Peer Review Congress

Science Integrity Digest

A blog about science integrity, by Elisabeth Bik, for Harbers-Bik LLC. Support my work at Patreon.com/elisabethbik

Research Integrity and Peer Review

Research Integrity and Peer Review is an open access journal led by a renowned Editorial Board and occupying a unique niche in the field as the only journal ...

The Journal of Scientific Integrity

by Laura Luebbert and Lior Pachter Background (by LL) Four years ago, during the first year of my PhD at Caltech, I participated in a journal club organized by the lab I was rotating in. I was assi…

A New Paradigm for Scientific Publishing, Peer Review, and Impact Assessment

Scientific publishing and peer review have evolved little in three centuries, while the demands placed on them have grown profoundly. The growing role of artificial intelligence has underscored deep, systemic shortcomings of an aging system that has largely evaded innovation, a system whose origins are appallingly closer to the invention of the printing press than to the internet. We can do better – much better. This article is intended as the beginning of a communal experiment: a living document that critically reviews the modern academic publishing and peer-review system and presents a concrete framework to address what bibliometrics experts¹ have characterized as "the pervasive misapplication of indicators to the evaluation of scientific performance". Building on the Leiden Manifesto, DORA, and a body of scholarship spanning many disciplines and decades, we present a community-governed, non-profit platform organized around three trust-weighted impact factors, for articles, authors, and reviewers, with full algorithmic transparency, an open development log, and structural decoupling of credibility scoring from content moderation and from monetization. We invite the community to discuss, critique, and help shape it.

Protect your science at any stage | ReviewerZero

ReviewerZero checks manuscripts and published papers for image problems, statistical errors, reference errors, and authorship questions, for publishers, research-integrity offices, and R&D teams.

Clear Skies – Your partner in research integrity

Introducing COSIG: The Collection of Open Science Integrity Guides

Investigating the integrity of published scientific papers is key to the scientific process, but the necessary knowledge is in short supply. We present COSIG, an open collection of meta-scientific guides enabling anyone to perform forensic peer review.

Guest post: If you’re going to critique science, be scientific about it

Loren K. Mell Editor’s note: This post responds to a Feb. 13 article in The Atlantic, “The Scientific Literature Can’t Save Us Now,” written by Retraction Watch cofounders Adam Marcus and Ivan Oran…

Can we measure trust in scientific publications? - LSE Impact

Jonathon Alexis Coates outlines how a constellation of static and dynamic indicators could provide a means for assessing the trustworthiness of published research

Why the Stockholm Declaration will never work

Abstract The Stockholm Declaration calls for a moral reformation of scientific publishing—replacing commercial publishers with scholar-led journals, rewarding quality over quantity and instituting independent oversight. While noble in spirit, it fundamentally misdiagnoses the disease. The crisis of science stems not from paper mills or profit motives but from systemic incentives that reward volume, novelty and prestige over validity and reliability. Non-profit ownership will not neutralize the prestige economy, sleuth-led policing cannot scale, and ‘integrity registries’ would merely replace metrics with surveillance. True reform requires rebuilding the publishing infrastructure as a public utility: publicly funded, free to publish and read, and stripped of hierarchy and financial incentives.

Faster science, penalties in evaluation, and concerns on quality and impact: Researchers’ use and perceptions of preprints

The preprint ecosystem has expanded rapidly over the past decade, fundamentally altering science communication. Yet, the scholarly community’s attitudes toward this shift remain underexplored. Through a large-scale survey of US and Canadian biomedical scholars, we provide a comprehensive analysis of preprint utilization, perceived impact, and integration into academic credit systems. We find robust engagement across reading, citing, and submitting preprints; however, this activity is driven primarily by a desire for rapid dissemination rather than a foundational commitment to open science. Furthermore, while preprints are valued as networking assets, perceived career penalties during formal academic evaluations stifle broader cultural adoption. Crucially, to navigate the absence of formal peer review, scholars report a heavy reliance on author reputation as a primary heuristic to evaluate a preprint’s credibility and guide their reading and citation decisions. Notably, despite acknowledging preprints’ role in accelerating knowledge sharing, scholars express significant concerns regarding fraud and misinformation, particularly amid declining public trust in science and emerging threats to scientific integrity from artificial intelligence. To resolve these tensions, the preprint ecosystem must evolve beyond prioritizing speed to foster genuine academic dialogue. Simultaneously, evaluation frameworks must adapt to the realities of preprinting, and innovative quality-control mechanisms are urgently needed to balance rapid dissemination with rigorous scientific integrity.

