Peer Review for Journals: Evidence on Quality Control, Fairness, and Innovation

I reviewed the published empirical evidence concerning journal peer review, which consisted of 68 papers, all but three published since 1975. Peer review improves quality, but its use to screen papers has met with limited success. Current procedures to assure quality and fairness seem to discourage scientific advancement, especially important innovations, because findings that conflict with current beliefs are often judged to have defects. Editors can use procedures to encourage the publication of papers with innovative findings such as invited papers, early-acceptance procedures, author nominations of reviewers, results-blind reviews, structured rating sheets, open peer review, and, in particular, electronic publication. Some journals are currently using these procedures. The basic principle behind the proposals is to change the decision from whether to publish a paper to how to publish itpeer review, journals, publications

Peer Group Support Effectivity Toward the Quality of Life Among Pulmonary Tuberculosis and Chronic Disease Client : a Literature Review

Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the major infectious diseases in the world. There were 10.4 million new tuberculosis cases in 2015 and the number of deaths reached 1.4 million. This literature review described the effectiveness of peer group support to improve the quality of life of clients especially with pulmonary tuberculosis and other chronic diseases. This literature review used 25 electronic journals from over 100 International and national electronic journals published between 2006 and 2016, with the inclusion criteria of studies using peer group support treatment, tuberculosis disease and other chronic diseases treated with peer group support.The exclusion criteria is research using group method, but there was no resemblance due to illnes among client that follow the group method. Keywords used to find the journals were peer group support for pulmonary tuberculosis and “dukungan sebaya terhadap klien dengan tuberkulosis paru”. Search engines of this study were Google search, PNRI (Perpustakaan Nasional Republik Indonesia) and Master journals. Twenty five journals used in this literature review concluded that peer group support can improve quality of life of clients with pulmonary tuberculosis and other chronic diseases such as diabetes mellitus and HIV-AIDS, but some conditions need additional therapy to be more optimal. Peer group support can improve quality of life of TB clients and can be recommended as a variety of nursing interventions in controlling pulmonary tuberculosi

Peer review innovations in Humanities: how can scholars in A&H profit of the "wisdom of the crowds"?

Though supported by a large number of scholars in Scientific, Technical, and Medical (STM) disciplines traditional peer review does not live up to the needs of an efficient scholarly communication system and of quality research control. Therefore journals in STM are experimenting different forms of refereeing in combination with more traditional peer review system. Such is the case of PLoSONE, Biology Direct, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, Electronic Transactions on Artificial Intelligence, and JIME. However in STM disciplines public peer review is not regarded an alternative to more traditional quality certification forms. It may be the case in the Arts & Humanities. In A&H publishing system peer review is by far a less common practice. Therefore the adoption of a social peer review process could be very useful to foster research in humanities. Scholars in A&H can profit of the interactive evaluation forms of the public peer-review to strengthen the scholarly debate, to foster active international and interdisciplinary discussions, to focus social attention on topics in Humanities, to broaden the borders of the cultural and intellectual discourse among non-scholars (public debate). This paper will provide some examples of how social peer review has been adopted by innovative communities of scholars in humanities to publish new experimental digital book models. In the digital environment the concepts of “document”, of “completeness of a document” and of “evaluation” is fast changing. In a close future in scholarly publishing it might become possible to overcome the rigid distinction between ex-ante and ex-post evaluation as the evaluation process might become an enduring part of the text itsel

Making available scientific information in the third millennium: perspectives for the neuroscientific community

