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Delete Offensive Language? Change Recommendations? Some Editors Say It's OK to Alter Peer Reviews

Delete Offensive Language? Change Recommendations? Some Editors Say It's OK to Alter Peer Reviews

Survey finds widespread support for editing, but there is little guidance from journals.

Encouraging Preprint Curation and Review

Encouraging Preprint Curation and Review

Review and commentary can help authors improve their articles; curation can provide readers with helpful context and enhance discoverability. But despite the benefits, barriers to reviewing and curating preprints remain.

Systematize Information on Journal Policies and Practices - A Call to Action

Systematize Information on Journal Policies and Practices - A Call to Action

Recently the creators of Transpose and the Platform for Responsible Editorial Policies convened an online workshop on infrastructures that provide information on scholarly journals. In this blog post they look back at the workshop and discuss next steps.

Gender and Other Potential Biases in Peer Review: Cross-sectional Analysis of 38 250 External Peer Review Reports

Gender and Other Potential Biases in Peer Review: Cross-sectional Analysis of 38 250 External Peer Review Reports

The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) set out to examine whether the gender of applicants and peer reviewers and other factors influence peer review of grant proposals submitted to a national funding agency.

Tech Firms Hire 'Red Teams.' Scientists Should, Too

Tech Firms Hire 'Red Teams.' Scientists Should, Too

Another botched peer review - this one involving a controversial study of police killings - shows how devil's advocates could improve the scientific process.

Open Up: a Survey on Open and Non-anonymized Peer Reviewing

Open Up: a Survey on Open and Non-anonymized Peer Reviewing

Our aim is to highlight the benefits and limitations of open and non-anonymized peer review. Our argument is based on the literature and on responses to a survey on the reviewing process of alt.chi, a more or less open review track within the so-called Computer Human Interaction (CHI) conference, the predominant conference in the field of human-computer interaction. This track currently is the only implementation of an open peer review process in the field of human-computer interaction while, with the recent increase in interest in open scientific practices, open review is now being considered and used in other fields. We ran an online survey with 30 responses from alt.chi authors and reviewers, collecting quantitative data using multiple-choice questions and Likert scales. Qualitative data were collected using open questions. Our main quantitative result is that respondents are more positive to open and non-anonymous reviewing for alt.chi than for other parts of the CHI conference. The qualitative data specifically highlight the benefits of open and transparent academic discussions. The data and scripts are available on https://osf.io/vuw7h/ , and the figures and follow-up work on http://tiny.cc/OpenReviews . While the benefits are quite clear and the system is generally well-liked by alt.chi participants, they remain reluctant to see it used in other venues. This concurs with a number of recent studies that suggest a divergence between support for a more open review process and its practical implementation.

Is Peer Review a Good Idea?

Is Peer Review a Good Idea?

This Article examines the effect of abolishing peer review on the changed incentive structure and the likely effects on the behaviour of individual scientists, and concludes that, abolishing peer review has overall slightly positive results.

NIH Peer Review: Criterion Scores Completely Account for Racial Disparities in Overall Impact Scores

NIH Peer Review: Criterion Scores Completely Account for Racial Disparities in Overall Impact Scores

Study found that preliminary criterion scores fully account for racial disparities - yet do not explain all of the variability - in preliminary overall impact scores.

Covid-19 Studies Based on Flawed Surgisphere Data Force Medical Journals to Review Processes

Covid-19 Studies Based on Flawed Surgisphere Data Force Medical Journals to Review Processes

New England Journal of Medicine and Lancet peer reviewers did not see raw data behind findings before publication.