Auditing published papers (part II)

The papers I audit passed peer review before publication?

Well… sometimes it does not look like they did. 😒

The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity (ECCRI) states that: 

“Researchers (must) take seriously their commitment and responsibility to the research community, through refereeing, reviewing, and assessment”

Illustration by Mohamed_hassan.

Most of the time, scientists review the work of their peers solely for peer recognition. Gratification may never happen. When were you ever paid for that? 💸

Reviewers are obliged to confidentiality 🙊, must declare actual or perceived conflicts of interest 🙉, and respect the rights of authors 🙈 (i.e., not use the ideas/findings they are reviewing for their own research without permission).

With so little in terms of rewards, why would you do this immensely challenging, labour-intensive, and unpaid work?

Because the cost of not doing it far outweighs the discomfort. 💪

Peer review has uncovered:

  • Fabrication: making up data.

  • Falsification: manipulating protocols and/or omitting data without justification.

  • Plagiarism: using other's work or ideas without giving credit to the original source.
 

Good peer review is one of the main bastions in the evolution of knowledge.


Science builds on itself. I could never have uncovered some of the findings I did 📓, if I had not been able to trust the work published before I started. 📖

I learnt a lot by reading wonderfully descriptive and quite lyrical papers published in the 1960s and 1970s (for which I'm forever indebted to the British Library). But also from heavy-duty mathematical modelling (thank you Prof Pries!). This way, I could find context for me.

Next, I'll detail how I do it...

 

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How to spot fake reviewers: a beginner's guide

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For those unfamiliar with or new to academic publishing, peer review manipulation is hard to spot. This is mainly because most peer review reports are still confidential documents that stay buried deep in academic journal's editorial offices. As long as this continues to be the default, recognising good and bad peer reviews is difficult enough... now we have to worry about fake peer review as well?! 😒 Well, yes. Yes, we do. The peer review process in academic publishing is unlike any other. The style and content of a manuscript are criticized, as are the thought processes that birthed it. Everything from word choice to significance of the research focus is under scrutiny. In traditional peer review formats, reviewers recommend that manuscripts be accepted or rejected. This much power may make some less scrupulous people guiddy... or yearning to rig the system. The refereeing work that is supposed to be one of the garantors of research integrity is itself highly susceptible to ma
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Auditing published papers (part I)

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After they have been published, I audit research papers.  Image by @freepik Why? How does that work? 😕 A new revised version of The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity (ECCRI) has been produced by Allea , and recognised by the European Commission, one of the world's largest research funding bodies. This revision focuses on a heightened awareness of issues pertaining to Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion ( EDI ), but also the General Data Protection Regulation ( GDPR ), and even Open Science . I know.. too much legal speak, too many acronyms... 😬 So, let me sum it up for you. 🔊 All institutions, organizations, and individuals that engage in or interact with research must always abide by the principles of: Honesty Respect   Reliability   Accountability  Simple enough, right? Humm.. I analyse papers that have been flagged as "of concern". 😟 The issues I most commonly see have to do with lack of funding or data availability statements, inappropriate citati
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IMHO: why open science should adopt double anonymous peer review

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Let's get opinionated... Peer review is still the cornerstone of quality research. This has been repeated by so many during #PeerReviewWeek2023 , it almost lost its meaning to me. I participated in this conversation wholeheartedly, as a freelancer with a variety of roles, from content review to integrity audits.  I’m no longer in academia, but I did my stint there: it’s hard to imagine that many PhD students and postdocs get excited by performing their first peer review. It often results from an invitation trickle-down and, although it can be regarded as a learning opportunity, peer review is hard, time-consuming, unpaid, and often unrecognized work. Open participation is often regarded by researchers as the fairer, more constructive and productive process, leading to improvement in the quality of the finished version of the works. This is the iterative version of having a preprint published in a stable server, with access to all versions of the work, and “comments on”.   The
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