From: Graham Taylor <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2016 12:59:46 +0100

As practices of the academic community evolve, so should healthy
scrutiny of the workings of peer review. Its effectiveness, fairness,
sustainability, and cost-efficiency merit challenge and debate. Our
latest survey into opinions of and attitudes to peer review was
designed with this in mind. We also wanted to analyse trends in
relation to earlier surveys.

Read the full survey results and a summary at:  publishingresearchconsortium.com

Perhaps surprisingly, this survey concludes that satisfaction with and
broad support for peer review has remained stable from previous
surveys. There is a continuing preference for conventional,
pre-publication, single or double blind peer review, and this
preference applies to both authors and reviewers, with open peer
review ranking significantly behind. But the desire to see
improvements in specific areas is increasing, with some variability
between subject communities in support for alternative types of
review.

Although the burden on reviewers remains significant, participation in
peer review is seen as an important contribution to the community and
reciprocating the work of others. The effectiveness of peer review is
ranked highest for improving the quality of published papers, but the
belief is growing that peer review should also be able to detect fraud
and plagiarism.

Graham Taylor
Convenor
Publishing Research Consortium