From: ANTHONY WATKINSON <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2016 09:17:48 +0100

I am very aware of Joe's knowledge of the industry but as someone who
has been responsible for hundreds of STM journals in my time I would
suggest that most journals in STM have very similar peer review
practices. I looked after 27 journals in my last job and they all
adopted similar practices. There is a norm. I guess most publishers
who read this list will agree but we shall see.

When researchers -and finding out what they think about scholarly
communication is what I mainly do now- talk about "proper" peer review
this is the norm they are thinking of but interestingly they are
willing to see this norm expand - for example PLOS One was welcomed. I
shall be interested to find out when most researchers are sure they do
not think some approach to peer reviewing is not "proper".

Anthony

----Original message----
From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2016 22:06:52 -0400

Experts on peer review will have much to say about this, but I wish to
repeat a point that I have made on this list before: peer review is
only one of the various editorial processes of the publishing process.
Some publications use peer review and nothing more; some ask reviewers
not to comment on originality or importance (how you could do that and
not know the results, I do not know); some use peer review as a useful
supplement to in-house editorial procedures. No doubt there are other
variants as well. What is unfortunate about the discussion about peer
review is that many seem to believe that there is one way to do it and
that the other parts of an editorial program do not exist or are
irrelevant.

Joe Esposito

On Sun, Sep 25, 2016 at 6:58 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> From: Ann Shumelda Okerson <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2016 18:55:01 -0400
>
> Any reactions to the underlying premise (that knowing results
> increases publication bias)?
>
> How big a pilot would be needed to test the premise?
>
> "Results-free peer review is getting its day in court, thanks to BMC
> Psychology, an open-access journal that is launching the first-ever
> randomized controlled trial of the process. Results-free peer review
> puts manuscripts before reviewers without divulging results or
> discussion sections until the end of the process. In theory, this
> alteration to traditional peer review decreases publication bias by
> forcing reviewers to focus solely on methodology and approach to an
> experimental question."
>
> http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/47081/title/Reviewing-Results-Free-Manuscripts/