Peer review

Peer review (known as refereeing in some academic fields) is a scholarly process used in the publication of manuscripts and in the awarding of money for research. Publishers and agencies use peer review to select and to screen submissions. At the same time, the process assists authors in meeting the standards of their discipline. Publications and awards that have not undergone peer review are liable be regarded with suspicion by scholars and professionals in many fields.

How it works

Peer review subjects an author's work or ideas to the scrutiny of two or more others who are experts in the field of the subject at hand. Referees return a text to its author with edits, annotation and suggestions for improvement. Typically referees remain anonymous to the authors and are not selected from among the authors' close colleagues, relatives or friends.

A chief rationale for peer review is that rarely is just one person, or one closely working group, able to spot every mistake or flaw in a complicated piece of work. Therefore showing the work to various others increases the odds that every weakness will be identified--and with advice perhaps fixed. The anonymity and independence of reviewers fosters unvarnished criticism and discourages cronyism in granting and publication decisions. The differing experiences of the reviewers of a paper may also lead to new approaches or things to try which the primary authors had not considered.

At a journal or book publisher, the task of picking reviewers typically falls to an editor. When a manuscript arrives, an editor solicits reviews from scholars or other experts who may or may not have already expressed a willingness to referee for that journal or book division. Granting agencies typically recruit a panel or committee of reviewers in advance of the arrival of applications.

As a policy, editors often invite a manuscript's authors to name people who they consider qualified to referee their work. Authors are also invited to name natural candidates who should be disqualified; with regard to which the authors are asked to provide justification (typically expressed in terms of conflict of interest).

Editors solicit author input in selecting referees, because adademic writing typically is very specialized. Editors often oversee many specialties, and may not be experts in any of them, since editors may be fulltime professionals with no time for scholarship. But after an editor selects referees from the pool of candidates, he or she typically is obliged not to disclose their identity to the authors.

Scientific journals observe this convention universally. To the editor, the two or three chosen referees report their evaluation of the article and suggestions for improvement. The editor then transmits these comments to the author, meanwhile basing on them his or her descision whether to publish the manuscript. When an editor receives both very positive and very negative reviews for the same manuscript, as somtimes happens, he or she often will solicit one or more additional review as a tie-breaker.

As another strategy in the case of ties, editors may invite authors to reply to a referee's criticisms and permit a compelling rebuttal to break the tie. If an editor does not feel confident to weigh the persuasiveness of a rebuttal, he or she may solicit a response from the referee who made the original criticism. In rare instances, an editor will convey communications back and forth between authors and a referee, in effect allowing them to debate a point.

After reviewing and resoving any potential ties, there may be one of three possible outcomes for the article. The two simplest are outright rejection and unconditional acceptance. In between, the authors may be given a chance to revise, with or without specific recommendations or requirements from the reviewers.

Recruiting referees

Recruiting referees is a political art, because refereeing is unpaid, and because at the institutions where potential referees work, they must improvise a time to do it. To the would-be recruiter's advantage, most potential referees are authors themselves, or at least readers, who are familiar with the system of publication. They know the system requires that experts donate their time. Editors are at an especial advantage in recruiting a scholar when they have overseen the publication of his or her work--or if the scholar is one who hopes to submit manuscripts to that editor's publication in the future. Granting agencies, relatedly, tend to seek referees among their present or former grantees.

Another difficulty that peer-review organizers face is that, with respect to some manuscripts or proposals, there may be few scholars who truly qualify as experts. Such a circumstance often flusters the goals of reviewer anonymity and the avoidance of conflicts of interest. It also increases the chances that an organizer will not be able to recruit true experts--people who have themselves done work like that under review, and who can read between the lines. Low-prestige journals and granting agencies that award little money are especially handicapped with regard to recruiting experts.

Different styles of review

It's worth noting that peer review can be rigorous, in terms of the skill brought to bear, without being highly stringent. An agency may be flush with money to give away, for example, or a journal may have few impressive manuscripts to choose from. So there may be no use to being picky. Often the decision of what counts as "good enough" falls entirely to the editor or organizer of the review. In other cases, referees will each be asked to make the call, with only general guidance from the coordinator on what stringency to apply.

Screening by peers may be more or less laissez-faire, and in this as well as other regards it is prone to differ between disciplines. Physicists, for example, are liable to opine that decisions about the worthiness of an article are best left to the marketplace. Yet even within such a culture peer review serves to ensure high standards in what is published. Outright errors are detected and authors receive both edits and suggestions.

Non-idealities

Some sociologists of science argue that peer review makes the ability to publish susceptible to control by elites. Reviewers tend to be especially critical of conclusions that contradict their own views, and lenient towards those that accord with them. At the same time, elite scientists are more likely than less established ones to be sought out as referees, particularly by high-prestige journals or publishers. As a result, it has been argued, ideas that harmonize with the elite's are more likely to see print and to appear in premier journals than are iconoclastic or revolutionary ones.

Peer review and software development

In the open source movement, something like peer review has taken place in the engineering and evaluation of computer software. In this context, the rationale for peer review has its equivalent in Linus's law, often phrased: "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." Eric S. Raymond has written influentially about peer review in software development, for example in the essay The Cathedral and the Bazaar.