Peer Review system: A Golden standard for publications process

Peer review process helps in evaluating and validating of research that is published in the journals. U.S. Office of Research Integrity reported that data fraudulence was found to be involved in 94% cases of misconduct from 228 identified articles between 1994–2012. If fraud in published article are significantly as high as reported, the question arise in mind, were these articles peer reviewed? Another report said that the reviewers failed to detect 16 cases of fabricated article of Jan Hendrick Schon. Superficial peer reviewing process does not reveals suspicion of misconduct. Lack of knowledge of systemic review process not only demolish the academic integrity in publication but also loss the trust of the people of the institution, the nation, and the world. The aim of this review article is to aware stakeholders specially novice reviewers about the peer review system. Beginners will understand how to review an article and they can justify better action choices in dealing with reviewing an article

Reviews

Managing Change in Higher Education: A Learning Environment Architecture by Peter Ford and eight other authors, Buckingham: Society for Research into Higher Education and the Open University Press, 1996. ISBN 0–335–19791–4. 161 pages, paperback. No price indicated

“Excellence R Us”: university research and the fetishisation of excellence

The rhetoric of “excellence” is pervasive across the academy. It is used to refer to research outputs as well as researchers, theory and education, individuals and organisations, from art history to zoology. But does “excellence” actually mean anything? Does this pervasive narrative of “excellence” do any good? Drawing on a range of sources we interrogate “excellence” as a concept and find that it has no intrinsic meaning in academia. Rather it functions as a linguistic interchange mechanism. To investigate whether this linguistic function is useful we examine how the rhetoric of excellence combines with narratives of scarcity and competition to show that the hypercompetition that arises from the performance of “excellence” is completely at odds with the qualities of good research. We trace the roots of issues in reproducibility, fraud, and homophily to this rhetoric. But we also show that this rhetoric is an internal, and not primarily an external, imposition. We conclude by proposing an alternative rhetoric based on soundness and capacity-building. In the final analysis, it turns out that that “excellence” is not excellent. Used in its current unqualified form it is a pernicious and dangerous rhetoric that undermines the very foundations of good research and scholarship

Peer review in medical journals: beyond quality of reports towards transparency and public scrutiny of the process

Published medical research influences health care providers and policy makers, guides patient management, and is based on the peer review process. Peer review should prevent publication of unreliable data and improve study reporting, but there is little evidence that these aims are fully achieved. In the blinded systems, authors and readers do not know the reviewers' identity. Moreover, the reviewers' reports are not made available to readers. Anonymous peer review poses an ethical imbalance toward authors, who are judged by masked referees, and to the medical community and society at large, in case patients suffer the consequences of acceptance of flawed manuscripts or erroneous rejection of important findings. Some general medical journals have adopted an open process, require reviewers to sign their reports, and links online pre-publication histories to accepted articles. This system increases editors' and reviewers' accountability and allows public scrutiny, consenting readers understand on which basis were decisions taken and by whom. Moreover, this gives credit to reviewers for their apparently thankless job, as online availability of signed and scored reports may contribute to researchers' academic curricula. However, the transition from the blind to the open system could pose problems to journals. Reviewers may be more difficult to find, and publishers or medical societies could resist changes that may affect editorial costs and journals' revenues. Nonetheless, also considering the risk of competing interests in the medical field, general and major specialty journals could consider testing the effects of open review on manuscripts regarding studies that may influence clinical practice

A critical theory and postmodernist approach to the teaching of accounting theory

[Abstract]: This paper outlines my teaching philosophy for the Accounting Theory subject. A Critical Theory and Postmodernist approach is recommended, which makes full use of non-accounting 'tangential material' (Boyce, 2004) and material from popular culture (Kell, 2004; Nilan, 2004). The paper discusses some classroom interactive activities, as well as interview results from interviews conducted with eleven international students and one Australian student at Charles Sturt University. The teaching approach proposed in this paper is to conduct classroom interactive activities which study theories and research results from a range of disciplines in order to illustrate key points that apply equally as much to accounting theories and the accounting research process, e.g. the Positive/Normative dichotomy. Classroom interactive activities are discussed in class using the 'dialogical approach' to education recommended by Freire (1996), Kaidonis (2004), Boyce (2004), and Thomson and Bebbington (2004). Once students gain experience in studying material from outside accounting, the interview results suggest that they are then better motivated (Wynder, 2006) and better equipped to study and evaluate accounting theories

Rifton Finns: An Ethnic Enclave in Ulster County, New York

When you begin to consider the Finns of New York State, there are two obvious foci that have received the majority of attention in the ethnic literature. The presence of some estimated 20,000 Finns in New York City during the 1920s provided a large population with its myriad cultural, religious and social organizations and activities. The heyday of the large Finnish population has passed, and as of 2000, a total of 3,466 Finns lived in New York City.1 This number remains the highest population within the state. Due to this large population size, much has been written about their existence, for example, in Brooklyn and Manhattan.2 A second significant concentration of Finns within the state has always been the Finger Lakes region in western New York State. Here, in cities and towns such as Van Etten, Spencer, Millport, and Ithaca, activities and organizations have existed for decades and have also received academic interest.