Diversity and Peer Review: What's Driving Peer Review

Written by Researchbite | Updated on: November 19, 2022

Diversity and Peer Review: What's Driving Peer Review

Peer review is the procedure through which academics evaluate one other's research articles for correctness and quality. Let's see what factors drive it and how it can be enhanced.

Introduction

Peer review is often used in academia when academics critique one another's work before it is published in prestigious academic publications. Academic scholars assess one other's work to ensure its quality before publication in a process known as peer review. Peer review is similar to reporters editing and fact-checking one other's work, but it involves a far more involved, time-consuming procedure. Peer review has come under fire for various reasons, such as potential conflicts of interest, promptness, and actual quality reached.

Peer review is the process through which academics and scientists verify each other's work and research to ensure that the approaches, findings, and conclusions are accurate or, at the very least compatible with recognized practices in the respective professions. Accordingly, many hypotheses in economics and finance are subjected to peer review before being published in journals and then disseminated to traders and investors. Peer review is comparable to journalists at a newspaper fact-checking, editing, and proofreading each other's work or engineers on a project comparing measurements and computations. Because there need to be more academics with the expertise to critically assess novel research findings or theoretical advancements, the practice of limited peer review among academics is employed in many high-level academic works. However, nonscientists are often not expected to be able to rigorously evaluate the quality of scientific research results, much like the ordinary person would not be required to verify an engineer's work.

Factors Of Peer Review

Peer review helps keep harmful medical research publications from being published.

Research with errors includes:

  • Fake findings and outcomes from hoaxes that lack a solid scientific foundation.
  • Conclusions, suggestions, and discoveries that are potentially harmful to humans.
  • Plagiarism is the act of an author taking concepts or findings from another researcher.
  • Peer review serves a variety of purposes. For instance, it could serve as guidance for choosing grants to finance medical research.

Identifying the Various Peer Review Types

There have been several recent improvements in peer review as journal editors and management tries to enhance their procedures for both authors and reviewers while upholding the highest academic and scientific standards. However, peer review procedures have always differed to some extent across scholarly publications. The techniques used by most academic and scientific publications to evaluate and validate the research they publish are covered in this overview of the many sorts of peer review practices. According to the premise that better-informed authors are better able to prepare their manuscripts for a constructive peer review process leading to successful publication, it is intended to clarify for scholarly authors the more recent and unusual as well as the most common and traditional approaches to peer review.

  1. Open and closed peer review: Peer reviews may be divided into two categories: closed and open. In a closed review, reviewers' and maybe writers' names are kept secret; in an open review, both parties' identities are made public. Although closed reviews are more popular and more customary in scholarly publications, not all closed reviews are created equal.
  2. Single-blind peer review: In single-blind peer reviews, the reviewer knows the identity of the author, but the author is kept in the dark about the reviewer's identity. The theory behind this is that a reviewer can evaluate a research article most successfully if they are aware of as much information as they can, including the author's identity and some information about their prior works.
  3. Double-blind peer review: Advocates believe that double-blind evaluations can help to avoid these issues. However, a double-blind reviewing procedure also necessitates keeping the author's identity a secret from the reviewer, just as in a single-blind method. This is only possible if the author meticulously removes all traces of personal identity from each file submitted, as instructed by the journal, before preparing the paper.
  4. Open peer review: Because both the author and the reviewer are aware of one another's identities, open reviews are completely different. A journal editor might act as a liaison between the author and reviewer while comments are made and edits are performed in order to conduct open peer reviews in the exact same manner as closed reviews are typically done. Those who identify significant flaws in conventional techniques view open reviews of this type as superior to blind reviews, and more academic and scientific publications than ever are now experimenting with open reviews.

The Advantages Of Exposing Research To A Diversity Of Perspectives

By exposing new research to various viewpoints, a pool of reviewers with diversity in terms of gender, geography, and career stage help preserve scientific quality. However, there are other advantages as well."Representation is one of the topics that is frequently discussed in diversity, "For instance, some organizations claim that when it comes to diversity in senior leadership positions, "people [from underrepresented groups] don't come forward; thus, we don't have the individuals to pull up." Peer review offers a possible access point. Thus there is a great chance to use it to draw underrepresented and new populations.

Peer review allows scholars to develop their writing abilities by teaching them what quality articles should look like. So that's another advantage, especially for academics in their early careers and those who don't have much experience publishing in prestigious Northern journals. The review pool's size is one of the ongoing issues journals, in particular, encounter. Editors are using the same well-known individuals to do an increasing number of reviews. But with senior academics being overworked and academic housekeeping requirements increasing, expanding the pool of reviewers is in everyone's best interest.

While early-career and research-communication training programs may provide less experienced academics and more excellent reviewer training, conferences should take measures to broaden the diversity of their review pools.

Improving Diversity In The Pool Of Conference Reviewers

Additionally, authors and publishers make recommendations to broaden the peer review procedure. Journals also diversify their editorial boards' regional, racial, and gender compositions. Further, as evidenced by research, increasing editor diversity will also enhance the variety of the peer review pool. Finally, professional organizations must improve the presence of women and minorities as speakers, poster presenters, and attendees at scientific meetings. According to a research assistant at the University of Utah in the United States, more journalists and organizations should follow the example set by AGU. She also asserts that the first step towards responsibility and enacting change is carrying out an internal audit and being open about the findings.

