What is it about?
Most people think that peer review is a decision making process where a decision is taken about the quality of a publication; and if the editor and the reviewers of a journal which has received a manuscript think that a manuscript is any good, it will be published, while if it's not, it will be rejected. But the paper we have had published in Scientometrics shows that the reviewers of a paper and the editor may actively contribute to the text. Their work adds interest to a manuscript and leads to greater recognition for it when it is published.
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Why is it important?
Peer review is all too easily seen as a judgemental activity. But that is a cariacature and a very unhelpful simplification. Peer review needs to be recognized not as event but as a process, often a long one and one in which a dialogue takes place. So while scholarly activity sees on the one hand the particularism associated with novel and inventive activity, on the other it partakes of collectivism. The production of knowledge is a to-ing and fro-ing between opposing principles of social organisation.
Perspectives
But there always needs to be a balance, between the freedom of authors to explore a vision, and the connection which reviewers and the editor can make to grounding a claim to knowledge.
Dr John Rigby
University of Manchester
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Journal peer review: a bar or bridge? An analysis of a paper’s revision history and turnaround time, and the effect on citation, Scientometrics, January 2018, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1007/s11192-017-2630-5.
You can read the full text:
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