Introduction

Within the scientific and academic community, peer revision is considered to be one of the most prominent and useful forms of revision. Typically, peer reviews are “regarded as the hallmark of scientific and scholarly literature”[1] and are seen to be more trustworthy than un-reviewed publications. However, despite the scientific community’s reliance upon this method, there seems to be disagreement upon the standards for acceptance, the principles behind it, prioritization of content, review practices and how to improve existing processes. In terms of a solution, the authors perform a literature review on the current trends and components of the peer review process and offer practical suggestions.

The authors highlight several areas of importance when considering an accurate and thorough review. Namely, they suggest focusing on the following criteria: “Content Integrity, Content Ethics, Fairness, Usefulness, and Timeliness” stating it as “the gold standard.”[2] Within this, the authors present a summary of recommendations that practitioners can use to improve targeted areas within the criteria they presented. In addition, the authors separate these criteria into two categories: Research processes (Content Integrity & Content Ethics) and the Peer Review process (Fairness, Usefulness, and Timeliness). The authors do so to present readers with two general categories to focus on—in this way, the categories can be used as a diagnostic tool to identify if the problem area lies in the practitioner’s research process or within the peer review process.

Understanding Content Accuracy

In their literature review, the authors describe how content quality, accuracy, and completeness come together to holistically represent the content’s integrity. Within this section, the authors’ cautionary decisions in the research process guided solely by significance, and should take pride in sound methodology instead—even if the results are sub-par.

Similarly, the authors suggest that research and publication ethics compose the ethicality of the content; the authors go on to discuss themes related to publishing guidelines. Specifically, they mention how journals should adopt a more conservative view when considering ethical consequences resulting from sub-par reviews followed by an ill-suited publication. In addition, the authors also go on to mention their concern with authors re-publishing their work, stating, “re-publishing the same work in multiple venues or ‘salami-slicing’ their research is detrimental to the scientific and scholarly literature. At best, it wastes time and effort. At worst, it over-inflates the significance of their research and skews the results of meta-analyses.”[3]

Transitioning to fairness, the authors discuss several potential overlaps between the research team, the editors, and forms of bias. Specifically, the authors take care to elaborate on authorship attribution, revision, conflicts of interest, confidentiality, and bias. Later in the section, the authors describe the relationship between bias and the tendencies of human nature and psychology. While the authors are not naïve to this, they propose mitigation rather than eliminating bias entirely.

Concerning usefulness, the authors take a holistic view of their work suggesting practical concerns. In line with this, the authors continue to elaborate on the components of usefulness citing guidance, constructive progress, transparent procedures, and continuous improvement. Conceptually, the authors consider usefulness as “providing constructive feedback to authors so that they can improve the clarity and accuracy of their research article and report their work in the best possible way.”[4]

Lastly, timeliness consisted of shared responsibilities, transparency, and continuous monitoring & improvement. Within this section, the authors describe the peer review process from a time-oriented perspective, stating, “Slow peer review can be unfair to authors as they cannot seek publication elsewhere whilst their manuscript is under review and are deprived of timely recognition for their work.”1 However, this ends up creating what the authors call “The Timeliness Paradox” stating that, “Researchers as authors want decisions as soon as possible, but researchers as reviewers want more time to provide better reviews.”[5]

Improving Content Review

Content Integrity

The authors suggest many ways to improve content integrity, namely by ensuring that the information is presented in its entirety and making decisions based on the quality of results, representation of data, and the level of work performed.

Content Ethics

To ensure that prior publications are barred from re-publication, the authors suggest the integration of new technology and tools to scan for prior publications. Subsequently, when dealing with ethics it is typical for journals and reviewers to hold submissions to a higher standard than their local ethics committee. To facilitate this process, the authors suggest that the peer review team focus on searching for research misconduct in tandem with specialized software to perform additional analysis related to prior publications and copyrighted material.

Fairness

Specifically, they suggest having more than one reviewer, maintaining a diverse sample of reviewers, and giving a word of caution regarding receiving author-recommended reviews. To achieve this, they suggest that practitioners declare their interests and any potential conflicts with the editorial team clearly. Transparency and diversity, in the eyes of the authors, are an effective solution to facilitate a fair review.

Usefulness

The authors also recommend developing more accessible publishing requirements and systems. The authors advocate for an article submission process that is easy to understand so that the feedback they are given is both useful and actionable. In line with this, the authors also advocate for a process that is constructive in nature; they argue that even if a paper is rejected, the feedback should contain information for improvement.

Timeliness

From The Timeliness Paradox, we can see that there is a tug-of-war between maximizing the review process and minimizing the wait time for authors. In an effort to make this process more efficient, the authors present several suggestions. Namely, the solutions revolve around clearly expressed expectations regarding the reviewing team’s final decision and the editor & reviewing team’s level of commitment. Similarly, the authors propose the use of AI and technology as a tool to further improve efficiency.

Conclusion

The peer review process can be overwhelming; there is a variety of factors to consider and often involves a great deal of coordination. They can also be confusing and inaccessible at times. However, be that as it may, there are many tactics we can use to systematically create a better and more digestible review process.

In their article, the authors discuss several specific strategies to effectively combat research misconduct. To do so, they discuss the components within the peer review process and outlined specific suggestions to improve the targeted areas. In addition, they have also presented a collection of guidelines to help practitioners navigate the different elements of a peer review.

While the suggestions offered by the authors are not exhaustive, they serve as a starting point. Developing a uniform set of standards would enhance the quality of peer reviews and provide a better understood process. However, first there must be agreement on what constitutes as a peer review. In order for peer reviews to remain useful, we must consider how we can elevate the standards and ensure a fair, constructive, and unbiased review.

Take Away

“There is a danger that ‘peer review’ has come to encompass too much and therefore mean very little. It is important for the scientific and scholarly community to bring clarity to this situation by defining what peer review means and what it should achieve.”¹ While not all peer review processes are equal, it’s clear that peer revision is an incredibly useful tool that researchers should take advantage of. However, to ensure the review is meaningful, we must work on identifying a set of guidelines to ensure that the peer review process is both rigorous and meaningful.

[1] Allen, H., Cury, A., Gaston, T., Graf, C., Wakley, H., & Willis, M. (2019, April 1). What does better peer review look like? Underlying principles and recommendations for better practice. Wiley Online Library. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/leap.1222

[2] Allen, H., Cury, A., Gaston, T., Graf, C., Wakley, H., & Willis, M. (2019, April 1). What does better peer review look like? Underlying principles and recommendations for better practice. Wiley Online Library. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/leap.1222

[3] Allen, H., Cury, A., Gaston, T., Graf, C., Wakley, H., & Willis, M. (2019, April 1). What does better peer review look like? Underlying principles and recommendations for better practice. Wiley Online Library. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/leap.1222

[4] Allen, H., Cury, A., Gaston, T., Graf, C., Wakley, H., & Willis, M. (2019, April 1). What does better peer review look like? Underlying principles and recommendations for better practice. Wiley Online Library. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/leap.1222

[5] Allen, H., Cury, A., Gaston, T., Graf, C., Wakley, H., & Willis, M. (2019, April 1). What does better peer review look like? Underlying principles and recommendations for better practice. Wiley Online Library. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/leap.1222