Peer reivew has been widely studied in the biomedical sciences with
different conclusions about its efficacy, and whether more open or
more closed models make any difference to the quality.
A review of many different studies (135 studies considered, and 19
included in the review), are presented in "Effects of Editorial Peer
Review: A Systematic Review" by Tom Jefferson, MD; Philip Alderson,
MBChB; Elizabeth Wager, MA; Frank Davidoff, MD, published in JAMA.
2002;287:2784-2786.
Their conclusions are "Editorial peer review, although widely used,
is largely untested and its effects are uncertain." (so not terribly
helpful!)
Pippa
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Pippa Smart
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PSP Consulting - www.pspconsulting.org
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2009/6/16 Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>:
> OA journals have no monopoly on low peer-review standards: There
are
> plenty of low-quality and even junk subscription journals (as we
have
> had occasion to note recently, with El Naschie's "Chaos, Solitons,
> Fractals" journal and of course the recent Pharmamercial Scams...
>
> The problem is not with peer review itself, but the rigor with
which
> it is practised. (Any resemblance to the NRA slogans on guns is
> unintended!) And the temptation to make a buck by cutting corners
is
> there with OA and non-OA journals alike...
>
> Stevan Harnad
> On 15-Jun-09, at 6:34 PM, Chen, Xiaotian wrote:
>
>> This story should be more of an OA problem than a peer-review
>> problem.
>>
>> According to the original LJ story, the journal "claims to
>> enforce peer-review."
>>
>> The model of author paying for OA publication may have
>> contributed to this, while common sense tells us that traditional
>> model (customers pay) may work better for quality control.
>>
>> Xiaotian Chen
>> Bradley U Library
>> Peoria, Illinois
>> http://hilltop.bradley.edu/~chen/index.html
>>
>
Received on Tue Jun 16 2009 - 11:35:52 BST