The rules governing the globalised process of sharing scientific information in the research community are rapidly changing. From the 1950s, commercial publishers started owning a large number of scientific journals and consequently the marketable value of a submitted manuscript has become an increasingly important factor in publishing decisions. Recently some publishers have developed the Open Access (OA), a business scheme which may help stopping such tendency. Indeed, in the case of an open-access publication, the marketable value of a manuscript may be not the primary consideration, since access to the research is not being sold. This may push scientists to re-consider the purpose of peer reviewing. However, costs remain a key point in managing scientific journals because OA method does not eliminate peer review process. Thus, OA may not solve the problem of the market pressures on publishing strategies. Furthermore, the OA has another strong point: everyone can read OA papers, including scientist living in poor countries. But, will OA method create new discriminations on who can publish on OA journals? Will it be possible to really exclude or strongly limit the influences of the market from scientific publishing? The example of the non-profit e-print arXiv (http://arXiv.org/), a fully automated electronic archive and distribution server for research papers with no peer review will be discussed. For neuroscientists, the possibility to make available scientific data, even in the case of negative results (usually, very difficult to publish) is an important step to avoid purposeless repetition of costly experiments involving animal subjects. The possibility to arrange internationally or locally peer reviewed papers in institutional repositories (IR) is a necessity. However, access to IR should be regulated, e.g. banning or limiting profit organizations and exploiting internet systems, professional organizations or network groups

Peer-reviewed public health journals from Arabic-speaking countries: An updated snapshot.

There is a positive association between availability of regional peer-reviewed public health information systems and progressive change in community and population health. The objective of this brief report was to identify public health journals in Arabic-speaking countries actively publishing as of 2016. We conducted an electronic search in several electronic database records for public health journals using a combination of search terms. We excluded journals that focused on human medicine, veterinary medicine, nursing, and other discipline-specific or clinical health professions. We identified twenty-five public health journals for review. Five journals were interrupted or discontinued. Only three journals had a consistent, uninterrupted active publication history of greater than 20 years. Most journals were not in the regional native language. Introduction of regional public health-dedicated journals with in-print and electronic availability and also to be published in region-native languages may require interdisciplinary partnerships. Region-wide public health journals such as the Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal could serve as an ideal model for the establishment of additional local and regional public health journals in Arabic-speaking countries

Report on Grouped Peer Review of Scholarly Journals in the Health Sciences and Related Medical Fields

Cite: Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf), (2014). Report on Grouped Peer Review of Scholarly Journals in the Health Sciences and Related Medical Field. [Online] Available at: DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/assaf/0024This report marks the forth in the series of discipline-grouped evaluations of South African scholarly journals. Ultimately, it is intended that all scholarly journals in the country will have been subjected to independent, multiple peer review as part of a quality assurance process initiated by the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf). The quality assurance process is a precursor to the identification of journal titles to be loaded on to the open access platform, Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO) South Africa. Only journals of a sufficiently high quality will be included in this fully indexed, free online, multinational platform, now also to be directly featured on the Thomson-Reuters Web of Knowledge portal.Academy of Science of South Afric

Before the law: open access, quality control and the future of peer review

— OA is not about abandoning peer review but it does provide the opportunity to rethink its role and our methods. —67% of existing OA journals do not charge APCs and yet academics have tended to steer clear of them. — People opt for recognised outlets because of the (erroneously) perceived emphasis on publication venue by accreditation structures such as RAE/REF/tenure. — In the print world peer review was historically linked to page limits; these do not apply in the electronic realm. — Double blind review is a misnomer and even then preserved anonymity can be problematic. — The alternative is to publish everything that meets a certain threshold of academic soundness and to let readers decide what should last; in effect a kind of post-publication, or peer-to-peer, review. — This modification of peer review could lead to more collaboration and less insistence on an individual finished product

Editorial and publication delay of papers submitted to 14 selected Food Research journals. Influence of online posting

The final version of the paper is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11192-007-1823-8 (www.springerlink.com)[Introduction] Publication delay, chronological distance between completion of a scientific work and distribution of its achievements as a peer reviewed paper, is a negative phenomenon in scientific information dissemination. It can be further subdivided in successive stages corresponding to the peer review process and the technical preparation of accepted manuscripts. Formal online posting in electronic versions of journals has been considered as a shortening of the process.[Objectives] To determine publication delay in a group of leading Food Research journals, as well as factors affecting this lag and also to compute the effect of formal online posting on the distribution of papers in electronic form. Secondary objective is also to study the possible effect of informal posting of papers through some repositories on the publication delay in the field.[Methods] 14 Food Research journals were selected and 4836 papers published in 2004 were examined. Dates of first submission, submission of revised manuscripts, acceptation, online posting and final publication were recorded for each paper.[Analysis] Data collected were analyzed using SPSS and SigmaPlot. Parametric correlation between some variables was determined and ANOVA was performed with BMDP package for significance analysis of differences among journals.[Results] Average publication delay of papers submitted to the set of selected journals is 348 ± 104 days, with European Food Research and Technology and Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry showing the shortest delays. Total delay strongly depends on the peer review process. On average, 85.75 % of manuscripts are corrected prior to their acceptance by journals. Online posting of papers prior to their print publication reduces total delay in about 29 %. On average, a paper is posted online 260 days after its submission to the set of journals.[Conclusions] Publication delay of papers is strongly dependent on the peer review process, which affects most of the manuscripts in the Food Research field. Advanced online publication through formal posting at the editor’s sites only slightly reduces the time between reception and final publication of papers.Peer reviewe

