From: "Wright, Victoria" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 10:00:15 +0100

Apologies for cross posting

Oxford, April 2013

Taylor & Francis survey: authors value rigorous peer review, even if
it takes time

In the sixth in a series of Press Releases on the themes and findings
of the Open Access Survey, Taylor & Francis investigates authors’
preferred methods of peer review suitable for their research.  Taylor
& Francis / Routledge journals, including those that are part of the
Open programme, benefit from Editor-led rigorous peer review and we
wanted to understand the value and importance of this service to our
author base.

Authors’ views on the peer review process

Respondents were asked about the kind of peer review they find the
most suitable for their research when publishing an open access
article.

Findings from the survey show that 45% of all respondents would
‘always’ value a ‘rigorous assessment of the merit and novelty of
their article with constructive comments for its improvement’. Adding
those who would ‘often’ prefer this more traditional style of peer
review takes this figure up to 78%.

Moving down the scale of rigour, to peer review that ‘reviews the
technical soundness of my research without any judgement on its
novelty or interest’, there is a huge fall in support; only 11% of
authors would ‘always’ find this suitable for their Open Access
articles. Similarly the number of supporters for an ‘accelerated peer
review [process] with fewer rounds of revision’ shrinks, with only 9%
of respondents ‘always’ accepting this method. And lastly, only 7% of
respondents would ‘always’ find ‘post-publication peer review after a
basic check by invited reviewers’ appropriate. In fact, more than a
quarter of authors would ‘never’ value ‘post-publication peer review’;
contrastingly, the number of those who answered ‘never’ to traditional
peer review was too small to plot on the chart.

Regional and Subject Differences

Across all subjects and regions, the majority of authors felt that
rigorous peer review would be the most suitable refereeing style for
the bulk of their OA research papers (selecting ‘always’ or ‘often’).
Authors from Library and Information Science seem least wedded to the
traditional style of peer review but even here 72% of authors said
they would ‘always’ or ‘often’ find this rigorous peer review suitable
for their OA articles.

Peer review in the style of PLoS One, which ‘reviews the technical
soundness of my research without any judgement on its novelty or
interest’, is the second most popular type of review for most subject
areas, finding the largest level of support from Library and
Information Scientists (50% choosing ‘always’ or ‘often’).

‘Accelerated peer review [process] with fewer rounds of revision in
(the style of eLIfe)’ was the second most popular form of peer review
in seven subject areas, most notably Business and Economics where 41%
of respondents chose ‘always’ or ‘often’ for this option.

 ‘Post-publication peer review’ in the style of f1000 Research found
most favour from authors in Chemistry and Materials Science, where it
saw a similar level of support as the other two types of alternative
peer review models (33-37% selecting ‘always’ or ‘often’).

Authors from Asia, the Middle East and Africa were slightly more
supportive of all the alternative forms of peer review but only those
from the Middle East and Asia showed a corresponding decrease in
support for rigorous peer review.  However, this still came out as the
most popular type of review in both of these regions.

This press release is accompanied by Supplement 5 to the original
report – which examines the subject, regional and country-level
variations for each question regarding peer review in full:

www.tandf.co.uk/journals/explore/open-access-survey-supp5.pdf

You can find the basic results, the full survey and all the subject
and regional data supplements at our OA survey homepage:

http://www.tandfonline.com/page/openaccess/opensurvey

Follow us on Twitter for the latest news on the survey @TandFOpen (#oasurvey).

Visit our newsroom at: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/press-releases

For more information, please contact:
Victoria Wright
Communications Manager
Taylor & Francis Group Journals
email: [log in to unmask]