Exploring the Peer Review Process (Workshop, Summer 2023)

This book is a self-paced, open access training in peer review. In eight modules it asks readers to engage in a variety of activities to learn the who, what, why, and how of peer review. It is geared to library professionals, library school students, or other academic professionals who must understand and/or engage with the peer-review process.

This briefing paper aims to provide a historical perspective that can inform the debates about what the future of academic publishing should look like. We argue that current policy regarding open access publishing, and many of the other proposals for the reform of academic publishing, have been too focused on the opportunities and financial challenges of the most recent changes in digital communications technologies and have given undue weight to commercial concerns. In 2013, the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council funded a 4-year project on the editorial and commercial history of the world’s oldest-surviving scholarly journal (‘Publishing the Philosophical Transactions: a social, cultural and economic history of a learned journal, 1665-2015’, AH/K001841). The project is led by Dr Aileen Fyfe at the University of St Andrews in partnership with the Royal Society. The project team convened a workshop at the Royal Society, 22 April 2016, on ‘The Politics of Academic Publishing, 1950-2016’. This briefing paper is informed by the contributions of those who attended that day, and we thank them for their insights.

This editorial describes some of the current and emerging challenges in peer review for the academic publishing system. Peer review is a fundamental element of academic research and publishing, with a firm reliance on the global scholarly community to perform gatekeeping and filtering processes in pursuing high-quality and high-value scholarly publications: the “gold standard” in academic publishing. We begin with examples of several contemporary challenges the peer review system poses, including impartiality and bias, academic reward structures, fake peer reviews, and reviewer fatigue. To further understand these challenges, we then provide a brief history of the evolution of the peer review system, focusing on the traditional forms of pre-publication peer review so familiar to the communication of scholarly work. Against this backdrop, we consider the benefits of peer review that span the continuum of the academic community – from authors to reviewers to journals and research communities. But many traditional forms of peer review are being challenged by new and innovative processes, systems and platforms. Finally, we look at how others have re-envisioned the peer review process during this phase of rapid evolution in journal publishing, with a strong call for quality and integrity in writing peer reviews. We conclude by suggesting ways forward for embedding sustainability, equity, and respect within the peer review process as an active force for advancing scholarship.

Peer review is central to academic publishing. Yet for many it is a mysterious and contentious practice, which can cause distress for both reviewers, and those whose work is reviewed. This paper, produced by the Editors' Collective, examines the past and future of peer review in academic publishing. The first sections consider how peer review has been defined and practised in changing academic contexts, and its educational significance in the development of scholarship. The paper then explores major historical and contemporary issues around identity, diversity, anonymity, and the review process, and the related power of editors versus reviewers in academic publishing. Finally, the paper discusses the case of new scholars as reviewers engaging in neoliberal labour, before concluding with some brief recommendations based on our analysis.

Peer review was introduced to scholarly publication in 1731 by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, which published a collection of peer-reviewed medical articles. Despite this early start, in many scientific journal publications the editors had the only say on whether an article will be published or not until after World War II.

In its ideal form, academic publishing is frequently presented as an objective, meritocratic, and thoroughly systematic process through which scholarly works are objectively evaluated by unbiased editors, impartially assessed by anonymous peer reviewers, and dispassionately copyedited so the tone matches a house style. Central to this ideal is the expectation that all works undergo the same review, regardless of the personalities involved. While this unbiased and egalitarian conceptualization of the review process is laudable, it is complicated by the reality that all academic interactions are shaped by the individuals involved. This article briefly argues that personal relationships have been central to shaping the scholarly process throughout the history of academic publishing, and it further suggests this legacy continues to inform modern editorial practices. As an illustrative example, this article highlights the activities of George Long (1800-1879) during his editorship of the Quarterly Journal of Education (1831-1835).

The increasing demand for swift dissemination of research findings, combined with the drive towards transparency and open science has challenged the established approach to peer review in the journal publication system. Post-publication peer review (PPPR) takes place when an article is published before peer reviewers are sought, and takes a number of forms, including Letters to the Editor, blogs, social media and online platforms such as F1000 Research. Aside from the speed at which information can be shared with the research community, PPPR also has the potential advantage of facilitating a dynamic discussion between researchers and gaining insights from a wider range of contributors. While pre-publication peer review is still regarded as the ‘gold standard’, the merits of PPPR are increasingly being recognised. PPPR has the potential to enable dissemination, promote meaningful discussions and collaboration between researchers and be an efficient engine of open science. However, there remains some significant concerns that expedited publication without prior peer review may result in the dissemination of poor-quality data and findings from badly designed studies. Whilst this risk is also present in traditional prepublication peer review, it is heightened in its absence. This is particularly true where media can disseminate findings which have not yet been interrogated closely and distinction is not easily drawn between peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed findings. There is also the need for an integrated and accessible system so that both authors and readers can easily benefit from PPPR. This narrative literature review explores some of the platforms which facilitate PPPR in the field of academic publishing, including journals which carry out all of their peer review post-publication, Letters to the Editor/Commentaries and academic social networks.

Is peer-reviewed research really superior? Why should journalists note in their stories whether studies have been peer reviewed? We explain.