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
18 GARFIELD: REFEREEING AND PEER REVIEW, PART 1 ceive fair consideration. Although the book had won the 1969 US National Book Award, Ross claimed that 14 publishers —including the book's original publisher —and 13 agents rejected it. 1 9 In the Peters and Ceci study, the presentation of the data in the original papers was slightly altered. Fictitious names and institutions were substituted for the real ones, but the content of the articles was unchanged. Three of the resubmissions were detected as such; of the other nine, eight were rejected. The authors concluded that the rejections resulted from a systematic bias against unknown authors and institutions. In the commentary section published along with Peters and Ceci's article, however, many commentators pointed out a number of flaws in the study. For instance, according to anthropologist Sol Tax, University of Chicago, Illinois, and Robert A. Rubinstein, School of Public Health, University of Illinois Medical Center, Chicago, the names Peters and Ceci chose for their bogus institutions were far removed from the mainstream of psychology institutions. Thus, what the investigators really demonstrated, say Tax and Rubinstein, is a bias against materials originating outside appropriate institutions. 2 1 Nobel laureate Rosalyn S. Yalow, Veterans Administration, New York, commented, "How does one know that the data are not fabricated?... Those of us who publish establish some kind of a track record. If our papers stand the test of time, it can be expected that we have acquired expertise in scientific methodology.... The work of established investigators in good institutions is more likely to have had prior review from competent peers and associates even before reaching the journal." 2 2 Garth J. Thomas, Center for Brain Research, University of Rochester, New York, suggests that referees and editors may have recognized the resubmitted articles as very like something they had seen before, but rather than raise the specter of plagiarism, they fell back on statistical criticisms to justify their negative comments. 2 3 Janice M. Beyer, School of Management, SUNY, Buffalo, writes that the most likely fate of any submitted article is to be unanimously rejected, as 80 to 90 percent are in the social sciences. 2 4 In addition, psychologist Grover J. Whitehurst, SUNY, Stony Brook, notes that Peters and Ceci had no control group. 2 5 Richard M. Perloff, Department of Communication, Cleveland State University, Ohio, and Robert Perloff, Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh, suggest that, among other controls, Peters and Ceci's study should have included resubmitting articles by authors from low-status institutions under by-lines with equally lowstatus affiliations, as well as resubmitting articles by high-status authors under equally high-status by-lines. 2 6 "Without such controls it is impossible to argue that the findings reflect the status bias [that Peters and Ceci] suggest," the Perloff s write. 2 6 But Is There Bias? Still, Tax and Rubinstein feel that a bias preventing competent work from being published is much more damaging than one that lets mediocre work slip through. 2 1 And anecdotal evidence of bias is so widespread that the possibility should not be dismissed by researchers. For instance, in another commentary on the Peters and Ceci article, Robert Rosenthal, Department of Psychology, Harvard, said that as a young member of the psychology faculty at the University of North Dakota, he was unable to publish 15 to 20 articles in mainstream journals in the 1960s. Within a few years of his move to Harvard, however, he says that most of these articles were published in the same journals that had previously rejected them. 2 7 He does not say, however, whether these were the identical articles, or if they had been substantially revised to meet the objections of reviewers or changed in any other way. In a 1970 investigation of how attitudes might influence referee judgment, Leonard D. Goodstein and Karen
