As you scale in the academia field you get ask more and more often to review papers. At the beginning I felt it was my duty to contribute to the process of scientific communication, so I took this task seriously, accepting only to review the manuscripts I think I can help to improve, reading some extra papers, ensuring that the methodology is appropriate and expending time to write complete reports with positive suggestions.
However, some times I run into a manuscript with several methodological and statistical mistakes and poorly reported. Most of those works they lack, in my opinion, the proper rigour to be published, independently of the journal prestige. I have no problem when my opinions do not match other reviewers; that is why we need more than one. But when three reviewers agree that a manuscript shouldn't be published in that state and the editor also agree, the paper gets rejected and few months later gets published in another journal with virtually the same problems... What is the point?
If nowadays anything can get publish, why should we keep reviewing papers?
In the beginning there were very few publication venues: See history of academic reviews: https://blog.frontiersin.org/2016/09/15/a-history-of-academic-peer-review/. The system now is not perfect as a whole (many useless/ predatory journals where you pay and can publish anything). However, every scientist has to view a scientific work as something to learn from and teach (the authors) -- hence reviews are important they are the cornerstone of scrutiny (of the leading journals), and doing reviews is part of scientific contributions of an individual (the fact that some authors are irresponsible or just rush to publish even bad work, and they have "mickey mouse journals" to publish at are not your problems, your problem is to do a proper scientific job (on reviewing, on writing, on research, on teaching).
It's frustrating but personal duty is personal duty!
Hi Abel I would like to say that Peer Reviewed Journals and Strict Regulations with High Impact Factor IF are the Characterstics of High Index Journals. It is very difficult to Publish poor written Article in such an Excellent Journal and Let me tell you Scholars and Scientists know which Article has Impact or Not so do not think bad about it. The Quality of the Article and Journal even after Publishing do not create such Impact which would be recognized as Excellent Publication. It is just presented as an Published Article but not Good Quality and most of the times its not widely accepted as High Impact Factor Article. Quality of the Article proves the worth of the Article its not what ever Published in evening News Paper worth it. I hope i have made my point here Regards
Review of a research paper in my opinion improve someones reputation and increase his/her exposure to key figures in their specialty field. It makes us up to date with the latest literature, and have advanced access to recent research results. It develops critical thinking skills essential to carrying out good research and it also gives advancement in our career.
As an examiner, I do my job I do my job for conscience. The editor of a journal that does not respect the opinions of the reviwers, it is not a good journal even if it has a IF.
I have a new little journal without IF (no Scopus no think). If I lose a reviwer it is not easy to find another one but if I lose an author it is not a big problem.
https://www.ijeca.info/index.php/IJECA/index
I totally agree with your point of view, I believe that there is a great business of journals without impact factor and that the only thing they achieve is to lower the quality of the studies that are published, I think that these journals should be regulated much more
In my view reviewing any paper can make you understand how and where the research is moving. It also enables us to further decide the direction of future researches.
To do what is required( i.e.add and delete ). Otherwise it will be full of mistakes and errors.
to build a reputation; see and learn from what other reviewers say; and get better at writing strong papers yourself.
http://composition.al/blog/2016/01/31/why-review-papers/
Review is the process of evaluation of the manuscript by other scientists to ensure the article's quality. Review of the paper helps the publisher to decide whether a work should accepted or not.
Please have a look at this link and PDF attachment.
Article Peer Review in Scientific Publications: Benefits, Critiques,...
The editor of the journal needs to determine whether the concerned work can be published as it is/can be published after minor or major adjustments/rejected based on the opinion from experts of respective domains/fields. This need gives rise to the process called review and the person consulted is termed as reviewer. However, reviewer has the freedom to accept or decline the request from the journal editor.
Now regarding your concern about the same article getting published without resolving the shortcomings for which it was rejected. First, an article may be rejected by a journal as it is not fitting into its domain or theme/it is not as per the research standards of the journal/ the journal only publishes core research work, experimental work, computing works etc. But another journal of same reputation may publish it as it may be an innovative approach for its theme or domain/meets its standards/ journal accepts peripheral/semi core research work, analysis work, conceptual work etc. For e.g. a journal having impact factor of 14 publishes your article but the same article will get rejected by Nature journal. The reviewer of Nature was correct to reject the article as they accept only ground breaking research but the other journal which is not looking for ground breaking research but for relevant/innovative work publishes it and the reviewer was correct to accept it as well. As the saying goes beauty is in the eyes of beholder.
Second as I understand your question arises due to unethical approach in research publication. Instead of discussing it let us try to solve this unethical approach. Instead of allowing publication in any journal or with any publisher it is better for the institutes to provide a list of reputed journals and publishers for respective fields/domain or the published work should be considered nill. This will encourage the researchers to publish in reputed and high quality journals and will solve the problem in whole.
As an individual effort you should accept to review papers only from reputed journals as most of them boast of having a high rejection rate.
Ongoing review of documents, including scientific papers is particularly important for issues that are rapidly evolving and the key topics of the subject are gradually changing. Such topics are, for example, advanced technological solutions, innovations and technical standards that are rapidly changing.
The review process is a public service. Try your best to help authors to improve their works by giving useful feedback, and hope others look as critical to your work and constructive to your own work.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Biological Science
- Kinesiology
- Running