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Peer Review Highly Sensitive To Poor Refereeing

Posted by Soulskill on from the i-blame-jim-joyce dept.

$RANDOMLUSER writes "A new study described at Physicsworld.com claims that a small percentage of shoddy or self-interested referees can have a drastic effect on published article quality. The research shows that article quality can drop as much as one standard deviation when just 10% of referees do not behave 'correctly.' At high levels of self-serving or random behavior, 'the peer-review system will not perform much better than by accepting papers by throwing (an unbiased) coin.' The model also includes calculations for 'friendship networks' (nepotism) between authors and reviewers. The original paper, by a pair of complex systems researchers, is available at arXiv.org. No word on when we can expect it to be peer reviewed."

4 of 233 comments (clear)

  1. yeah by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    thats what always happens to my comments on here... frosty pist!

  2. Peer review by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Result: -1 Troll

    Now mod me up for factual accuracy or face infinite recursion

  3. So, umm, was this, you know, peer-reviewed? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    (no text)

  4. Just like the Slashdot moderation system by Old97 · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Ok, mod me down.

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