Please help us by filling out, and sharing, this survey: https://tinyurl.com/ECRs-in-peer-review 

 

Our survey of the experiences of researchers in peer review, particularly focused on whether early career researchers can (and should) get recognition for co-reviewing with the invited reviewer (for example, their Principal Investigator) is drawing to a close, and so we are asking once more for help with completing and sharing our survey.

Our survey was prompted by data from a recent survey by the Early Career Advisory Group in eLife, a journal publishing life sciences research, indicated that 92% of those surveyed had undertaken reviewing activities. But more than half, and 37% of graduate students, had done so without the assistance of their advisor:

 

This statistic may come as a surprise to some but, anecdotally, discussions with ECRs (particularly in the life sciences) point to a number of incidences of “ghostwriting” of peer review reports: that is, carrying out peer review of a manuscript, writing the report, and submitting it to a supervisor, who submits the report (or some version of it) under their own name, and without the name of the co-reviewer.

 

This led us to ask: just how often does this “ghostwriting” occur? Why does it happen? Is it unique to the life sciences? What can we do to ensure the recognition of scholarly work by ECRs?

 

We are working on understanding more about, and resolving, this issue, and to do so we need your help, beginning with gathering more data on the subject through:

 

https://tinyurl.com/ECRs-in-peer-review 

 

Please help us by filling out, and sharing, this survey!

 

Updates will be on our peer review resource soon!