Apr 29, 2019 | Peer Review, Resources, Surveys & Forums
Last year at an ASAPbio meeting on peer review, one discussion centered around the role of early career researchers (ECRs) in peer review, and particularly how frequently ECRs contribute to peer review behind the scenes. This was fueled by a survey in eLife, a journal publishing life sciences research, indicating that 92% of those surveyed had undertaken reviewing activities, but more than half had done so without the assistance of their advisor. Dr. Gary McDowell (FoR Executive Director) and Dr. Rebeccah Lijek (former FoR BoD member and faculty member at Mount Holyoke College) led workshops discussing the reasons for, and questions about, the likely unrecognized involvement of ECRs in the peer review process. Those conversations inspired a year-long project to collect data on how frequently ECRs contribute to peer review when they are not the invited reviewer (“co-review”), and how commonly ECRs co-review without being acknowledged to the journal editorial staff (“ghostwrite”). Results and recommendations have now been published as a preprint here at bioRxiv. You can also read an article about the preprint in Physics Today. 1,952 publications in the peer-reviewed literature were evaluated though an exhaustive search and no previous studies about ECRs ghostwriting peer review reports were found. 498 researchers were then surveyed about their experiences with, and opinions about, co-reviewing and ghostwriting as ECRs. This found: 3/4 of those surveyed have co-reviewed and most find it to be a beneficial (95% agree) and ethical (73% agree) form of training in peer review; co-reviewing is the second most commonly reported form of training in peer review besides receiving reviews on one’s own papers; 1/2 of those surveyed have...
Oct 8, 2018 | Data, Ideas for change, Peer Review, Policy
As part of our effort to increase transparency about the role of early career researchers in peer review, we are trying to collect data on the policies that journals have implemented with respect to involvement of early career researchers. Particularly we are looking at how transparent co-reviewer policies are, and whether expectations around co-reviewing are made clear. We are part of a collaborative project, TRANsparency in Scholarly Publishing for Open Scholarship Evolution or TRANSPOSE, currently working on gathering this and other data about scholarly publishing as part of the Scholarly Communication Institute 2018 Meeting in Chapel Hill, NC, where the theme is “Overcoming Risk“. One of the risks identified in our project is the risk ECRs face when it comes to ensuring their scholarly contribution is recognized. You can find more information below, but follow along on Twitter with #TriangleSci for our updates – today’s work is populating the database with a subset of journals in the life, health and chemical sciences to have some data to work with. If you want to find out more, please read below or check out the TRANSPOSE site – and stay tuned! What is TRANSPOSE? TRANSPOSE (TRANsparency in Scholarly Publishing for Open Scholarship Evolution) is a grassroots project to crowdsource journal policies on peer review and preprints. The project is a collaborative effort across a number of different organizations dedicated to making publishing more transparent. Future of Research is particularly interested in the component you can search below – which journals allow co-reviewers to be named! Why TRANSPOSE? Journal policies on peer review and preprints are variable and complex. Existing databases (such as SHERPA/RoMEO and Publons) contain some,...
Sep 21, 2018 | Data, Ideas for change, Peer Review, Resources
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...
Sep 14, 2018 | Diversity in science, Ideas for change, Peer Review, Resources
Peer Review Week is a global event celebrating the essential role that peer review plays, with the view that good peer review, is critical to scholarly communications. This year, Peer Review Week has been focusing on Diversity in Peer Review – aiming to focus discussions on diversity and inclusion in peer review. A major motivator for our “What is the current role of Early Career Researchers in Peer Review?” effort is that the most diverse part of the research workforce is in the early career population of postdocs, graduate students and undergraduates. We are trying to uncover how to ensure the roles of early career researchers across fields and across the world are recognized as part of peer review, with a view to ensuring that greater transparency about who gets to do peer review can further the conversation about how to make peer review efforts and experiments more inclusive. We are currently carrying out a survey on the experiences and opinions of researchers in peer review, and identifying which journals provide an opportunity for ECRs to participate in, and be recognized, for their efforts. Please help us by filling out, and sharing, our survey: https://tinyurl.com/ECRs-in-peer-review You can find out more about the efforts of Peer Review Week and discussions around diversity and inclusion in peer review at https://twitter.com/PeerRevWeek and at peerreviewweek.wordpress.com. Peer Review Week has been running this week and concludes on September 15th. We will be adding resources shared to our #ECRPeerReview resource page in due course....
Sep 5, 2018 | Data, Grassroots movements, Ideas for change, News, Peer Review, Policy, Resources, Surveys & Forums
Reminder: our survey on attitudes and experiences in peer review is open until September 21st – please fill it in and urge your peers to do so too! https://tinyurl.com/ECRs-in-peer-review As part of our effort to increase transparency about the role of early career researchers in peer review, we are trying to collect data on the policies that journals have implemented with respect to involvement of early career researchers. Particularly we are looking at how transparent co-reviewer policies are, and whether expectations around co-reviewing are made clear. We are part of a collaborative project, TRANsparency in Scholarly Publishing for Open Scholarship Evolution or TRANSPOSE, to work on gathering this and other data about scholarly publishing. This project has been accepted as part of the Scholarly Communication Institute 2018 Meeting in Chapel Hill, NC, where the theme is “Overcoming Risk“. One of the risks identified in our project is the risk ECRs face when it comes to ensuring their scholarly contribution is recognized. What is TRANSPOSE? TRANSPOSE (TRANsparency in Scholarly Publishing for Open Scholarship Evolution) is a grassroots project to crowdsource journal policies on peer review and preprints. The project is a collaborative effort across a number of different organizations dedicated to making publishing more transparent. Future of Research is particularly interested in the component you can search below – which journals allow co-reviewers to be named! Why TRANSPOSE? Journal policies on peer review and preprints are variable and complex. Existing databases (such as SHERPA/RoMEO and Publons) contain some, but not all, of this information. How can I help? If you’d like to...
Aug 23, 2018 | Data, Ideas for change, Peer Review, Policy, Resources, Surveys & Forums
We are launching our #ECRPeerReview effort – focused on ensuring the recognition of peer review efforts by early career researchers. Please help us start by filling out, and sharing, this survey: https://tinyurl.com/ECRs-in-peer-review Peer review is viewed as central to the evaluation of research, and in the case of peer review of manuscripts for journal publication, an activity that is seen as part of the service of a researcher. Graduate students, as those training in how to carry out research, should therefore clearly be participating in, and receiving training in, constructive peer review. Postdocs are researchers in a position of mentored independence – working on their own projects and research plans, and learning how to manage a research group from an independent principal investigator. As such, postdocs are already intellectually capable of being fully involved in the peer review process. But, how involved are these early career researchers (ECRs) in journal peer review? A recent survey 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...
