Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7b9c58cd5d-g9frx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-03-14T10:00:19.975Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

11 - Confronting the Crises in Peer Review and Academic Publishing

from Part II - Rethinking Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 March 2025

Karen B. Schmaling
Affiliation:
Washington State University
Robert M. Kaplan
Affiliation:
Stanford University
Get access

Summary

Contemporary science depends heavily on peer review. Usually without compensation, experts evaluate the reliability and quality of work contributed by other scientists. The system of peer review now confronts serious challenges. The volume of scientific work that requires peer scrutiny has grown exponentially, placing pressure on reviewers’ availability. Academic publishing has been challenged by two trends. First, uncompensated peer reviewers are less willing to offer evaluations. The rate of declining invitations to review has dramatically increased. Second, commercial publishers charge authors exorbitant fees to publish their work. Younger authors, and those from less wealthy countries, can’t afford these charges. We offer several remedies to address these problems. These include reevaluating the relationships between universities or scholarly societies and for-profit publishing houses. An alternative system might return publishing to university libraries and scholarly societies. The system would be funded by the hundreds of millions of dollars that academia currently transfers to commercial enterprises.

Type
Chapter
Information
Rethinking Clinical Research
Methodology and Ethics
, pp. 217 - 231
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

National Institutes of Health. The NIH Almanac: Chronology of events. Accessed March 21, 2024, www.nih.gov/about-nih/what-we-do/nih-almanac/chronology-events.Google Scholar
National Institutes of Health. The NIH Almanac: Center for Scientific Review. Accessed March 21, 2024, www.nih.gov/about-nih/what-we-do/nih-almanac/center-scientific-review-csr#events.Google Scholar
Van Slyke, CJ. New horizons in medical research. Science. 1946; 104(2711):559567. doi:10.1126/science.104.2711.559.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wiesner, JB. Vannevar Bush. Biographical Memoirs: Volume 50. 1979; 50.Google Scholar
Bush, V. Science: The Endless Frontier. US Government Printing Office; 1945.Google Scholar
Shaw, J. There and back again: Revisiting Vannevar Bush, the linear model, and the freedom of science. Res Policy. 2022; 51(10):104610.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gallo, SA, Thompson, LA, Schmaling, KB, Glisson, SR. The participation and motivations of Grant Peer reviewers: A comprehensive survey. Sci Eng Ethics. 2020; 26(2):761782. doi:10.1007/s11948-019-00123-1.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mahmić-Kaknjo, M, Utrobičić, A, Marušić, A. Motivations for performing scholarly prepublication peer review: A scoping review. Account Res. 2021; 28(5):297329. doi:10.1080/08989621.2020.1822170.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ware, M, Mabe, M. The STM report: An overview of scientific and scholarly journal publishing, 2012. March 21, 2024, www.stm-assoc.org/2012_12_11_STM_Report_2012.pdf.Google Scholar
Schneider, B, Alexander, J, Thomas, P. Publication trends: U.S. Output and International Comparisons, 2022. Accessed March 21, 2024, https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb202333.Google Scholar
National Institutes of Health. The NIH Data Book. Accessed March 21, 2024, https://report.nih.gov/nihdatabook/.Google Scholar
Association of American Medical Colleges. Faculty Roster: U.S. Medical School Faculty. Accessed March 20, 2024, www.aamc.org/data-reports/faculty-institutions/report/faculty-roster-us-medical-school-faculty.Google Scholar
Tite, L, Schroter, S. Why do peer reviewers decline to review? A survey. J Epidemiol Community Health. 2007; 61(1):912.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Willis, M. Why do peer reviewers decline to review manuscripts? A study of reviewer invitation responses. Learn Publ. 2016; 29(1):57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Squazzoni, F, Bravo, G, Grimaldo, F, García-Costa, D, Farjam, M, Mehmani, B. Gender gap in journal submissions and peer review during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. A study on 2329 Elsevier journals. PLoS One. 2021; 16(10):e0257919. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0257919.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Messaoud, KB, Schroter, S, Richards, M, Gayet-Ageron, A. Analysis of peer reviewers’ response to invitations by gender and geographical region: Cohort study of manuscripts reviewed at 21 biomedical journals before and during covid-19 pandemic. BMJ. 2023; 381.Google ScholarPubMed
