Braun Tibor, Schubert András (szerk.): Szakértői bírálat (peer review) a tudományos kutatásban : Válogatott tanulmányok a téma szakirodalmából (A MTAK Informatikai És Tudományelemzési Sorozata 7., 1993)

EUGENE GARFIELD: Refereeing and Peer Review. Part 1. Opinion and Conjecture on the Effectiveness of Refereeing

9 GARFIELD: REFEREEING AND PEER REVIEW, PART 1 ported that "most of the authors of the [other] 15 percent...were convinced by the review process that [their papers] were either unoriginal or wrong."

3? Delays in Publication In addition to charges that referees make too many serious mistakes, complaints also focus on the delays in publication that many attribute to the refereeing process. While conceding the value of thorough, constructive reports by referees, Richard Shea, editor. Transactions on Nuclear and Plasma Sciences, is nevertheless concerned about the time lost during the refereeing process; he is quoted by Christiansen as saying that "the ultimate referee is the reader."

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0 And as noted by Kronick, the historical significance of papers ultimately depends on this reader evaluation and readers' willingness to cite what impresses them.

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2 But one of the reasons for the existence of the refereeing system is that readers of scientific articles have varying interests and backgrounds; they must be able to rely on a high degree of validity in what they read, especially if it is Somewhat outside their field. Real or perceived, delays in publication resulting from refereeing may be the most prevalent concern among scientists, who may have job security, promotions, or the need to establish priority for a discovery hanging in the balance. In a note in NEJM, Thomas P. Stossel, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, voices his concern that the commercial potential of many new discoveries, especially in biotechnology, is giving rise to new and particularly taxing demands for rapid publication.

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3 In an editorial, Lawrence D. Grouse offers several explanations, based on his experience as senior editor of JAMA

, for the lag time between submission and publication: "Excellent manuscripts are often criticized by reviewers with vested interests or contrary views. Overcritical reviewers flay manuscripts for minor or supposed deficiencies.

... Reviewers may also cynically delay the appearance of research competing with their own."

34 And in a 1979 editorial in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, associate editor Marc H. Hollender asked "why it takes three months or longer to review an article that takes three minutes to read and perhaps took less than three months to write.... Does it take the referee that long to come to a conclusion and to dictate comments? It is more likely that the article gathers dust among other low-priority items."

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5 In short, if I may use an old, informal phrase, referees should either fish or cut bait. Bias and Unethical Behavior Of all the complaints about refereeing, however, some of the most bitter

— though not the most prevalent

—concern the issue of referee bias (although little uncontested empirical evidence exists to indicate that authors' affiliations and the reputations of their institutions affect a referee's evaluation). Assuming that some bias exists, however, historian of science Donald deB. Beaver, Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts, suggests that a preconceived suspicion of scientific "have-nots" may be explained in terms of the second part of the "Matthew effect."

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6 This concept, introduced by Merton in 1968,

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7 draws an analogy between the misallocation of scientific credit and a passage from the gospel of St. Matthew: "Unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath" (emphasis ours). Presumably, contributions from unknown scholars