The process of peer review has been critiqued on several grounds - it doesn't always prevent bad or flawed science from being published, doesn't always let good research in, and is riddled with problems like academic rivalries, and bias towards well-known scientists and institutions.
Now, a recent meta-analysis of previous studies on peer review says that inter-rater reliability (the degree to which two reviewers agree on a manuscript) is very low - .17 to be precise.
Which then leads to the question - what exactly is the point of peer review?
Bornmann L, & Daniel HD (2010). The usefulness of peer review for selecting manuscripts for publication: a utility analysis taking as an example a high-impact journal. PloS one, 5 (6) PMID: 20596540
No comments:
Post a Comment