Scholars Forum: A New Model For Scholarly Communication

Scholarly journals have flourished for over 300 years because they successfully address a broad range of authors' needs: to communicate findings to colleagues, to establish precedence of their work, to gain validation through peer review, to establish their reputation, to know the final version of their work is secure, and to know their work will be accessible by future scholars. Eventually, the development of comprehensive paper and then electronic indexes allowed past work to be readily identified and cited. Just as postal service made it possible to share scholarly work regularly and among a broad readership, the Internet now provides a distribution channel with the power to reduce publication time and to expand traditional print formats by supporting multi-media options and threaded discourse. Despite widespread acceptance of the web by the academic and research community, the incorporation of advanced network technology into a new paradigm for scholarly communication by the publishers of print journals has not materialized. Nor have journal publishers used the lower cost of distribution on the web to make online versions of journals available at lower prices than print versions. It is becoming increasingly clear to the scholarly community that we must envision and develop for ourselves a new, affordable model for disseminating and preserving results, that synthesizes digital technology and the ongoing needs of scholars. In March 1997, with support from the Engineering Information Foundation, Caltech sponsored a Conference on Scholarly Communication to open a dialogue around key issues and to consider the feasibility of alternative undertakings. A general consensus emerged recognizing that the certification of scholarly articles through peer review could be "decoupled" from the rest of the publishing process, and that the peer review process is already supported by the universities whose faculty serve as editors, members of editorial boards, and referees. In the meantime, pressure to enact regressive copyright legislation has added another important element. The ease with which electronic files may be copied and forwarded has encouraged publishers and other owners of copyrighted material to seek means for denying access to anything they own in digital form to all but active subscribers or licensees. Furthermore, should publishers retain the only version of a publication in a digital form, there is a significant risk that this material may eventually be lost through culling little-used or unprofitable back-files, through not investing in conversion expense as technology evolves, through changes in ownership, or through catastrophic physical events. Such a scenario presents an intolerable threat to the future of scholarship

Peer-reviewed physical education journals from Arabic-speaking countries: a regional assessment

Purpose: Non-communicable diseases (NCD) such as heart disease, diabetes and overweight and obesity are associated with physical inactivity and represent the leading cause of death globally. In the Arabic-speaking region, NCD is associated with more than 2.3 million deaths annually with rates expected to increase. Professional physical education (PE) journals are important resources in the dissemination of knowledge from evidence to practice. With the growing physical inactivity problem among Arabic-speaking countries, the purpose of this paper is to assess the availability culturally relevant peer-reviewed physical education journals in this region. Design/methodology/approach: An assessment of professional PE journals within this region was conducted using four academic databases and journal directories. The electronic search generated 14 PE-affiliated journals in Arabic-speaking countries with a publication status of active, interrupted or ceased; search parameters were limited to English, Arabic and French languages. Findings: Results indicated that no professional publications identified in this review predates to 2005 within the Arabic-speaking region. Although all 14 journals within the sample offer both electronic and open access, only one provided both print and electronic versions. Iraq was over-represented with 12 PE journals; no other country offered more than one. Originality/value: Systematic analyses of PE prevalence among Arabic-speaking countries are scarce, and there are no current evaluations of peer-reviewed publications addressing PE within the Arabic-speaking region. PE capacity building and collaboration can be fostered, improved and maintained when supported by regionally and culturally congruent research