A budding discipline around how science gets read and judged - Aris

Scholarly publishing spent thirty years arguing about access. It has barely begun arguing about what readers do with the paper once they have it. At Aris we call that second argument scholarly interface design. Mike Morrison's community calls it ScienceUX. Either way it is becoming a field, and here is why it is worth your attention.

Reformation of science publishing: the Stockholm Declaration

Science relies on integrity and trustworthiness. But scientists under career pressure are lured to purchase fake publications from ‘paper mills’ that use AI-generated data, text and image fabrication. The number of low-quality or fraudulent publications is rising to hundreds of thousands per year, which—if unchecked—will damage the scientific and economic progress of our societies. The result is editor and reviewer fatigue, irreproducible experiments, misguided experiments, disinformation and escalating costs that devour funding from taxpayers intended for research. It is high time to reevaluate current publishing models and outline a global plan to stop this unhealthy development. A conference was therefore organized by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to draft an action plan with specific recommendations, as follows. (i) Academia should resume control of publishing using non-profit publishing models (e.g. diamond open-access). (ii) Adjust incentive systems to merit quality, not quantity, in a reputation economy where the gaming of publication numbers and citation metrics distorts the perception of academic excellence. (iii) Implement mechanisms to prevent and detect fake publications and fraud which are independent of publishers. (iv) Draft and implement legislations, regulations and policies to increase publishing quality and integrity. This is a call to action for universities, academies, science organizations and funders to unite and join this effort.

The Peer Review Crisis Demands Radical Reform: Why Reviewers Should Become Paid Professional Referees

The peer review system, fundamental to scientific quality control, faces a significant crisis. As journal editors, we often need to send up to 35 invitations just to secure two reviewers, confronting daily the collapse of voluntary participation. This reflects a critical imbalance: while publication pressure intensifies, willingness to evaluate diminishes, creating "literature elephantiasis", i.e., an overwhelming proliferation of papers exceeding human processing capacity. Current compensation models, relying on token recognition and database access, fail to incentivize quality engagement and may encourage ethically problematic practices like excessive self-citation. The unchecked infiltration of artificial intelligence into peer review, with minimal enforcement, further undermines system integrity. We propose transforming peer reviewers into professional referees, modeled on sports officiating. This radical solution involves formal training and certification for reviewers, equipping them to assess scientific merit, methodology, and ethics comprehensively. Like sports referees supported by assistants, scientific referees would collaborate with specialists - including statisticians, methodology experts, and reference checkers - ensuring thorough evaluation while distributing workload effectively. Funding would come from publishers or research funders, recognizing peer review as an essential, compensated component of the research lifecycle. Implementation faces challenges including publisher resistance and funding allocation, which we address through phased transition strategies. This professionalization addresses current inequities where conscientious scientists shoulder disproportionate reviewing burdens while others contribute minimally. Professional reviewers would view evaluation as valued career development rather than unwelcome obligation. Critics citing independence concerns overlook the sports analogy: referees maintain impartiality through professional standards despite league compensation. Quality scientific evaluation requires dedicated expertise, adequate training, and fair remuneration. Science deserves better than a system dependent on goodwill and guilt - it needs professional referees now.

The Drain of Scientific Publishing

The domination of scientific publishing in the Global North by major commercial publishers is harmful to science. We need the most powerful members of the research community, funders, governments and Universities, to lead the drive to re-communalise publishing to serve science not the market.