Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Peer Review |
Peer ReviewVerb1. Evaluate professionally a colleague's work. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
| Domain | Definitions |
Health | An organized procedure carried out by a select committee of professionals in evaluating the performance of other professionals in meeting the standards of their specialty. Review by peers is used by editors in the evaluation of articles and other papers submitted for publication. Peer review is used also in the evaluation of grant applications. It is applied also in evaluating the quality of health care provided to patients. (references) |
Public Administration | Evaluation by physician's professional peers in connection with quality control for medical services. Source: European Union. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
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.
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, editor's 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.
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.
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.How it works
Recruiting referees
Different styles of review
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Peer review."
Synonym: Peer ReviewSynonym: referee (v). (additional references) |
Crosswords: Peer Review |
| Specialty definitions using "peer review": INTERDISCIPLINEARY SCITENTIST ♦ Peer Review, Health Care, Peer Review, Research, Professional Review Organizations, Publication Bias. (references) |
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Periodicals |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Health | Unsuccessful applicants are encouraged to reapply after improving their proposals based on the suggestions of scientists on peer review panels. (references) | |
Stringent peer review consistent with Joint Commission for the Accreditation of Hospitals' standards should monitor ongoing utilization of ECT. Periodic inspection of the equipment is also essential. (references) | ||
Economic History | China | Since the late 1980's, China has directed an increasing proportion of government research funds through peer review mechanisms at the National Natural Science Foundation of China (www.nsfc.gov.cn) and the Ministry of Science and Technology (www.most.gov.cn) in order to achieve better results from research funding. (references) |
Political Economy | GREECE | Accounting/Auditing: The transitional period for de-monopolization of the Greek audit industry officially ended on July 1, 1997. Numerous attempts to reserve a portion of the market for the former state audit monopoly during the transition period (1994-97) were blocked by the European Commission and peer review in the OECD. (references) |
Trade | Greece | The transitional period for de-monopolization of the Greek audit industry officially ended on July 1, 1997. Numerous attempts to reserve a portion of the market for the former state audit monopoly during the transition period (1994-97) were blocked by the European Commission and peer review in the OECD. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day | Expression | Frequency per Day |
peer review | 88 | physician peer review | 4 |
peer review process | 13 | peer peer review | 4 |
journal peer review | 13 | helium peer review | 4 |
medical peer review | 7 | edu esl peer review | 4 |
peer review organization | 7 | form peer review | 3 |
article peer review | 7 | electronic peer review | 3 |
calibrated peer review | 7 | jersey new organization peer review | 3 |
michigan organization peer review | 6 | peer review system | 2 |
hospital peer review | 6 | control internal peer review | 2 |
nursing peer review | 5 | clinical peer review | 2 |
online peer review | 2 | ||
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Language | Translations for "peer review"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | ||||||||||||||||
Dutch | peer review, intercollegiale toetsing, collegiale toetsing. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||
French | revue par pairs, examen par des pairs, examen mutuel, examen critique de confrères. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||
German | Beurteilung durch eine Peer-Group. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||
Italian | valutazione tra pari, revisione tra pari. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||
Pig Latin | eerpay eviewray revisão por pares, avaliação pelos pares. (various references) revisión paritaria. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "e-e-e-e-i-p-r-r-v-w" | |
-1 letter: prereview, previewer. | |
-2 letters: reprieve, rereview, reviewer. | |
-3 letters: preview, reverie, weepier. | |
-4 letters: eerier, peerie, peewee, reiver, revere, review, rewire, riever, veepee, verier, viewer, weeper, weepie, weever. | |
-5 letters: eerie, peeve, pewee, prier, reeve, reive, riper, river, viper, wiper, wirer, wiver, wrier. | |
| Words containing the letters "e-e-e-e-i-p-r-r-v-w" | |
+4 letters: preinterviewed. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)50 65 65 72 52 65 76 69 65 77 |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)
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Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)01010000 01100101 01100101 01110010 00100000 01010010 01100101 01110110 01101001 01100101 01110111 |
HTML Code (1990) (references)P e e r   R e v i e w |
ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)0050 0065 0065 0072 0052 0065 0076 0069 0065 0077 |
Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)507171842527188757189 |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Quotations: Non-fiction 6. Expressions: Internet 7. Translations: Modern 8. Anagrams | 9. Orthography 10. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
