Transparency of peer review: a semi-structured interview study with chief editors from social sciences and humanities.

Veli-Matti Karhulahti, Hans-Joachim Backe
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引用次数: 4

Abstract

Background: Open peer review practices are increasing in medicine and life sciences, but in social sciences and humanities (SSH) they are still rare. We aimed to map out how editors of respected SSH journals perceive open peer review, how they balance policy, ethics, and pragmatism in the review processes they oversee, and how they view their own power in the process.

Methods: We conducted 12 pre-registered semi-structured interviews with editors of respected SSH journals. Interviews consisted of 21 questions and lasted an average of 67 min. Interviews were transcribed, descriptively coded, and organized into code families.

Results: SSH editors saw anonymized peer review benefits to outweigh those of open peer review. They considered anonymized peer review the "gold standard" that authors and editors are expected to follow to respect institutional policies; moreover, anonymized review was also perceived as ethically superior due to the protection it provides, and more pragmatic due to eased seeking of reviewers. Finally, editors acknowledged their power in the publication process and reported strategies for keeping their work as unbiased as possible.

Conclusions: Editors of SSH journals preferred the benefits of anonymized peer review over open peer and acknowledged the power they hold in the publication process during which authors are almost completely disclosed to editorial bodies. We recommend journals to communicate the transparency elements of their manuscript review processes by listing all bodies who contributed to the decision on every review stage.

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同行评议的透明度:对社会科学和人文学科主编的半结构化访谈研究。
背景:开放的同行评议在医学和生命科学领域越来越多,但在社会科学和人文科学(SSH)领域仍然很少。我们的目的是找出受人尊敬的SSH期刊的编辑如何看待开放的同行评议,他们如何在他们监督的评议过程中平衡政策、道德和实用主义,以及他们如何看待自己在这一过程中的权力。方法:我们对知名SSH期刊的编辑进行了12次预先登记的半结构化访谈。访谈包括21个问题,平均持续时间为67分钟。采访被转录,描述性编码,并组织到代码族中。结果:SSH编辑认为匿名同行评议的好处大于开放同行评议的好处。他们认为匿名同行评议是作者和编辑应该遵守的“黄金标准”,以尊重机构政策;此外,匿名审查也被认为在道德上更优越,因为它提供了保护,而且更实用,因为它更容易寻找审稿人。最后,编辑们承认他们在出版过程中的权力,并报告了尽可能保持其工作公正的策略。结论:SSH期刊的编辑更喜欢匿名同行评议而不是开放同行评议,并承认他们在出版过程中拥有的权力,在这个过程中,作者几乎完全向编辑机构披露。我们建议期刊通过列出在每个审稿阶段参与决策的所有机构,来传达其稿件审稿过程的透明度要素。
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