The College Fix

Editors aim to increase transparency while reducing bias and errors in research

A new open review system called MetaROR aims to reform the “broken” peer review academic publishing process by allowing scholars to pre-publish their research for peers to review.

Kathryn Zeiler, editor-in-chief at MetaROR and professor of law at Boston University, recently told The College Fix more about the impetus for the online platform, which launched in the fall.

She and her fellow editors aim to “help researchers regain control of the publication process,” she told The Fix in a recent email.

“For example, under our review model, we (the researchers, as opposed to the publishers) get to decide when to issue statements of caution when mistakes are discovered, and authors are given an opportunity to correct mistakes and publish revised versions,” Zeiler said.

Zeiler said she and her fellow editors want to improve the peer review process as well as help consumers of academic research.

“And we know peer review, however much it is lauded, often does not work. It is sometimes biased, and too often allows errors, or even scholarly fraud, to creep through,” she and fellow editors Stephen Pinfield and Ludo Waltman wrote recently in an article at The Conversation.

“Clearly the peer-review system is broken. It is slow, inefficient and burdensome, and the incentives to carry out a review are low,” they wrote.

They explained the process of their new system:

“Authors submit their work to MetaROR by providing MetaROR with a link to their preprinted article. A managing editor then recruits peer reviewers who are experts on the article’s object of study, its research methods, or both. Reviewers with competing interests are excluded whenever possible, and disclosure of competing interests is mandatory.”

Open reviews act as a way to strengthen scholarly conversations as well, and researchers gain from reviewing others’ academic papers openly, they wrote.

The editors also aim to bring transparency to the peer review process and alleviate pressures of the publish-or-perish culture. With their system, Zeiler said researchers get to decide for themselves how much to write and publish, without “pressure to sacrifice quality to improve quantity in an effort to increase publisher profits.”

What’s more, “MetaROR is a solution for long publication delays due to multiple rounds of revisions,” Zeiler informed The Fix.

Open reviews allow authors to respond, interact, and engage with edits. “In addition, editors strive to locate reviewers with no competing interests,” Zeiler said.

Through their new system, “we have committed to providing full access to our data to allow metarearchers to study our open review process. This will allow us to finetune our process and to learn about the strengths and weaknesses of it,” she said.

MORE: Michigan State U., dean silent on plagiarism allegations

Ivan Oransky, medical journalist and co-founder of Retraction Watch, also confirmed that one of the problems of academic publishing is scholars often feel pressured to publish. His blog reports on academic retractions for various reasons, including errors and plagiarism.

“People are being pressured,” Oransky told The Fix in a Zoom interview focused on academic publishing. “They have to publish too much, and they have to publish in certain journals. If you take away that pressure, then people can be more relaxed. And they won’t have the incentive to make things up or cut corners.”

However, in a follow up email asking about open review platforms like MetaROR, Oransky told The Fix that “reducing retractions shouldn’t be a high-priority goal right now, in my view. Retracting papers that should be retracted is a bigger priority.

“And at most MetaROR can prevent a tiny number of retractions. The field it’s involved in is very small, and populated by researchers who already scrutinize one another’s work more than in a lot of other fields, or at least that’s their ethos,” he said.

A few other open review platforms also exist. Oransky pointed The Fix to one called eLife, which helps “scientists accelerate discovery by operating a platform for research communication that encourages and recognises the most responsible behaviours in science.”

The eLife platform focuses on STEM research, while MetaROR welcomes “articles in all fields of metaresearch.”

Meanwhile, the editors at MetaROR want to foster new academic discourse by creating a publishing culture that is open to non-established academics like students.

Zeiler told The Fix that MetaROR “welcome[s] student engagement. First, students are welcome to submit articles for review. Second, students are sometimes involved in the review process as we welcome jointly authored reviews (i.e., sometimes faculty members invite students to co-author reviews).

“Students might also be interested in studying MetaROR’s review system. We would be happy to supply any data and other information that would make this possible. We are also considering inviting students to help us with some of our quality checks like plagiarism checks and error checks,” she said.

MORE: Censorship in the Sciences conference speakers call on peers to organize, defend free speech

IMAGE: Pong-photo9/Shutterstock

Like The College Fix on Facebook / Follow us on Twitter