability for publication and give you feedback that you can use to improve it. However,\u00a0in reality, the\u00a0problems\u00a0with peer review go far beyond getting a reviewer who just doesn\u2019t get your […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[12902],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-74835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-higher-education","tag-peer-reviewing"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPerils of Peer Review - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/perils-of-peer-review\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Perils of Peer Review - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Peer review, like many things, sounds great in theory. 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