IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/amerec/v69y2024i2p241-258.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Economics Peer-Review: Problems, Recent Developments, and Reform Proposals

Author

Listed:
  • Christoph Siemroth

Abstract

This article contributes to the debate on reforming the peer-review process in the economics profession. It examines the current state of peer-review in economics, surveys the relevant literature, and identifies several problems and solutions. Problems to be discussed are referee overreach and excessive revisions, strategic refereeing and conflicts of interest, prestige bias and other discrimination, and the noisy outcome of peer-review. It recommends several solutions for reform. First, enforce referee guidelines that referee reports must explicitly separate their suggestions into essential and optional, with 3 essential maximum. Second, let authors award the best referee report. Third, adopt conflict of interest policies for referees and punish non-disclosure. Fourth, use double-blind refereeing. Fifth, make better use of prior reports from other journals. Sixth, pay referees for prompt reports. A discussion of the role of editors highlights additional issues that deserve a debate in the profession.

Suggested Citation

  • Christoph Siemroth, 2024. "Economics Peer-Review: Problems, Recent Developments, and Reform Proposals," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 69(2), pages 241-258, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:amerec:v:69:y:2024:i:2:p:241-258
    DOI: 10.1177/05694345241269484
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/05694345241269484
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/05694345241269484?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:amerec:v:69:y:2024:i:2:p:241-258. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://journals.sagepub.com/home/aex .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.