Pride and prejudice - What can we learn from peer review?

ABSTRACT: Objectives: Peer review is a powerful tool that steers the education and practice of medical researchers but may allow biased critique by anonymous reviewers. We explored factors unrelated to research quality that may influence peer review reports, and assessed the possibility that sub-types of reviewers exist. Our findings could potentially improve the peer review process.Methods: We evaluated the harshness, constructiveness and positiveness in 596 reviews from journals with open peer review, plus 46 reviews from colleagues' anonymously reviewed manuscripts. We considered possible influencing factors, such as number of authors and seasonal trends, on the content of the review. Finally, using machine-learning we identified latent types of reviewer with differing characteristi

SUBMITTER: Le Sueur H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7497287 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature