Like many other aspects of society, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the strengths and weakness of how journals conduct peer review for potential scientific publications. Even before the pandemic, the number of articles published per year has drastically increased. Reviewers are increasingly under pressure to perform peer review in a quick and efficient manner. Despite the increase in the number of people eligible to publish, the relative number of reviewers remains small and disproportionately western scientists (Tennant, 2018, p.3). The lack of incentive to be a peer reviewer compounds this problem as peer review depends largely on the unpaid and unrecognized labor of reviewers (Tennant, 2018, p.4). Academics, however, have responded to peer review’s challenges in a myriad of ways to create hybrid processes that still ensure high quality research. In this paper, I identify adaptions to peer review that attempt to speed up the process while also mitigating bias.
Traditionally, peer review was conducted as either a single- or double-blind review. A single-bind review refers to the anonymity of the reviewer to the author, and double-blind review refers to the anonymity of both the author and reviewer from each other. The single-blind review does not eliminate potential bias from the reviewer who could be influenced by the institutional affiliation, gender, race or other characteristic of the author when reviewing a manuscript. Additionally, double-blind review does not mitigate the potential bias of the journal editor. To solve this, journals have used a triple-blind peer review process in which the identities of the reviewers, authors, and journal editors are all kept anonymous. The process allows reviewers and editors to solely look at the contents of the research article and its publication potential (Horbach & Halffman, 2018, p. 4)
Another way to mitigate bias is to conduct an open peer-review process, a process in which the identities of the author and the reviewer are known to each other (Horbach & Halffman, 2018, p. 5). This can also mean that review reports are published alongside the final article or that there is “open participation, open interaction, open pre-review manuscripts, [and] open final-version commenting” (Tennant, 2018, p.4). The main benefit of open peer-review is that it makes the review process transparent and extends the eligibility of reviewers to all researchers and not a select few that have acted as reviewers before (Tennant, 2018, p.4). Articles posted to pre-print servers represent one form of open peer review and can also be referred to as post-publication peer review. Rather than submitting an article to a journal, researchers can quickly post their finalized research to a pre-print website (Horbach & Halffman, 2018, p. 6). The global community of scholars can then quickly provide feedback which speeds up the process of peer review (Tennant, 2018, p.4). In this form, peer review is not gatekept by journal editors, and “quality control [is] achieved based on consensus, with evaluation based on engagement” (Tennant, 2018, p.6).
Research relating to the COVID-19 pandemic illustrates that open peer review on preprint servers is an effective way to quickly publish research. COVID related preprints posted on the preprint server MedRxiv underwent review at a much faster rate of 72 days which is twice as fast as other research articles posted to the site. John Inglis, the co-founder of MedRxiv, attributes to the success to the community of scientists who were more willing to review this critical research. Additionally, the established MedRxiv peer-review system in which the process is collaboratively conducted helped to speed up the process (Else, 2020, speedy review section). While possibly not sustainable for other types of research, this example illustrates that quick peer review is achievable.
Just like preprint servers incentivize and widen the group of potential reviewers, providing scholarly value to acting as a reviewer further increases the number of scientists willing to participate in the process. Websites such as Crossref allow reviewers to register their review reports with unique DOIs. This way they can cite their work as peer reviewers on their CVs or resumes and increase their scholarly reputation. Other websites such as Plubons also provide reviewers and authors the ability to rate the quality of reviewers. Consequently, these websites can encourage scholars who are still developing their resume to act as reviewers and engage in the scholarly community (Tennant, 2018, p.4).
Lastly, different disciplines have created their own forms of peer review to incentivize certain types of research. Psychology and medicine have developed a registered reports peer review process in which reviewers evaluate research into two stages. In the first stage, reviewers assess the research methodology, rationale for pursuing the research, and the research question before the data collection phase. This is the first criteria to determine whether a research article should be published. The process encourages scholars to conduct replication studies which is not often incentivized by journals who want to publish novel research. Reviewers then assess the findings and analysis of the finished research. Consequently, this peer review process encourages good research and ensures that researchers are grounding theirstudies in their discipline’s methodology and not just developing studies that focus on a potential journal reader (Horbach & Halffman, 2018, p.6).
The peer review process remains a critical component of scientific research. However, the process continues to present significant challenges including potential reviewer and editor biases and the considerable time it takes to complete the process. Rather than completely do away with the process, academics have adapted the process to suit their needs and specific disciplines.
References
Tennant, J. (2018). The State of the Art in Peer Review. FEMS Microbiology Letters, 365, 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1093/femsle/fny204.
Horbach, S.P.J.M. & Halffman, W. (2018). The Changing Forms and Expectations of Peer Review. Research Integrity and Peer Review, 3(8), 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41073-018-0051-5.
Else, E. (2020). “How a torrent of COVID science changed research publishing – in seven charts.” Nature, https://www-nature-com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/articles/d41586-020-03564-y. Accessed 17 Oct. 2021.
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