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Envisioning a Hybrid Model of Peer Review
Towards the end of September, Peer Review Week hosted a whole host of content around the subject of peer review, its processes, and editorial policies, as well as highlighting updates and current threats to the system that underpins academic publishing.
Editage, in partnership with EASE, organised a discussion entitled “Envisioning a Hybrid Model of Peer Review: Integrating AI with reviewers, publishers, & authors”, led by Chris Leonard (Director of Strategy and Innovation, Cactus Communications). He was joined by Serge P.J.M. Horbach (Institute for Science in Society, Radboud University, Netherlands), Hasseb Irfanullah (independent consultant on environment, climate change, and research systems) and Marie E. McVeigh (Lead, Peer Review Operations and Publication Integrity, Mary Ann Liebert Inc).
The discussion started with highlighting problems with peer review today; noting that we are engaging with a mid-20th Century system of “gatekeeping” which has developed into one setting standards for research, a space to develop work and ideas, where communities can collaborate and a place to discuss what it means to create “good” standards. A major issue with the peer-review process, as highlighted by Serge, is finding quality reviewers – the number of invitations required has increased due to subject specificity and interdisciplinary fields overlapping. The volume and vast number of articles exacerbates this issue and small communities of interest can no longer support growing areas of academic research alone. This can lead to exclusivity and the network of reviewers within it is diminishing.
Hasseb raised the question of whether peer review has become overrated? If a manuscript’s decision can be made on the outcome of two reviewer reports – does this undermine the whole of the research? As peer review is not valued necessarily by the publisher in a financial sense, the value of its contribution is lost. However, it is important to understand that the communication around the research does not end with the peer-review process, it starts upon publication.
As the discussion progressed, the focus turned towards a hybrid approach to peer review and what that means. A hybrid approach could equate to a generative AI and human reviewer contributing towards a reviewer report, while the Journal Editor provides a final commentary. This assistance would provide “free labour” and generative AI is a good bibliographical research tool. Marie posed the suggestion that in cases such as this, it is ideal to allow machines to do what machines can do and allow humans to engage with the outcomes. For example, AI would be great at screening manuscripts, analysing citations and identifying peer groups. Such routine and rule-based tasks can be done quickly and efficiently. Evaluations can then be conducted by humans, who are able to decipher and assess whether the article adds to the scholarly record. As human reviewers cannot be located quickly enough, this dual aspect might be the quickest, cost-efficient way to support peer-review processes going forwards.
As journals look to lean on AI technologies, we need to understand what a journal is and what it does. Is it still simply a facet to share and disseminate work and ideas, or is it becoming more than that – a place where communities engage and develop their insights? By involving AI, do we consider it a peer? If community is at the core of journal publishing, surely humans will be required to keep that sense of togetherness ongoing. Without it, it’s just computers talking to each other.
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Text recycling in research writing (COPE Lightning Talk, April 2024)
The “text recycling in research writing” COPE Lightning Talk in April 2024 was presented by Professor Cary Moskovitz (Director of the Text Recycling Research Project at Duke University, NC, USA).
Text recycling can be defined a number of ways. Essentially it is the reuse of material – whether it is prose, visuals or equations – in a new document where material is used in the new document as it was in the original source. The material is not presented in the new document as a quotation and usually one author on the new document is the same as the original.
Recycling material in published papers is common, however authors do need to be mindful of the copyright law that they are submitting their paper under. Under US copyright law, authors may find that generally they can reuse portions of text under the Fair Use clause, and in many STEM journals publishers ensure their policies work to accommodate this, so as not to infringe the copyright/legal ownership.
The ethics of recycling are different and it requires appropriate transparency. Legalities and ethics may differ and the author must ensure that permission has been requested if their use of copyrighted material falls outside of the Fair Use guidance and journal policies. Text recycling should be done within best practice – we cannot expect authors and editors to be experts in copyright law, however publishers’ policies should adapt to and support their communities. It is also important to highlight that authors should check their publisher agreements as this is where the details lie. These will vary from publisher to publisher and the rules around text recycling are not always consistent.
It is recommended to authors that if they are using work which is previously published, a statement could be included in the paper to highlight this, and this would act in accordance with best practice. This will allow the reader to know that the work is not original, but it will also signpost accordingly.
Read more“… Everything was excellent.”