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Cooperation between Referees and Authors Increases Peer Review Accuracy

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  • Jeffrey T Leek
  • Margaret A Taub
  • Fernando J Pineda

Abstract

Peer review is fundamentally a cooperative process between scientists in a community who agree to review each other's work in an unbiased fashion. Peer review is the foundation for decisions concerning publication in journals, awarding of grants, and academic promotion. Here we perform a laboratory study of open and closed peer review based on an online game. We show that when reviewer behavior was made public under open review, reviewers were rewarded for refereeing and formed significantly more cooperative interactions (13% increase in cooperation, P = 0.018). We also show that referees and authors who participated in cooperative interactions had an 11% higher reviewing accuracy rate (P = 0.016). Our results suggest that increasing cooperation in the peer review process can lead to a decreased risk of reviewing errors.

Suggested Citation

  • Jeffrey T Leek & Margaret A Taub & Fernando J Pineda, 2011. "Cooperation between Referees and Authors Increases Peer Review Accuracy," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(11), pages 1-11, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0026895
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0026895
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Bernd Pulverer, 2011. "Peer reviews: some are already public," Nature, Nature, vol. 474(7351), pages 285-285, June.
    2. Anna Dreber & David G. Rand & Drew Fudenberg & Martin A. Nowak, 2008. "Winners don’t punish," Nature, Nature, vol. 452(7185), pages 348-351, March.
    3. Hidde Ploegh, 2011. "End the wasteful tyranny of reviewer experiments," Nature, Nature, vol. 472(7344), pages 391-391, April.
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    5. Daniel Mietchen, 2011. "Peer reviews: make them public," Nature, Nature, vol. 473(7348), pages 452-452, May.
    6. Bernd Pulverer, 2010. "Transparency showcases strength of peer review," Nature, Nature, vol. 468(7320), pages 29-31, November.
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    Cited by:

    1. Qianjin Zong & Yafen Xie & Jiechun Liang, 2020. "Does open peer review improve citation count? Evidence from a propensity score matching analysis of PeerJ," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(1), pages 607-623, October.
    2. Emilija Stojmenova Duh & Andrej Duh & Uroš Droftina & Tim Kos & Urban Duh & Tanja Simonič Korošak & Dean Korošak, 2019. "Publish-and-Flourish: Using Blockchain Platform to Enable Cooperative Scholarly Communication," Publications, MDPI, vol. 7(2), pages 1-15, May.
    3. Federico Bianchi & Francisco Grimaldo & Giangiacomo Bravo & Flaminio Squazzoni, 2018. "The peer review game: an agent-based model of scientists facing resource constraints and institutional pressures," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 116(3), pages 1401-1420, September.
    4. Gaute Wangen, 2015. "Conflicting Incentives Risk Analysis: A Case Study of the Normative Peer Review Process," Administrative Sciences, MDPI, vol. 5(3), pages 1-23, July.
    5. Necmi K. Avkiran, 2013. "An empirical investigation of the influence of collaboration in Finance on article impact," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 95(3), pages 911-925, June.
    6. Mantas Radzvilas & Francesco De Pretis & William Peden & Daniele Tortoli & Barbara Osimani, 2023. "Incentives for Research Effort: An Evolutionary Model of Publication Markets with Double-Blind and Open Review," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 61(4), pages 1433-1476, April.
    7. Follert, Florian & Naumann, Chantal & Thieme, Lutz, 2020. "Between scientific publication and public perception: Some economic remarks on the allocation of time in science," Working Papers of the European Institute for Socioeconomics 34, European Institute for Socioeconomics (EIS), Saarbrücken.

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