Comment archive

Tuesday, 12 Mar 2024
Fake Research Is Threatening Our Democracy

What will happen to public debate and our democracy if we can no longer trust research? Fabricated ‘scientific publications’ could threaten the very foundations of our society. It isn’t ‘fake news’ that scares me, it’s fake research. By this, I don’t mean plagiarism and the failure to provide correct citations, ...

Sunday, 27 Sept 2020
Peer Review and Societal Impact of COVID-19 Research

In this final instalment of our blog series marking this year’s Peer Review Week, Senior Research Nicholas Marsh looks at how Reddit users are accessing research on the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and finds that non-peer-reviewed publications pose a real challenge to peer-reviewed publications as a way to disseminate research to ...

Saturday, 26 Sept 2020
Hostile Reports and the ‘Responsibility to Protect’

In today’s blog in PRIO’s blog series for Peer Review Week 2020, Marit Moe-Pryce, managing editor of the PRIO-owned and -run journal Security Dialogue, discusses the key role of editorial offices in mediating between authors and reviewers in the peer review process. ‘’The text suffers in every aspect that makes ...

Friday, 25 Sept 2020
Peer review, DORA, and science

Today we continue our blog series for Peer Review Week 2020 with a piece by Haakon Gjerløw, discussing the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and how its criticism of the use of publication metrics in research assessment relates to peer review in journals. Without peer review, we are ...

Thursday, 24 Sept 2020
Turned Away at the Gate: How Peer Review Can Reinforce Social Inequalities

In today’s instalment of PRIO’s blog series marking Peer Review Week 2020, Lynn P. Nygaard discusses ways in which peer review in its current form can reinforce existing inequities in the research system, and points to a need for more training in and reflection on the role of the reviewer ...

Wednesday, 23 Sept 2020
Long Live Peer Review – Expand and Differentiate

In today’s blog in PRIO’s series marking this year’s Peer Review Week, Pavel K. Baev reflects on his own experiences reviewing and being reviewed and the challenges posed by unclear expectations on reviewers. He suggests that a partial solution may lie in a clearer delineation between different types of review. ...

Monday, 21 Sept 2020
Welcome to Peer Review Week at PRIO!

This week is Peer Review Week 2020. The aim of this annual, global, virtual event is to raise awareness of the importance for research of peer review – the practice of researchers providing feedback on each other’s work, most prominently in connection with publication of research in academic journals. The ...