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 2. The Research on Refereeing and Alternatives in the Present System
EUGENE GARFIELD: Refereeing and Peer Review. Part 2. The Research on Refereeing and Alternatives in the Present System Current Contents, August 11,1986 Continuing our discussion of refereeing, which focused on complaints about the system in Part 1,' we now examine the empirical research on the subject, the anecdotal literature supporting the current system, and some of the suggestions for improving it. Part 3 will appear at a later date and will discuss the peer review of grant proposals. Again we will review the considerable literature of opinion and conjecture, but we will give special attention to the large-scale study by sociologists Stephen Cole, State University of New York (SUNY), Stony Brook, and Jonathan R. Cole, Columbia University, New York, 23 as well as other papers 4 and special reports. 5 Editors: The Author's Guardians Each anecdote purporting to reveal some fault in the present system of refereeing seems to find a ready counterpart in the opinion of a supporter. For instance, many critics claim that some referees do not review manuscripts dispassionately. But editors say that they usually take great pains to ensure that referees are fair. In Running a Refereeing System, Michael Gordon, research-associate, Primary Communications Research Centre, University of Leicester, UK, recommends the use of two or more referees to reduce the risk of an offhand, frivolous, or biased treatment of a manuscript. 6 (p. 13-5) When referees do cause excessive delays, return unsupported or capricious reports, or otherwise display "questionable ethics," they tend to be retired from the system, according to Patricia Dehmer, Argonne National Laboratory, Illinois, and member. Publications Committee, American Physical Society (APS) in a "Guest Comment" in Physics TodayP Whether this is the case in other disciplines is not known. Critics also suggest that referees sometimes take advantage of the privileged information they are privy to in the manuscripts they review. But Dehmer asserts that many APS editors try to ensure that referees are not working along lines precisely like those of the papers sent to them, to reduce the possibility of conflicts of interest. But this is contrary to the practice in biomedicine and elsewhere. Most editors try to match submissions with reviewers as closely as possible, in an attempt to have the manuscript reviewed by those presumed to be most qualified to judge it. In either case, according to Claude T. Bishop, director. Division of Biological Sciences, National Research Council of Canada (NRCC). and editor-in-chief, NRCC Research Journals, referees ought to disqualify themselves when there is the possibility of a conflict' of interest, or when they feel they cannot be objective about the paper or its author. In some instances, however, they might propose simultaneous publication of their own paper and the review paper, or even approach the authors of the review paper and propose a collaboration. 8 (p. 50, 82) As a parallel approach, many editors honor author requests that a paper not be sent to a given referee. 7
