A modest proposal to solve the problem of peer review: Treat evaluation as an in-house publishing function.

Peer review is under constant scrutiny due to its failure to adapt to a more effective model in the digital age. Steve Fuller argues that academic evaluation proceeds much too slowly for the quite simple reason that academics are valued mainly for being productive and not evaluative. It may be the job of publishers to rescue the academic brand – from academia itself — by hiring peer reviewers directly. To ensure quality control in academic knowledge production, peer review may need to be internalised as a regular publishing cost

Does the use of open, non-anonymous peer review in scholarly publishing introduce bias? Evidence from the F1000Research post-publication open peer review publishing model

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by SAGE in Journal of Information Science on 05/07/2020. The published version can be accessed here: https://doi.org/10.1177/0165551520938678 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.As part of moves towards open knowledge practices, making peer review open is cited as a way to enable fuller scrutiny and transparency of assessments around research. There are now many flavours of open peer review in use across scholarly publishing, including where reviews are fully attributable and the reviewer is named. This study examines whether there is any evidence of bias in two areas of common critique of open, non-anonymous (named) peer review – and used in the post-publication, peer review system operated by the open-access scholarly publishing platform F1000Research. First, is there evidence of potential bias where a reviewer based in a specific country assesses the work of an author also based in the same country? Second, are reviewers influenced by being able to see the comments and know the origins of a previous reviewer? Based on over 4 years’ of open peer review data, we found some evidence, albeit weak, that being based in the same country as an author may influence a reviewer’s decision, while there was insufficient evidence to conclude that being able to read an existing published review prior to submitting their review encourages conformity. Thus, whilst immediate publishing of peer review reports appears to be unproblematic, caution may be needed when selecting same-country reviewers in open systems if other studies confirm these results

Tolerance in the Peer Review of Interdisciplinary Research in Architectural Journal Publishing

In order to consider how to negotiate the publication space of interdisciplinary research in architecture in academic journals, this essay reflects on the current forms of writing in architectural discourse, the history of a “critique militante” architectural (peer) review process within the academy, and the future possibilities of a feminist oriented process that seeks to accommodate otherness. These reflections emerge from our experience as academics and as women editors of the interdisciplinary, multimedia journal, Architecture and Culture, first published in 2013. The essay argues that peer review for interdisciplinary research in architecture needs to be re-negotiated as publishing tolerance through a contingency approach to evaluation. We conclude that academic architectural journal publishing can flourish through broader conversational modes of open, non-hierarchical knowledge exchange and editorial practice where published work undergoes a process of becoming

The emergence of a field: a network analysis of research on peer review

This article provides a quantitative analysis of peer review as an emerging field of research by revealing patterns and connections between authors, fields and journals from 1950 to 2016. By collecting all available sources from Web of Science, we built a dataset that included approximately 23,000 indexed records and reconstructed collaboration and citation networks over time. This allowed us to trace the emergence and evolution of this field of research by identifying relevant authors, publications and journals and revealing important development stages. Results showed that while the term “peer review” itself was relatively unknown before 1970 (“referee” was more frequently used), publications on peer review significantly grew especially after 1990. We found that the field was marked by three development stages: (1) before 1982, in which most influential studies were made by social scientists; (2) from 1983 to 2002, in which research was dominated by biomedical journals, and (3) from 2003 to 2016, in which specialised journals on science studies, such as Scientometrics, gained momentum frequently publishing research on peer review and so becoming the most influential outlets. The evolution of citation networks revealed a body of 47 publications that form the main path of the field, i.e., cited sources in all the most influential publications. They could be viewed as the main corpus of knowledge for any newcomer in the fiel

Internal and contextual factors, knowledge processes and performance: From the Chinese provider's perspective

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Expert Systems with Applications. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2011 Elsevier B.V.This paper explores the influences of two internal factors, i.e. supplier team’s IT-based skills and communication with client’s team, and two contextual factors, i.e. supplier team’s understanding of client’s culture and collaboration with client’s team, on knowledge processes and performance in global sourcing of IT services from the Chinese provider’s perspective. Knowledge processes are characterized by knowledge sharing, knowledge-based coordination and expertise management, and performance is measured by product success and personal satisfaction. Data have been collected in 13 companies in Xi’an Software Park, with 26 in-depth, semi-structured interviews held with top and middle managers, and 200 structured questionnaires distributed to knowledge workers who are involved in global sourcing projects. The results indicate that supplier team’s IT-based skills, communication with client’s team, cultural understanding of client’s culture and collaboration with client’s team are positively associated with knowledge process and performance. Also, knowledge sharing, knowledge-based coordination and expertise management are found to be crucial for those influential factors to function positively and contribute to the performance. The findings of this study suggest that the effects of key factors on knowledge processes and performance in global sourcing of IT services appear to transcend the social and cultural differences; however, contextual factors seem to have more significant influences on knowledge processes and performance in global sourcing of IT services.National Natural Science Foundation of Chin

Establishment of higher education institutions and new firm entry

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Research Policy. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2011 Elsevier B.V.The presence of universities has generally been associated with technological entrepreneurship. But what is the real impact of new universities on the levels of firm creation in a region? The present paper uses policy evaluation methodologies and longitudinal data on the establishment of higher education institutions in Portuguese municipalities for the period 1992–2002 to examine its effect on entry rates of new firms in different sectors. We find that the establishment of a new university has a positive and significant effect on subsequent levels of knowledge based firm entry in municipalities, and a negative effect on the levels of entry in other sectors, such as low-tech manufacturing