Severin, A, Chataway, J. Overburdening of peer reviewers: A multi-stakeholder perspective on causes and effects. Learn Publ. 2021; 34(4):537546.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellwanger, JH, Chies, JAB. We need to talk about peer-review-Experienced reviewers are not endangered species, but they need motivation. J Clin Epidemiol. 2020; 125:201205. doi:10.1016/j.jclinepi.2020.02.001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
New Scientist. Time to break academic publishing’s stranglehold on research. New Scientist. 2018.Google Scholar
Buranyi, S. Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science. The Guardian. 2017; 27(7):112.Google Scholar
Macrotrends. Net profit charts. Accessed March 2024, www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/Google Scholar
Grove, J. UK universities “paid big publishers £1 billion” in past decade. Times Higher Education. 2020.Google Scholar
Bergstrom, TC, Courant, PN, McAfee, RP, Williams, MA. Evaluating big deal journal bundles. Proc Natl Acad Sci. 2014; 111(26):94259430.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Else, H. Nature journals reveal terms of open-access option. Nature. 2020; 588(7836):1920.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Butler, L-A, Matthias, L, Simard, M-A, Mongeon, P, Haustein, S. The oligopoly’s shift to open access. How for-profit publishers benefit from article processing charges. Zenodo. 2022.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seguya, A, Salano, V, Okerosi, S, et al. Are open access article processing charges affordable for otolaryngologists in low-income and middle-income countries? Curr Opin Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. 2023; 31(3):202207.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brembs, B, Huneman, P, Schönbrodt, F, et al. Replacing academic journals. R Soc Open Sci. 2023; 10(7):230206.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cahn, RW. The origins of Pergamon Press: Rosbaud and Maxwell. Eur Rev. 1994; 2(1):3742.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clarke, T. Case study: Robert Maxwell: Master of corporate malfeasance. Corp Gov: Int Rev. 1993; 1(3):141151.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miranda, RN. Robert Maxwell: Forty-four Years as Publisher. A Century of Science Publishing. 2001:77.Google Scholar
Young, NS, Ioannidis, JPA, Al-Ubaydli, O. Why current publication practices may distort science. PLoS Med. 2008; 5(10):e201.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Henderson, A. The Dash and Determination of Robert Maxwell. The Cottage by the Highway and Other Essays on Publishing: 25 Years of Logos. Brill; 2015:163180.Google Scholar
Amsen, E. How to avoid being duped by predatory journals. BMJ. 2024; 384:q452. doi:10.1136/bmj.q452.Google ScholarPubMed
Delamothe, T. US National Institutes of Health clarifies E-biomed database. BMJ. 1999; 319(7202):73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaplan, RM. Let’s end the rocky marriage between academia and commericial publishers. Times Higher Education. 2022 (March 21, 2024). June 13, 2022. www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/lets-end-rocky-marriage-between-academia-and-commercial-publishers.Google Scholar
Holman, L, Stuart-Fox, D, Hauser, CE. The gender gap in science: How long until women are equally represented? PLoS Biol. 2018; 16(4):e2004956. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.2004956.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hopkins, AL, Jawitz, JW, McCarty, C, Goldman, A, Basu, NB. Disparities in publication patterns by gender, race and ethnicity based on a survey of a random sample of authors. Scientometrics. 2013; 96(2):515534. doi:10.1007/s11192-012-0893-4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmaling, KB, Gallo, SA. Gender differences in peer reviewed grant applications, awards, and amounts: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Res Integr Peer Rev. 2023; 8(1):2. doi:10.1186/s41073-023-00127-3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ginther, DK, Kahn, S, Schaffer, WT. Gender, race/ethnicity, and National Institutes of Health R01 research awards: Is there evidence of a double bind for women of color? Acad Med. 2016; 91(8):10981107. doi:10.1097/ACM.0000000000001278.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×