A multi-disciplinary perspective on emergent and future innovations in peer review [version 2; referees: 2 approved]

Peer review of research articles is a core part of our scholarly communication system. In spite of its importance, the status and purpose of peer review is often contested. What is its role in our modern digital research and communications infrastructure? Does it perform to the high standards with which it is generally regarded? Studies of peer review have shown that it is prone to bias and abuse in numerous dimensions, frequently unreliable, and can fail to detect even fraudulent research. With the advent of web technologies, we are now witnessing a phase of innovation and experimentation in our approaches to peer review. These developments prompted us to examine emerging models of peer review from a range of disciplines and venues, and to ask how they might address some of the issues with our current systems of peer review. We examine the functionality of a range of social Web platforms, and compare these with the traits underlying a viable peer review system: quality control, quantified performance metrics as engagement incentives, and certification and reputation. Ideally, any new systems will demonstrate that they out-perform and reduce the biases of existing models as much as possible. We conclude that there is considerable scope for new peer review initiatives to be developed, each with their own potential issues and advantages. We also propose a novel hybrid platform model that could, at least partially, resolve many of the socio-technical issues associated with peer review, and potentially disrupt the entire scholarly communication system. Success for any such development relies on reaching a critical threshold of research community engagement with both the process and the platform, and therefore cannot be achieved without a significant change of incentives in research environments

A multi-disciplinary perspective on emergent and future innovations in peer review

Peer review of research articles is a core part of our scholarly communication system. In spite of its importance, the status and purpose of peer review is often contested. What is its role in our modern digital research and communications infrastructure? Does it perform to the high standards with which it is generally regarded? Studies of peer review have shown that it is prone to bias and abuse in numerous dimensions, frequently unreliable, and can fail to detect even fraudulent research. With the advent of web technologies, we are now witnessing a phase of innovation and experimentation in our approaches to peer review. These developments prompted us to examine emerging models of peer review from a range of disciplines and venues, and to ask how they might address some of the issues with our current systems of peer review. We examine the functionality of a range of social Web platforms, and compare these with the traits underlying a viable peer review system: quality control, quantified performance metrics as engagement incentives, and certification and reputation. Ideally, any new systems will demonstrate that they out-perform and reduce the biases of existing models as much as possible. We conclude that there is considerable scope for new peer review initiatives to be developed, each with their own potential issues and advantages. We also propose a novel hybrid platform model that could, at least partially, resolve many of the socio-technical issues associated with peer review, and potentially disrupt the entire scholarly communication system. Success for any such development relies on reaching a critical threshold of research community engagement with both the process and the platform, and therefore cannot be achieved without a significant change of incentives in research environments

A Newly Developed Empirical Predictive Model for the Dispersed Phase (DP) Holdup in Rotating Disc Contactors

Newly novel developed correlations were derived to predict the dispersed phase (DP) holdup in a rotating disc contactor (RDC) extraction column. DP holdup is one of the significant parameters in the design of liquid–liquid contactors and for calculating their production capacity. Despite the availability of quite a large number of holdup prediction correlations for the RDC, most of these correlations are either general in nature or valid for a limited range of operating conditions. This study conducted an experimental and theoretical investigation of the RDC holdup under the influence of varying geometries, including variations in the dispersed phase distributor, speed of the disc, flow rate, and physical characteristics of the system. The analysis revealed that the holdup decreased with an increasing distributor hole diameter and increased with an increasing disc speed and total flow rate. The effect of the physical properties on the holdup was larger than the effect of the disc speed. Using the measurements of over 150 runs, two RDC column holdup predictive models were proposed and evaluated. The first correlation was derived in terms of the distributor hole diameter, operating parameters, system physical properties, and column geometry. The second correlation excluded the column geometry. These correlations, which consider the distributor hole inlet diameter in predicting the DP holdup for an RDC column, were presented for the first time in this study. The predictive capability of these correlations was evaluated via their standard deviation (SD) and mean average percentage error (MAPE). The respective SD and MAPE of the two correlations were 1.7 and 5.2% for the first correlation and 1.6 and 11.4% for the second

Performance Evaluation of Polyethersulfone Membranes for Competitive Removal of Cd2+, Co2+, and Pb2+ Ions from Simulated Groundwater

This paper presents studying the performance of three types of polyethersulfone (PES) membrane for the simultaneous removal of Co2+ ions, Cd2+ ions, and Pb2+ ions from binary and ternary aqueous solutions. Co2+ ions, Cd2+ ions, and Pb2+ ions with two different initial concentrations (e.g., 10 and 50 ppm) were selected as examples of heavy metals that contaminate the groundwater as a result of geological and human activities. This study investigated the effect of types of PES membrane and metal ions concentration on the separation process. For the binary aqueous solutions, the permeation flux of the PES2 membranes was higher for the separation process of solutions containing 50 ppm of Cd2+ ions and 10 ppm of Co2+ ions (24.7 L/m2·h) and Pb2+ ions (23.7 L/m2·h). All the metals in the binary solutions had high rejection when their initial concentration was lower than the initial concentration of the other metal present in the same solution. Using PES2, the maximum rejection of Cd2+ ions was 61.3% when the initial concentrations were 50 ppm Pb2+ ions: 10 ppm Cd2+ ions and 55.4% for Pb2+ ions when the initial concentrations were 10 ppm Pb2+ ions: 50 ppm Cd2+ ions. For the ternary aqueous solutions, the rejection and the permeation flux of the PES membranes increased with decreasing the heavy metal initial concentration. Using PES2, the maximum permeation flux was 21.6 L/m2·h when the initial concentration of the metals was 10 ppm; and the maximum rejection of the metals obtained at initial concentration of 10 ppm was 50.5% for Co2+ ions, 48.3% for Cd2+ ions, and 40% for Pb2+ ions. The results of the filtration process using PES2 of simulated contaminated-groundwater indicated the efficient treatment of groundwater containing Co2+, Cd2+, and Pb2+ ions