Why is the peer review process important in science

Figure-skating championships may be judged by former skaters and coaches. Wine-makers may help evaluate wine in competitions. Artists may help judge art contests. So while peer review is a hallmark of science, it is not unique to science. Peer-reviewed journals are publications in which scientific contributions have been vetted by experts in the relevant field. What's peer review good for? To find out, explore what happens when the process is by-passed. Visit Cold fusion: A case study for scientific behavior.

To find out how to tell if research is peer-reviewed and why this is important, check out this handy guide from Sense About Science. Visit the Visionlearning website for advanced material on peer review. The peer-review process has been around for hundreds of years. Despite its drawbacks, the system truly works to weed out invalid, poor quality, or unoriginal science.

That way, you can always trust the peer-reviewed research you read. Want to know more about peer review and how it affects your career as a research scientist?

Then keep reading this article for everything you need to know. Peer review is a process of ensuring that new research is original and uses valid science.

It is used in all areas of scientific and academic research activity from life sciences to astrophysics and psychology to social sciences. In other words, peer review allows the scientific community to continuously put out high-quality information. Information that practitioners, researchers, and students can trust. Each of these three goals contributes to the overarching theory behind peer review. That is, that science must be evaluated before being published.

Before there was ever such thing as a scholarly journal, historians believe ancient Greeks used the peer-review process to evaluate their ideas. A Syrian physician recorded evidence of such a process for the first time in C. A few hundred years later, the printing press was invented.

From that point forward, academic communities could distribute books and articles to the general public. Yet, with no regulation on what was being put out where and to whom, researchers recognized a need. Francis Bacon fulfilled that need in The famed scientist and researcher published a book detailing what is now considered the seed of modern-day peer-reviewed research.

Since then, the peer review process has evolved. It incorporated the goal of validity in the 18th century. Then, it added the goal of quality in the years following World War II.

Today, some researchers criticize the flaws of the peer review process see below. When an author submits an idea or study for publication, the article must go through the formal peer-review process. Depending on the journal to which the author submits, the standards for peer reviews vary. Yet, the majority of journals follow one of four broad types of peer reviews.

This type of review allows peer reviewers to remain impartial. There have been cases of peer reviewers purposefully delaying publication so he or she can publish their research first. Another con is that reviewers have been known to use their anonymity to be overly-critical or unnecessarily harsh with their review. In a double-blind review, both the author of the publication and the peer reviewer s are anonymous. This type of review process fixes many of the problems with single-blind reviews, including:.

Even with a double-blind process, reviewers may identify an author by his or her writing style or subject matter. Double-blind and single-blind reviews also fail to protect authors from editor bias. Seeing as editors have an ultimate say over where, when, and how an article is published in a scholarly journal, this is a major concern. Scientific researchers aim to improve medical knowledge and find better ways to treat disease. By publishing their study findings in medical journals, they enable other scientists to share their developments, test the results, and take the investigation further.

Peer review is a central part of the publication process for medical journals. The medical community considers it to be the best way of ensuring that published research is trustworthy and that any medical treatments that it advocates are safe and effective for people. In this article, we look at the reasons for peer review and how scientists carry them out, as well as the flaws of the process.

Peer review also has other functions. For example, it can guide decisions about grants for medical research funding. For medical journals, peer review means asking experts from the same field as the authors to help editors decide whether to publish or reject a manuscript by providing a critique of the work.

There is no industry standard to dictate the details of a peer review process, but most major medical journals follow guidance from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. COPE also have a large membership among journals. These associations do not set out rules for individual journals to follow, and they regularly remind reviewers to consult journal editors.

In most cases, the authors also do not know who carries out the peer review. Making the review anonymous can help reduce bias.

The reviewer will evaluate the paper, not the author. For the sake of transparency, some journals, including the BMJ, have an open system, but they discourage direct contact between reviewers and authors.

Peer review helps editors decide whether to reject a paper outright or to ask for various levels of revision before publication. Most medical journals ask authors for at least minor changes. All peer reviewers help editors decide whether or not to publish a paper, but each journal may have different criteria. The editor will need to decide whether a paper is relevant, whether they have space for it, and if it might be more suitable for a different journal.

The journal editors make the final decision when it comes to publishing a study. The editorial position and best practices of the journal influence its criteria for publishing a paper. The BMJ , for example, focus on relevant findings that are important to current disease management.