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PEERE

Introducing ReviewerCredits 

Following the success of the 1st PEERE International Conference on Peer Review, the PEERE COST Action follow-up community organised the second edition of the PEERE International Conference on Peer Review  and was celebrated virtually on 29 September – 1 October 2020.

The conference welcomed any contribution (e.g., original research, position papers, literature reviews) that used any method (e.g., quantitative, experimental or qualitative) to investigate peer review in a variety of scientific domains (e.g., scholarly journals, funding agencies, research assessment). Interdisciplinary research is especially welcome.

The program is published here: http://tiny.cc/peere2020 


The second edition of the PEERE International Conference on Peer Review aims to provide a forum for scholars, practitioners and science stakeholders to share research, models, tools and experience on peer review in different fields, e.g., medicine, computer science, social sciences and humanities. It aims to stimulate the use of evidence-based research in the design and implementation of peer review in a variety of fields and encourage more systematic research.

technical paper

This talk highlights the main results achieved during the PEERE project from the Springer Nature perspective

Introducing Springer Nature

Background: The poor representation of women and of researchers from low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) as authors, reviewers, and editorial advisors compromises the quality of the global medical literature, and is a threat to research integrity. The Lancet Group of journals are implementing initiatives to aim to redress the imbalance. 
Methods: We established a baseline of the peer-reviewer and author populations for Lancet journals in terms of gender and country of origin for 2018. In consultation with editors and experts, we developed a set of initiatives to improve the inclusion of women and of LMIC colleagues as authors, reviewers, and editorial advisors. 
Results: At baseline, women comprised about one-third of the authors and about a quarter of peer reviewers at Lancet journals. This is despite an almost 75% female editorial workforce, challenging previous evidence of editor homophily as a way of improving diversity in peer reviewers. Three commitments were made in 2019: (1) aim for at least 50% women and LMIC contributors for Series and Commissions, and exercise positive action in diversifying selected authors for commissioned content; (2) aim to invite 50% women as peer reviewers for all submissions, and recruit additional female statistical advisors; (3) meet a minimum of 50% female editorial board members for all Lancet journals by 2020. To complement these commitments to change in our editorial and peer review processes, the editors made public pledges in the form of a Diversity Pledge and No All-Male Panel Policy. Regular tracking of the impact of these initiatives is being undertaken, and 1-year results and the lessons learned, will be reported. 
Conclusions: Editors at the Lancet have implemented a series of diversity initiatives to increase inclusion of women and LMIC colleagues, aiming to reduce the waste of research resources and improve the quality, representation, and integrity of the evidence base in medicine and global health. Lessons learned can assist other journals and organisations who may wish to adopt gender equity and diversity policies.

Improving gender equity and diversity at Lancet journals

To increase transparency during policy-making process and to stimulate the conversation between stakeholders, the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) in Taiwan has held a series of forums and seminars since 2017 to invite researchers and relevant stakeholders to attend, and this action has become one of the approaches of communication in policy-making process in these two years. This paper aims to analyze the questions or comments raised by the participants in these forums to understand what is the most important issue in Taiwanese academia, and the response strategies from the funding organization to illustrate how responsible peer review could be achieved in the future.  Based on the result, the general funding mechanism can be considered the most concerning issue and especially the one with peer review process. The researchers questioned the fairness of single-blind peer review, the criteria of assessment and the quality of reviewing.  Hence, the MOST has implemented action plan to improve the quality and aimed to create the consensus on assessment criteria and standard, including organizing the consensus meeting of reviewers, building the evaluation mechanism of reviewers to assuring the quality, providing the example of good comment, allowing applicants to nominate the black-list of reviewers in written review stage, enlarging the pool of reviewers, providing the comments to applicants and revealing the name of reviewers partially after the result notification. Since the key element of peer review is degree of transparency, the more open, the more responsible peer review may be expected. This action plan in education or consensus buildup during peer review process can be the important approach to improve the quality under the single-blind or double-blind peer review mechanism by emphasizing accountability.

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