peer review

peer review, process whereby experts in a given field help judge the value of a relevant work or ideas that they were not part of creating. The primary function of peer review is gatekeeping—selecting the best from a pool of submissions. It also serves, however, as a source of constructive criticism, whereby expert feedback by peers can be taken into account to improve ideas, research proposals, and papers.

Peer review occurs in a variety of contexts. The two major areas, however, are editorial peer review, which involves the review of scientific or academic manuscripts submitted for publication or meeting presentation, and grant peer review, which involves the review of funding applications.

The following article focuses on editorial peer review of work submitted to scientific journals, although some of the issues discussed apply to other types of peer review as well.

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Historical developments

Early forms of editorial peer review were in use by the 17th century, most notably within the Royal Society of London and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. A more modern peer review system was developed in the late 19th century by Ernest Hart, editor of the British Medical Journal. Yet it was only after World War II, as medical research methods became increasingly sophisticated and journals became more selective, that peer review systems became institutionalized in the scientific and academic journals of the United Kingdom, the United States, and elsewhere.

Reviewers and the review process

The term peer in the context of peer review is loosely interpreted to include subject-area experts, statisticians, methodologists, journal editors, editorial boards, and sometimes other individuals, such as graduate students or nonexperts. Outside experts are usually sought because of their specialized knowledge in the submitted manuscript’s content area or their advanced statistical or methodological skills. Ideally, reviewers have more expertise than the authors of the submitted work. However, because of the proliferation of scientific journals and the many competing demands on experts’ time, this specialized ideal is not always reached. It is therefore not uncommon for less-qualified reviewers to assume this role.

A variety of peer review systems are employed across the thousands of academic journals published worldwide. Systems vary in their relative reliance on external reviewers, such as outside experts, versus in-house reviewers, such as editors and editorial boards. Post-publication peer review may also be used, which can include letters to the editor, full articles critiquing a published work, or even commenting online on papers published on the internet. There are significant challenges, however, for post-publication review. For example, authors sometimes choose to ignore a published critique or respond minimally to peripheral issues in place of the specific criticisms made. Even when serious errors are detailed in a critique, retractions or corrections are the exception.

Criticisms of peer review

Many criticisms of peer review have been raised by authors and reviewers as well as by journal editors. A common criticism is that peer review is prone to bias, which can take various forms, including ad hominem bias, affiliation bias, ideological bias, and bias against negative results. Ad hominem bias and affiliation bias are found when a review is influenced, either knowingly or not, by knowledge of the author’s identity or affiliation. Such bias can negatively impact young researchers, who are not yet published, and authors who are from lesser-known or less prestigious institutions. Mixed evidence has been found on the presence and extent of these two biases.

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Ideological bias, where a reviewer’s antecedent value-based views for or against an author’s position unduly influence a review, has been demonstrated in several studies on the peer review process. Closely related is confirmation bias, the more general and well-documented tendency to less critically evaluate evidence that is consistent with one’s existing beliefs.

Compared with research reporting statistically significant positive results, research with null or nonsignificant results generally is less likely to be recommended for publication through peer review. The omission of negative results from the literature, however, can have consequences for meta-analyses and other types of systematic reviews. Moreover, such publication bias can originate with authors themselves, since, in many instances, authors choose not to submit reports with null or negative results for publication.

Other commonly voiced criticisms are that peer review is conservative and hinders the development of new ideas or methods; is secretive and without accountability of reviewers to authors; is subject to competitive abuse (e.g., a reviewer intentionally delaying the publication of a competitor’s results); suffers from low inter-rater reliability (agreement among reviewers); produces reviews of low quality; allows too many papers to slip thorough the system; frequently lacks adequate statistical and methodological review; is slow and expensive and delays publication; and is unscientific, with little or no evidence of its effectiveness. Nevertheless, no serious candidates for replacement of peer review have emerged.

A common misunderstanding of the peer review process is that it is intended to validate the scientific integrity of a published article. Expecting such validation is unrealistic, however, as reviewers typically have access only to what the author or authors present in the manuscript. Important logistical and methodological decisions are unknown to the reviewers, as are key details that the authors might omit.

Improving the peer review process

The many challenges facing the peer review process have generated numerous suggestions for its improvement. To prevent bias, for example, double-blind review has been utilized. Some journals rely on single-blind review, in which the names of the reviewers are not known to the author. In double-blind review, neither the reviewers nor the authors know one another’s name. (By comparison, in grant peer review, inclusion of the authors’ names and affiliations, as well as other detailed information about the authors’ past experience and accomplishments is typically an integral part of the reviewed application.) The effectiveness of double-blind review is uncertain, however; in a significant number of cases, an author’s identity can be deduced from information included in a paper.

A proposal to increase reviewer accountability and to generate more constructive reviews is to employ a signed rather than anonymous review process, in which reviewers’ names are provided to the reviewed author. Although several major journals use signed review systems, some journals and reviewers have raised concerns about retribution, especially in the case of younger researchers who are fearful of criticizing senior colleagues. The requirement for signed peer review has been associated with a high refusal rate by those asked to serve as reviewers.

Other suggestions for improving overall review and editorial decision quality include providing more training and support to reviewers and employing statistical and methodological review of all manuscripts. Reviewer training can take the form of workshops, tutorials, guides, apprentice models, and other strategies. Statistical and methodological review can be carried out concurrently with review by subject-area experts or subsequent to initial reviews by experts. It can involve either in-house or external methodologists. Despite challenges in recruiting sufficient numbers of methodologists, this strategy is potentially very powerful, since it has been found across several different fields that most published articles contain nontrivial methodological flaws.