Peer review has multiple functions. On the one hand, it helps screening the quality of manuscripts for publication. On the other, it allows authors to increase the value of their manuscripts by constructive feedback. However, measuring the developmental value of peer review is difficult as it requires complete, large-scale manuscript data rarely available. With complete data from ten journals from the Royal Society from 2006 to 2017 in various fields of research, we estimated the effect of the number of reviewers and the reviewer score on manuscript changes throughout peer review. We found that peer review improves manuscripts of moderate initial quality often leading them to receive more citations than manuscripts initially receiving higher reviewer scores. Most beneficial changes include the last sections of manuscripts, i.e., discussion/conclusions, and especially references, whose changes were beneficial in terms of citations. The developmental effect of peer review is marginal whenever more than three reviewers assess the same manuscript. Our findings suggest that peer review can essentially work both as a quality screening and a developmental process.

Peer Review Improves Manuscripts of Moderate Initial Quality. A Study on Ten Journals from the Royal Society (2006-2017)

2. Peer review metrics and data analysis

technical paper

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 


PEERE

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.

Federico Bianchi

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Peer Review Improves Manuscripts of Moderate Initial Quality. A Study on Ten Journals from the Royal Society (2006-2017)

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