How Peer Review Works in the Social Sciences

Peer review, at least in intent, is the way the editors of academic journals attempt to keep the quality of articles in their publications high, and assure (or attempt to assure) that poor or fallacious research does not get published. The process is tied up with political and economic issues involving tenure and pay scales, in that an academic who participates in the peer review process (whether as author, editor, or reviewer) gets rewarded for that participation in an increase in reputation which can lead to an increase in pay scales, rather than direct payment for services rendered. In other words, none of the people involved in the review process is paid by the journal in question, with the sole exception (maybe) of one or more editorial assistants. The author, editor, and reviewers all do this for the prestige involved in the process; they are generally paid by the university or business that employs them, and in many cases, that pay is contingent upon obtaining publication in peer-reviewed journals. The editorial assistance is generally provided in part by the editors university and in part by the journal. The Review Process The way academic peer review works (at least in the social sciences), is that a scholar writes an article and submits it to a journal for review. The editor reads it over and finds between three and seven other scholars to review it. The reviewers selected to read and comment on the scholars article are chosen by the editor based on their reputations in the specific field of the article, or whether they are mentioned in the bibliography, or if they are personally known to the editor. Sometimes the author of a manuscript suggests some reviewers. Once a list of reviewers is drawn up, the editor removes the name of the author from the manuscript and forwards a copy to the chosen stout hearts. Then time passes, a lot of time, generally, between two weeks and several months. When the reviewers have all returned their comments (made directly on the manuscript or in a separate document), the editor makes a preliminary decision about the manuscript. Is it to be accepted as is? (This is very rare.) Is it to be accepted with modifications? (This is typical.) Is it to be rejected? (This last cases is also fairly rare, depending on the journal.) The editor strips out the identity of the reviewers and sends along the comments and her preliminary decision about the manuscript to the author. If the manuscript was accepted with modifications, it is then up to the author to make changes until the editor is satisfied that the reviewers reservations are met. Eventually, after several rounds of back and forth, the manuscript is published. The period from submission of a manuscript to publication in an academic journal generally takes anywhere from six months to over a year. Problems with Peer Review Problems inherent in the system include the time sink between submission and publication, and the difficulty obtaining reviewers who have the time and inclination to give thoughtful, constructive reviews. Petty jealousies and full blown political differences of opinion are difficult to restrain in a process where no one is made accountable for a specific set of comments on a particular manuscript, and where the author has no ability to correspond directly with her reviewers. However, it must be said that many argue that the anonymity of the blind review process allows a reviewer to freely state what he or she believes about a particular paper without fear of reprisal. The burgeoning of the internet in the first decade of the 21st century has made a huge difference in the way articles are published and made available: the peer review system is often problematic in these journals, for a number of reasons. Open access publishing--in which free draft or completed articles are published and made available to anyone--is a wonderful experiment that has had some hitches in getting started. In a 2013 paper in Science, John Bohannen described how he submitted 304 versions of a paper on a bogus wonder drug to open-access journals, over half of which were accepted. Recent Findings In 2001, the journal Behavioral Ecology changed its peer review system from one which identified the author to reviewers (but reviewers remained anonymous) to a completely blind one, in which both author and reviewers are anonymous to one another. In a 2008 paper, Amber Budden and colleagues reported that statistics comparing the articles accepted for publication before and after 2001 indicated that significantly more women have been published in BE since the double-blind process began. Similar ecological journals using single-blind reviews over the same period do not indicate a similar growth in the number of woman-authored articles, leading researchers to believe that the process of double-blind review might assist with the glass ceiling effect. Sources Bohannon J. 2013. Whos afraid of peer review? Science 342:60-65. Budden AE, Tregenza T, Aarssen LW, Koricheva J, Leimu R, and Lortie CJ. 2008. Double-blind review favours increased representation of female authors. Trends in Ecology Evolution 23(1):4-6. Carver M. 2007. Archaeology journals, academics and open access. European Journal of Archaeology 10(2–3):135–148. Chilidis K. 2008. New knowledge versus consensus – a critical note on their relationship based on the debate concerning the use of barrel-vaults in Macedonian tombs. European Journal of Archaeology 11(1):75–103. Etkin A. 2014. A New Method and Metric to Evaluate the Peer Review Process of Scholarly Journals. Publishing Research Quarterly 30(1):23-38. Gould THP. 2012. The Future of Peer Review: Four Possible Options to Nothingness. Publishing Research Quarterly 28(4):285-293. Vanlandingham SL. 2009. Extraordinary Examples of Deception in Peer Reviewing: Concoction of the Dorenberg Skull Hoax and Related Misconduct. 13th World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics: International Symposium on Peer Reviewing. Orlando, Florida. Vesnic-Alujevic L. 2014. Peer Review and Scientific Publishing in Times of Web 2.0. Publishing Research Quarterly 30(1):39-49. Weiss B. 2014. Opening Access: Publics, Publication, and a Path to Inclusion. Cultural Anthropology 29(1):1-2.