To increase the diversity of published writers, it is essential to diversify peer review. By eliminating prejudice in peer review, the scientific community will benefit, and the public will become more aware of significant findings.

Reason For Lacking Of Peer Review Diversity

Several factors cause this lack of diversity in peer review. First, the research looked into the possibility of gender bias in their review procedure. The research revealed that while female editors preferred more female peer reviewers, men editors preferred more male peer reviewers. Fewer female peer reviewers were included since there were many fewer female editors than male editors. Based on a comparative examination of its peer review procedure and came to the same findings. Less variety was ultimately achieved in the peer review pool. This ultimately resulted in a less diverse selection of manuscripts for publishing.

One explanation for this lack of diversity among peer reviewers is the academic and research communities' heavy reliance on networks. Networks are frequently created between peers. Women still need help moving up the corporate ladder, and their research is sometimes not given enough credit. Similar issues affect national minorities, and less developed nations remain underrepresented in the peer review. It is less probable that these organizations will be asked to peer-review journals since they need help publishing and promoting.

Methods To Improve Diversity In Peer Review

Examples of journals that have successfully adopted programs to enhance diversity among authors, reviewers, and their staff are provided, along with actions you may take to foster diversity in peer review.

Ensure that readers can easily access your academic journals

Journal paywalls, which disproportionately restrict access to research for lower-income scholars, institutions, and nations as a whole, are one of the biggest obstacles to increasing diversity in peer review among authors and reviewers in the areas of race, ethnicity, and social classes, among others. By restricting access to studies for various groups Because potential writers may not have access to the journal and may need to be made aware of prior work published there that ties to their own. Paywalls can also reduce the variety of submitting authors. Potential reviewers could also feel less motivated or qualified to do so for a journal they cannot read themselves. For the average person, a research institution, or a university, subscriptions to all peer-reviewed journals are out of their price range. Concentrating on access hurdles is essential for journals to reach a more diverse audience of potential writers and reviewers. Journals should strive to offer open access (OA) copies of papers, ideally in their final publication but at the very least as preprints.

Keep track of diversity data and develop an action plan

One will want to monitor your progress to understand which areas they're improving and where work still needs to be done when your journal makes initiatives to enhance diversity among authors, reviewers, and editorial board. Monitoring demographic information is one of the most excellent methods to achieve this. For each of its volumes, Sociological Science, for instance, keeps track of information about diversity, including the authors' nationalities and degrees of experience. "Sociological Science invites submissions from all researchers, regardless of position, affiliation, or place of origin," the organization states on its website. In addition, a varied author base can translate to a diverse reviewer base because many publications use their writers as a source for peer reviewers.

Similarly, on the editor's side, journals must take action to examine diversity among their writers, editors, and reviewers and to reach out to more varied groups. Again, this is important for the future of diversity in academic publications.

Proactively Assist ESL Authors

The predominance of English language journals poses a significant obstacle to academic publishing's efforts to represent authors from many parts of the world. Language use and style issues are among the most common reasons papers are rejected by journals, according to several studies, which can significantly penalize writers who speak English as a second language. Therefore, it's critical to encourage ESL writers so that non-native English speakers who submit to your journal have a fair chance of publication and their findings aren't disregarded because of language use.

Journals may assist ESL authors in a variety of ways, including:

  • Ensuring that all submission and manuscript formatting guidelines are clear and accessible to respond to queries
  • Assisting writers in interpreting reviewer comments

Keeping a list of resources and assistance groups that editors may suggest to ESL authors in need of assistance with workshopping their articles. Journals can also play a part in persuading administrators and policymakers to provide more resources for authors who do not speak English as their first language by bringing up the difficulties ESL authors face at industry gatherings.

Conclusion

The National Center for Education Statistics of the U.S. Department of Education revealed that just 16% of full professors were people of color in a 2015 study of faculty diversity. White professors, notably white men, made up most of the faculty. There are many areas in scholarly institutions where there is a lack of parity among voices, including the underrepresentation of different gender orientations, ethnicities, socioeconomic backgrounds, ideological perspectives, and levels of professional seniority. Underrepresentation of diverse races and women is just two of these areas.

There is little doubt that the diversity issue in academia permeates the literature. Additionally, Western nations dominate the scholarly communication system, excluding many voices from the Global South. Adjustments are required in academic publications and at the institutional level to address these concerns. Diversity and Inclusion in Peer Review highlight the issues of imbalance across editorial teams, authors, and reviewers.

References

  • https://www.enago.com/academy/increasing-diversity-and-inclusion-in-peer-review/
  • wolterskluwer.com/en/expert-insights/author-talk-the-peer-review-process-and-you

         

Tags


Written by
Researchbite
ResearchBite is a platform committed to availing the scientific knowledge and information at your fingertips.

Check out other articles written by Researchbite .